It makes me sad that "SEO consulting" exists as a thing. I understand the need for it, but it's always just felt so dirty. It's basically someone who is an expert at tricking a single business, and it's a constant cat and mouse game.<p>And Google will even tell you how to get a high ranking, which pretty much boils down to "make content that humans find compelling and Google will too". It's all the other "tricks" that might work for a while until Google gets wise and changes their algorithm and then we all start the dance over.<p>It was just like the spammers on reddit -- they'd come up with some new trick, we'd block it, they'd find another new trick, and so on, but all along, the stuff that got to the top was for the most part things that people found interesting. Post interesting content was always a good strategy, even if there were a trick or two that might work to boost you on any given week.<p>I just wish we could all just make good content and not worry about gaming the directory, but a few bad actors make that impossible for the rest of us. :(