The Truth About SEO, Ranking And What It Takes
Occasionally, I like to stop and look backward at all of the ventures I have pursued online. One thing I always see when I look back and see the road, I have traveled is a long and pronounced string of failures.
That is not a bad thing and I am not ashamed of it because it is a path that all webmaster has to take.
Learning how the web works and how people’s minds work in the realm of Search Engine Marketing is a daunting task in which no two situations are the same.
The fact of the matter is launching an internet business takes work, lots of work and it takes time, lots of time for some, depending on your niche.
If you are fortunate enough to be knowledgeable in a niche that is not saturated and there is a need in that niche, then odds are, you will see results for your efforts much sooner than the average marketer. Additionally, if your niche market contains products that have a higher profit margin than the average niche, you will probably make more money than the average marketer.
However, for most of us, marketing online is more of an endurance race than a sprint as we are taught by the experts.
That being said, when I look back down the road I have traveled, there are some noteworthy similarities with respect to the successes that I have had and here they are.
The sites had time to age. All of the successful sites I have had were aged to a degree. Aged in internet terms simply means more than a year old. I am not saying new sites cannot be successful and go viral. They can. However, most do not, which means that they have to hang around long enough for search engines and people to find them.
They had unique content. All of the websites that I have had success with had, to some extent, high quality and unique content, had links that actually worked and were not simply sites that pointed to others as resources.
They were up to date. I updated them regularly and visitors could tell. This, actually is why the blogging platform is so popular and why many new websites are actually placing their blog as their root script. This is how I build all of my sites now and it looks great to new visitors because the site actually looks alive. If you stop updating it, it eventually dies…
They had quality links…which actually all came from blog comments on other blogs. Blog commenting, I cannot rate highly enough as the absolute easiest source of high quality, high PR link value. There is simply nothing like it that is not taboo.
They were hobby sites. Unfortunately, this is true. All of these sites reflected the passion that I had for that niche. I you like what you are doing, it will show. There really is not alternative for interest in the subject at hand.
I have always been told that we should be be humble about our successes and laugh at and speak freely about our failures. Well, if you are in the realm of SEO, SEM or IM, you’ll have plenty to laugh about. Trust me.
