What makes a bad SEO example?

You'll find a bad SEO example when someone decides not to follow Google's Webmaster Guidelines. The goal of this site is to monitor Google's Webmaster Guidelines for any changes they make to these recommendations, with the assumption that this will give us insight into what works (and what doesn't) when it comes to search engine optimization.

For months now I have been monitoring these guidelines and have realized that this webpage actually changes quite frequently. Until now I have not made any (strong) attempt to interpret these changes. That's the purpose of this blog.  

Why "bad" SEO examples?
There is a lot of debate about what makes an SEO example "bad" (or "good" for that matter, but that's another website). One SEO's "bad" could be another's "good" because, in my humble opinion, of their risk-tolerance. For some a tactic is "bad" because it is too risky but for others something could be "bad" because it doesn't really move the needle (perhaps because it is not risky enough).

In the SEO community this is often conveyed by the color of someone's hat. Some one is a black hat if they do things that are bad or white hat if they do something that is good. This is an unproductive distinction when it comes to seriously discussing SEO. It is just boils down to a pejorative, and whenever conversations degrade to name-calling, we might as well move on.

For the purposes of this blog I am defining a bad SEO example as anything that goes against Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Now we can have debates about whether or not "bad" to Google is really that "bad" for your website- and I hope we will- but I just want to be clear about what I mean by "bad".

I've setup a system to actively monitor changes Google might make to their Webmaster Guidelines. Whenever they make a change I hope to post something (hopefully that day) to this blog, outlining the change. I don't want to just inform you about the changes they make, but I also hope to lend some insight into why they might be making this change- cross-referencing these changes with information from other places.

Argue with me. Add your own insights. As a result I hope we will all become better at SEO.

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