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I didn't just write 500 articles.  I have had many employees working for me and that is where the money mostly went, as well as my time.  I have tried everything in the book and consider myself an expert on the concepts of SEO.  As well as this, I followed current SEO news with Google Newsreader and Google Alerts on a daily basis.  My schedule was 8PM to 4AM after work 5 days a week.  I read everything I could and tried out many tools.  I feel like I know the ins and outs of SEO like the back of my hand.  I can't tell you how many directory submissions we have made (myself and my employees).

Here is the problem.  The problem is I feel strongly that SEO is dead.  The reason is because Google doesn't want you to be able to pay to improve your rankings.  Google is giving precedence to companies who have been around for a long time and naturally deserve the highest rankings.  There is no way for a new or small company to compete with that.

I have tried every method I know of to get ranked and I have no words of value in the top 50.  I feel that the only people making money are people selling how to make money or SEO services.  Once the client realizes this it will be too late and the SEO expert will have made too much money at this point.

Here is what I am getting at.  I feel that this is exactly like Jim Cramer on Mad Money.  Rand Fishkin is making money the same way, he is giving people false hopes and then making money off of it.

All of these articles and blogs on here are worthless because it is so difficult to rank in the first place who gives a damn about those small nuances of title this, backlink that.

The only people making money are those selling how to make money or SEO services...

Tell me I am wrong, tell me how to get ranked.  But I have tried everything in the book and I can't get ranked for any valuable keyword.

The only thing I haven't tried is buying links, maybe I should try that?

Or maybe since my domain was parked before I bought it google is penalizing me?

Or maybe I am in the supplemental index?

Who knows, this is a losing battle and I feel ripped off.

***Note from Jen 4/6/11:

I've deleted the text of this question as it goes against our guidelines by putting down other people and ranting as opposed to asking a question. I left the original question up for about 24 hours before removing.

The comments are great though so I didn't want to delete the thread altogether.

Thanks!

Jen Lopez
Community Manager, SEOmoz

Is the iframe website the site that is the real site and not showing to the users, or is it the site that I want to display to the users instead of the real site?

Hello, I use a wordpress plug in that allows me to display tot he user any link I want from my domain, so it might be like: www.domain.com/gift-card, but the actual link is www.someaffiliatelink/w09fjai;owfoienw  <--- and then a bunch of crap after the domain for the affiliate link.  It uses the common technique of an iframe to hide the actual url from the user and show the one that I want them to see.  What I am wondering is, does link juice in this case flow to my site, or to their site?  And also, do you have any comments regarding this type of link cloaking?  Thanks.

Thanks