Imagine it’s the first day you’ve ever studied SEO
There are as many SEO blog posts as there are opinions, and as the saying goes, everyone’s got one.
Over the weekend though, a thread on the forum got me thinking: “Experienced SEO’s have a level of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt), how bad is it for newcomers?”
In case you haven’t read through the thread, the crux is:
- Newcomer to SEO posts a comment here, using his name as anchor text.
- Most likely read on a thousand blogs about blog commenting or forum commenting for backlinks.
- He then goes on to read more stuff about SEO and finds out about link penalties, and then after some soul searching, asks to have the links removed.
- The comments however are real ones, on a decent site with loads of content.
I hate to say it, but I believe that Google’s anti-SEO campaign is working!
The Beginners Checklist of Required SEO Reading
- IF you only read one thing about SEO, please make it the beginners guide by MOZ: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
- IF you then still have appetite to read some more, the 2014 White Hat SEO Guide here on WMS has links to the official guidelines, and tries to put them in plain english.
Now STOP: Before You Go ANY Further
It’s really important to understand SEO is in a constant state of flux.
Yes, that makes it a much harder thing to get to grips with, as it means that anything written some time ago, is potentially no longer true.
Also, 99% of what you read is likely to be inaccurate, there’s no standardisation, there’s no accepted truth.
These Simple Rules Should Guide Whatever You Do:
-
If something feels “wrong” it probably is.
If you can’t see why something would benefit you, it probably won’t.
That goes for submitting to directories, leaving comment spam, stuffing keywords, buying links, and whatever you read on most SEO blogs unfortunately. -
Google is trying to provide the best possible result set for every query.
Sure, they get it wrong quite a bit, but ask yourself why your page should rank well? Is it the best result for a search term?
If not, please start with trying to make sure it IS the best result. In doing so you’ll improve your website & make it more valuable to your readers/customers, even if Google don’t immediately rank it well (they probably won’t), you’re contributing to the fabric of the internet & you don’t need to worry about Google updates.
