The Charlie Sheen Effect

You would have to be a hermit with no access to media to not have heard of Charlie Sheen and his antics.  When the producers of Two and a Half Men, Charlie's hit sitcom, cancelled the remainder of the season due to his recent legal and personal problems, Charlie went into over drive mode.  His media blitz certain got him the attention he wanted but now it is getting rather old and boring.  The end result is that despite his media blitz, he has not gained what he wanted.  So, what does this have to do with blogging?  Well, yesterday morning I opened an email that said "Don't Charlie Sheen Your SEO".  In essence using any black hat method including link exchanges will result in the Charlie Sheen Effect for your blog.  In the short term you may gain traffic and even attention but in the long run you end up alienating readers and the powers that be, in this case the search engines in particular Google.  In the end your blog will end up with the same results Charlie has achieved - a big, fat nothing.  Except, you won't be living high on the hog with ample money in a huge mansion like Charlie does, you will just have a big, fat nothing blog with no traffic or earning potential.

Garden Gnome
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