Inaccurate and unreliable search engine optimization (SEO) advice is available with alarming regularity, it seems. You can find it almost everywhere you look on the internet.
Bad advice lurks in your e-mail as spam from shady fly by night companies calling themselves SEO professionals. Suggestions on improving your website’s position, found in the various internet message forums, ranges from tremendously helpful to downright terrible. Instead of boosting your blog or website in the search rankings, bad advice abounds that can at best drop your rankings below their current levels. At worst, bad advice can result in outright banning from the search engines entirely.
There are articles on SEO, widely read and believed, that offer not only questionable opinions, but are riddled with factual errors. Self styled SEO experts can be found on their websites, waiting to ensnare the unwary.
Following such dubious advice, some novice website owners could make some terrible errors, that could drop their website’s placement in the search engine rankings. Some of the advice can even get a website banned from the search engines, for violation of their webmaster guidelines.
Webmasters unknowingly read and hear bad SEO advice on a constant basis. Often, the advice is packaged in a fairly well written format, and carries a fairly authoritative tone. What many website owners don’t know, is how to select the solid and useful recommendations, from the concepts best ignored at any cost.
The internet in general, and search engine optimization in particular, are still very young in terms of years in existence. The idea, that SEO can even make a difference, to a website’s ranking in the search engines, is a concept still very much in its infancy.
The opportunity for the internet version of snake oil salespeople, and for outright charlatans, is certainly very high. The lack of peer review of information, creates an ideal environment, for both the dishonest huckster and the simply incompetent advisor.
The best defence for any website owner is to read carefully, and weigh the pros and cons of all advice on offer, prior to taking any drastic action. Find some reputatable SEO advisors and seek their opinions. Weigh the various suggestions offered to find agreement and consensus. Avoid any advice that recommends practices that violate the webmaster guideline recommendations of the search engines themselves.
Whether the advice arrives from self styled experts, message forums, e-mail newsletters, or from a search result, it’s important for the website owner to be very cautious. While not all SEO advice is bad, there is much that needs to be taken with an entire shaker of the proverbial salt.
Search engine optimization advice is certainly a webmaster beware system.
Don’t get caught following harmful advice.
Wayne Hurlbert provides insigtful information about marketing, promotions, search engine optimization and public relations for websites and business blogs on the popular Blog Business World.
Check out Blog Business World for yourself.
