The term ‘Uncle Bob’ is used alot among photographers to describe that person who turns up at the wedding, thinking they know it, with a posh camera, taking pictures and generally getting in the pro photographers way. It describes the person who thinks they know it all, but really knows nothing, and is little more than a pain in the arse to all concerned.
There are people like this in all walks of life, and across most industries (although hopefully not to many for nuclear physics). There are also many in the SEO world, who like to pass off their free advise, and get a bit of an ego rub from ‘helping’ people. Unfortunately, alot of the time, the information they pass on is out dated, incorrect, or no use, and they are unable to provide no evidence for the claims they make.
Whilst you may think its helpful to get advice from someone like this, if you need real help (just like if a couple want real wedding photographers) you need to hire the professionals who work in this industry, day in, day out, year after year.
Recently, I sat in a webinar, that was supposed to help a group of photographers improve their SEO, and was being run by one such Uncle Bob. The advise that was offered was of little of no help to the people asking, and some of the comments made were just crazy. The person running the course had got their website to the front page of Google for search terms that are searched about 20 times a month, hardly an achievement, and nothing like some of the keywords we handle here.
The advice was very poor, and focused a huge amount on on site SEO, which as anyone who works in the industry knows, accounts for about 20 to 30 % of what the total SEO package should be. When comments were made about off site SEO and link building, it was obvious that the webinar leader had no idea what they were going on about, and accused many SEO consultancy companies of using ‘Link Farms’ to build links to their clients sites. Obviously the power had gone to their head, by getting a website to page one of Google.
A lesser person with SEO knowledge would of immediately launched a negative SEO campaign onto the webinars leaders site. And to be honest, it won’t take alot to get it knocked off the front page of Google. But I didn’t. Instead I walked away, hanging my head at how someone who can moan about Uncle Bobs within the photography industry, turns around and does the same thing to the people who work in the SEO industry.
Unfortunately, there is no way to get rid of people like this, and it will always happen. Taking poor advice like this will never get your website to the first page of Google for keywords that will really drive traffic to your website. Its the highly competitive keywords, that get searched alot, that drive the traffic to your site. What is the point in ranking for a keyword that gets searched 20 times a month, when a similar keyword, with a bit more competition, and a bit harder to rank for, gets 20 searches a day.
Its the SEO Professionals who can help you to get to the first page of Google for those keywords that are searched, and that will drive the traffic to your site. We know what we are doing, and we know how to implement complex on page and off page SEO strategies. We also keep up with the latest changes, and generally we are talking the search engine changes before the newsletter companies have published their articles. We know what works and what doesn’t We don’t make wild claims, such as ‘you shouldn’t build links to quickly’, as we know what the link velocity rate should be (Did you know that for some sites you can build and index links quicker than other sites?).
So the next time you see Uncle Bob at a wedding, just remember you not the only one affected.