1. if – If this is true I’m probably not lying. Sentences starting with “if” sound awful but the “if” makes you sound strange even in the middle of a sentence. Why? Saying “if” means that you do not trust yourself. You are not writing the truth. You are not sure. The rest of the text only applies if…
2. tips – Did you mean ideas, techniques or advice? Tips means only shallow advice, low quality techniques and stale ideas everybody knows already. Why not being specific? Tips are for waiters not bloggers.
3. insane – What’s even more amazing than awesome? It’s insane! More and more bloggers try to outperform their peers by adding superlatives to their post headlines. Who wants to read about insane web design? Not me. When it’s great, outstanding or fantastic say it but don’t act crazy and call it “insane” just to sound better. Insanity is nothing to be proud of.
4. basic/s – Whenever you cover the basics or write about the basic this or that it’s either an excuse for not being an expert yet or just proof that you don’t believe in yourself. Telling your audience that something is only basic means half of them won’t read it at all. Nobody wants to share basics on the social Web. People you target with your basics would prefer to read “advanced blogging techniques” instead of “basic blog tips”.
5. daily – Do you really plan to blog daily, 7 times a week, even on holidays? Then don’t call your blog Daily something. Otherwise the first day you don’t publish a post you out yourself as a liar or at least unreliable.
6. Amazon – Many people on the Web do not notice but I and other Web savvy readers do, whenever you add a link to Amazon in a post I know that you are trying to sell something to me and the link is an affiliate link you earn money on.
7. Wikipedia – In a recent post someone on TechCrunch has written “according to Wikipedia”. Wikipedia is no source you can cite. Wikipedia is just the lazy bloggers’ source. Also, even in case the cited article is worth being cited, next week someone might have already changed it. Moreover it shows that you have no clue about that topic and had to look up Wikipedia. At least when googling do not click the first result and find another more reputable source.
8. expert – Do you consider yourself an expert? Maybe you write that you are a social media or SEO expert. In most cases you aren’t. When you have to proclaim yourself that you are you most probably aren’t one. Don’t call yourself guru, star or genius either.

Are there more words that damage trust? Tell me about them. I might add them to the post and will credit you as the source.

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Above: Not personalized search results for the query [content strategy mistakes]. I rank at #7. Look who ranks at #2 and #4.

While trying to assess the impact of stolen and otherwise copied content on my rankings here on the SEO 2.0 blog I’ve found an anomaly in the Google results I want to share with you.

A post from a popular web design blog, indeed a blog I like very much, Six Revisions outranks other far more relevant search results.

How does it do it? It succeeds by a single keyword mention below the posting:

and most importantly a category named after part of the keyphrase in question: “content strategy”:

http://sixrevisions.com/content-strategy/5-common-seo-mistakes-with-web-page-titles/

So the most significant onpage ranking factor seems to be the category keywords in the URL.

The site has lots of backlinks, the post itself as well. There are no incoming links with the keyword combination in the anchor text according to Blekko though:

Above: Blekko showing the inbound link anchor texts. None of them contain the term “content strategy”

Still it outranks other pages that really deal with content strategy mistakes while itself the post does only cover SEO mistakes.

What do you think? Is this an exception from the rule? Are category keywords in the URL a significant ranking signal now or does Google favor authority sites so much these days hat they need only slightly relevant content to outrank the competition that covers the topic at stake directly?

You may wonder why I rank so bad in this example. My blog has been “pandalized” recently during a minor Panda update with the number 2.5.2. I have been removed from the top 10 for all two word keyphrases I have been ranking in the top 10 for years. You won’t find my blog  anymore for phrases like

• [seo blog]
• [image seo]
• [advanced seo]
• [url seo]

anymore. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t rank higher for [content strategy mistakes]. I only rank for some very long long tail queries now.

Also take note that an aggregator called Scoop.it curated by a friend mine, Gabriella of Level 343 who cites my posts ranks higher than the post on SEO 2.0 itself. I have asked on Twitter whether other SEO people can confirm that keyword mentions in categories are an important ranking factor these days.

I know that the impact of keywords in URLs beyond the domains has been negligible over the recent years. Has Google changed this? Two SEO experts, Shark SEO and Mark of Guava have weighed in that there might be different reasons but were as well surprised by this example. What do you think?

P.S.: I didn’t link out to any of the sites or pages involved here in order not to skew the results.

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I was awestruck today when I noticed that the perhaps most important German blogging conference re:publica sells high PageRank links.

Paid links are forbidden by the Google Webmaster Guidelines since 2007

and Google has repeatedly asked webmasters to report paid links aimed at manipulating Google’s PageRank algorithm over the recent years.

The more astounded I was when I discovered that

Google itself, Google.de to be more exact buys a link on the same page.

It’s right there on the homepage. It has PageRank 7 and the links are easily identifiable as Sponsors.

So I took a look at the source code and was quite sure that my Quirk SearchStatus extension has overlooked the obligatory “nofollow” attribute you have to add to sponsored links to stay within the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

I mean after all, these people, the blogging elite of Germany are Internet savvy professionals. They have to know it.

The more I was dumbfounded when I discovered the actual source code. In it you can clearly see anchor text that doesn’t show up on the page itself. It’s hidden. You can see images only that is the logos of the companies buying links at re:publica.

In the source code it says though:


<ul class="sponsors kooperationspartner">
<li><a target="_new" href="http://www.sony.de/" title="Sony">Sony</a></li>
<li><a target="_new" href="http://www.google.de">Google</a></li>;

among others.

So not only are these paid links. This site and with it Google itself violate the Google Webmaster guidelines by using hidden text as well. It’s one of the oldest spam techniques there are on the Web. Here the site uses CSS to hide the text.

So what does this mean? Has Google revised its stance on paid links, now the it buy links itself?

I don’t know what to believe by now. In the past Google departments all over the world have been caught buying links but in most cases they a good excuse. What’s the excuse here? Will Google.de and re:republica get penalized by Matt Cutts? We’ll see.

This blog is probably not important enough to make Google.de and the German blogging elite revise their site so I hope some more important publications cover this story as well.

As far as I’m concerned I don’t think it’s OK to force the little guy with a blog to remove a few paid links on a blog that make a bit extra money while allowing huge corporations like

• HP
• Sony
• Google

itself to buy links with hidden anchor text to manipulate PageRank and search results.

It smells like double standards.

Btw.: re:publica sells links all over the site, not just on the homepage. There are dozens of them. It’s not just one of two.

Of course you can become a cynic and consider site that sell links to Google as a save haven from now. Whenever you want to buy links on high PageRank sites make sure to do it on sites that sell to Google as well.

P.S.: The webmaster of re:publica know what nofollow is. They have links on the homepage that use nofollow. They use nofollow on links from Twitter updates.

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A few weeks ago I had a lively discussion on Twitter with two quite opinionated individuals who are quite known in the SEO industry. I won’t name them here to prevent this discussion from getting personal but I want to come back to the actual topic we discussed about because it happens all the time that I have to discuss such matters​: the discussion almost always boils down to science vs reality.

Science will tell one thing and the reality won’t obey what scientists declare though in many cases.

The simplest example for this is the weather forecast: while the smartest and most gifted scientists using satellites and supercomputers want to tell you whether the sun is shining or not you are strongly advised to look out of the window to find out.

In many case you will notice that the weather forecast was wrong.

The so called chaos theory explains why you can’t forecast weather without erring from time to time and indeed I’m glad that there is some element of chance and not everything can be predicted.

Now is science bad to put it bluntly? Do we have to believe the church and explain everything with God? Well, you ask the wrong person, I’m not particularly religious but I respect religious beliefs. Also I don’t engage in futile discussions whether God exists or how man has evolved whether by way of evolution or “intelligent design”​. Personally I think that the Bible is partly a literary work so that it speaks in metaphors. Thus when the world was created in seven days it doesn’t mean you have to take it literally.

Why do I explain this? Well, you can reconcile science and religion. Also

you don’t have to denounce everything science hasn’t yet proven or even discovered.

Moreover science tends to err and most of scientific dogmas break down after a while because scientists themselves discover new phenomena they have not even taken into account before.

Quantum physics is the best example: it has rendered most of prior science obsolete.

So scientific laws hold true just for a few decades usually. Nonetheless there is a tendency today to treat scientists like priests in earlier epochs: whatever scientists say you have to obey. They don’t just discover and explain anymore they forbid you to do things and force their dangerous experiments on you.

Nuclear energy has been probably the worst crime against humanity committed by science, not just due the horrific effects of the atomic bomb but due to taking the wrong path when it comes to energy, one that we’ll have to deal with for ten thousands of years as the toxic waste will haunt us almost forever.

So you see, scientists can seriously mess up this planet, your health and your life. That’s not the end of the story,  the “is SEO science or art” (or something else) debate is not far from these issues.

Let me use the example we used in the discussion with the SEO professionals on Twitter. The discussion started with the issue of potentially harmful vaccines. This is a taboo topic in some circles. People who blindly believe in science and what their doctors tell them tend to think you’re insane even when you suggest that not all vaccines are needed. They are accepted out of tradition and because doctors and scientists say so or rather the pharmaceutical companies behind them.

Now I won’t explain here why some vaccines are harmful, this would be offtopic. I want to dwell on the comparison of dogmatic treatment of vaccines and the one exhibited by alternative medicine, be it Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) or homeopathy. Practitioners of the latter two will tell you that vaccines can indeed be harmful and ask you to be cautious when getting vaccinated. Especially children can get harmed by vaccines.

Now the tow SEO guys were infuriated that I could even bring this issue up. Also they declared acupuncture and homeopathy to be a placebo etc.

So you see, while I am not anti-science but ask you to see its limitations and never blindly believe in science people like the two believe in science to such an extent that you are not allowed to do things that are not approved by scientists.

Either you obey science or you are a nut

is what they think. They don’t even bother with conflicting scientific results or new discoveries, they protect tradition and a belief system. More than that, it’s part of their identity. It’s an attack on themselves when you dare to doubt scientific results from hundred years ago.​ Most vaccines have been created back then and people don’t care that the situation is completely different now. It’s like still using steam engines.

In SEO we have a similar situation: the science of SEO is nascent if it exists at all so you can’t really prove everything.

You can have theories and show statistics. You will never exactly know why something worked exactly and what exact factors made it work. Especially as Google makes around 400 tweaks to its algo a year. Your SEO science is outdated​ the moment you have proven it or quicker, I’m with the author of SEO Theory here.

So SEO, like many things life, and even the weather is changing all the time. Even the climate is not static, it changes as well, being influenced by us. Thank you science for noticing and proving it!

Also SEO changes as we have an impact on Google and other search engines.

We create content farms, Google and Blekko react. So at the end of the day you have to take a look outside the window yourself to find out what the weather is like. It’s like with climate change: ​while we can see and prove it we don’t really know whether the ocean tides will bring us a colder period or whether the global warming will have a more direct impact by rising temperatures. We have to observe reality to find out.

So you see I’m not anti-science. I appreciate science, especially when it discovers and proves the obvious. Acupuncture works for thousands of years and I know it because it works on me as well, like homeopathy does.​ Still science and its methods are often not enough to prove it because ​science is too limited as of now. It can’t quantify the data of acupuncture or find any substance in homeopathic​ remedies (which are based on information not substances like conventional medicine).

So I appreciate science where it makes sense but I don’t let science make me ignorant enough not to try things that have worked long before science even existed. Likewise

I practice what works in SEO

and do not blindly obey scientists who tell me one day that I need PageRank sculpting just to backtrack next day after Matt Cutts’ announces that it has been discontinued several months ago.

When it’s science vs reality I tend to believe what I see and I expect science to explain it. Science is not an entity to force you to do something or ignore something else. Science is not the church, so stop blindly believing in it. Always take a look at reality itself and when the glaciers melt you know science is right.

BTW.: there are many new scientific studies that indeed prove that acupuncture works and also which explain other worldly phenomena many people deemed obvious long ago.​

* Image by by Okko Pyykkö

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One of the most important factors of my success until now is the fact that I was never been content with following. I never liked

• following orders
• following trends
• following people

I always preferred leading. I’m not speaking of following on Twitter. Following is a general strategy most people adhere to. It has something to do with laziness. You follow a path people went before you because you are either afraid or too lazy to find your own.

Y​ou will never be the first to do something when you just follow others.

In business we speak of the unique selling proposition that enables your business to stand out. How do you think you will be able to have an USP when you just copy something someone has done before you?

I’​ m not talking about leading like in “being a leader” either. The German word for leader is “Führer” and you know who the most well known leader in Germany was. I don’t want people​ to follow me either.

Many of the Web celebrities have a business model of making other people follow them.

They can sell you affiliate products they recommend and make you spread their message on social media.

T​he people who follow me on Twitter or elsewhere are not followers of that kind. They are people who lead themselves. These people find and follow their own path.

It’s not easy to find your own way of doing things these days. You get inundated with information, choices and your desires are constantly played with. Almost the whole make money online blogging industry is based on the wrong leader-follower relationship.

I​n SEO 2.0 you get the optimal win to win situation when peers work together and support each other.

I can’t understand why people are following exploitative​ and deceiving individuals like Jason Calacanis, Steve Rubel or Kevin R​ose. You have to lead yourself instead of following false idols. I don’t want to be your idol. I don’t want to show you my way of doing things in order to be able to sell you products. I want you to find your own way.

* Image by David Spinks

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*

Two years ago I celebrated my first world usability day by pointing out usability mistakes usability experts commit. Fast forward to 2010 and what do I see?

World Usability Day is here again and usability experts still can’t even get their own website right.

Yes, the World Usability Day website sucks big time and I’m really ashamed for them. How can they make people believe that they want to support usability when their own site is not usable by any standards?

Here are the most obvious mistakes the organizers make on their own site:

Excessive Clutter

Both the worldusabilityday.org website and the UPA site are excessively cluttered. The site looks so bad I don’t even want to add a screenshot here not to scare away my readers. Find it at the bottom of the post.

Repetitiveness

Why say it just once when you can repeat it several times throughout your frontpage? “World Usability Day – Making Life Easy!” says the logo on top. Right behind the logo we read “World Usability Day has started!”. Looking down from the quite big logo we see another even bigger logo saying “World Usability Day 2010 – 11. November 2010 . Making Life Easy!”. In order not to forget where we are we can read right below it: “World Usability Day announces Honorary Chair for 2010″ and scrolling a bit further: World Usability Day is Today!
I won’t cite all the other mention or even the headlines containing that phrase or Google will penalize me for keyword stuffing!

Bizarre Typography Mix

While I myself use two different fonts on this blog: Arial/Helvetica and Verdana, worldusabilityday.org manages to use not only Arial/Helvetica in all kinds of different shapes, colors and sizes but Georgia as well although every novice web designer will tell you that you shouldn’t mix both serif and sans-serif fonts.

Blinking

I couldn’t believe my own eyes! Did worldusabilityday.org just blink on me? Yes, they did. They have a large blinking section in the middle of the site. What can I say? Why not use the <blink>-tag then?

Call to Action Overkill

While visiting worldusabilityday.org I was really overwhelmed! Not only by the clutter though! Several calls to action in a row shouted at me: I had to “get involved”, “sign our charter”, “visit partner events”, “register an event”, “donate to world usability day”, “follow us on Twitter”, “become a sponsor”. All of the even before I had the chance to scroll. I didn’t even count the “contact us” call to action and those below the fold.

Making the Logo Bigger

Did I mention that designers love to “make the logo bigger” on websites? worldusabilityday.org really gave them that opportunity. Lie I said above, the big logo on top appears as an even bigger aka huge version below. Great work!

No or Several Points of Focus

It wasn’t just clutter and the myriad of calls to action that made me dizzy on worldusabilityday.org – the site has no single point of focus. There are some many similar sized objects on that site vying for attention that I simply had to give up. My eyes were jumping like ping pong balls on a table on his site.

I’m just an

• SEO
• blogger
• former web developer.

I’m not a designer or usability expert myself. Still I see so many utterly obvious usability mistakes even without professional training.

Therefore I ask you: What is the purpose of the World Usability Day? Is this some kind of cruel irony? Give me a break from World Usability Day! I’m already fed up with all that “usability” and bouncing.

Usability experts still fail themselves so they aren’t in the position to teach the rest of us. Do you want to see the screenshot [600kb] yourself? It’s awful but at least it doesn’t blink.

* Image by clpo13

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Diamond Skull by Damien Hirst. Image by Aaron Weber.

Recently a post titled “How SEO is breaking the web (and killing Google)” has garnered almost 200 tweets. While I assume that many of them were automated tweets from accounts retweeting everything about SEO and Google I guess there still were people around ignorant enough to spread this crap.

I even considered tweeting it myself to get my followers to ridicule the clueless guy but then I decided to just comment on that post. Luckily I wasn’t the only person to voice my dissent with this kind of polemic. Most people were clearly stating that it’s nonsense to denounce SEO as a whole. Still the post garnered around 3000 views. What did people think about this post though? I guess 2000 of the 3000 were just shaking their heads in disbelief. How can somebody who is sane still spread such myths?

Then Google Instant has been released and guess what, Steve Rubel, who has badmouthed SEO in 2008 already did it again: His “Google Instant kills SEO” nonsense got more than 1.5k retweets and numerous links. So does the “SEO is dead” meme still work? No.

“SEO is dead” is dead. Google itself offers official SEO advice at least since 2008 when the SEO starter guide has been published.

This time high profile Google personalities including Sergey Brin himself debunked the “SEO is dead” myth right away during the Google Instant presentation. Also Marissa Mayer and Matt Cutts stepped in to declare SEO alive and kicking.

SEO is alive but ignorance is as well.

Still the “SEO is dead” meme is dead. Who will believe Web celebs like Steve Rubel in the future when their misguided interpretations of Web reality get refuted within minutes after publication?

Get over it. SEO is here to stay. As long as there is search on the Web, websites will have to get optimized. Don’t behave like an idiot. The old stereotypes don’t work anymore. You just ridicule yourself ignoring the obvious and stating that SEO id dead. “SEO is dead” is dead and you will too on the Web as well in case you spread misconceptions like these.

Who is this Steve Rubel anyways?

While I still knew what the other celebs were doing who have declared SEO dead in the past I don’t even know what Rubel does. Likewise most people will know him as the idiot who declared SEO dead while even Google disagreed.

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You certainly know urban legends already. Stories, misconceptions and myths that sound enticing and thus get spread through gossip all over the place, mostly where people use to meet for small talk, thus “urban”. The Internet is even worse when it comes to such legends.

Lies, hoaxes and other legends spread on the Web even faster due to low accountability and “viral” social media.

Thus I decided to open your eyes to 10 Internet legends everybody should know when browsing the Web. It’s good for your

• privacy
• security
  
• sanity.
  

So check these out and tell me more in case I forgot some:

The Web is open and uncensored: In the early days authorities tried (and some still try) to scare users by telling them that it’s far too open and uncensored. You can download bomb building manuals everywhere etc. Well, try searching for such material. Not only you’ll have difficulties to find it on Google, even manuals on how to block trains (to stop nuclear waste transports) have been taken off the Web. Or better you don’t try to search for it as you are NOT anonymous on the Web. See below.

The Web is anonymous: You just need to use a nickname, don’t you? Well no. Even without tracking your IP you can get identified among millions of others just via your unique browser fingerprint. Every Google search can be tracked back to you and will be used against you in court. Write “I want to kill the president” on the Web and your home will be raided within 24 hours even if it was a joke. You don’t have to be a killer though, being a blogger is enough.

The Web never forgets: Old media like to scare new Internet users about how the Web never forgets what they have published once. It will shatter their future career etc. as potential employers check your name in Google first. That’s stupid scare-mongering. I’m on the Web since 1997 and I have been publishing ever since. Most of it sadly disappeared as many sites end up as dead links after a few years. Also nobody beside the CIA will check all the 200 results in Google for your name. There are by far too many applicants to do that. Stay yourself and make sure the top 10 results are quite OK. Everybody has some issues so a completely clean person is suspicious. Become known on the Web for the great things you do or write and nobody will care for the occasional rant.

People are genuine on the Web: Your Facebook friends, bloggers and Twitter followers are genuine, aren’t they? Especially when they recommend books or other products. Unfortunately most bloggers do not disclose affiliate links. Most bloggers link books on Amazon to earn a commission when you buy them. On Twitter and Facebook even less people disclose affiliations.

Posting images of yourself or your kids is safe: You can post images of yourself on Flickr or your blog can’t you? Well, anybody can use them to stalk, abuse and ridicule you. The less images of yourself you post the better. Just think of the Spanish politician whose image got used to show how Bin Laden might look by now. The graphic designer who made the photo montage just the image from the Web.

Social Media sites are democratic: On social sites like Twitter, StumbleUpon or Digg the best content gets shared the most as the “wisdom of crowds” decides. Sadly not. Who has the most followers or fans can push anything. The sites themselves are not democratic but governed by for profit top down hierarchies. The owner decides ultimately be it Mark Zuckerberg, Rupert Murdoch or someone else. You have no rights on such sites and your account can get terminated for any petty reason without prior notice.

You have to listen to Web celebrities: The likes of Jason Calacanis, Steve Rubel or Kevin Rose have tens of thousands of fans and people readily retweet, link or “like” them. Why? They are known for being famous on the Web so what they say must be true! It isn’t. They spread nonsense all the time. They tell you that blogging or SEO is dead or their product is Web 3.0 to gain attention and links while behind the scenes they spam the Web. Beware of self proclaimed Web celebs.

SEO is dead or kills Google and the Web: All of the Web celebs above used this lie to get links and attention on the Web. They said it in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. The Web, SEO and Google still thrive. Also Google itself offers SEO advice since 2008. Just download the SEO Starter Guide by Google [PDF].

Mainstrem media are unbiased or “objective”: You only can trust old media then, the NYT, CNN, BBC. True? Nope. Even the New York Times has spread the lies about the WMDs in Iraq. CNN is infamous for its pro-war propaganda, yes, CNN, not just Fox News. The BBC aired a Yes Men hoax twice before it was taken down. Every media outlet, be it a newspaper, a news network or a blog, has an agenda. You need to know what the agenda is and who pays them to be able to see through their bias.

The others are evil, we’re fine: The Web is so full of propaganda I could puke any day. Just read any news item about Iran. For instance you’ll find plenty of stories about homosexuals getting killed for being gay. While I’m as pro-gay as a straight man can get and I firmly oppose the death penalty you just need to search on Iranian news sources for the name of the alleged innocent gays. They have been convicted of rape, murder or other gruesome crimes. Is Iran the most dangerous nation on Earth? Well, think about this: Iran hasn’t started a war or armed conflict in the last 100 years. In the meantime the US has fought in over 50 wars and armed conflicts it has started itself. The US has still the most nuclear weapons on the planet. It could obliterate Earth a thousand times.

How can you spot lies, myths and Internet legends? Well, they sound too good to be true. They resonate with our fears and hopes. They tel us we’re the best and can get everything at the expense of others. They appeal to our lowest instincts. Please use common sense, read between the lines and check several sources with different agendas to find out the truth.

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I confess: I’ve been lying to you all these years! I don’t wear a white sombrero like my avatar does. I wear a Panama hat instead. There is more to it than just the hat type I realized recently. It dawned on me that myself but basically all so called white hat SEO practicioners are in fact Panama hat SEOs. Let me explain.

The realization came while I read a new blog post by a very well known SEO blogger. She was linking back to her posting from 2007 to denounce the same person again for the same reason three years later. It was the everlasting white hat vs black hat SEO debate. She argued that black hat SEOs are better than clueless white hats. To be honest I’m not interested in that debate at all anymore. When I started out in SEO most people where more or less gray hat so I wanted to stick out by being whiter than white. These days most SEOs are by far whiter than back then.

I still want to be white hat and ethical, even more than others, but today it isn’t that surprising anymore. You rather rather stick out when publicly defending black hat SEO. This is probably one of the reasons this SEO blogger did it. On the other hand

there are no white hats or black hats if you ask me.

I aspire to be like my avatar, it’s my goal to wear a completely white hat but in reality there are no saints. We are just humans. Also in this ever changing Web landscape and SEO industry what is white hat today might end up black hat tomorrow. What is black hat today might become altogether illegal tomorrow, or worse it might be illegal already and you simply don’t know it.

Just look at paid links. They haven’t been officially black hat or rather outside Google guidelines from day one. People all over the Web bought text link ads like any other ad type and to this day some people outside of the SEO industry do oblivious that there might be a Google penalty for paid links.

In case you look long enough you might still find some comments of mine from around 2006 where I actually defended the practice of paid links, then known as text link ads.

I bought links myself! Yes, I’ve done that. I even used to seek out high Pagerank sites and to offer them assistance with getting text link advertisers. At first Matt Cutts has been denouncing paid links in his cat blog but what do I care for Matt Cutts’ cats? Finally paid links have been marked officially as outside the Google Webmaster Guidelines. By then I think I had already stopped using this technique. I have never used it on large scale or depended on it so I didn’t care much.

Every SEO serious about optimization for search engines has to know some black hat SEO basics at least to know what not to do. Also when you don’t use black hat methods it doesn’t mean your competition won’t either. You at least have to able to spot it. How else can you report them to Google?

So basically SEO is always Panama hat SEO. While you have to aspire to be as ethical as possible there will always be a black band around your Panama hat.

Stop arguing about white hat vs black hat. Take note that a Panama hat isn’t gray either. It’s what we call “nature white” or “natural white” over here in Germany. That’s it: Human nature is never white. Ethics are not really natural, they are mostly part of our culture. We have the ten commandments and Google Webmaster Guidelines that show us the path more or less but we are prone to error trying out new things.

The bible says “let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!”

Until then, while wearing your Panama hat, make sure it’s ethical. My Panama hat by Pachacuti is hand made in Ecuador and fair trade certified. Women can wear them too!

Related posts:

1. Guest Blogging Guidelines
2. Google Buys Links with Hidden Anchor Text
3. 7 Rules of Ethical SEO You Ignore Probably as a White Hat

1. Guest Blogging Guidelines
2. Google Buys Links with Hidden Anchor Text
3. 7 Rules of Ethical SEO You Ignore Probably as a White Hat

Most Hair Cuts 6.99$ by a4qpa.

Last week I went to the barber. Actually she’s a female barber so should I say hairdresser then? I paid 25 Euro for approx. 45 minutes. That’s quite but not very expensive. A haircut for a man costs 8 to 40 Euro here and takes 1o minutes to an hour usually unless you like the really fancy stuff.

I not only paid 25 instead of 8 Euro I also waited three weeks to get an appointment with my hairdresser.

Usually you can just “cut and go” with many cheap barber shops

but I chose to look like a hobo for three weeks because I had needed a haircut badly already three weeks ago. My wife is always short of filing for divorce and people on the street almost give me money for looking that desperate.  I’m always late when it comes to cutting hear.

Now why the hell do I wait so long or pay more than elsewhere? Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite a frugal person. I’ve even tried several of the “cut and go” 10+ Euro barber shops. I’m not a snob either. I went once or twice to the 40 Euro barber but wasn’t satisfied with the results.

I always go the the same hairdresser whenever I can. She’s my favorite for several years now. I remember when she worked for someone else 5 or 6 years ago. She then moved on to open her own barber shop, she did open it with another hairdresser. I followed her to the new location. By now they are 5 I think. I still stick with her even if the others can a more timely appointment.

Why do I tell you all this boring crap about hairdressers in an SEO blog? Well, last week I got an email from someone representing a British language school wanting me to work for them. I get a few offers like that per week and I basically can’t even reply them. I don’t have the time.

Client work and my own projects plus family life are enough for an eight days week.

From time to time a project or client sounds interesting so that I reply anyways. I did last week. It took me one hour to send the guy a more or less sound offer. I shouldn’t have bothered though. He wanted German and Polish SEO and just sent me the English keywords to be “translated”.

Of course you can’t simply translate keywords. Also I always perform my own keyword research, even if a client sends me a list of keywords. Clients almost always err when it comes to best keyword combinations. Clients can do SEO as much as they can do design themselves. In the case of web design they can for a bigger logo, when it comes to SEO they want bigger keywords.

Now this guy was too stingy to pay me 4h keyword research (which is the absolute minimum) per language and he stated that the other SEOs already send him the translated keywords in their offer. He was willing to invest in just one hour per language in keyword research.

The older I get the more moderate I get. I didn’t even get angry. I didn’t cry. I almost laughed. I didn’t write him to go to hell and stop wasting my time. I was very polite. I only wrote him that I don’t offer “quick & dirty” SEO. I offer quality optimization.

How do you want to build a stable house if you are not willing to pay for a decent foundation?

Without proper market and keyword research your SEO project is broken from day one.

Now I will explain the barber story above. I’ve been to the “quick & dirty” barber shops a few times. It never really worked well. Either I looked bad from the start, or a few days or weeks later. Once a cheap hairdresser did quite good work but next time I went there she wasn’t working there anymore.

A few weeks ago I wrote that SEO is craft. SEO is similar to cutting hair in a way. A good hairdresser isn’t necessarily quick and dirty. It takes time and money. You have to wait longer and pay more to be satisfied with the results.

When you pay for quick and dirty you get quick and dirty.

Whether it’s a haircut or SEO. Even if you’re very lucky and you pay for quick and dirty and you get quality you won’t be as lucky the next time.

I only serve a few clients and I work for years with most of them.

What you certainly shouldn’t do is approach a quality SEO practitioner and ask for quick and dirty SEO.

I don’t like huge corporations so I don’t charge 500$ an hour like many of the top SEO experts do. So my services are affordable. Still: You wouldn’t ask a barber for a “bad haircut” either, would you?

Related posts:

1. 10 SEO Client Archetypes
2. The Dirty Dozen of Funny SEO Techniques for Lazy Bums
3. SEO 2.0 Services 3.5$/h

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2. The Dirty Dozen of Funny SEO Techniques for Lazy Bums
3. SEO 2.0 Services 3.5$/h