SEO Tricks: Unintended Consequences

[SEO Manager]

Unintended Consequences
 

<p>Edward Lewis runs You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login, one of the more well known and trusted directories in the SEO space. When I first started learning SEO about 5 years back Edward sent me an email letting me know that something I wrote was incorrect. He was right and I made sure I fixed the issue, but he was also quite abrasive. </p>
<p>When Traffic Power was spreading their slime through the SEO industry, Edward Lewis was one of the main people helping to fight them off...so much so that Traffic Power even created a hate site about him. Edward cares a lot, but sometimes a bit too much. Recently he You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login at Sphinn, where he was largely outraged by some inaccuracies he saw. In less than a week he was banned from the site for being too curt, abrasive, and disrespectful.</p>
<p>The problem with trying to clean up everything on the web is that conversations are controlled by power laws...for every person in the know, there are 100 people new to the field. Plus many of the people who know what they are talking about eventually exit the conversation. Given that trend (and how companies like Google profit from spreading misinformation) the goal of killing misinformation is equally painful and self-defeating. </p>
<p>Being correct is not enough to ensure success. You also have to package your message in a format that people find appealing. Which is part of the reason why blogs are so popular. Someone slicker than you is going to take your ideas and repackage them in a profitable format...may as well be you doing the repackaging rather than letting others take credit for your work.</p>
<p>We all get invested in what we know, and to hear something from a different perspective challenges our identities. Easier for people to buy off on changing their opinions if they learn from a trusted messager, especially if they do not have to admit that they are wrong to do so. An easier way to create change is to share your side of the story on your home turf using good formatting, clear language, and logic. Some people will listen and follow, others will not.</p>
<p>Allowing people to self-select is a much more efficient marketing strategy than trying to force change upon others. It allows network effects to work for you, rather than against you. You pretty-much need legal or military might (government) or a monopoly (Microsoft or Google) to get away with forcing change, and even then it usually ends up creating unexpected consequences (just look at Iraq).</p>

 

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