I encounter “SEO experts” on a daily basis. They sell their services, it’s usally something about pinging, posting or some other kind of semi-spam, with phrases like: “I am ranking number one on this keyword with more than 140 million competing sites.” This, dear friends, is snake oil.

First of all, I have no doubt that there might be a lot of good SEO’s out there that would do great results if they were given a chance. That they just never had the opportunity to work with a big budget doesn’t make them bad. There are, on the other hand, a lot of SEO’s out there that are just a breath of warm air ready to be blown up your ass. I would even like to say that a decent percentage of the people selling SEO services of one kind or another are, when they are doing their very best, only adequate.

I want to tell you that you, my dear reader, are most likely someone I would view more or less as a shaman while the serious part of our industry are doctors and scientists. If you believe submitting your feed to 200 aggregators or posting shitloads of cloned pressreleases are ways forward you’ll probably dismiss me as a troll. You know by experience that you have reached top position on a keyword with 140 million results. What do I know about SEO that you don’t?

SEO for one site or one keyword is neither hard or risky. Doing SEO and getting great results over and over again on site after site, that’s another business. Doing it at a decently low cost and in a structured manner is a completely different game. If you tell me you can create a video that goes viral and you’ll get a lot of links, you sell snake oil. Sure, you can do videos, sure they can go viral but is the client really getting a decent worth out of the money he’s throwing at this. is this really the best way to get links?

The same goes for the “blog commentors” and if your one of them please start getting angry now. If you systematically comment blogs for links and keep doing it you’re a fool. I can’t tell you how many sites I’ve seen get decent positions by doing this just to like a rabbitbaby out of an elephant 9 months later. If you sell this service you should be spanked. I’m not saying comments are bad, I’m saying systematic comments are.

There are a million services like this, they range from Pure White Hat to spamming junk-forums with even more junk. Most of them are crap or if you’re lucky only expensive. SEO is not very hard, do it properly and do it a lot. Stay clear from the to good to be true stuff and the guys that preach Google-lore. Stay away from anyone that mentions how many results there are on their keyword – this means nothing.

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