I composed and published this blog entry sometime last year on my design blog but decided to move it over here.
Outdated SEO Articles outranking new SEO Articles
This must be a really confusing time for all newcomers or the average SEO John Doe. Even for experts it’s a time off eyebrow raising and chin rubbing. There is so much stuff going on that I am about to vote for April as the #1 SEO month of the year in 2007, but who knows what the future will bring.
We’ve got the Page Rank toolbar update due which some people argue will be pushed into the next months due to Google’s recent maneuvers towards paid links. For those who missed it, you can now report what you consider a paid link through Google’s Webmaster Central.
If interested in the topic, see Matt Cutt’s blog, there should be at least 500 comments. Most of the webmasters do not seem to applaud Google’s recent behavior.
While paid links might be Google’s dilemma, a different issue which remains within the SEO community is that too many beginners take information for granted way too quickly, without proper verification or any valid form of proof.
It’s not always the newbie’s fault as a big problem with SEO today is the amount of outdated information fluctuating on the net. Articles from 2001 or earlier rank high in the SERP’s for popular search engine optimization and search engine marketing related search terms. Most beginners end up taking this information for granted, word for word.
Don’t you think that Google might have done some updates over the past 6 years?
These old school articles gained backlinks, trust and authority over the past years. Today, they rank high, no wonder, that’s how the algorithm works right now. But what is the purpose of spreading old info? Some webmasters might argue that the quality of the search results is solely the search engines responsibility, however in terms of fresh SEO information, producing up to date information within the top results does not seem to be priority. Why would it be?
Often, the information provided in an outdated SEO article sounds great to the first-time reader and while some of this content might still apply today, it’s often foolish too assume that this is the case at all times.
Second, a problem directly related to this is that judgments are simply drawn way too quickly without proper up-to date knowledge, expertise or any form of manual verification. This simply leads to wrong conclusions. Most search engine related forum posts, even on popular forums serve the entertainment purpose. They are often quite questionable in SEO terms. Based on the authors experience level, almost everybody has a different SEO story to tell.
This brings me last but not least to my final point. It’s a shame that even authority sites or popular forums do not remove outdated SEO information, articles in particular. Unfortunately there are commercial aspects behind this as there is still significant traffic flowing even through a SEO article which became popular in 2000 and advises users i.e. to stuff their meta tags with keywords for ranking purposes.
