Beware Pseudoscience 

Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice posing as science, but which does not constitute or adhere to an appropriate scientific methodology…

Beware folk trying to bamboozle you with science. This isn’t a science when Google controls the ‘laws’ and changes them at will.

You see I have always thought that optimisation was about:

• Looking at Google rankings all night long,
• Keyword research
• Observations about ranking performance of your pages and that of others (though not in a controlled environment)
• Putting relevant, co-occurring words you want to rank for on pages
• Putting words in links to pages you want to rank for
• Understanding what you put in your title, that’s what you are going to rank best for
• Getting links from other websites pointing to yours
• Getting real quality links that will last from sites that are pretty trustworthy
• Publishing lots and lots of content
• Focusing on the long tail of search!!!
• Understanding it will take time to beat all this competition

I always expected to get a site demoted, by:

• Getting too many links with the same anchor text pointing to a page
• Keyword stuffing a page
• Trying to manipulate Google too much on a site
• Creating a “frustrating user experience.”
• Chasing the algorithm too much
• Getting links I shouldn’t have
• Buying links

Not that any of the above is automatically penalised all the time.

I was always of the mind I don’t need to understand the maths or science of Google, that much, to understand what Google engineers want.

The biggest challenge these days are to get trusted sites to link to you, but the rewards are worth it.

To do it, you probably should be investing in some marketable content, or compelling benefits for the linking party (that’s not just paying for links somebody else can pay more for). Buying links to improve rankings WORKS but it is probably THE most hated link building technique as far as the Google web spam team is concerned.

I was very curious about the science of optimisation I studied what I could but it left me a little unsatisfied. I learned that building links, creating lots of decent contentand learning how to monetise that content better (while not breaking any major TOS of Google) would have been a more worthwhile use of my time.

Getting better and faster at doing all that would be nice too.

There are many problems with blogs, too, including mine.

Misinformation is an obvious one. Rarely are your results conclusive or observations 100% accurate. Even if you think a theory holds water on some level. I try to update old posts with new information if I think the page is only valuable with accurate data.

Just remember most of what you read about how Google works from a third party is OPINION and just like in every other sphere of knowledge, ‘facts’ can change with a greater understanding over time or with a different perspective.

Chasing The Algorithm

There is no magic bullet and there are no secret formulas to achieve fast number 1 ranking in Google in any competitive niche WITHOUT spamming Google.

A legitimately earned high position in search engines takes a lot of hard work.

There are a few less talked about tricks and tactics that are deployed by some better than others to combat Google Panda, for instance, but there are no big secrets (no “white hat” secrets anyway). There is clever strategy, though, and creative solutions to be found to exploit opportunities uncovered by researching the niche. As soon as Google sees a strategy that gets results… it usually becomes ‘out with the guidelines’ and something you can be penalised for – so beware jumping on the latest fad.

The biggest advantage any one provider has over another is experience and resource. The knowledge of what doesn’t work and what will hurt your site is often more valuable than knowing what will give you a short-lived boost. Getting to the top of Google is a relatively simple process. One that is constantly in change. Professional SEO is more a collection of skills, methods and techniques. It is more a way of doing things, than a one-size-fits-all magic trick.

After over a decade practising and deploying real campaigns, I’m still trying to get it down to its simplest, most cost-effective processes.

I think it’s about doing simple stuff right.

Good text, simple navigation structure, quality links. To be relevant and reputable takes time, effort and luck, just like anything else in the real world, and that is the way Google want it.

If a company is promising you guaranteed rankings and has a magic bullet strategy, watch out.

I’d check it didn’t contravene Google’s guidelines.