How bad SEO advice becomes conventional SEO wisdom

Good advice is bad advice. Remember that, because when you find yourself nodding in agreement with someone who is giving you bad SEO advice, it's because you are hearing good SEO advice.

Let me share an anecdote from when I was in technical school. I enrolled in a Data Processing technology program. There were intensive classes in coding and methodology. The instructors taught logic in the Greek way -- they posed rhetorical problems that we had to solve.

One of the problems came in the form of a test. Waitaminnit, does that really make sense? Yes, to a computer programmer who has been trained right, it does. The test itself was a logical challenge to the students -- not because it was testing our knowledge but rather because it was testing our common sense.

I think maybe 3 people in the class came close to following the logic of the test. I was not one of them. I realized something was bogus when I got to the part that said: "Now shout out I am the greatest follower of instructions in the world."

At that point, I did what the first instruction in the test said to do: I read the entire document carefully and finally reached the last instruction, which said: "Now go back and do only the first 3 things in the list."

The point of the test was to teach us to look before we leap, not to make assumptions, and to show us who was most likely to be careful and methodical. When 65 people fail to read a document all the way through before following its instructions carefully, what does that say about everyone in general?

That was a particularly difficult curriculum. I was one of 6 people to actually graduate, and I did it out of pure stubborness. I think the other 5 graduates would have said the same thing. It was a rigorous 18 months of having our pseudo-code, flowcharts, and code handed back to us with red ink and comments like, "A compiler would not catch these mistakes."

When I finally went on to college to earn a degree in Computer Science (and another one in Data Processing), I struggled with the math courses (because I dropped out of High School in the 9th grade) but the computer courses were pretty easy for me. In addition to passing through one of the toughest teaching programs I ever took in my life, I also took advantage of the fact that students around me were floundering like fish just dumped from a net. Every person who had a bug with a program or code that just didn't do what it should became an opportunity for me to learn from someone else's mistakes.

I fixed a LOT of programs when I was in technical school. I even managed to beat instructors at fixing some student programs because I had encountered the same problems first. Analyzing code, data, and methodologies became second nature to me. I learned to sift through good code looking for bad code. Normally, it only takes one mistake to cause a program to run amok and use up all the system resources. No one crashed the mainframe more than me. I usually did it with one mistyped command, one logically incorrect idea.

Now back to SEO. You tend to see a lot of standard (and therefore good) SEO advice passed around these days. This is almost always what I called "first tier" SEO advice in my previous post. It's commonly documented stuff that has all but been absorbed into the realm of common sense. Most people with a smidgen of knowledge about SEO now seem to understand that title tags are important. They may not understand how you set up a title tag, but they understand that it's important.

Most advice-givers become fairly competent at handing out the standard advice. It's a very good communal service as long as they stay up-to-date. The more people who hand out good advice, the better for us all. But the problem is that first-tier SEOs don't see the subtle problems with good advice that is misplaced.

I don't normally "out" bad advice givers. Certain people have reacted with hostility when I've called them on their bogus advice. Most likely, my lack of tact and diplomacy have something to do with the hostility. By the time I'm ready to nail someone in a forum, they've so disgusted me with their nonsense I no longer care what they think of me.

Still, let me try a different approach (with someone who has not disguested me with nonsense). I'll begin by pointing out that one of my search industry influencers today sent me to this page. I have read this site before. The author claims to be an amateur SEO who just likes to play and do research. The author has posted some interesting tests on the front page, but the analysis of the data and results is flawed.

Equally so, the conclusions in the Suppplemental Hell article lead you down the garden path with good SEO advice -- first tier advice. The author has probably done more testing and research than people who look for help in the forums but there are pretty severe problems with the methodologies showcased on the site.

The problem in this case is not properly defined. Therefore the proposed solution is inappropriately worded. I cannot be more specific than that. In a very clear sense, the page offers the wrong solution. The author is giving bad advice, but you'd never know it if you didn't stop to ask, "What does all this good SEO advice have to do with the problem at hand?"

Nonetheless, people are already linking to the article (as have I). The article may very well create a buzz and go on to become one of the SEO community's standard references on how to deal with Google's Supplemental Index.

And the irony is that it's wrong, even though the correct answer (as far as what I have seen work in the past few weeks) is buried amidst all the bad/good advice.

What most SEOs forget, time and again, is that in a world where the rules change often (as with search engine rankings and filters), you have to redefine the basic problem in the terms of the most recently vetted available information. "Vetted" information has been tested and analyzed and found to be generally accepted by more than one methodology. The Supplemental Hell article does offer a good bit of "vetted" or at least authoritative information. The problem is that it's missing a key piece of information.

Relying on "vetted" information may be an imperfect standard but it's the only one that works in a world encapsulated by trade secret-induced ignorance. Neither you nor I know exactly what Google is doing, but we have been given a fair amount of information about the Supplemental Index and the "going Supplemental" issue. Unfortunately, too many well-meaning helpful SEOs are not looking at everything we have been told.

It is a serious error to evaluate today's Supplemental Index in the light of 2003's information, in the light of 2004's informatioin, etc. About as far back as you can safely go is Bigdaddy. Before December 2005 we were hearing different things about the Supplemental Index than we have heard for the past year. So people need to discard the past and just focus on the present. We no longer have to deal with the original Supplemental Index.

By attempting to look at today's problem with yesterday's useful advice, you complicate the problem and make solving it much harder for people.

I don't have the definitive explanation of what Google is doing with the Supplemental Index or why. But I do know what is getting pages out of the Index. So do other people. I have seen them share advice similar to what I have shared, based on their own experiences. Do I know more (or think I know more) than I have shared? Yes. And I think other people have figured out some of the new rules of the game, too.

The SEO community in general has not yet come to terms with what today's Supplemental Results really mean. So it is falling back on giving out good advice because that advice always worked in the past. But the past offers no guarantees that what worked then will work now or in the future.

Today's Google presents us with more challenges than just the Supplemental Index issue. Most people are still reeling from being exiled to the Supplemental Zone, so they haven't even yet figured out what else is going on. And every day I am learning something new. I'm still figuring things out, too. But I do know how to cut through the inappropriate methodologies and get down to brass tacks.

I've had a lot of practice at that. Unfortunately, most SEOs have not.