How to Survive on the Ever Changing, Ultra Competitive Internet
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The business climate on the Internet is TOUGH!!!
Books that were published a couple years ago on traffic, conversion and SEO are now mostly outdated. In 2004/2005, you can rank really well just on reciprocal links. If you wanted one-way incoming links, all you had to do was submit your article to submission services. There were thousands of directories you can submit to for one-way links. Content was king back in the day and if your site had unique content, links were almost guaranteed. Just as recent as 2007, you can easily find and buy quality links from sitepoint, digitalpoint and even ebay.
What Happened?
- Google – Search giant cleaned and tweaked their ever changing algos. A lion’s share of the directories lost their Page Rank, reciprocal links carried almost no significance and article submission services suffered from duplicate content. They also created FEAR amongst link buyers and sellers with the punishment of banishing from their index.
- Webmaster Greed and Fear – SEO used to be a niche, almost secretive and the majority of website owners knew little about it. In 2008, ALL of my friends who own websites, even the non-commercial ones knew basic SEO principles. Graphic and website designers who at one point despised SEOs are now offering SEO services. Everyone knows that you rank based on your links and anchor text. Of course, this got Google worried and thus executed the actions above. This also led to one of man’s greatest flaw, greed. People are getting stingy with links. It’s getting so much harder for webmasters to link to sites. Maybe it’s because they are afraid of Google’s penalties or they know that sites rank based on links so they decide on preserving their link juice. Two years ago, I got highly authoritative links, one .edu, just by ASKING. These days, it’s not going to happen…even if you paid for it!!!
- Pollution, Spam and Content Authenticity – I’m very skeptic (optimistic pessimist) yet sometimes I am easily fooled by spammy, fake content. Everyone is jumping the work-at-home, make money now, get rich quick on the Internet band wagon while providing no to very little value to the web. I’m sure you’ve come across the long, colorful, bulleted, numbered and oh so hype-up sales letter written in a Meth lab.
Strategies You Can Apply
- SEO is getting tougher by the second. If you are launching a new site, it helps to invest in pay per click advertising. Prior to doing so, make sure your website is conversion oriented, useful and has a nice custom design.
- Write killer content that will blow your target audience away. By audience, I am referring to websites that will link to you. Seduce their interests with your writing.
- Learn the basics of PR and “tie” your website to controversial topics so people in the know will recognize you. This is lesser spammy form of link bait.
- I was going to write submit your story to Digg, but last week, they changed their algos so it will be a lot harder to get traffic there.
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I still think submitting your story to Digg is effective. This is especially true for new sites. Besides the obvious advantage of getting new content indexed fast, you can get to top 10 for easy keywords, but which may still be receiving reasonable traffic, even if you are new on the market… all with the help of Digg.
Hi Ms. Gio. Met you last time you were in Manila (SEMCON2007 -guy in the long sleeve barong). Got your site through Riz(PinkSEO).
Allow me to add a thought… I think that more there is clutter on the net, the more one can form valuable, lasting relationships with readers/visitors/customers. Instead of just grabbing attention, there should also be a concerted effort to keep the attention. Something along the lines of Seth Godin’s permission marketing.
Once you got the trust, you can let lose some viral campaigns. Other marketing aspects, not just SEO, come more into play.
Just my 2 cents.
Hi Jozzua,
Nice meeting you. Yes, we practice the “customer retention value” now that we changed our business model. I run other sites that do well. You get loyal readers if you provide lots of useful value…unlike this blog 🙂
Hahaha. Your blog has value. 🙂
I’m a subscriber!
Eric…
If a web page is not listed in the first pages of any search, the odds of someone finding it diminishes greatly (especially if there is other competition on the first page). Very few people go past the first page, and the percentage that go to subseque…
I’m still laughing about this comment of yours… “sales letter written in a Meth lab.”
That is a great description if I ever saw one. Hilarious. Thanks for the laughs.
Mark
@Mark – Where you smoking pot when you read this? 🙂
Cheers!
Interesting to know.