If you have a Twitter account, you by now know what a “social media expert” is. They profess endless knowledge of the search engines while sporting a minimal client base and a dubious background. I’m often asked about social media, having a bit of background in this field, so here are some hard facts about it and myths that need to be dispelled.

1. Nobody Can Guarantee Results in the Top 20

The search engine results pages are like waves on the ocean. Any effort at search engine optimization will raise your results, but nobody can guarantee top 20 results without using dubious methods, such as spammy directory listings and reciprocal link programs where your site is being linked to 500 others without your knowledge.

The only thing that an SEO company should be guaranteeing is that they will be spending a certain amount of time on your account for a certain amount of money; it is this time, and not simply entry into their spam database, that will yield solid and lasting results.

2. Black Hat Methods Are Short Term

Black Hat refers to methods such as the ones used above. Some businesses will actively seek out black hat SEO companies in order to get good results, as they want them at any cost. In the end, that “any cost” may be too high. Sure, if you are just selling a flash-in-the-pan ebook or are marketing for a event that takes place on a certain date, Black Hat SEO may actually be your friend. For the average business that wants to rank more highly on a consistent basis, you should not be actively seeking this kind of firm out.

3. White Hats May Actually Be Black Hats with a Mask

Some white hatters do legitimately use methods that may be considered “grey”. Realistically, there is nothing wrong with that unless you are sitting firmly on a very high horse. However, there are some companies out there who market that they exclusively use “white hat” SEO methods when they are actually anything but when you check out their business.

To see if there is some shadiness going on, check out their client sites, and if they won’t let you see their client sites, that is a red flag right there. Check for any links to website directories; a common method used to gain rankings is to turn all of your client sites into a giant link farm that may help client rankings, but will bleed valuable Google Page Rank away from your site because you are linking to an untrustworthy internet ghetto rather than a lovely, trustworthy neighbourhood.

Check also for consistent keyword-stuffed copy on site pages. This was a common early 00′s method to raise website rankings, and many SEO companies still use this outdated and much frowned-upon method. If your words are not human readable, your site is not trustworthy, and people will not buy from you.

4. Real Social Media Experts Offer to Train You

Social media is not a mysterious beast that only a chosen few can master. If you can surf the internet, you can use social media. A real social media expert won’t set themselves up as being a master of an occult art; rather they will be approachable and offer to educate you on how to do it yourself, sometimes for a fee, sometimes as a part of the project that they are working on for you. Granted, not everyone is tech-savvy, but they will at least try to put the tools in your hands that you need to succeed with social media.

In the end, good use of social media such as Reddit, Stumble Upon, Twitter and the rest in conjunction with well-written content will win over both customers and search engines. There are back-end code issues that may be affecting your search engine optimization efforts, and any good web design firm will be able to sort those out for you. If you want me to recommend any, just drop me a line.

I have found Twitter search to be indispensable for my freelance writing business. Whenever I run up against a saturated keyword that has search engine results pages that are polluted by nothing but Yahoo Answers, paid search, and eHow articles, I turn to Twitter search to get some quality results.

One example is the term “green products” or “organic products”. I write a daily blog on green living and search for new and unique green products to share with my readers. I have all but given up on Google as a source now that I have discovered Twitter real time search. The products I find on Twitter are new, they are interesting, and best of all I don’t have to wade through pages and pages of irrelevant search results. They are ALL relevant. This allows me to drill down on my information within seconds, where before it would take me up to 30 minutes to find a good product to blog about.

I find traditional search results are getting clogged with bad content from content mills, enough that I have lost faith in the depth of material available to me on a traditional search. How many of you feel the same way? Here is a list of the sites I am talking about:

Yahoo Answers
eHow
Examiner.com
Suite101.com
hubpages.com

I have consistently found that pages from these sites return results with bad data and worse writing. Twitter search seems like a much more viable option to weed out these bad apples.

Have you hit this wall?

You: “You need more content on your site.”

$$: “Can’t you write that for me? I am paying you to do the site!”

You: “You hired me to program the site (and/or) up your search engine rankings, not write content.”

$$: “Isn’t that the same thing?”

When I was working in customer service, people used to call me to complain that their shipments were late. They didn’t care that the problem was with the trucking company or courier, all they cared about was the fact that their shipments were late, which made my company look bad. In their minds, our company and the trucking companies were inseparable. They just wanted someone to solve their problem.

Your clients want you to do the same thing. They want you to solve all of their web problems and drive more traffic to the site, no matter how you do it. Some of them may even be hoping that you are using Black Hat methods, as long as it gets them results.

I’m your ace in the hole. A dedicated writer, researcher, and former web designer who knows what you are up against. You need quality content that is 100% on point and on time. That’s what I do, and you can see from my portfolio that I do it well. When someone needed to have the absolute best descriptions of Tarot cards on the internet, they came to me; and then they came back to me for runes and astrology when the results bowled them over. Another client reported that his hits went up to just under 1000 per day after I started ghost writing articles for his green building blog.

Good content equals eyeballs, and it makes you look like the superstar that you are. Let me help you take your business to the next level, and call on me when your next project needs killer content that blows everything else in the marketplace away.

This isn’t really a one-post subject, but it is meant to give everyone who is giving it a go on their own a bit of advice on how best to go about it.

After a very long time in the industry, I’ve come to the somewhat obvious conclusion that quality wins out over quantity.  The conclusion doesn’t seem like an obvious one when you start reading SEO literature or start listening to a few SEO experts speak.  Many of them profess that multiple articles on the same subject will act as “linkbait” and encourage search engines to link to your site.  They’re not wrong.  However, this attracts the wrong kind of attention.

Posting a bunch of bad content on your site is the equivalent of dressing up and sauntering by a construction site – you’re bound to get a lot of dates, but they won’t add up to much more than a bunch of names and no meaningful relationship will come of it.  The key is to develop a quality relationship not only with the search engines, but with your readers who will act as evangelists for your site and Twitter, Digg and otherwise share what they find.  Real eyeballs are the key.

While I know they work, I have an ethical issue with creating landing pages for sites because I feel that they dilute the web in general.  If I see a “landing page” on a site, I purposely will not buy something from there because I feel that they must have something to hide in order to employ such an obvious sales gimmick.  I have a feeling that I am not alone in this distaste for landing pages, although it is the rare writer who won’t do them at all.  If a client asks me to, I will,  but under advisement that successful sites on the internet are moving away from such language and into more quality content that appeals to social networkers.

I also believe in giving Google what it wants.  Google and the rest of the search engines want good, quality content that has been linked to by reliable sources.  The only way to get this without tricks is to actually sit down and do it, something many SEO experts write off as too time-consuming or troublesome.  If you have a hard time writing yourself, that’s what Working Web Copy is here to help you with.  If you don’t, insert some solid facts in your site and people will keep coming back.  Sometimes they’ll even bring their friends.  They’ll link to you and voila – Google has been satisfied.  Your natural rankings rise.  That’s SEO without the tricks that go the way of the dodo every time Google changes their algorithms.

Got any questions about optimizing web content?  E-mail me or hit me up on Twitter at @workingwebcopy.