An Open Letter to SEO Bloggers: Back up Your Statements!
Dear SEO Bloggers,
I’ve been reading SEO blogs for quite some time and while I appreciate the input you offer up on a regular basis, I’ve noticed a very disturbing trend. It seems that more and more of your posts state your opinions or theories, as facts.
Now don’t get me wrong, this is nothing new; people have been doing it for as long as they’ve had opinions (and in fact, I’ve been guilty of this as well), but it seems to be happening more and more often in the SEO blogosphere.
Why, just yesterday I read 3 different posts, from SEO’s I generally respect as knowing what the hell they’re doing, and yet within those posts, they casually stated a “fact” that as far as I know has never been proven and remains at best, a theory.
Of course, blogging is essentially stating your opinion on matters or offering your take on an issue, but why have we abandoned phrases like “in my experience” or “as far as I can tell” or *gasp* “I think”? Are we all so desperate to sound like authorities in our field that we have to state everything as definitive fact rather than opinion or theory?
To make matters worse, these statements aren’t being backed up with anything! There’s no logical reasoning applied to them, there’s no research provided, there’s not even any links being given to other articles or posts that support their position!
One of the things I like most about SEO is that it’s constantly changing and really, only Google knows precisely what works and what doesn’t (and to be honest, I even have my doubts about them). But the fact that things change so often means that there is very little “common knowledge” in this industry. Even something as simple as “links are the key to ranking” will be hotly debated by some members of our industry.
So please, the next time you want to say something along the lines of “________ doesn’t work anymore” or “________ links are devalued” or “doing _______ will harm your rankings”, please, please PLEASE back it up with something! I’d be much more comfortable reading “I haven’t been seeing ____ links helping my sites as much as they used to” or “As the results of this experiment suggest, doing _____ will harm your site’s rankings.”
It might seem like I’m splitting hairs here or dealing in semantics but keep in mind you’re not only writing to other seasoned SEO’s. People that are completely new to the industry or that are trying to learn more about SEO often do the bulk of their learning on blogs and forums. When one blogger writes one thing as an established fact, and another blog states the exact opposite, it leads to a lot of confusion and, in my opinion (see how easy that was?) hurts the industry as a whole.
If our industry ever wants to fully shed the reputation of snake oil salesmen, I believe we’re going to have to start putting some serious data, testing, and documented experience behind what we claim as fact.
Sincerely,
Skitzzo
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I’m sorry, but that’s just your opinion. I’d personally like to continue wasting my time on irrelevant POS.
Lol Rhea, I figured I’d get a lot of comments along those lines. Bunch of sarcastic readers…
But really, your comment actually makes my point in a round about way. I think people should be able to come to their own decisions (whether something is relevant to their site or not) rather than having someone else’s forced down their throats.
To borrow an often used (and abused) line, I’d like bloggers to present the evidence and “you decide.”
Take the SEO part out of your post and I agree with your statement. Yes, people all across the blogosphere do seem to do that. I am (sometimes) certainly guilty as charged.
However, I don’t really care. I think it’s the same for many blog readers, whether they do SEO or not. I just assume that is the case with blogs, I know it before I start reading any post, and I disregard the “authority” tone I see in a lot of places.
Sometimes people will surprise me by doing proper research or by excellently argumented opinions. Most often, they won’t. Which I’m perfectly fine with. In fact I sort of prefer it. I like to chew my food myself.
As any (bad) developer will so often tell you: It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
Eugen, that’s a good point, maybe I’m just expecting too much from blogs in general. But I mean some of these blogs are THE sites to go to for information and yet, they’ll drop an opinion or theory in as a casually stated fact.
To me, that sends the wrong message. I definitely prefer to “chew my food myself” as well but when pressed on these points, the response is almost always “well that’s what I’ve heard” or “it’s common knowledge” or something else as equally ridiculous.
Its like they’re promising food, get me hungry, and then all they have to offer is a piece of gum. At least that’s my attempt to keep your analogy going lol.
Thanks for the comment though, and as I said, very good point.
And sometimes I wonder where that gum has been before it was offered to me.
Agreed completely … great point!
you have a point… :) if there’s a theory, there should be a little something to support that theory, not just plain bool sheet :)
You mention the major names doing it, and I have to say that Its the major names who, in my opinion, are the major offenders.
And if what I say is true, there is a lot of opportunity out there for smaller bloggers to piggy back off of large ones by filling in the blanks for them.
For example. Let’s say a post comes out at Search Engine World stating that URLs have absolutely no bearing on rankings without making a citation. Whoever disproves or proves that fact on their own blog could stand a chance to wrangle a link from that major blogger… in theory.
No?
I agree things like PR siloing, Bruce clay have been saying it’s advanced seo so much recently but have put nothing forward to prove it, no case studies no anything..
DAVEN
Dave, thanks for stopping by. That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. I really haven’t paid much attention to the PR soloing thing but it certainly sounds like it fits the mold of what I’m talking about.
I tend to agree with you as well.
Although I may not perfectly do as you advise, I try more often to support my comments with accurate facts – but only when doing so will not hurt me.
I have been hurt before by making internal data available, and it ended up costing me top rankings on a keyword phrase that generated a lot of traffic for me. My competitors found the information and toasted my rankings for that term… After having held #1 for years, I am now #8.
So now I give detailed information, only when doing so will not compromise my own positioning or that of my clients.
of course the other issue is with if I say xxxxxxxx will be next on Googles kill list, But I might not be able to say why, matters of trust or a not wanting to out a service or a person.
not sure if your in any underground groups where testing and POC takes place, I’m in a few, I add data and traffic to test, others in the group build sites, others test hosts ip address etc etc … some even test services etc .. built on trust and a open team, the problems with the industry is data, not sure how many actual seo’s have the time or courage to test single processes, like building 10 sites, and only adding links to one, only do pr siloing on one, keyword stuff in alt’s, img tags on one etc..
and see where the land really lies, Dave
Good point, however…
There should be some space left for trust. For example, if a well known blogger claims something is true and tested, without specifying the method or references, I usually assume that he is putting his reputation on the line and therefore the chances are that he will not talk out of his ass. If I occasionaly get a post by that blogger, saying “sorry folks, my last post was a complete BS, I did not check my facts properly, will not happen again”, the level of trust in my eyes increases.
That said, I am a firm believer in testing and presenting the results, which is mostly what I do on my blog. I have never thought of it as jumping in a niche left open by the big guys, but there is truth to that. The drawback to those kinds of blogs is a very low frequency of posting, which is dictated by the tedious process of testing, controlling and confirming the results – if it takes Google about 10-15 days to index and consider the changes on my testing sites, that brings my posting frequency to about once a month. I do run several tests in parallel, but some of them require more than one step, so on average the posting frequency gets to be the same.
So as a lot of people said here, the key is to take with a big grain of salt anything that was not tested, smaller grain goes to the tested posts and use your own head and experience to come to operative conclusions..
DaveN, great point on siloing – open it up, show the research if you make claims that big. I mean I think any of us can say the meta keywords tag is devalued, but for these newer tactics people need to back up their stuff.
Great post!
Agreed 100%
The constant need (?) to produce “fresh” content together with another need (?) to establishing authority over a subject is creating an army of fake-authorities writing many half trues… This is not isolated to SEO forums or posts
Thank you for the many gullible of us!
Dude! wow like totally! IN college I had to site my sources, and my research methodologies, and the limitations of my research.
In the world of SEO, people hide behind ambiguity, the Google, Live, and Yahoo ToS, and just say whatever they want!
Data, we need more data. We also need more people to say HEY!! so “How do you know this?” Then to check things for a scientific methodology.
This is just missing in the SEO blogshphere. Except for the big dawgs… MarketingVox is good… at least they site their sources when they speculate, for example.
i guess thats the crux of all SEO- it keeps on changing(improving) every time- and indeed thats what makes it l so interesting! theres never dull moment in it.
SEO is all about assumptions (based oo trial and error), so I do not think anyone can tell anything with a guarantee, though they can share their experience.
-DS
Great Post – A lot of it comes from the sticker shock of how much really good SEO work for a site can cost. People see the high dollar amounts and instantly assume that new and updated info MUST be coming out and available regularly, when many times it just is not. That leads to people making claim after claim just to seem to stay relevant.
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