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Seo And Search Engine Forums & Conferences :
By Rob Sullivan, Fri Dec 23rd
Working in the SEO/SEM industry can be very rewarding. Manytimes a problem can be solved simply with a little onlineresearch, and posts on a few forums. All to often, however, some people put too much stock in theposts they see, ultimately negatively impacting their SEOefforts. In this article I look at some of the positives and negatives ofonline SEM forums and attending SEM and conferences.
As part of my daily routine I visit a few of the search engineforums out there to see what people are talking about and whatsome have noticed. Sometimes I come across real gems - stuff I can put away forlater, or use with a client I'm currently stuck on. But more often than not, the information you see is reallymis-information in some cases. As such, one must be extremelycareful in relying what is said on one forum. A good example is when the Google Dance used to happen. It was at this time that webmasters would watch Google and beginto sweat when their rankings dropped one or many positions. Somewebmasters literally didn't sleep during the days of the dance. And many times you would visit some of the popular forums andsee all kinds of conjecture and speculation as to what Googlewas doing. My favorite posts were "on my website this happened, so this HASto be what Google is doing." Yet all to often this poor soul wasbasing his ideas on the effects he witnessed on only onewebsite. And that is a flaw with these forums. It's not that the forumsthemselves are flawed, it's that in some cases people posting onthem make bold statements about the current state of the engineswith little or no evidence. They base their "fact" on observations made on one or twowebsites over the course of one or two days. Generally, these types of posts are quickly debunked as myth,but sometimes they do more damage than good. That's because there are others out there who know even less andread these posts and take them as the truth when in fact theyare mere speculation. And it's not just forums where this happens. Many of the big forums now have events planned - conferences andthe like - where you can now go hear those that post regularlyalso speak. But it's not the speaking engagements I have a problem with,it's the speculation that happens before and after thepresentations that worries me. I can't tell you how many times I've had clients come back fromWebmasterworld conferences or Search Engine Strategies withtheir heads full of ideas on how to move forward, even though Iknow many of these "theories" to be false, or at least flawed. You see, there's lots of socializing that happens at theseevents. You may be sitting down to their lovely boxed lunches and strikeup a conversation with the person next to you. Before you knowit you are sharing ideas, and the next thing you know he'ssolved all your problems. Or at least you think he has. But how well do you know the guy you've just been talking to?And how can you be sure that what he's told you is correct? This is what I've dealt with in the past and many times it's theforums and conferences that can undo over 3 or 4 days what ithas taken you
to build over months and years - that is anappreciation from your clients that you do indeed know what youare talking about. Here's an example: We once had a client from a major University. Things weresailing along quite nicely, changes were getting made and thesite was beginning to rank quite well. The client thought it would be a good idea to attend a webmasterconference. We recommended that she attend, but try not to placetoo much emphasis on what she had heard. This was because theconference she was attending wasn't one of the "big" ones likeWMW or SES, but more of a regional one put on by a local SEOcompany. Yet she came back full of ideas on how to "help" me do my jobbetter. Things like turning off her URL rewriter because "search enginesindex dynamic content just fine." and removing optimized metatags because "search engines don't use those things anyways" andhalting all link building efforts because "building links canget you banned." Well you can guess what happened next - the site stalled in thesearch engines, and didn't improve much after that. We pleadedwith her to let us get back on track, but she was unwilling. In the end, the client canceled unhappy with the results, butwould never allow us to do the job we were hired to do. All because she took what she had heard sometime during theconference as the truth to end all truths. Now I'm not saying that what she was told at the conference waswrong. In fact, I'm inclined to believe that what she was toldwas mostly right. However somehow between attending theconference and coming back to work with us she had determinedthat she somehow knew more that I did about SEO. Chances are she likely distorted what she had heard. Instead of"search engines don't use meta tags" she probably heard "mostsearch engines don't look at meta keyword tag." And instead of "link building will harm your rankings" sheprobably really heard "improper link building can hurt yourrankings." I feel she misinterpreted or otherwise twisted what she hadheard into something else. So if you are site owner, please don't assume everything youread/hear in the industry spaces is correct. If anything I'vefound that you must question everything. Even if it's something that a well known industry expert hassaid, you still owe it to yourself to question it. After all, if the "expert" is wrong, and you've based youronline marketing decisions on what they've said, there's onlyone person to blame - and it isn't necessarily the expert. Similarly, if you've read something in a forum, be sure todouble and triple check it against a few other reliable sources. For example, if you've read something at the Webmasterworldforums, don't be afraid to question the ability in theSearchenginewatch forums. Go a step further and question it in afew more places until you get a satisfactory answer. Because while there is a whole lot of gray in our industry interms of what works and what doesn't there are some hard andfast rules to SEO. Ones that will help and ones that will hurtwhen applied to your site. About the author:About the author: Rob Sullivan - Specialist and InternetMarketing Consultant. Any reproduction of this article needs tohave an html link pointing to http://www.textlinkbrokers.com
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