Have you ever been hit by a stroke of Genius, telling you that automated directory submissions will help your ranking in search engine results? Maybe you thought that some nicely crafted meta tags would help your search engine ranking. I may be a bit too hard on people at times, but common sense just completely eludes many people when it comes to SEO (search engine optimization). Many website owners want to rank in the top of search results so badly that they will try almost anything. Well, as long as it is cheap, easy, and sounds techie-fancy.

When I started to write this, I was going to rant about automated directory submissions. Then I realized that I have touched on the topic of directory submissions before. I still have something to get off my chest, and I still have something to say about the toxic lies and misinformation that have been created surrounding the SEO industry. It is often fueled by greed and hope of getting something for nothing.

I have been around this Internet a long time. I suppose I may have a bit of a different view through the eyes of experience, but haven’t we all had some sense of caution about our online identity at some point? For over a decade, I have presented myself as “just me” and never tried to hide a lot of what I think, feel, do, or where and how I live. I guess you could say that I kind of just grew into an acceptance of my job here on the Internet.
In the early days of many Internet users’ online [...]