Planet13 - 3:38 am on Aug 30, 2010 (gmt 0)

but I honestly think a lot of the bad SEO advice comes from people who feel true enthusiasm about the fact that in a world where the old economy is tanking, there's real opportunity here, and that the important part is giving advice at all.

the other thing is, I think the algos are SOOO complex and complicated that no one really knows how to predict rankings - not even Matt Cutts or any of the other tech heads at google. I mean, the fact that there is so much spam ranking well and that google makes the opportunity available for people to report spam seems to me that they are just kind of feeling their way along.

And of course, they don't have to be perfect - they just have to be better than the other guys (yahoo, bing, ask, etc.,).

What is the MOTIVE behind sharing that SEO advice?

I'm gonna go with adsense revenue. Seriously, if you can't make money by actually SEOing an ecommerce web site to the top spot in google, well, maybe you can just write a lot about it and make a few dollars off of adsense.