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SEO and Search Engine Forums & Conferences
: Are They Really Helpful?
Article by Rob Sullivan (www.textlinkbrokers.com)
Working in the SEO/SEM industry
can be very rewarding. Many times a problem can be solved simply
with a little online research, and posts on a few forums.
All too often, however, some people
put too much stock in the posts they see, ultimately negatively
impacting their SEO efforts.
In this article, I look at some
of the positives and negatives of online SEM forums and attending
SEM and SEO conferences.
As part of my daily routine I visit a few of the
search engine forums out there to see what people are talking
about and what some have noticed. Sometimes I come across real
gems, stuff I can put away for later, or use with a client I'm
currently stuck on. But more often than not, the information you
see is really misinformation in some cases. As such, one must
be extremely careful in relying on 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 begin to sweat when their rankings dropped one or many positions.
Some webmasters literally didn't sleep during the days of the
dance, and many times you would visit some of the popular forums
and see all kinds of conjecture and speculation as to what Google
was doing.
My favorite posts were "on my website this
happened, so this HAS to be what Google is doing." Yet all
too often this poor soul was basing his ideas on the effects he
witnessed on only one website.
That is a flaw with these forums. It's not that
the forums themselves are flawed, it's that in some cases people
posting on them make bold statements about the current state of
the engines with little or no evidence. They base their "fact"
on observations made on one or two websites 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 and read these posts
and take them as the truth when in fact they are mere speculation.
And it's not just forums where this happens.
Many of the big forums now have events, planned
conferences and the like - where you can now go hear those that
post regularly also speak. But it's not the speaking engagements
I have a problem with, it's the speculation that happens before
and after the presentations that worries me. I can't tell you
how many times I've had clients come back from Webmasterworld
conferences or Search Engine Strategies with their heads full
of ideas on how to move forward, even though I know many of these
"theories" to be false, or at least flawed.
You see, there's lots of socializing that happens
at these events. You may be sitting down to their lovely boxed
lunches and strike up a conversation with the person next to you.
Before you know it you are sharing ideas, and the next thing you
know he's solved 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 the forums and conferences that can undo over 3 or
4 days what it has taken you to build over months and years -
that is an appreciation from your clients that you do indeed know
what you are talking about.
Here's an example:
We once had a client from a major University. Things were sailing
along quite nicely, changes were getting made and the site was
beginning to rank quite well. The client thought it would be a
good idea to attend a webmaster conference. We recommended that
she attend, but try not to place too much emphasis on what she
had heard. This was because the conference she was attending wasn't
one of the "big" ones like WMW or SES, but more of a
regional one put on by a local SEO company. Yet she came back
full of ideas on how to "help" me do my job better.
Things like turning off her URL rewriter because "search
engines index dynamic content just fine" and removing optimized
meta tags because "search engines don't use those things
anyway" and halting all link building efforts because "building
links can get you banned".
Well you can guess what happened next. The site
stalled in the search engines, and didn't improve much after that.
We pleaded with her to let us get back on track, but she was unwilling.
In the end, the client canceled unhappy with the
results, but would never allow us to do the job we were hired
to do. All because she took what she had heard sometime during
the conference as the truth to end all truths.
Now, I'm not saying that what she was told at the
conference was wrong. In fact, I'm inclined to believe that what
she was told was mostly right. However somehow between attending
the conference and coming back to work with us she had determined
that 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 "most search
engines don't look at the meta keyword tag" And instead of
"link building will harm your rankings" she probably
really heard "improper link building can hurt your rankings".
I feel she misinterpreted or otherwise twisted what
she had heard into something else.
So if you are site owner, please don't assume everything
you read/hear in the industry spaces is correct. If anything I've
found that you must question everything.
Even if it's something that a well known industry
expert has said, you still owe it to yourself to question it.
After all, if the "expert" is wrong, and
you've based your online marketing decisions on what they've said,
there's only one person to blame - and it isn't necessarily the
expert.
Similarly, if you've read something in a forum, be sure to double
and triple check it against a few other reliable sources.
For example, if you've read something at the Webmasterworld
forums, don't be afraid to question the ability in the Searchenginewatch
forums. Go a step further and question it in a few more places
until you get a satisfactory answer.
Because while there is a whole lot of gray in our
industry in terms of what works and what doesn't there are some
hard and fast rules to SEO. Ones that will help and ones that
will hurt when applied to your site.
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