A little background
To the novice, search engine promotion may appear to be quite simple.
Make a web site, submit it to the search engines, and watch the
traffic pour in. There was a time when it was that easy, but that
time came and went in the mid 90's.
As more and more web sites were indexed by search engines, it became
increasingly clear that in order to get to the top of the searches,
you needed to make pages that were optimized to be read well by
search engine spiders. In the beginning, it was a simple task: Choose
your keywords, throw them all over your page, and submit your site.
Many people tried to trick the spiders by hiding their keyword
text on the page, making optimized redirect pages, and so on. This
was great for a while, but the search engines realized that this
practice was making their search results irrelevant. So most of
them wrote complex algorithms designed to detect this kind of abuse
and punish the abusers.
Today, the chances are that the keywords you wish to target get
millions of search results, so the goal of getting that top 10 or
20 position is more difficult than ever. Furthermore, there are
thousands of search engine promotion and optimization firms helping
webmasters compete for those spots, each of them with a bag of tricks
up their sleeve. The problem is that unless you have a $10,000+
budget for such firms, you won't get very far with most of them.
So what are those tricks, and can you perform them yourself? This
collection of articles outlines the tricks used in the industry
and tells you how to use them. All you need to invest is time.
Guaranteed Top 10 Position! Or not?
You see the sites, you get the spam. Everyone is ready to guarantee
a top 10 position. So how do they do it? The first secret we will
reveal is the numbers game. The more search results there are for
a keyword combination, the more difficult it will be to get the
position you want. Think about it: What if 20 companies approach
20 SEO firms with a web site they want to appear in the top 10 with
on the term 'COMPUTER'. At best, only 10 guarantees can be met,
and that is assuming none of the other 83,000,000 results beat them!
The more honest firms will talk you out of such a popular or vague
keyword, otherwise they won't take your account. Others will simply
play the numbers game, and recognize that if they meet their guarantee
even one out of 10 times, they are making money. Now, if they get
you to target 'polka dot computers', it may be an easy job. In fact,
we can grantee that you can get a #1 position on that one without
reading this article.
Ready to be an SEO Pro?
If you read every article in this program, and take it all in,
you will have more knowledge under your belt than 99% of the search
engine optimization professionals out there. If you apply what you
learn here, you will have every chance to achieve the positions
you desire as any SEO firm. We are not saying it is simple. It will
require time, patience and work... but you can do it.
Who are we to say?
If you have read this entire page, our single greatest reference
is time. We've been there all along. Cyberspace HQ has been in the
web promotion business since 1994. We remember when we got excited
that we could put pictures on our web pages. We remember downloading
the first version of Internet Explorer Beta, We remember visiting
the Netscape booth at INTEROP (it was 10' x 10' at the time). Mosaic
was cool, and UUCP Mail was a big deal. A large web hosting company
had 50 accounts, and you could pretty much get any domain name you
wanted.... and domain names were free. We wrote the first automated
domain registration tool. We wrote the first DNS server for windows,
and in 1997 we wrote the first all-in-one web promotion suite: AddWeb.
We know this stuff like the backs of our hands. Sometimes we will
give you the good news, and sometimes we will reveal myths that
only serve to promote the SEO industry.
But then again, we may be wrong
Ask 10 SEO professionals what matters, and you can get 10 different
answers. Some suggestions are simply common knowledge in the SEO
business, and others are based on what each person has seen to work.
Everyone is right, and everyone is wrong. Every SEO pro has a list
of sites they have gotten top ranking on, and each thinks he knows
why. But the honest answer to it all, is "This seems to be
what works". The reason is that the search engines guard their
spider algorithms as top secret, so the best you can do is see what
works. Most of our knowledge comes both from experience, and a program
we wrote to analyze the unique characteristics of high ranking pages
versus low ranking pages. In honestly, there are many anomalies,
but we have been able to isolate many specific rules, which are
revealed in this program.
Special Sections
Where appropriate, we will label special sections in the articles.
These include:
Behind a myth
This tells you about common myths in the world of web promotion,
and gives you the reality.
Spin Control
This tells you what many SEO firms or search engines lead people
to believe. We reveal the reality.
Do it in AddWeb
This tells you how to perform a specific function in AddWeb related
to the article.
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