They are all Super-Jedis… unique Ranking Masters… in fact any SEO consultant seems to be a mix of MacGyver + Mr T with a bit of Xmen.. seriously.
Don’t you know it already?
SEO professionals are b*d ass warriors, and Google masters of the universe, real Ninjas with unique powers.. until…

mmm wait…

until they get confronted by another SEO expert to PROVE a theory and do a ranking experiment.

Ohhhh do I need to prove my theory?

Mmm not good.

Are you asking me to a Ranking challenge where I have to put my money where my mouth is?

Mmm not good.

Not good because we all hate to “work”…and because we are not Mac Gyver (I can’t build a bomb with a glass of mil and a piece of paper!)

In this so-called SEO industry…. we all hate to really confront the fact that we believe in ghosts, that we believe in things we haven’t tested, that we preach theories that we don’t even really know if they are true or not.

And the reason?

We want to fit in.
We want to be nice sheep…  politically correct sheep, we want our customers to say “WE REALLY UNDERSTAND THIS INDUSTRY” and we want want to just be another of the “nice guys” around.

And is thanks to this laziness that we stop thinking, researching and really trying to go out of our comfort zone and experiment what SEO it’s all about.

SEO is a moving art, a moving science, a constant chaos… like a big,  nasty, ugly Bull in a Rodeo.
You can’t really know what comes ahead, but you can be sure, if you train enough you will be the one having your 8 seconds of famous.

And that’s why many times SEO experts discover quickly that they are not the brave RODEO cowboys, instead they are the cowboys running AWAY from the Bull, isntead of riding the bull

So how to detect these Rodeo clowns claiming to be Rodeo Cowboys??

* They never accept any ranking challenge… because they understand they can’t pull ranking:

SEO it’s about pulling ranking. If you can’t pull ranking, you can’t be involved in this industry. In the same way a doctor job is to save lives… your job is to get a site from the darkness of ranking… and bring it to the 1st page.

* They don’t accept the idea of SEO with money back guarantee…

Mainly because, well… they can’t rank
Remember? So money back guarantee it’s a big no, no… hey!

They want to get paid , regardless if they get you rank or not!

This means, the will spend more time claiming that “you can predict ranking” instead of offering an strategy when that ranking will achieved.

They love to praise their results … but without providing you all the facts.

One of the best ways to see detect these type of SEO-Expert is when you see in their sites statements like

~~~ “We Rank 1st over 56.000.000 competitive sites!” ~~~

The reality is: No you don’t have 56 million sites competing  for the term you rank, in the same way, I don’t have 1.5 milllion sites competing for the keyword : SEO consultant.

Instead I only have 20, or even less sites that are in fact competing to rank for that keyword

The rest.. the other 1.499.80 sites are just sites that Google find for that keyword: But obviously not competition.

So in a few words: Hey… I’m not such a though guy, in fact I’m nothing amazing, or even an “expert”… but at least, I’m honest enough to realize that I’m not MacGyver just because I’m first for this term…

Do I sound bitter? you bet… mainly because it seems the web dunes are full of useless content about what SEO strategy it’s all about.

Just last week in Linkedin SEO professional group… I heard SEO professionals announcing the word: “Don’t bother to do any link building, google doesn’t want us to do link building… in fact please avoid it… just write content and traffic will arrive”

As soon as these post was posted there was an army of sheep that posted agreeing that yes… links are not required… links are over rated.

OMG

OMG

OMG

So if links are over rated why the top credit card companies in Australia spend thousands investing in building network of sites to increase their page rank and inbound links, instead of investing their money in hiring more content writers?

So because the prove it’s in the pudding let’s take a look at some examples:

Term: web hosting (lovely for any hosting company)

1st position: Digital Pacific…

So let’s pressume that links are NOT important to achieve this PREMIUM ranking…. does Digital Pacific has the best CONTENT? Well… no… it’s just plain content, in fact they don’t have so many pages indexed like the competitors or even an older domain name.. but what they have… oh boy… it’s NICE LINKS

PR 7 Link from http://www.science.org.au/

Anchor link: Web hosting

So may be this is just a mistake… but obviously it’s not, let’s take a look at another adorable Page rank 5 anchor link

Page rank 5 site: http://www.etwa.org.au/

Anchor link: web hosting

So it’s this a sin? No really, it’s just the way the game works. And if you don’t like it.. quit today because it doesn’t seem things will change.

Obviously, the SEO experts that teach seminars, and go to conferences, will never mention this in one of their “seminars” because clearly people don’t want to hear this… people want to believe, the brave SEO experts are indeed Brave Rodeo cowboys  specially when you are paying THAT cowboy to improve your website without any type of real link building strategy.

When ever you talk about SEO in forums, discussion forums… there are 3 type of “readers” or “players” . The ones that are willing to learn, the ones that know what they are talking about and the Clowns that are usually experts in all type of topics and the only information they really know about SEO is the one that they get when they google the keyword

“SEO”

Oh… clowns… I used to hate them when I was a little kid and I still hate them.

These type of clowns love to show the world how amazing their websites are and they love to watch Matt Cutts videos and read Google webmaster guidelines and forums like if GOOGLE was going to tell you exactly how the Algorithm works.

The clowns… obviously are experts in branding, social media, design, launching websites, products creation and yes… off course… SEO.

That’s why they are quick to correct you… because they are EXPERTS.

Experts with no ranking, no client, no data and no experience… that’s why they are clowns.

So how do you detect a clown from a real expert? Simple. Ask the clown to prove any of their SEO theories without “quoting” someone else, without linking to a Google page… or without linking to a lame Enzine Article about SEO.

The reality is Clowns don’t have DATA , don’t have Experience and don’t have sites where they can actually experiment changes in Google Algorithms.

That’s all… that’s the difference.

The people that do this … don’t spend their time talking to “Google helpline…” or asking themselves if Duplicate content penality is real or if Google really detects GOOD content…

What the real expert is doing is : Building sites. Building backlinks. Exploring new ways to create backlinks and new ways to create a more powerful flow of Google Juice…

That’s what a REAL SEO professional does.

SEO certification?

Web Standards Group?

Certified Web Designer?

Who really cares? The point is… in this game, in the SEO game you need one thing: Experience.

Experience is what gives you the b*lls to be able support your claims… because once you have experience, you can understand how this whole game really works.

So next time you see a Clown… moving around trolling in Forums trying to show how clever he is… remember: Clowns only have authority in the circus… In the real world… they are only scary and sad people that nobody really takes serious.

I recently had a friend that went to an SEO conference in Melbourne where Australian businesses owners paid over $900 to attend a series of lectures where many famous SEO experts, revealed for hours the most confidential and exclusive SEO theories, concepts and best practices to achieve top position in Google.

What I find interesting is that usually 99.9% of the people that will leave this type of conference will never implement any theory, concept or strategy for a very simple reason: SEO Experts, tend to complicate the SEO industry .

So when I think about the $900 invested in a weekend of SEO wisdom, I can’t stop thinking … mmm what a waste of money!

The reality is that I’m a true believer that when SEO companies experts approach to potential clients they have one objective in their mind: To complicate them, to confuse them, to explain things with so many technical terms, than the normal Joe the Business man will simply believe he can’t take control of his own company SEO strategy.

Paying $900 for a SEO conference is not a lot, specially if you can find SEO concepts that will help you to build your traffic and most important increase your ranking, but usually these conferences don’t go straight to the point, and they fail to explain clearly what the exactly you need to do to increase your keyword ranking.

Also, paying $900 to hear an SEO guru tell me that…
“To make it in your Search Engine Optimization and Internet marketing arena, you just need to have passion about your business. Write good content and traffic will come” … makes me extremely sick in my SEO tummy .

The advice that traffic is related with good content is a typical typical lame lie, that many SEO companies love to tell their clients, because at the end of the day, it sounds better to say:
“sorry you need to improve your content to be Number 1″
instead of
“Don’t worry about the content, instead go out there and get more links for your site”

Believing that Google understand the amazing quality of your content, and that by just the nature of your words’ you will rank in 1st position, is like telling kids that Santa is in fact the biological father of the Eastern Bunny : It is not true .

If you don’t believe me try to see how many times you find Harvard University ranking in 1st position for any term? Mainly because the quality of the content is not equal to ranking or traffic.
So, why are so many gurus telling companies you that they write great content, and if you are passionate about their industry, they will sooner achieve, position 1 in Google for their selected keywords, if they keep sticking to build the best content possible ?

Well, the main reason is because many of these gurus are gurus by teaching people how to rank, but not by ranking their own sites. The love to talk about SEO, but they don’t make a living from optimization their own sites, or by building niche / industry related sites.

How many of these Gurus are ranking 1st for the keywords loans or mortgages? for sure none of them, instead of all them work for other companies, providing advice and consultancy services.
It seems we keep forgetting that SEO is about one thing: Being 1st in Google. That’s it. Nothing else. if you can’t be 1st in Google for your term, you are loosing the battle and another site, anther company is getting your visitors, your users, your potential customers and your money.

But again, nobody tells you that when you spent $900 in a SEO conference. Instead they will tell you about the relevance of social media , networking, youtube, forum postings, facebook advertising, etc. It seems like a funny conspiracy to make you believe that to rank you need to make friends, and work hard to make people love your site.

“Create great content and then traffic will follow” — are you for real?

So what happens then? You, or the poor beginner that saved the money to pay the amazing SEO conference, start to follow the advise of these gurus.

They open a Twitter account, they create a myspace profile, they try to comment in all the forums in the world trying to get new visitors, and after spending 10 to 15 hours per week, they discover after a few months, how useless and exhausting all these type of tasks.

The Truth is that SEO conferences will not be so interesting if the SEO expert will tell you the things in PLAIN and RAW English, like the reasons why people don’t manage to rank their sites.
Are you ready for the truth?

1. People are lazy, not just lazy, but usually professionally lazy, so lazy they are perfectly happy to pay $900 just to hear the secret that will tell them how to RANK fast. People want a magic bullet, a quick fix, a fast solution. People don’t want to realize that ranking a website is like building a businesses, it takes hours and hours of sacrifice, work and dedication.

2. Just 3 Steps: Ranking one website has to do with 3 basic things: Keyword research, SEO content and Link Building.

3. Is all in the Links Baby:  If you don’t link build you will not rank. That’s it. Link building is boring (in fact it is one of the most boring things you can do….), but if you don’t do it, your site is worth nothing. the more you link build the more “brownie points’ you have in the eyes of Google Santa.

4. Forget about the Content. You don’t need to have 1000 friends, followers or network’ partners to rank. Even your content doesn’t need to be just amazing . In fact I have sites that rank 1st in Google with content that seems written by a 7 year old french kid with very basic level of English. (well, actually I am a 1/2 french, 1/2 Colombian guy leaving in Australia with a very strange English accent….)

5. Forget about Social traffic. If you really want to Rank, forget about the social hype, Twitter, Stumble Upon, Digg, Facebook. Social Media only needs to be done to build one thing; Links – not friend, not cool internet buddies that rub your back while you believe that “everyone loves me and everyone thinks my site is great’.
Remember: Internet Buddies don’t become customers, they are internet buddies mainly because they are wasting their time “surfing” the net, instead of producing results for their own sites.

6.  Links override everything: Any on site SEO errors or deficiencies, like Metatags, Titles, link structure, sitemaps, can be over ruled with contextual inbound links to your site.

7.  Work it: SEO is about dam hard work, about doing the same thing over and over again: Producing links to your site – that’s it. That is the secret (I just gave you the secret without charging you $900 dollars)
Choose the right keyword, research your competition, great content with the relevant keyword and go out there, into the Jungle and build inbound links, day at night, night and day, like a beast. The more your build the stronger your site will become.

So what about Links? Is just getting link like a manic? Well, kind of , but we need to understand that not all links are the same.

The kind of Links we want are off a high Google PR page or site, related to our niche/industry , Links that have been indexed by google for a while, links that are inside content that is related to your industry …
Also we want to have our keyword anchor in the link and we want to be sure we don’t give away links out of site to every single person out there.

Confusing? Well, not really, it is just a method a system, and what internet marketers really need to do, to rank sites is to build links, to create link building strategies.
And believe me, it is not exciting it is boring, it is tedious, you have to do it none stop and once you think you are doing keep doing it again.

Do you need any more secret info to increase the ranking in your site? I don’t think so. The problem with small website owners is that they spend hours trying to learn everything about Search Engine Marketing, instead of deciding to do something about it. Small businesses owners love to think about their site, instead of working in their site.

So now that you saved the $900, what can you do with that money? invest it in your online marketing strategy, buy domain names related to your site, create some extra blogs, or pay an SEO monkey like me, to do just one thing; Link building….
….. because only when you build you will get that organic traffic that is free, effective and converts.