Snake-oil SEO

I am by no means an SEO (search-engine optimisation) expert but one thing’s for sure: a lot of the so-called SEO specialists are snake-oil salesmen and you shouldn’t go near them.

The bottom line is that Google doesn’t want to be ‘gamed’ - i.e. they are constantly tweaking their algorithms to promote results from sites that are deemed more humanly relevant to a search query. As such optimisation is a cat & mouse game where a site owner is artificially attempting to increase the search engine’s impression of their relevance.

So: the best SEO advice is to write copy, include diagrams & pictures about your subject in a way that would be genuinely helpful to someone investigating your area. This is what Google wants and what it rewards most highly.

There is, of course, much more to this and for an in-depth analysis I’ve not seen a clearer or more detailed brief that has been put together by the folks at SearchEngineLand. Have a look at the downloadable PDF of their Periodic Table of SEO.