The Worst SEO Advice EVER! (and what not to do to rank high in Google)...

A great question I'd say I was glad you asked but I know its opening a big can of worms here. It seems to be a controversial topic. Some people get really angry when I say this, but truth is none of us work at Google so can't say for sure. I just speak from my own experience and it points me away from the conventional conclusion.

It's a complex situation, but I'll do my best to answer it briefly. In most cases backlinks can't hurt you, especially if you are a big authority site where it hurts Google not to have you in its index.

So on the whole Google does protect you from bad backlinks hurting you, but in some extreme circumstances it doesn't.

In certain more extreme circumstances backlinks can effect your overall trust score with Google and contribute (but rarely, if ever, cause) penalties and potentially prolong the time in the Google sandbox. Smaller sites with less authority and fewer true editorial citations are most at risk.

Also a dodgy backlink profile can land you in the dog house with a human Google moderator. Typically you won't face one but it is not unknown for sites to fall out of Google for innocent reasons (a Google bug, you get hacked, downtime etc.) and when you file a reinclusion request and they look at your backlink profile it can spell trouble for you getting back in.

I think 50% of the people I know that have been in the industry for 5 or more years have been knocked out of Google for one reason or another. I got kicked out once when my site got hacked. It's a shame if that happens and you then can't get back in because you built shady backlinks.

A lot of people build small sites where its not a big deal if they drop out of Google. I build bigger sites where I expect 100,000 visitors a month minimum from Google once they are established, so this effects my perception and risk tolerance when it comes to SEO.

And there is a business for damaging other website's rankings. It usually is done by 'online reputation management' companies. Only a small amount of them do it as it is quite specialist and difficult. They are out there though.

I PM'd you with the simplest example of this in action. Its not really suitable for public and people might think I do it or condone it. Which I don't.

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Am I Right?

I expect a few replies here will disagree with my views on SEO, they'll talk from their experience just as I have talked from mine.

I noticed a rude comment already. Just to let you know up front I won't reply to any that are rude or aggressive - I'm hear to learn and share information. No need to get heated or personal, its a waste of time and nobody will learn anything and it will be another one of those annoying threads full of arguments. This isn't a PS3 forum.

I could well be wrong in some of what I am saying, I've been wrong before plenty of times. They key to being a good SEO is knowing that you will get it wrong a lot because...

1. Google Changes A Lot

2. Only Google Truly Knows What's Going On - we just try to figure it out with limited tools.

3. Its difficult to test any theory in a controlled environment and account for the many possible variables and the bigger picture (i.e some things can help in short term but hurt in the long term - a quick test doesn't show that).

Most SEOs are not open to new ideas and get stuck in conventional wisdom (a lot of which is wrong in my opinion).

My viewpoints on this are also shared by the online biz owners I chat with trust (ones that can pull in 6 and 7 figure monthly traffic from Google).

If you disagree with me and also pull that amount of traffic I really want to talk to you and learn from you.

Yep that is the better way to do it. You are an enlightened rarity to though as most will not do that.

I personally would find that process relatively difficult and long winded in practice (compared to other effective link building techniques like link baiting, guest posting etc.), and some of those links are not that high quality anyway so benefit is not huge.

On a list of 100 things to do for SEO, what you list would be
#94-100.

I can't say anyone here (who has experience/knowledge/reputation) would
ever do any of that for a client before exhausting all others. Those are very,
very low level items.

Sure, there are numerous clowns who come here and post such nonsense.
The wannabes cargo on and say it's great. Most just sit back and snicker.

Not helping isn't exactly hurting, unless it's time taken away from real stuff.

I have not met any riff raff types here. Some I disagree on a few fine points,
but overall, they give good advice. I choose not to meet the others.

The thread is helpful only to rant against such nonsense. But take a look around.
You will have a lot of people extol the virtues of such low-level nonsense.

On that list of 100 SEO things, I rarely make it past 12, as I need to keep propping
those up.

The worst SEO advice, that is semi-good-advice, is to get tons of backlinks.
Tons of backlinks will not help if they are junk. Concentrate on high PR, high
authority backlinks. Yet as we speak, there are lame threads about getting tons
of links with the push of a button. Complete waste of time. Notice I said waste,
not penalty.

Paul

Some of my sites get in excess of 50,000 hits per day individually. Your "advice" is poor advice and is the type of information that keeps the ignorant running in circles.

To drive the vast majority of opinions in this thread, I'd be happy to do a little SEO contest with you. You use your backlinks that you believe to work best, and I'll use mine, some of which you claim to be crap. I'm sure Tom would be happy to join in on this as well.