Re: Search Engine Promotions

From: Rich Pulham <rich_at_internetcontentdevelopers.com>
Date: Thu 15 Feb 2001 16:20:31 -0600

WOLTER TJEENK WILLINK <WolterW_at_ISDC.NL> WROTE:
> At the moment it's still possible to get high
> rankings by optimizing your title and meta tags on most
> engines, but isn't it true that after a while all web
> promotion and search engine optimizing techniques will
> be of no use? I mean, every webmaster or marketeer can
> find the source code of the web site ranked number one
> and copy it for his own use.

There is one thing of great importance you are not
considering: content. That is the one thing that
differientiates all web sites. Yes, you can copy meta
tags, heads, keywords, etc. But do those things match
your content? If not, you are wasting your time trying
to get visitors to come to your site who aren't really
interested in what you have. And when the spiders
index your content, you will not do as well as the site
you copied.

> - is there ever going to be a time when all web
> promotion techniques will be useless?
>
> - do we have to be afraid of loosing high quality
> search engine rankings, since I as a web marketer can
> bid on keywords like 'election' and 'mp3' while they
> don't have anything to do with my line of business?

I've been doing www.UtahFishFinder.com for four years
and even though the competition has increased ten-fold,
my rankings continue to improve. How? Yes, I optimize
for the search engines. But I believe the real secret
is my content has continued to improve. Let the
competition buy all the keywords they want. I'm not
trying to see how many visitors I can get to come to my
site and then click the "back" button. I have the best
"Utah fishing reports" in the world. So someone buys
"fishing" or "Utah"? There must be half a million
sites that have fishing on them. If they are not
interested in Utah fishing, they will be disappointed
in my site. Maybe there are ten thousand sites that
have "Utah" on them. If they are looking for off-road
biking or national parks, they couldn't care less about
my site and that's fine with me. Why overload my
server with visitors who really don't want to be there?

Another thing to consider is that many sites have their
ranking more by accident that planning. You can't
optimize a page using some WYSIWYG editor like
FrontPage. You have to know what you are doing (or
hire someone that does). Even some
multi-million-dollar companies fail at this. And you
think copying their code will help? Often, just doing
it right is all it takes. Optimize for the best
keywords for the content you have and have the best
content you can. The best will always rise to the top,
now and in the future.

Rich Pulham
rich_at_InternetContentDevelopers.com





Received on Thu Feb 15 2001 - 16:20:31 CST