SEO forums actually worth reading?

isnt webmasterworld enough?? lol

I’ve found that webmasterworld has so much ‘noise’ going on that you have to ferret out a ton of speculation, whining, guesses, and bad grammar to get any solid information you can use.

But, yes, it’s worth reading the seo forums.

Seochat
site-reference.com
searchenginewatch.com

I prefer webmasterworld.
Real Sellers, real troubles, real advices.
Not only academic teaching

Are SEO forums worth reading? I would have to say no. Follow the rules and guidelines set out by the major SE’s. If there is something you don’t understand learn it. Don’t take short cuts, a high ranking sites often takes years to perfect.

SEO forums are packed filled with speculations and in many cases just plain stupid information. One ends up being confused and overwhelmed.

They way I figured some stuff out was through trial and error. I also used some optimization advice from programs, such as webceo. But be cautious what advice you decide to take.

I also created a dump page, a page on my site strictly for testing. From here I can find out what works and what doesn’t. Every site is arranged differently therefore, what works for me might not work for you. The same can be said about these SEO forums. Most sites are rather unique, and too assume some of their advice will work on your site is a fallacy that many fall prey to.

So how do you do it? there are people that hire SEO freelancers which sometimes work. But the ultimate is being in control and understanding your own site.

But the one thing that is universal, be honest a write for your visitors. greek39

When PPC died I initially spent a lot of time at SEO forums. After several months I came upon a conclusion. Everyone there contracdict themselves, and it is 100% speculation.

I haven’t bothered to visit a forum for years now. Since I decided to not worry about SEO and to focus on what I know works, is since I have been doing well with SEO.

SEO is very basic, there really isn’t too much to it. About the only thing that the successful crowd seems to differ with each other on is whether 3 way links is better than recips. I agree that 3way is probably better, but it’s too difficult for me to monitor so I dont worry about it.

Used to spend a lot of time at SEOchat, but after awhile it gets very repetitive. Greek has a good point about the speculation, contradiction and stupid information. After you read a forum for a few weeks or months, you start to get the same answers over and over again from the people who know what they are talking about.

In a nutshell, go get relevant themed links for your site, as many as possible, match the content on your site with the anchor text you are targeting. That’s essentially the magic bullet, not really much magic at all. All the rest of it is noise and people splitting hairs about one technique vs. another. Having a ton of links trumps it all.

Still at webmasterworld the opinion of some of the long term members is a serious source of knowledge.

An average webmaster of course is not able to read the 200 post of each thread.

There’s no way to have a real understanding about how Search Engines works , by using a software like Webceo or similars .
In the best case they only provide an automatic device to anlize keyword density, tags, headings etc.
The big scam with these piece of software is people claiming that they can anticipate or fully understand how to deal with the algorithm changes.

Tons of links?
After some years online I really doubt about this technique.

Related links?
If I have the time I’ll contribute with an article talking about a website getting good rankings buying unrelated/non english sites links from western europe.
Of course I like related partners but that’s not the whole solution.

Ton of content?
New sites with 500 or 600 pages are quite artificial IMO.

PR for rankings?
I doubt about this too

So my bet for the future is a very basic SEO and common sense.
And again that is something that at least for me is only available from real webmasters posting in some forums (including this),

I agree with Antoine 100%.

When I did visit Seo forums the only ones I found worth reading were Seochat and Webmasterworld, but even those are loaded with 99% mis-information. Some of which I am sure is calculated the rest is people throwing out crap that they suspect but can’t confirm with hard data.

I think they are entertaining and occasionally prompt me to think more about some aspect of SEO.

You can’t base a website on the info from there though.

The search engines do not want you to manipulate their results. They want you to grow at a normal pace, link to a few good places, have a site that is fast to load, easy to navigate and informative for the visitor.

If you are serious about getting somewhere in the long run, that will get you there and keep you there.

All successes achieved by intensive SEO are temporary and make your site(s) act like jojos and you glued to google dances and forced to tweak and tweak and tweak.

If you want good permanent rankings, you have to do what the engines want, not try to trick the engines into thinking you have what they want.

If you want google to like you, read this and mind it:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Thanks for the tips and critique so far. The discussion above lead me to another question.

Since SEO (in its “none search algorithm exploiting form”) is actually very close to just creating user friendly web sites, are there any forums on that specific subject?
I’ve so far learned that user/reader friendliness is something that is surprisingly hard to achieve, so I’d welcome good resources on the subject.