This going to be a bit of a follow up article on my last post “Real SEO Is Work“. After speaking with a few of my closest friends, we all agreed that there is a ton of misinformation going around about SEO on one of our favorite forums. I honestly think that a few people are intentionally misleading people with bad advice, and promises of instant SEO success.

My first thought was, “Hey, if they want to dish out good links for bad advice, who am I to care”. But The little man on my shoulder would not let me let it go. So, I thought I would take a few minutes to explain some of the “Amazing Advice” that is being tossed around.

As we discussed in the last article, real SEO work is not easy, it’s not fun (sometimes), and it will take real work. Webmasters have been trying to game the SE’s for years now, some of the smartest people in the world are “Black Hat” SEO’s and they do know their stuff. they know there is a million ways to game the system and manipulate the rankings. These same evil geniuses also know that Black Hat tricks are not as effective ling term for several reasons.

Now I will not get into a White hat vs. Black hat argument because its pointless. Most webmasters are stuck in between somewhere anyway. What I do want to talk about is some of the age old short-cuts that I have been seeing new webmasters talked into trying and giving up links for that are more valuable that the information they are getting.

Do-follow blog links

Let’s start off talking about the practice of finding Do-follow blogs where you can leave a comment w/ a linkback. This is one of the most common and over used shortcuts to SEO I see today. Of course, getting a free Do-Follow link is great, but just like everything else in life, you get what you pay for. Most of these blogs are aged, and have hundreds of comments already. Don’t get me wrong, there is some value in these links, but do not expect that you will shoot to number one because of a handful of blog spam links. But as you have already heard, if a page has 1000 outgoing links draining PR juice already, the link you get will be diminished in value and not accomplish your overall goal of getting a unique backlink profile and QUALITY links pointing to your website.

Social Bookmarking links

Over the past 24 months, social bookmarking sites like Digg, Yahoo Buzz, Stumble Upon, and many more have grown in popularity and they have turned into huge online communities with millions of people visiting daily and adding new articles in hopes of getting a link, some traffic, and exposure. Again, this is something everyone can do with makes the actual link pretty valueless in terms of SEO. there are some great advantages though, sites like these are great to get new articles and news stories indexed within minutes. The long term affect on your sites SEO is very very small though.

RSS Feed Submission Directories

Just like social Bookmarking sites like Digg and Buzz, RSS directories have increased in traffic and visibility over the last 2 years. Millions of scrappers rely on these sites and use them well for specific purposes. I’m not going to get into details because I’m sure you can put 2+2 together for yourself. You can easily find RSS directories that DO-Follow your feeds, but once again you have found a place to get a low value link that will do little long term for your site.

Building “Shell” Sites

Now, this is a funny one to me, because I see lots of people setting up what I call “shell” websites on places like Tripod or Wetpaint. They spend hours and days building a websites with content just so they can link from it to their real sites. This whole concept is ass backwards! If you are going to take the time to build a mini Shell websites, you should be spending that time networking, gaining quality links, and most importantly writing good content!. There will NEVER be a substitute for quality content that gains you new keywords and long tail phrases to gain real traffic from.

I’ve even seen some things like the picture below which is by definition a deceptive link scheme, which eventually will come back to bit you down the road. Here is my issue though, If you have the time to set up a spammy network of sites to link farm out, shouldn’t you work on writing usable content for your visitors??Long term the answer is YES. Some people just don’t like to do the work though.

Now, the few tings we have covered so far ar easy to understand and DO provide you with some links and some even will boost your site in the SERPS in the short term. The key phrase is “short Term“. Unless you are planning to build a hit and run website, then short term is not what you are looking for.

Solid SEO is work, we have discussed that before. Its very easy to be tempted by easy link schemes, cheap do-follow links,  etc. As a webmaster you want your site to rise in the SERPS and to continue rising as your site ages, you add more content, and you get natural links to your website. Natural links, just like content never goes away!

So, do yourself a favor and put the real work in. Stop looking for the easy way to get some links or rank for a term for a couple weeks. There are no secrets in SEO, everything you ever wanted or needed to know can be found on the web.