How Giving Away Secrets Can Hurt Everybody
Writing by Nick Stamoulis
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This isn’t talked about much on SEO blogs, but there are some things you just don’t tell – trade secrets, highly controversial practices, questionable tactics, or who got wild at the last midnight SEO bash (do they even have those any more?). Well, here’s a good illustration as to why some things just shouldn’t be mentioned.
It seems some SEO guys were so excited to be getting dofollow links from Twitter that they blogged about it. Then, all of a sudden, all the links were nofollow and everyone lost thousands of links. Holy Grendel! You mean, Twitter was listening?
Unfortunately, yes. And that’s what happens. As soon as you let the cat out of the bag about something so doggone good, one of two things will happen (and both of them are bad).
- Either everyone will start doing it, causing the benefits to dwindle and eventually the practice will be snuffed out by those who have the power to do so; or
- Those who have to power to kill it will just sound the death knell and no one benefits at all
It seems like in this case option number 2 was selected. Thanks to a few happy bloggers, the entire search engine optimization community took one in the face.
5 Responses to “How Giving Away Secrets Can Hurt Everybody”
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It’s a paradox. If we as SEO bloggers don’t give away any good tricks, why should anyone read our blogs? If we do give away the better tricks, those tricks will stop working.
What kind of blog is this? One that will spill the beans, or one that will not?
There are 2 rules to success.
1. Don’t tell everything you know.
Hi quadszilla – I think the Search Engine Optimization Journal is a blog that helps teach businesses and marketers all aspects of long term SEO.
Hi Chris – What is the 2nd rule?
quadszilla: “It’s a paradox. If we as SEO bloggers don’t give away any good tricks, why should anyone read our blogs? If we do give away the better tricks, those tricks will stop working.”
Michael: Most people in the SEO community don’t know enough about SEO to keep posting useful tips for much longer than a week. Just about all the really useful tips have been shared as fundamental on-page optimization and standard link building tactics.
However, the one thing no one can scoop you on is your opinion. Where the SEO community can help itself and lot of other people is in the sharing of pros and cons on all aspects of publicly documented SEO techniques as well as all aspects of online marketing.
You don’t have to report the news — just talk about what’s going on and why you think it’s good or bad.
Hi Michael – Great points! Talking about what is good or bad and why is a great way to go!