Working in the SEO/SEM industry can be very rewarding. Many times a problem can be solved simply with a little online research, and posts on a few forums.

All to often, however, some people put too much stock in the posts they see, ultimately negatively impacting their SEO efforts.

In this article I look at some of the positives and negatives of online SEM forums and attending SEM and SEO conferences.

As part of my daily routine I visit a few of the search engine forums out there to see what people are talking about and what some have noticed.

Sometimes I come across real gems – stuff I can put away for later, or use with a client I’m currently stuck on.

But more often than not, the information you see is really mis-information in some cases. As such, one must be extremely careful in relying what is said on one forum.

A good example is when the Google Dance used to happen.

It was at this time that webmasters would watch Google and begin to sweat when their rankings dropped one or many positions. Some webmasters literally didn’t sleep during the days of the dance.

And many times you would visit some of the popular forums and see all kinds of conjecture and speculation as to what Google was doing.

My favorite posts were “on my website this happened, so this HAS to be what Google is doing.” Yet all to often this poor soul was basing his ideas on the effects he witnessed on only one website.

And that is a flaw with these forums. It’s not that the forums themselves are flawed, it’s that in some cases people posting on them make bold statements about the current state of the engines with little or no evidence.

They base their “fact” on observations made on one or two websites over the course of one or two days.

Generally, these types of posts are quickly debunked as myth, but sometimes they do more damage than good.

That’s because there are others out there who know even less and read these posts and take them as the truth when in fact they are mere speculation.

And it’s not just forums where this happens.

Many of the big forums now have events planned – conferences and the like - where you can now go hear those that post regularly also speak.

But it’s not the speaking engagements I have a problem with, it’s the speculation that happens before and after the presentations that worries me.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had clients come back from Webmasterworld conferences or Search Engine Strategies with their heads full of ideas on how to move forward, even though I know many of these “theories” to be false, or at least flawed.

You see, there’s lots of socializing that happens at these events.

You may be sitting down to their lovely boxed lunches and strike up a conversation with the person next to you. Before you know it you are sharing ideas, and the next thing you know he’s solved all your problems. Or at least you think he has.

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