Finding out about a new topic is quite straightforward nowadays, you simply visit Google and carry out a few searches, read a Wikipedia page and usually get the information you require in less than 10 minutes.
When the subject you want to find out about is search engine optimisation the task becomes quite a lot harder. All the sites at the top of the search engines for terms such as SEO and search engine optimisation have been there for quite a long time and, while some deserve to be ranked highly, a lot are simply ranking because they are old sites.
A newcomer to the industry will no doubt end up using reciprocal links and submitting to search engines because that’s exactly what the highest ranking sites are saying to do. The newcomer has no idea the site hasn’t been updated in 5 years.
Forums such as Digital Point used to be quite valuable sources of information but valuable contributors no longer see any point in posting good advice when it just gets drowned out by a lot of other users giving bad advice.
Sure, there are a lot of really great resources for newcomers to read but the chances they find them through Google are quite low thanks to Google’s reliance on age and trust in the algorithm.
Maybe one day Google could do what Technorati does and ignore all links over 6 months old. That would shake things up a bit.
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