I had meant to post this several days ago, but in my part of the world, there is a nasty virus going around, and I managed to catch it! It has not been pleasant sipping Neo Citran and hoping there is some truth to claims that Oil of Oregano helps to drive away cold and flu viruses. If there is any truth to it, this must be one powerful virus!
From time to time, I’ll pick up the odd “course” on SEO that someone is offering, just to see if there are any nuggets of information or interesting experimental data that I can use.
Some days ago, an email arrived in my inbox with a link to a course that promised to teach me how to find thousands of free back links that were easy and would propel any website I owned to the first page of Google.
The price was cheap, so I thought I’d see if there was anything new to be learned and bought it.
All I can say is that I feel sorry for business and website owners that buy into these programs, believing they are getting value, and that their time studying these courses – and then putting what the course says into practice, will actually get them crushing their competitors.
The course was simply a rehash of what a few others have claimed, and included ideas that are actually against the terms and services of some websites! I really doubt the authors of this course had even tried out their own methods and tested them. As well, their idea for using free press release services for getting back links was laughable – just about all the free press release services they provided as a resource do NOT give you the ability to provide backlinks in the press release!
It really bewilders me at times to come across these so called “courses” and see what they are teaching, and realize that there are people out there who are hanging their hopes on learning something, willing to pay for the education, believe they are being taught by an “expert” – and I know for a fact, they are going to be bitterly disappointed.
I’ve often thought about putting together a course or book myself. SEO that actually works. No hype. No crap. No theory. Just stuff that works. The fact of the matter is you need a holistic approach to SEO. There is no one method that is going to get you ongoing high search engine rankings. In some cases, you need to combine what works for local search with what works for organic search, in order to rank well in both.
The problem with writing a book or putting together a course is that I’d rather do the stuff than teach it!
But I’m still thinking about it. We’ll see.