Why does everybody think they can give SEO advice?
SEO is a strange industry. Reading articles about the subject on a daily basis it’s so frustrating to see bad advice being handed out.
One of the most annoying things is when people who don’t know much about SEO decide they have some valuable advice to offer. Why would you do this? If somebody asked me for legal advice or some tips on fixing a car then I wouldn’t just make something up so why do so many people think they can give SEO advice?
A lot of bloggers give out advice and ridicule what “so-called SEO experts” have told them. Most of the time the “expert” they got the advice from wasn’t an expert at all so it’s not surprising the advice was wrong.
Getting search traffic to a well written blog is easy – install WordPress and get a few links from other blogs and visitors will start rolling in. This makes a lot of bloggers think they are qualified to give sometimes dubious SEO advice to other people.
One of the worst places in the world to get SEO advice are public forums (paid ones such as SEObook are full of good info). Reading somewhere like Digital Point is probably the worst thing you can ever do, you will spend 3 years stuck in an endless cycle of directory submissions and social bookmarking before you know it.
Post category: Search Engine Optimisation Tweet
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds SEO & Digital Agency specialising in SEO, Web Design, Development & Social Media.
Comments
Read the 9 comments below, or add your own!
Good point Patrick, I think it’s also common in digital as a whole to be honest. People with no expertise or experience seem to think they can just offer up groundless opinions which potentially ruin websites, whilst ignoring the advise of experts they are actuallky paying to build it.
I think with SEO however, one thing excaserbating this issue are professional bloggers. Companies such as your own, or SEOmoz, are obligated to provide new material to their readers regularly. While some people do that well, and know when to write a post giving advice, or when to merely comment or offer observation, a lot of people do it wrong.
As such we get a few respected sources of information, and a whole damn bursting torrent of uninformed rubbish. To a non-SEO, it is impossible to tell which is worth reading and which isn’t.
The article somehow seems half baked. You start out laying a strong foundation. You tell us what not to do but there is little in the way of what is the right thing to do. Perhaps a few simple SEO tips combined with some URLs where to learn more would have rounded out this article. As it stands, I feel like the first shoe dropped and I’m left waiting for the second one.
Ryan this wasn’t intended as a post to actually offer any SEO advice. If you want to learn SEO then the best thing to do is join sites like SEObook and SEOmoz.
I think part of the problem is that an awfully large amount of the advice you get from proper SEO “experts” is not that great. As a professional web developer I am regularly SEO guidelines as part of projects, and the quality of these can vary massively.
Then this, not necessarily good information, get moved along to less technical colleges, friends, blog readers, etc in a kind of Chinese wispers, until the advice they are giving out is at best worthless and worse dangerous.
It’s no different than everybody having financial, business, or parenting advice. It’s just a unique example of how the times are changing…
The bottom line with SEO is this:
you are as good as your positions today.
thats it.
everything else is waffle.
And i mean positions, not, Im third for ‘villas in portugal with pools’
I mean number 1 for ‘car insurance’
too many wafflers in this game.
too many people talking about it but not really doing much else.
thats why i love it! muwahahaha!
I think there are a lot of people that are considered experts.. you know the one’s that go to all the tradeshow panels and talk about how awesome Matt Cutts is. I really wish they would stop giving advice. They’re on the payroll at major SE’s with an agenda to spread misinformation.
Isn’t it becoming a bit like advertising? Everyone is an expert on advertising and also on graphic design for that matter!
Hi Patrick,
Whilst I would agree with the point that there are many non experts only too keen to offer useless or indeed damaging advice to newcomers & novices, I would like to know where you stand with such software as WebCEO or IBP & Arelis. Both expensive programs & probably out of the price range of most novices, but do these also give false or misleading advice….???
Regards
Steve