Search Engine Optimization SEO Information

Everyone is looking for help with the search engines, and it seems that everywhere you look, there is help to be had. But here's the rub: how do you sort out the good helpers from the bad helpers? When it comes right down to it, you have no better or worse way of distinguishing between guides, tips, and tutorials than anyone else. There are no standards in the search engine optimization industry, and a great deal of success is achieved through little more than luck and guesswork.

Even the most authoritative, reputable sources of information are generally unreliable because they don't provide real data to justify their statements. The popular SEO resource sites generally just share opinion and speculation, and while there is nothing wrong with looking at everyone's opinions and speculation, you really cannot judge how well informed anyone is by who or how many people pat them on the back.

Verify SEO Information

Search engine optimization is founded upon the time-honored principle of testing everything, believing nothing, and accepting only what can be replicated. Many SEO "experts" claim they have conducted numerous tests but they cannot show you the results of those tests because they are too large, proprietary, or for some other seemingly plausible reason. In your quest to learn more about SEO, you should always remember that you cannot trust any opinions or conclusions that you cannot verify yourself. It's not rocket science. If someone tries to explain something you don't understand, they may be overcomplicating the process or they may just be blowing smoke at you. Either way, what they have to say doesn't help you, does it?

Some claims can be relatively easily verified. For example, if someone attributes an anecdote to another person, you should be able to find the original discussion on the Web through a search. Anything that was shared in a discussion you cannot read for yourself is about as worthwhile as a pound of ice at the South Pole. You don't need "secret" information to succeed with search engine placement. Whenever someone tells you something is "so", ask for a link. The more links the merrier. If they offer nothing, be polite, but move on.

Some claims are not so easily tested. For example, if someone tells you that PageRank converges to an average of 1, how do you determine if they know what they are talking about? In fact, you can look at the PageRank technical papers and come away just as confused as the idiot who claims that PageRank converges to an average of 1. In general, you don't need to worry about PageRank in order to succeed with search engines. The most popular people in the SEO community who still talk about PageRank can be safely ignored. They don't know what they are talking about.

How To Do Your Own SEO Testing

If you want to evaluate what other people claim works (or doesn't work), set up a Web site you don't care about and put some good original content on it. Write a few essays, post a few pictures, etc. Then try something. Use page redirection. Use H1 headers. Put keywords meta tags in your pages. The secret to conducting a good test, however, is to use expressions that you cannot find in the search engines. If you create an expression in the form of "snoop diddly doopy whoop" and find it's not indexed, you can at least determine where on a page (and what kind of page) a search engine will find and index that expression.

For example, if someone says "Google won't pass PageRank or anchor text for links in NOSCRIPT tags", you can easily test this for yourself. Just set up a NOSCRIPT tag on a page and embed a link with unique anchor text. If Google doesn't show that unique anchor text on two pages (your page and the destination page) within two weeks of your test page being crawled, then maybe Google isn't passing PageRank and anchor text (but remember what we said above about people who talk about PageRank -- it doesn't matter who they are).

Beware of SEO Forums

There are no good SEO forums. Not Webmasterworld. Not Highrankings. Not SearchEngineWatch. Not Spider-Food. Not IHelpYou. Not SEORefugee. Not Digital Point. Not SE Roundtable. Get the point? None of the SEO forums provide reliable information. They all provide some good information (some more than others), but if you don't already know what is good and what is bad information, how do you sort out the good from the bad?

Nonetheless, you can find a lot of useful advice and tips in SEO forums. So, go forth and browse the forums. But don't be lazy and ask for help by saying, "I've searched the forum for this and could not find anything". Everyone will know you're either lying or incompetent. They may or may not help you, but quite often they'll just tell you to search again. Beware of the first person to respond. Even moderators don't always know what they are talking about. In fact, most moderators are no more knowledgeable than you are. Remember that. Many of them think they know quite a bit about SEO, but most of them learned what they "know" in SEO forums. An SEO forum is no place to acquire a good education in SEO. Go test what people say in the forums.

Beware of SEO Tutorials

SEO tutorials are a dime a dozen. Some come in the form of articles, some come in the form of FAQs, some come in the form of eBooks. They'll all have some basic information that will help you get started, but they all contain erroneous information too. There are no exceptions. All the tutorials are flawed, outdated, bad, or a combination of all three. Some tutorials are better than others, but even the best tutorials don't help you distinguish between good information and bad. Test everything, believe nothing until you can see how it works with your own eyes. Good luck.