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Many new webmasters read about SEO (search engine optimization) and worry that they won't be able to compete in their competitive market against the pros because of their relative lack of experience in getting web pages found in the search engines.
This is quite understandable, and the truth is that most people will struggle to get pages to rank well in the major search engines...but there is hope, and by following a few simple guidelines you can start to have pages on the first page of the results of Yahoo and Google over time. Here's a question I often receive - I just read an article explaining all about using keywords in your URL, Title Tags and in the 'anchor text' of incoming links to our site. If everyone is doing this, how are we supposed to get our sites ranking well when we have such stiff competition? My Answer? Not everyone is doing this correctly and besides it doesn't really matter if they are. In the not too distant future, pure search engine focused SEO like these articles discuss is doomed and yet many of the people in the industry either don't get it or are hoping it doesn't happen. Here's why... While factors such as correctly formatted title tags and descriptions are important, the 'real' thing to focus on is creating unique, valuable content that adds value to the web and contains your own personal 'voice' or style and personality. A perfectly SEO'ed site that contains boring, generic content (or simply rehashed or re-written PLR content purchased from a membership site somewhere) which is designed only with SE's in mind has no chance against a well written site which contains the author's own personal style, friendly writing and great content when a HUMAN visitor comes along. Search engines track lots of things including length of each visitor's stay and when people find a site they love, they tend to hang around. When they arrive at a site that's obviously aimed at SE's and simply designed to get Adsense clicks or funnel people to an affiliate program, they don't. Sometimes they'll click on an ad to get away from the site, but they never come back and wouldn't think of subscribing to a newsletter there - and building a list of subscribers is an important part of building your online business. The bottom line is what's the point of doing perfect SEO, getting incoming links with the right anchor text, etc., and then not giving your visitors what they are looking for when they arrive? Most pure SEO guys just don't get this, and that is why you can build a site that outranks them when we do the correct SEO stuff AND create unique, valuable content that helps and entertains your visitors. And fortunately for us little guys, many of the SEO pros will never get it, so we have nothing to fear from most of the 'gurus'... Bottom line? Build unique content, develop your own 'voice', set up your pages correctly using good SEO fundamentals, build lots of pages around easy-to-win keywords to start with, and you will not only compete in your niche, you'll ultimately be in a position to dominate segments of your market as your website traffic grows and grows. |
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