1. We have a proven, methodical, scientific system.

2. Search results continually change in an unpredictable way.

These two statements contradict each other. People crave certainty, especially in inherently chaotic areas, and some are quite happy to promise it.

Here’s a quick test that helps me when I have any doubt: go to Google, type in the url of the website (like internetscam.com for example) and look at the results.

People who claim to be big players can be found out very easily with this method. Not a lot of results? Probably haven’t been around too long.

Are all the results directory listings or otherwise neutral? Are they all ads? They’ve probably done some SEO but still not a definitive result.

The jackpot is really blog and forum results where somebody writes quite clearly “so-and-so is a rip off” or even “so-and-so is legitimate”. Look for real people giving real reviews and unsolicited feedback.

Traffic spikes are Black Swans. So are #1 rankings in Google. SEOs are always chasing them, and like the deluded traders in Taleb’s book, they are always developing systems and rules for creating them.

Search engine algorithms are black boxes. SEOs do some work, the algorithm works its magic, and rankings and traffic come out the other side. SEOs then work by induction to determine the algorithm, but if you know anything about induction you’ll know how unrewarding it can be.

People love certainty and they’re prepared to bypass reason to believe in it. That’s why so much stock market software exists that promises big returns, and it’s the same with SEOs that promise high rankings or big traffic.

The alternatives are not pretty. Tell your customers that you can promise nothing and see how happy they are when you bill them. Tell SEOs that their strategies are based on faulty reasoning and they’ll ask you what the alternative is.

There are two meta-strategies that I think will work well here. Number one, educate your clients. Show them what SEO is and tell them how rankings in Google are generated, then they’ll be less quick to buy search marketing snakeoil.

Number two, cover as many angles as you can. Look at on-site optimisation, look at link-building, look at ads, look at social networks, video etc. It might be one thing affecting your placement, it might be one hundred, but keep your hand in everywhere, keep every plate spinning. Just don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you know how SEO works because you’ve had a few successful campaigns.

One company offers first place ranking in Google for £650. Their small print says that if this doesn’t happen they’ll refund you but keep an admin fee of £75. What’s more, their “first place” seems to be in sponsored ads not organic results. You can buy those yourself.

The second was a phone call saying that they had a spare place on the first page of Google for “insert relevant keywords here”. I thought wow, who is this guy? Does he actually run Google? Because I hear that they don’t exactly need the money.

For any of you who are in the dark, let me make this absolutely clear: no one can guarantee you any place in the search rankings for any keywords.

Check out Google’s own guidelines on this. (Scroll down to No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.)

Doing SEO for small or new businesses is miles away from this. These people are the enemy.

It’s a common mistake to think that traffic equals sales. But when you visit a site that’s full of spammy articles, what do you do? You click away.

The more people who employ dodgy techniques to get high page rankings, the more difficult it is for a new business to break through this spam barrier. And I want them to break through. When someone has a great product or service, I want to hear about it. But as in all media, good product does not equal good marketing.

For most search terms, there are millions of results, but most of them are never seen. This is a good thing. We can’t handle too much choice. By limiting what we see, Google has made their search engine much more pleasant for our minds. The abstract notion of trillions of web pages hangs in the back of our minds, but in front of our eyes lie ten simple alternatives, ten short lines of text.

This is good for the searcher, but less useful for the potential searchee. That is why, for so long as this remains the case, SEOs will fret over those top ten spaces.

Recently, some SEOs have been creating fake stories and articles as a way of increasing eyeballs on their product or service.

I think this has got a bit backwards.

SEO used to be about stuffing keywords and amassing links by any means necessary. But as these things have become less important and filtered out by the important search engines, the internet marketers have turned to linkbait and viral campaigns.

The reason Google doesn’t want your ability to crank widgets to affect the ranking of your website is that it makes Google useless. It’s not that they are promoting ethics necessarily, they just want to build a tool that provides useful, relevant, interesting or timely content to users. And they want to do that because (drum roll) that’s what users want. Users like you and me.

When it gets to the point that SEOs are creating fake content to lure people to their sites, isn’t it just a whisker further to get that content to be real? Or at least relevant?

The cart before the horse is this: you’re trying to get higher traffic so you create something that will pull in the numbers. Wrong. You create something useful, relevant, interesting or timely and you will get traffic. And the great thing is, for as long as search engines are around, that will always work.