12 Months Without SEO

I t is more than a year now       1980's and had practical           since I concluded that          marketing experience with my own   Search Engine Optimization      business from the mid 1990's. I    (SEO) was, or was soon going to       was not born into internet         become, a waste of time. I had        marketing alone, so could still    already, 6 months before then,        see outside the blinkers and the   said farewell to spending an hour     hype.                              a day working on getting                                                 reciprocal links.                     A very basic but important aspect                                        of marketing is to know your       What led, at the time, to what        market place. When it comes to     many would have said were very        search engine rankings, then       rash moves? After all, reciprocal     clearly a major part of that       linking was still being               market was the major search        expounded, by all and sundry, as      engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN,    an essential way to get a good        with Google being the clear        ranking, and the software tools       leader then, and a year later      were being actively marketed          today.                             still. Search engine positioning                                         software was still being heavily      I started to think 18 months ago   marketed and is still today;          that as far as reciprocal linking  keyword density was a buzz term       went, it was becoming a spammers'  being branded around as if it         zone. Surely, I argued with        were an essential science to be       myself, Google did not really      practised by all good SEO             want to rank a web site highly     conscious webmasters.                 just because the web master had                                          the tools and the time to chase    What I did was to go back to          around getting reciprocal links?   marketing basics. I had received      It just did not make sense. And    my marketing training back in the     the same was true of buying        links. Why should a web site rank                                        highly because they have splashed     The first of those new web sites   out on buying links?                  13 months ago was in the self                                            improvement niche, which is        What Google, and the others,          highly competitive. I was          really wanted was to rank the         expecting to be "Sandboxed" by     best web sites for a particular       Google because of that, and so it  search term, and it seemed only a     proved. But I just kept plugging   matter of time before they            away, sticking to my no-SEO        sniffed out and extinguished the      principle. Of course, none of us   abuses such as blatantly              outside Google knows for sure if   artificial link building, Blog        there is such a thing as a         spam, scraping and extreme            sandbox, but there is undoubtedly  SEO'ing.                              a waiting time before a new site                                         is thrown fully into the ranking   A year ago, I started two new web     melting pot.                       sites without any real thought of                                        SEO. As a writer, I was happy to      In the self improvement case, the  try to provide what search            last Google update saw my site     engines wanted: original content      emerge from the sandbox after      on what people were searching         about 12 months. So, at last, I    for. While I did provide title        was able see whether my no SEO     and description tags, everything      approach was to yield any          else was just written on a go         positive results. Thankfully, a    with the flow basis. The keyword      few high rankings were             phrase for any page would come        immediately apparent, including a  out in the natural flow. I could      few #1 positions. On one of those  just write to my heart's content      terms, Yahoo followed a few weeks  without using any tools checking      later to the #1 position, while    keyword density.                      the site was #2 (now 1) at MSN.                                          following Google's advice to       Now, this is early days for that      webmasters is about all you need   particular site, and there is         to do, and that is free.           much to do to get more high                                              rankings. However, I am confident     Of course, those with software     that SEO is infinitely more           products to peddle will argue      simple than some experts,             that I could do even better with   especially those selling ranking      their software. But if Google      tools, tend to have you believe.      decides to blacklist that                                                software as a manipulating tool,   Since I started that particular       then all my hard work could be     site, I have only made one major      undone. So I will leave the        change, and that is convert all       others to chase shadows with       my web sites to CSS. Providing a      ranking software, and just enjoy   content rich site that is easy to     writing content. After all, that   crawl for search engine robots is     is what basic marketing told me    the most important aspect of the      to do.                             new, simplified SEO. In fact,                                         About the Author: Learn and earn your way to success at online university. Read more articles by: Roy Thomsitt Article Source: www.iSnare.com