I get so weary of the SEO games

I promised myself that I would not write another thing about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Yet here I am, once again doing something that is absolutely pointless. It makes no sense, I know that. Really, I do.

First, writing about anything even vaguely SEO related is unlikely to attract many readers. No, not because of lack of interest, but rather because of too much interest: there is too much written every single day, so anything I do will fall into a large ocean of other articles, 99.99% of which will promise to teach you the path to wealth through Internet marketing. There's just too much competition out there.

Second, I'm an anti-SEO person. I detest it - well, most of it. I'm all in favor of the type of SEO that Google recommends. I'm not enamored of what everybody and their brother recommends, which generally can be summed up in one short sentence: lie through your teeth.

Ranting about SEO is even worse than writing about SEO. Your article will fall into the same great ocean as all the rah-rah SEO articles and if by chance it should be noticed, all the people who hope to make a living as an Internet scammer will hate everything you have to say.

Frustrated

This article is, therefore, another utterly useless and completely pointless rant.

So why am I ranting again even when I know there is no point in doing so and after promising myself that I would not?

It's because I'm frustrated by willful ignorance.

Reddit

My frustration stems from an article I read that was written by someone who had been banned by Reddit.

If you don't know what Reddit is, it's a social bookmarking site. It's similar in concept to Stumbleupon: users add links to pages they think are interesting, other users vote and leave comments and so it goes.

Reddit is largely junk. I truly can't imagine any intelligent person spending any time there. But never mind that. After all, the Internet stopped being about intelligent people sometime in the mid 1990's, so that boat sailed long ago. Reddit appeals to the clueless masses, but for those desiring Internet traffic, a clueless visitor is as good as any other, so who cares? Bring on the Yahoos!

Anyway, the article I read told the tale of being banned by Reddit for being a spammer. What's a spammer in Reddit's eyes? They actually have a good FAQ entry on the subject of spamming. It begins with this:

"It's not strictly forbidden to submit a link to a site that you own or otherwise benefit from in some way, but you should sort of consider yourself on thin ice. So please pay careful attention to the rest of these bullet points."

Obviously the person who was banned never read that. In fact, he admitted that he had not.

Apparently, that's a common failing at Reddit. The site is plagued with users who don't read the rules and join just to plaster their spammy links in hopes of gain. To their credit, Reddit has a novel way of dealing with that crap. Reddit doesn't ban them, censure them or do anything so overt. Instead, the spammers links are just silently made invisible to others.

That's a brilliant solution, I think. It keeps the really dumb ones on the hook, blissfully submitting spam that will never be seen by anyone. The spammer is rendered impotent and unless they check their efforts while logged out, they'll never know.

The spammer in question did notice, however. His solution was to create another account and continue his spamming, being more careful this time to mix in other links with his own and engage in community activity to look more like an honest user.

The NATURAL way

As it happened, earlier that day I had come across another SEO related article. This one had a title that was something along the lines of "Blast your way to unimaginable traffic with natural backlinking!". That wasn't the actual title, but it could have been.

The thrust of that article was contained in one paragraph. I won't quote it verbatim, but basically it boiled down to this:

"Keep your backlinking efforts looking as natural as possible, so that Google won't know that it's YOU trying to get more traffic to your site."

That's the mistake the guy who was banned from Reddit made, obviously. His link spamming didn't look "natural", moderators caught on, so they made him invisible. Unfortunately for the rest of us, he noticed and has now created a new account (perhaps even multiple accounts) and is now spamming more carefully.

You don't know when you are lying?

If you'll remember, the banned guy admitted that he hadn't read Reddit's rules. From his point of view, that's all that went wrong here. He was "wrong", but only because he didn't read Reddit's rules. Other than that, he sees nothing wrong with adding his own links. His new account is still being used for that purpose.

I know that many of the people reading this will agree with him. They see no moral issue here at all. I have to ask the obvious question: is this not a lie?

Playing Google for a chump

If you are trying to convince Google that your page is valuable because other people link to it but YOU are the one doing the linking, you are telling a lie.

You can justify this, of course. "Everybody does it" is a favorite excuse. That's not true, though. Everybody doesn't do it. I don't do it and millions of other honest people don't do it either.

"I have a family to feed" is another one I have heard more than once. If this is supposed to be an equivalent to "A starving man can steal bread for his family", I don't buy it. You aren't starving, you are just lying to help your success.

You can twist and turn and squirm all you want: you are lying. You are lying to Google and you are lying to the world. You are lying to Reddit users when you tell them that your own content has value that they should note.

I'm sorry. You may not like this, but it's simple truth. Anonymous backlinking is lying and there is no polite way to say it any differently.

Pot, Kettle, Black!

I was almost tempted to leave this section off to see if someone would jump on it.

I post my content to Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. I post other things at those places also, but a lot of it is just my own links. Isn't that lying also?

No, it isn't. You see, Google knows those are my accounts because I've told them that in multiple places. I'm not trying to fool Google or anyone else - I'm telling them about my other identities on the Internet. Most of those use the same "pcunix" moniker as I use here, by the way, so my ownership and interest in the links is obvious to anyone who cares to look.

In the interests of full disclosure, I also have some other accounts that I do not list. I don't list them because I only created the account(s) to learn what the sites were about so that I could advise others; I haven't used them to post links except in some very rare cases when I was demonstrating them to someone else and in most cases I have remembered to delete those. In almost every case, by the way, I use the name "pcunix". I am not trying to deceive anyone.

At one time, I thought Stumbleupon was a useful site. I no longer think so, but my links are still there. Note that my name there is "pcunix" - no intent to hide anything.

I'm not a spammer, period. I don't lie to Google and I don't lie to other people.

Where's the harm?

Aside from the fact that it is lying, you mean?

How about that it affects the reliability of search results and clogs the Internet with mountains of garbage?

What about that other sites have been known to ban legitimate links to sites like HubPages that have a lot of users abusing the system with spammy links to their own crap? So YOUR spammy crap causes someone else to be unable to point out a legitimate post by someone else..

Is that harm enough?

Does this make you angry?

If it does, doesn't that say that in your heart you realize that you are a liar? Why else would you be angry? If you know you are not lying to people - for example you are legitimately using Reddit, Stumbleupon or whatever to post truly useful content - you hate the liars as much as I do.

If it doesn't make you angry, you either aren't doing any of this or you are and think I'm just a fool.

Fine, I'm a fool. I'd rather be a fool than a liar.