Okay so I keep on seeing stuff like this, I know it's been going on for ages but it seems to be increasing in intensity. Anyway, thanks to Facebook knowing I click on their ads to do with SEO it shows me pretty much just those ad types now.

I'll get to the point. I saw an ad for the "Search Marketing Business Academy", or "SMBA" so I was curious and clicked. There's a chap who professes 12 years experience in internet marketing and has a bunch of companies and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, he's offering himself up as basically an expert of experts, one that can show other search marketers how to make it. www.searchmarketingbusinessacademy.com/

There's a few things that look fishy though.

• The testimonials have common names and no business names
• There's no mention of what these companies he runs are
• There's no work to see in the form of case studies or a portfolio
• Under "Meet Lee Gilbert" it states that they've been supporting other SEM companies since 2004, yet a quick Google of the company and the name shows little to support this.
• Googling the chaps name just gets you his own website www.leegilbert.co.uk which professes more of the same and just a bunch of products
• Of just a few pieces of advice given for how to rank on Google it includes keyword density
• The chap seems to still place a lot of importance on Page Rank (As in the old PR that we all know means nothing now, and his blog about this is only a month old)
• From searching, it doesn't seem that there is any history at all, let alone this history of mass success
• There doesn't appear to be any social presence for the company or the man, except that ad.

It seems just like an average SEO (albeit one that's a bit behind on the times) who knows an average amount, trying to say he can tell other SEO's how to master the arts.

He's not even a member on SEOmoz, that's the biggest give away haha.

So, could I be wrong? Am I being too harsh?

That's what I thought originally, but on sites like ripoffreport and blagger.com, among others (btcomplaints.com is good) they simply have a disclaimer, that any of the views expressed and stories reported are that of other peoples and not necessarily shared by the site authors.

Plus, chatting to a lawyer friend of mine before revealed that if something is true, and can be proven as true... it's okay to share your negative experience of it if the point is to warn others

I do hope Ryan gets "Good Answer" and/or "Endorsed Answer" for this... hint, hint

Righty, I've been on a mission to clarify... it seems there's a lot of conflicting views on it. I mean I know there's conflicting views on pretty much everything but these views all seem to be from very good sources, so now I don't know what to think... I'm on the fence!

There's some discussion in here: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4176006.htm

Along with this: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/backlink-age-seo-factor/9943/

It's a difficult one, but it doesn't appear to be in the ranking factor survey, which is a shame as it would be interesting to see what level of agreement there is.

Anyway, Rand's is more recent than Ann's so I guess it would make best sense to follow his

Thank you for pointing it out, I would have been none the wiser otherwise!

Well yeah that wouldn't be too many at all, but then going back to what Marcus and EGOL said you're much better off using bold tags for readability reasons than simply using it on keywords really. It has little to no impact in terms of rankings (probably a tiny bit) but can have a much greater impact on keeping your visitors moving forward and converting if used to break the content up into more digestible chunks with a good scent of what's important to them and where their eyes should go next.

I'd probably use bold a few more times in a 500 word piece but use it as what it is, an emphasis tag Not emphasising keywords for Google but whatever it is in the content that will encourage the user to feel they're in the right place... if that happens to combine with some keywords or keyword phrases then great, but don't see it as a game-changer for rankings

Christoph put a really decent video out on how to identify spammy links, that should help

http://www.linkresearchtools.com/case-studies/link-networks/