There’s nothing wrong with increasing traffic to a website by making it genuinely informative and sufficiently alluring to attract links from other websites and bloggers!
I don’t decry the practice of boosting, I’M AN SEO! HOWEVER, I do object to the means that some firms and people use to achieve it.
I’ve written on the disgust I have for spammers and the tactics used by self-proclaimed gurus and web marketers. I’ve also held back while biting my tongue when I read blogs by some copywriters masquerading as SEOs trying to promote their “methods” and “secrets”, often in book form, while failing the SEO game themselves - especially when considering the very websites they use to promote these “methods”.
There are a few camps with SEO.
One - The true SEO, technical and ethical. They’ve walked the line in the past and now know where it is and have evolved to where they can do it with honest methods while providing an income stream for themselves as well as their clients.
Two - The “web marketers” - they are not SEOs. They’re email harvesters and mass mailers. They produce pages like toilet paper that promise the world - scroll after scroll before revealing the cost to purchase, well, usually a method to produce more of this very type of pollution. Their failure in SEO is evident it the fact that they define SEO in terms of “landing pages”, “email marketing” and more obviously spun excuses for not achieving honest top ranking sites that people actually look for in Google. These sites are either thrown at them in email or they’re discovered by click-through from other sites - usually just like them. These “SEOs” usually advocate the use of PPC as a traffic generator - a sign that natural search is out of their league.
Third - The true spammers and hackers - these are evil people, scum of the earth and deserve no further mention. They’ve passed the line and enjoy hell.
I’m focusing on #2 now. Maybe SEO terms have become muddy. But, the truth remains regardless of semantics or opinion, mine or yours.
You have not learned anything from an affiliate purchase that simply tells (re-sells) you to bid high in AdWords in order to achieve top rank. Nor have you achieved anything other than have gifted your money to someone by purchasing a product from some “guru” who pushes their “methods” by crappy SEO efforts. (email marketing)
These self-back-patters usually source their claims when their methods are questioned by directing you to ANOTHER article pushing similar wares, secrets and methods, full of affiliate links and absolutely horrible on-page SEO.
The problem is circular.
One of my big pet peeves with this type of web marketer is when they source an article to defend a claim when that very article is of the same type of pollution that’s initially questioned, a seemingly blind group that subscribes to each others “methods” as the truth and simply refer visitors in an unending circle of falsehoods and self-praise.
Those that preach usually learned from the methods they now promote, in book form or seminar, and it goes round and round and round…. barely escaping to actual search, to NEW customers. These circles are groups, communities and associations that appear to choose their “experts” by the amount of propaganda and pollution the candidates have presented their circle.
Sadly, because their customers are already within the circle, the community is hindered in terms of growth and education, ripe for exploitation. For some associations - it’s too late.
Good observations Knox-the term “expert” is widely thrown around. Now more than ever-buyer beware!