Yesterday I happened to be on wikipedia.com on the trustrank page, when I scrolled over the words “various techniques to achieve higher-than-deserved rankings” in the second paragraph, and the link title popped up “Search Engine Optimization”
hum…so Search Engine Optimization is “various techniques to achieve higher-than-deserved rankings“…but hey…I do believe I’ve heard those exact words used before by some search engine engineers, and I think I’ve read those exact words before in some patents.
I wish there were a “Rank Deserve Number” next to the urls in a search result page … This site deserves to be at this number..but the seo practices on the site are making it rank where you see it……. hey, you’re #3…but you only deserve to be #23….red flag!… hey, you’re #23, and you should be #3…better do more SEO!……or you deserve to be #11, and you are #11… so keep your SEO to that level….
So what if I were talking to my neighbor about his website, and after running some searches, I thought that he was ranking way below where I felt he deserved to be..
So what if I told my neighbor these 3 simple SEO tips…
1. Normally, If you mention your targeted phrases a few times on a page (as opposed to just once, or not at all) you will rank higher for those phrases.
2. Normally, If you put your targeted phrases in your title tags you will rank higher for those phrases.
3. Normally, if you get other websites to link to your site, you will rank higher.
These are surely SEO technique to achieve higher rankings…now, if my neighbor took the above advice, and he went up in the rankings…did he deserve that increase? What if he did this every day, all day, 40 hours a week for every week of the year… would he deserve that increase in rankings? What if he then started participating in blogs and forums of related sites, perhaps for the purpose of getting links, by making blog comments that got links to his site?…. what if that increases his rankings, did he deserve that?…what if he was participating in blog comments and forums just for fun…and wasn’t thinking about the link juice… does he deserve ranking increases for things he did w/o knowing it would increase his rankings…what if he was having fun and maybe only thinking about link juice a little?
Do you only deserve an increase in rankings if you did things without link juice in mind? What if you thought about the link juice just a little bit? What if some PR guy comes up with an idea, and in the background their in house SEO/marketing guy is yelling “Yes Yes” because he knows it could bring links?
See,there’s the kicker…Bob Jones from some PR department can make a decision like, “Lets give away phones to people.”…or something like that…and if that gets them lots of links..hey, they weren’t thinking of link juice… but if it were Jim Boykin giving away phones or hot fudge..well, you know….anyways…that’s another post….
I believe that there are many who do believe that Search Engine Optimization is just “various techniques to achieve higher-than-deserved rankings” …but doesn’t every site owner feel they deserve higher rankings?…and how can we know just what we deserve? And how much SEO do we do to only obtain “what we deserve”?
8 Responses
Ahh 1’st post!
I think those are great questions. My non-sane view is that entrepreneurs with nonprofit type views tend to have a greater interest at heart, and as a result have a greater cause. Unfortunately many rock stars don’t truly rock until AD. I’d like to think as a whole, history absolve some web sites and site owners. I also think higher rankings are supposed to mean more traffic and supposedly profit, but don’t think that’s always the case and also profit & higher rankings don’t always equal success.
Jim, yours is the first seo blog i ever read, though i just seo my own business it was incredibly helpful and encouraging as a small business owner dumping thousandsX into yellowpages. Ive been a fan ever since. – we also joined your Ninja Site which i here is shifting direction.
You guys are awesome, Cheers
Nice post Jim, and agree with what you say. Some people are very narrow minded when it comes to SEO, they either expect instant results or they think it’s voodoo and pay less attention to it, i.e. smaller budget so that give away something for free thing is tricky for SEO’s anyway.
Plus I thought the whole point of a marketer, offline and online is to create exposure for your company. What’s stopping a little mom & pop shop from gettting an ad on (if price didn’t matter) TV or a billboard seens by 1000s, are people going to moan because ‘they shouldn’t be there’?
Only aiming for ‘what you deserve’ is kinda like marketing to the people across the street, why not the whole town?
Thank you for a very informative website. You point out many good issues like being targeted and personal in your approaches. However the platform is build by you and your colleges so a lot of internal understanding and cooperation is needed and all functions concentrated on the same target; making the Online Marketing profitable. For many companies a major issue is to understand and accept that all functions are equally important from ides over production to sales. Once the strategy is established the next but very important question comes up; how do we communicate this in order to reach our target group? The scope of an Online Marketing company is to ensure the link and understanding between the visions and the realities, a very challenging job.
Hey Jim,
I found this post a really informative read. I have recently created my first blog so I’m getting to grips with the in’s and out’s of what I should be doing. This, coupled with a few other guides, has helped me to understand how backlinking and SEO works and for that I am grateful. Hopefully, I will reach a stage where I can help others in the same way that you have with this guide.
Thanks again,
Matty
Interesting post Jim! It’s becoming more and more evident that more people are thinking of link juice when they come up these so-called contests like Green Peace, Square Space, etc.
But to me you should deserve to rank in the top spots if you did what it takes to get there in a legitmate way. That’s like saying an athlete doesn’t deserve to be the #1 athlete if he spends a ton of extra time tweaking his skills in practice? As long as he’s not cheating doesn’t he deserve to be the best he can be? (no pun intended) He shouldn’t be the #1 athlete only if he never thought that the extra practice would make him the best. 🙂
Business is all about continuously generating revenue. Hence, there is no harm if a little bit SEO can increase SERP and thus bring in more revenue.
As you mentioned there is no set level of what position a site should rank for. The only thing people should consider is if top ranking sites of good quality and are providing highly relevant information. If thats the case, then there is no problem if a SEOed site outranks – Non SEOed sites.
I completely agree with you.There are no just one set of techniques that every one must follow to get high rank. If you want to rank higher than you should do something extraordinary so you can make the difference.There are no just one set of techniques that every one must follow to get high rank.
There is a saying: “First Deserve than Desire”
Search engine optimisation has to take place now as the web is becoming jam packed with companies. It is now becoming so competitive that many companies pay huge amounts of money to be ranked number one. That is really annoying when you do aspecific search using specific keywords and the first six sites have nothing to do with the subject you are after.
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