In order to separate best seos truths from traditional misconceptions and errors, you always must first examine the truth. For example, if an expert is trying to determine a counterfeit $100 dollar bill from a real $100 bill, he only gains insight by examining the genuine $100 bill first. You could examine many different counterfeit bills for a long time and never gain any ground at all, because you did not learn to recognize the truth first. But once you know and understand the real government issued bill, then you can spot the false things much more quickly.
Let me say that most skilled SEOs are not bad people. They are not schemers who are just out to get your money. Like anything else, there are people who are good and bad in every area of life. When it comes to practicing SEO skills, there are many people doing many different things, but it all comes down to the “intent of the individual person.”
People pegged for being “black hats” usually think quite a little bit differently than the SEO with a professional long term career. The Black hat is more prepared to lose the domain and knows that they are always on the run and they often view the search engines as the enemy. They thing that search engines MUST be “outsmarted” or so they are convinced. Some tend to enter more like a game with throw-away domain names that they’ll purchase in quantity, fully knowing that they’ll have to do the same types of things over and over again each time they get penalized. They think they are at war with the search engines.
White hat SEO professionals are more focused on creating high quality, useful content that serves a purpose and satisfies the reason why the user initiated a search. Many white hats have had structured skills training. They generally understand that they are not at war with the search engines. They choose to respect the search engines guidelines instead of trying to cheat them. They are never on the run, because they have done nothing to fear being caught at or banned for. They tend to do the job once for long term stable rankings that can last for years.
Okay so this fits in with the first misconception or idea that was first pitched years ago. However, this first misconception is a major misconception. Here it is…
Misconception 1. You are at war with the search engines to gain top rankings. Therefore you must learn to do sneaky tricks to outsmart their algorithm. Therefore you must learn ways to beat the search engine to gain top visibility in search results. Have you heard this story before?
While this whole concept (probably dreamt up by a marketer years ago sometime) it cleverly appeals to a human beings somewhat carnal side of being “sneaky” or being able to beat the search engines at their own game by using “secrets” and “tricks.” Even though the pitch may appeal to some people, the only trouble is that the concept is 100% FALSE from beginning to end. Some of you may be disappointed to hear this because for years, you thought you were at war with the search engines. Think a little bit more and let’s separate marketing pitches from the real truth.
Truth 1: The truth is that you have never been at “war with the search engines.” You are not required to “outsmart” or fool” the search engines at all to gain top visibility for your Web pages.
Listen up now. The only one you are truly competing with for visibility is your competitors, NOT the search engines. The whole idea that you must “beat” the search engines or “outsmart” the search engines is a completely false concept.
You never need to compete with any search engine. You never need to trick it or even try to “fool it” in order to get excellent visibility. A search engine does not really care whether you rank number 1 or not. They are fine with it, so long as you are offering relevant content that is useful and satisfies the reason why the user searched. Obviously any search engine does not want junk showing up in the results.
Being “sneaky” may appeal to some emotionally in a marketing pitch. It may make you even feel like the service or the course or publication will ultimately “make you smarter” somehow. But people need to learn to distinguish truth from error and you’ll be blowing far less money on e-books, tool sets and memberships that appeal to the emotion but are founded on untruths.
