SEO? Fact or Fiction?

I have been concentrating a lot of energy on promoting my website,
iheartmypond.com, lately. In doing so, I have been reading a lot by
so-called SEO experts.

It's my perception that the majority of the ideas for increasing traffice to
your site are all artificial. There seems to be much discussion on setting
up blogs and refering to your site. Setting up RSS and refering to your
site. Paying/Asking for links back to your site.

I understand that a lot of incoming references to your site increases it's
authority to many search engines, but isn't all of this artificial incoming
traffic useless from a user perspective?

Wouldn't be more valuable to me to have 10 pond sites linking to me, then
1000 random sites pointing to me because I manufactured the links?

I don't think I am saying what I want to say, very clearly. Hopefully
someone will understand.


--
BV
Webporgmaster of iheartmypond.com
Check out the IHMP forums, ihmp.net/phpbb
I'll be leaning on the bus stop post.

Benign Vanilla wrote:

> I have been concentrating a lot of energy on promoting my website,
> iheartmypond.com, lately. In doing so, I have been reading a lot by
> so-called SEO experts.
>
> It's my perception that the majority of the ideas for increasing traffice
> to your site are all artificial. There seems to be much discussion on
> setting up blogs and refering to your site. Setting up RSS and refering to
> your site. Paying/Asking for links back to your site.
>
> I understand that a lot of incoming references to your site increases it's
> authority to many search engines, but isn't all of this artificial
> incoming traffic useless from a user perspective?
>
> Wouldn't be more valuable to me to have 10 pond sites linking to me, then
> 1000 random sites pointing to me because I manufactured the links?
>
> I don't think I am saying what I want to say, very clearly. Hopefully
> someone will understand.
>
>

I run Australia's biggest site for historical stockmarket prices at
http://www.ipo-australia.com/data

I get over 20,000 hits/day on this page alone, and have spent nothing on
advertising or SEO.

CONTENT IS KING. Concentrate on content and all will follow. Word of mouth
advertising is better than SEO tricks.

gtoomey

Benign Vanilla BVanillaREMOVE@tibetanbeefgarden.com wrote:
> I have been concentrating a lot of energy on promoting my website,
> iheartmypond.com, lately. In doing so, I have been reading a lot by
> so-called SEO experts.
>
> It's my perception that the majority of the ideas for increasing traffice to
> your site are all artificial. There seems to be much discussion on setting
> up blogs and refering to your site. Setting up RSS and refering to your
> site. Paying/Asking for links back to your site.
>
> I understand that a lot of incoming references to your site increases it's
> authority to many search engines, but isn't all of this artificial incoming
> traffic useless from a user perspective?
>
> Wouldn't be more valuable to me to have 10 pond sites linking to me, then
> 1000 random sites pointing to me because I manufactured the links?
>
> I don't think I am saying what I want to say, very clearly. Hopefully
> someone will understand.
>

I think so.

Bear in mind that the people talking about SEO aren't always the ones
doing it effectively, and that an awful lot of the commercial end of the
business is about getting paid to promote pointless adcert holders.
Promoting sites that actually have content or customers is an entirely
different matter.

--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"live fast, die only if strictly necessary"

"Eric Jarvis" <web@ericjarvis.co.uk> wrote in message
news:MPG.1c328f525a8628d98d9c9@news.individual.net ...
<snip>
> > Wouldn't be more valuable to me to have 10 pond sites linking to me,
then
> > 1000 random sites pointing to me because I manufactured the links?
> >
> > I don't think I am saying what I want to say, very clearly. Hopefully
> > someone will understand.
> >
>
> I think so.
>
> Bear in mind that the people talking about SEO aren't always the ones
> doing it effectively, and that an awful lot of the commercial end of the
> business is about getting paid to promote pointless adcert holders.
> Promoting sites that actually have content or customers is an entirely
> different matter.

I think that is where my frustration is. I am no looking to bump my PR up
just so I can say I have a high PR. I want to truely gain traffic, as I
think I a very useful site. I think I am going to give up on this SEO
garbage, and go back to my content, content, content model.


--
BV
Webporgmaster of iheartmypond.com
Check out the IHMP forums, ihmp.net/phpbb
I'll be leaning on the bus stop post.

In article <32rdh6F3orgf8U1@individual.net>,
BVanillaREMOVE@tibetanbeefgarden.com says...
>
> "Eric Jarvis" <web@ericjarvis.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:MPG.1c328f525a8628d98d9c9@news.individual.net ...
> <snip>
> > > Wouldn't be more valuable to me to have 10 pond sites linking to me,
> then
> > > 1000 random sites pointing to me because I manufactured the links?
> > >
> > > I don't think I am saying what I want to say, very clearly. Hopefully
> > > someone will understand.
> > >
> >
> > I think so.
> >
> > Bear in mind that the people talking about SEO aren't always the ones
> > doing it effectively, and that an awful lot of the commercial end of the
> > business is about getting paid to promote pointless adcert holders.
> > Promoting sites that actually have content or customers is an entirely
> > different matter.
>
> I think that is where my frustration is. I am no looking to bump my PR up
> just so I can say I have a high PR. I want to truely gain traffic, as I
> think I a very useful site. I think I am going to give up on this SEO
> garbage, and go back to my content, content, content model.
>
>
>

SEO - smoke and mirrors. Don't throw away your money.

That's all there is to it - content, content content.

I'm #3 in both my desired search terms, and all I ever read on the
subject was the link from Google:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Benign Vanilla wrote:
> I understand that a lot of incoming references to your site increases it's
> authority to many search engines, but isn't all of this artificial incoming
> traffic useless from a user perspective?

Congratulations: You've just discovered why Google is finding it
increasingly hard to return accurate search results

> Wouldn't be more valuable to me to have 10 pond sites linking to me, then
> 1000 random sites pointing to me because I manufactured the links?

Yes, but that doesn't stop people abusing the system.

> I don't think I am saying what I want to say, very clearly. Hopefully
> someone will understand.

Read Gregory Toomey's reponse. He's right. A useful, quality website
will generate its own inbound links, from users who find your content
genuinely valuable.

So you have a choice. You can either:

a] Create compelling, valuable, useful and effective content that users
want and enjoy using.
b] Use lots of SEO tricks to direct users to your content by fooling
search engines into thinking your content is significant.

Either approach will likely require a similar level of effort and
thought. Option A is likely to me more satisfactory in the long term IMHO.


--
Matt Bradley
"Myths which are believed in tend to become true"
-George Orwell

Benign Vanilla wrote

> I have been concentrating a lot of energy on promoting my website,
> iheartmypond.com, lately. In doing so, I have been reading a lot by
> so-called SEO experts.
>
> It's my perception that the majority of the ideas for increasing
> traffice to your site are all artificial. There seems to be much
> discussion on setting up blogs and refering to your site. Setting up
> RSS and refering to your site. Paying/Asking for links back to your
> site.
>
> I understand that a lot of incoming references to your site increases
> it's authority to many search engines, but isn't all of this
> artificial incoming traffic useless from a user perspective?
>
> Wouldn't be more valuable to me to have 10 pond sites linking to me,
> then 1000 random sites pointing to me because I manufactured the
> links?
>
> I don't think I am saying what I want to say, very clearly. Hopefully
> someone will understand.

Yes, there is a lot of hocus pocus, and smoke and mirrors. Take
Google's own advice:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

There's only so much you can do.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com