Browse through any search engine forum, or simply do a search on Google to look up search optimization for Google,
and you will find incredible amounts of information on the latest trends in website ranking, webmaster tricks, and
theories as to what the future holds for Google. Website owners are simply obsessed with Google, and many are
spending too much time trying to appease Google when they could be building a wildly successful website.
Successful Websites Do Not Have To Rank Well
Investors constantly preach the benefit of diversifying a portfolio to reduce the risk of investment fluctuations.
The same strategy needs to be taken with developing your website's marketing strategy. Diversify the sources of your
traffic. Becoming over-reliant on any single type of traffic sets your website up for failure if that type of traffic
happens to fail for some reason.
Unfortunately, many website owners simply do not know how to generate traffic to their websites. These website owners
would do well to think about their website in more traditional business terms. Traditional businesses do not have
search engines to bring people to their doorstep. Rather, the brick and mortar businesses rely on word of mouth, good
solid promotion, good customer service, a good location, and quality products.
Websites can incorporate these same techniques in developing traffic. Article writing, press releases, participation
in forums, development of a mailing list, and developing a strong public relations campaign are all solid promotion
techniques. Entering into partnerships with industry websites, doing joint promotions such as co-registrations can
help position you in a location where your visitors can find you. Offering your visitors the ability to recommend
your site to a friend, adding community interactivity to your website are all ways to help promote your site
effectively.
Stop Optimizing Your Website (That Means No Trading Links)
One of the worst things to happen to websites is the development of search engine optimization. Although it is
perfectly acceptable (and expected) to do a cursory amount of SEO, many website owners do too much to the detriment
of their sites. The purpose of your website is to offer information and possibly a service to clients and visitors.
Your SEO activities should never define how you develop, structure, and word your website.
The most popular technique in search engine optimization currently is link trading. Knowing that Google judges a
page's value by the number of inbound links, website owners learned that they could set up entire links pages and
exchange links with hundreds of other website owners. You will know the websites that do this. They will have a page
named "links" or "resources" that contains a myriad of links to other websites. If you visit those other websites,
they typically will have a similar page.
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The problem with exchanging links is two-fold. The first, and more important one, is the fact that link exchanging
does not have as strong an effect as it once had. Google knows that webmasters exchange links, and many webmasters
are concerned primarily about the quantity of links they have. Google also knows that these links are primarily
exchanged in an attempt to increase page rank, something Google probably will try to not recognize. Page rank was
initially developed to incorporate the number of natural inbound links a website had. So, to prevent website owners
from falsely increasing their page rank, Google actively works on developing systems that determine links that are
a part of a link exchange and links that occur naturally. The problem with link exchanges is this: website owners
are spending way too much time on an activity that has relatively little impact when they could be spending their
time writing articles or other more reliable traffic generation techniques.
The second problem with exchanging links is the cosmetic effect it has on your website. Visitors that come to your
website do not want to see a loosely collected arrangement of links to sites that may or may not be similar to your
topic. They came to your website to see what you have to offer. If you want to recommend a resource to your visitors,
you can do so, but you certainly would not do so in the form of a links page. The cosmetic effect that links pages
have on a website is to make it look less professional.
SEO should never dictate how your site is arranged, worded, or how you spend the majority of your time.
When You Get That Visitor
Promoting your website is only half the battle in developing a wildly successful website. The other half is to have
a website that will bring visitors back time and time again. Not only do you want a website that visitors find worthy
of revisiting, you want a website that people talk about and refer to others.
There is a popular saying among internet marketers: "Content is King". Well, this is sort-of true. But, it takes more
than simply having content on your site to bring visitors back to your site time after time. It takes quality content.
People visit websites on a repeat basis for a few reasons. First, they may believe that a particular website is the
only place they can get the content they are looking for. Secondly, they may recognize that more than one website
offers the same content or information, but they prefer the format, look, and design of one website over another.
When developing your website, make it your goal to not just match the quality of your competition, but rather to
far exceed the quality of your competition. Be confident that your layout and design is of a higher caliber than
any competing websites. And, most importantly, offer more unique, valuable, and helpful information than any other
website that could compete with you.
That's the Rub? Yep, that's the Rub
Here is the amazing part... when you stop focusing on developing your website for the search engines and start
focusing on a website that is the best of its kind, the search engines will find you. By focusing all of your
attention on developing a high quality website that leaves an impression on visitors, and by focusing on developing
alternative sources of traffic, search engines will take notice and give you the ranking you deserve.
Google and the other search engines have a very simple goal with their search results: to provide the most relevant
results to those who perform a search. Some of the brightest minds are working on developing formulas and algorithms
that do just this. Your job as a website owner is not to focus on trying to demystify the secrets of members of
Mensa-level search engine developers. No, your job is to develop your website, to promote it through the many
channels available, and to maintain the high level of quality content your site offers.
If you successfully build your website on a diversified set of traffic sources, your website will be protected from
the loss of any single traffic source. Furthermore, if you build your online business to capitalize on every visitor
that you receive, the traffic will always be there. If you happen to be picked up by Google, or Yahoo!, or MSN Search,
the results will simply be a pleasant addition to your already abundant sources of traffic.
About The Author
Mark Daoust is the owner of Site-Reference.com. This article originally
appeared at
http://www.site-reference.com/Marketing/5258/index.html.
Discuss this article, and other topics, at Forums.Site-Reference.com
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