Admittedly, I’m beginning to feel as though I’m beating a dead horse, but the internet continues to spit out misleading articles about search engine optimization and I continue to feel compelled to respond to them. The latest that has come to my attention is this article from the News Times that claims to present a series of SEO tips that are “all you’ll ever need to rank in Google.”
Right from the point of the headline it is clear that the author massively underestimates the amount of work that the average Los Angeles SEO company must do to provide satisfactory results for its clients.
The best case outcome from listening to an article like this is that a site owner will become convinced that SEO is straightforward and simple, and will become frustrated with his inability to skyrocket to the top of results pages. The worst case outcome is that it will lead that site owner to buy into empty promises from an unscrupulous local SEO company, and to waste a lot of money on it.
But as I’m sure I’ve said before, these articles are not useless. The one that I’m responding to presents itself as a “checklist.” And it can indeed be used in that way – not as a definitive checklist for your own SEO content, but as a means of keeping tabs on your local SEO company and making sure that the basics are covered before they explain to you how they will go above and beyond these simple starting points.
