Written by: Tim Corliss 3/2/2007 5:56 PM
Internet Marketing - My Entry into SEO, Search Engine Optimization, was an eye opening experience. I recently started a web business, SpringsOnTheWeb.com, and I had no experience in SEO. I created SpringsOnTheWeb.com to help Small Businesses create an effective and affordable presence on the Internet. My intention was not to simply throw up a nice looking web site, but rather to create value for my clients by using open source products and automated processes to keep expenses low. What I wasn’t anticipating was the work that was required to draw traffic to my clients’ web sites. This is where the fun began. So how does one learn about SEO? What better place to start than the Google itself. I typed in key words like web marking, internet marketing, SEO, and search engine optimization. What do think I got blasted with? Yes, hundreds of companies promising to get my web site in the top 3 results in two weeks for a small fee. I quickly, grew suspicious. Some companies were asking $7 or $8, others $129, and of course the “call us for a quote.” What were these companies doing for $8 or $100? Mostly, they were submitting sites to search engines and adding them to link farms. In a future article, I will discuss link farms, but for now just know that link farms are bad, very bad. If it was that easy to get a top 3 ranking for 100 bucks, then everyone would be doing it and there wouldn’t be thousands of BLOGs on SEO. So, what’s next? After lots of searches and reading dozens of BLOGs, I began to understand how SEO worked. To get top rankings, it takes work, work, and work. Of course, between work and work, there is lots of homework and networking. The work consists of creating quality links within content linking to quality content. Since this is my first article on the subject, I will wait and go into the details in another article. For now, I would advice that no one fall sucker to those cheap, quick, and easy schemes by SEO link farming. Do your home work, create quality linked content, become active in forums discussing similar subject matter, and the traffic will come your way. More on this is coming soon and BTW, no one really knows exactly how Google is determining rankings; again the topic of another article. - Tim Corliss - Corliss Consulting