3 Ways to Immediately Increase Search Engine Traffic

By nickwBest of, Traffic

Amongst the commercial blogosphere there is huge interest in the dark, and mysterious art of SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. There shouldn’t be. Not because paying attention to Search traffic is bad, or that wanting to rank higher in Google is evil, simply because it’s not rocket science, and anyone can do it. Even you.

If you want get more traffic from Search engines, this post is for you. Read on….

The Big SEO Secret: It’s Easy

Before we get to the list, (I don’t mind if you scroll, but this next bit is important too…) let me explain what i mean by “it isn’t rocket science”: Manipulating Search engine rankings for sites that naturally find it difficult to get incoming links and attention, say affilate sites, many ecommerce type operations and much of the web1.0 shopping experience sites is very hard, and it takes a lot of skill and knowledge to achieve.

It’s become harder and harder over the last few years to game Google, and many SEO’s are now wondering if it’s time to give up trying to “manipulate” G results and simply start feeding Google more of what it wants — the unfortunate result of which is a huge increase in workload, namely copywriting and Linkbaiting.

That’s the thing most SEO’s won’t want to tell their clients. That there is no magic wand, mystical powers or Search engine hoo joo to be had anymore, it’s all down to 3 things:

  1. Copywriting
  2. Links and
  3. Networking

That’s not to say those tasks don’t require skill, but it really is that simple.

I’ll give you a full checklist in just a minute…

Avoid the Snake Oil Merchants

There are still die hard SEO’s out there that spend all their time trying to game the system, but most of them are pretty shit at it, only a very few have enough resources to manage it. There are also, a whole slew of con merchants masquerading as SEO’s, just as there are fake designers in the web design field, basing their credentials on the fact that they’ve read a few articles, or bought a keyword tracking tool.

These people are idiots, and should be avoided at all costs.

At the end of this article I’ll point you in the direction of a few quality resources for further reading.

3 Ways to Immediately Increase Search Engine Traffic

Now you’ve patiently read though all of the above, or impatiently skimmed to the bottom, it’s time to get into this list.

1. Write Better, More Specific Copy and Linkbait

Good copywriting encompasses many things, titles, subject matter, the post and url’s to name the most important. It also goes hand in hand with The Art of Linkbaiting. Here’s a checklist for more search engine friendly copy:

Title’s are everything.

  • Titles should be short, snappy, and attention grabbing – think about how you skim through your RSS reader every day, and bear that in mind when writing titles.
  • Preferably, title’s should contain keywords related to your topic — that should come naturally, if you have to jam them in there, its either a bad title, bad copy, or you’re a lunatic.
  • If your blog software writes titles like this: My Blog Title | My Post Title, you need to change them to this: My Post Title – My Blog Title. Many people will tell you it’s even better to ditch the “My Blog Title” bit all together, in order to not dillute the important keywords in the title, but they’re forgetting the importance of branding, and with blogs, establishing some brand recognition goes a long way toward gaining links and attention.
  • Titles are akin to advertising, and the best ones make promises, and deliver

By far the best resource out there for blog titles is Brian Clark’s Magnetic Headlines series of posts on the excellent Copy Blogger site.

Body Copy
There’s been much written, both online and off about copywriting, and as a writer of small talent, it’s not for me to get into the in-depth details of it. I am good at linkbaiting though, and am constantly studying what kind of post are being linked on del.icio.us, Digg and other “link sites”.

It’s the much discussed art of linkbaiting that this post will focus on. Remember, we’re talking about getting search engine traffic right? Here’s a checklist for writing good linkbait (we’ll discuss why links are important a little further down).

  • Study the popular bookmarks on del.icio.us to get a feel for what people are linking to
  • Such things as HowTo’s and Lists are always good fodder for linkbait and you should be aiming to get onto those pages by writing appropriate copy. (you want to be there, because being there will gain you links, and links = traffic, more on that soon…).
  • Use html lists, headlines and other visual means of breaking up posts in order to make them easier to read and skim
  • Link out, link often and link generously — Really, forget any rubbish you may have heard about depleting page rank, or any concerns you have over sending away traffic, and work on providing links to great resources your readers will love — they’ll thank you for it, and link to you for it.
  • Fight bloggers block by getting inventive, and doing some research.

Some of the best blog specific resources for copy writing, and linkbaiting are:

2. Make it Easy for People to Link to You

All of the above tips on writing more attractive, useful and linkable copy are geared to two things:

  1. Providing what your readers want
  2. Gaining links

Links are the currency with which one trades on the web, the lingua franca of the internet and key to ranking, and traffic. Hint: They’re really, really important ok?

Essentially, you’re looking for this:

  • Links coming to your posts, from many different sources
  • Links preferably have relevant keywords in the text used to make the link and again preferably come from sites on a similar topic
  • Links from trusted, authoritative sites

Apart from writing great linkable copy, there are a few things you can do to make sure that your posts get linked, and hence ranked aswell as get more bang for your buck per link.

  • Encourage readers to submit your posts to Digg and del.icio.us, or more specific link sites depending on your subject matter. Those categories in del.icio.us for example, are exported by users to their own blogs (targeted, keyworded link text = good), and they often kick off a knock on effect [pdf] that can have wild implications for your Search traffic.
  • There are varios widgets for most blog software to do the above for you, just have a search through your blog softwares list of plugins.
  • Where possible, make sure your urls contain your keywords. Contrary to popular opinion, this is not because Search engines pay particularly more attention to urls with keywods, but because people often just paste urls into comments, blog posts and forums where they are automatically linked by the software. Those links, contain the keywords, and it’s keywords in links, from authoratitive, trusted sites, that are what we want.
  • Place a “link to this post” widget on your blogs templates
  • Ask other bloggers in your niche for links — but don’t make a pest of yourself, nobody likes to be hassled, and some people turn down link requests on general principle (me for example..). See Trisha’s thread in the Performancing forums on link exchanges for a lively discussion on the merits of the dreaded link exchange. — My personal advice is dont bother, do the other things listed here and all of it will fall into place.
  • Network like crazy, see below…

Although there are lots of posts out there on links, I couldn’t find much that would add value to what i’ve written above. If you have resources to share, please post them in the comments.

3. Networking, the Unsung Hero of Blog SEO

You read little about networking in this context. Many bloggers into SEO are facinated with the technicalities, despite it being a very simple thing to do and thus miss one of the biggest opportunities to gain links, readers, and traffic.

Done right, a well built network of contacts, friends and like-minded bloggers can seriously help you get the link love you need, both directly and indirectly. Here are a few tips and resources for working your network for better Search traffic:

  • Read Chris Garrett’s Networking for Blog Success
  • Comment and participate on blogs within your niche — Get to know the people around you
  • Email with them, LINK to them, they’ll reciprocate, trust me.
  • Expand outside of blogs — find forums, newsletters and groups in your topic
  • Use social bookmarking sites to discover related topics (see right hand side) and hence expand your groups, newsletters, forums and blogs search even further
  • Above all: Be generous. If you respect your network, and work hard to be part of the community surounding your topic, the rewards can really pay of — never abuse it, it tends ot backfire in all kinds of horrible ways.

4. Bonus Tip

There’s always a bonus tip, didn’t you know?

If you’re really set on learning more, more than my overview here — and if i really can’t dissuade you from getting caught up in what i consider a massive waste of time for the majority of bloggers (technical seo) then at least pay attention to the right people 🙂 Here’s a list of my favorite, and most authoratitive SEO blogs:

126 thoughts on “3 Ways to Immediately Increase Search Engine Traffic”

  1. Pingback: Best Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website

  2. A very well written blog on search engine traffic . Also i think if the content is very unique say 90% .and has good on page and off page optimisation . the site will surely climb up the searchengine.

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  4. Great post

    The article is very good
    but it *is* simple and clear, Sherwood. There’s no dark magic involved, and I think that’s the point.

  5. I think the best way is the first one because like what the gurus says content is the king, if the visitor come to your site and there is nothing useful he will leave immediately.

  6. Pingback: How to Encourage People to Read Your Blog Posts : Performancing

  7. Thanks for such awesome tips, I have tried them all and works like charm. BTW is choosing the right theme, always an important task, People Say Thesis is the best SEO theme, however Im using a free version theme ., and Im quite satisfied with the SEO results, What do you suggest me Sir, to keep my current theme tor migrate to Thesis?

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  11. Thank you for this wonderful site. I got a lot of ideas and hints on how to become big and how people could provide you with their links. Being on top is really hard and competitive. And being challenged is the thrill because all of your skills and abilities are being used just to be on top.
    arizona search engine optimization

  12. This is very informative site…..From this site i wanna tell u about my website whichi is about games…plz check it out…….
    http//:games.m5zn.com

  15. Excellent excellent excellent stuff! I really learned a lot from this post and will definitely be linking to you in the near future. I am not going to hesitate now or be worried about PR leakage with outbound links!

    -Nathaniel

  20. SEO is no easy task…it’s just takes time and ideas from others. You need to search and find the correct info which is no easy to find. Secondly ideas need to be creative in order to get yourself notice. There are plenty of ways to do it and it all works but the point is how far can you go with it and is 1 or 2 enough?

    Ways to advertise.
    – Forums
    – Classified ads
    – Blogging
    – Search engine placement
    – Paid Banners
    – Pay per click
    – Link exchange
    – many more including offline exposure of your site is important.

    Remember it all works…every little little thing counts (time will reward your efforts and patience). Now do you have the determination, time, and effort to search all those? . Only you can race with time.

  22. Nice work mark. 3 ways, though not the only way, can increase our site popularity. Also, twitter is getting increasingly popular day by day; it has been a great resource this day to popularize your product. My website is made popular and optimized for google and yahoo search engine by a web marketing company named medical web experts(www.medicalwebexperts.com). They have induced some really appreciable techniques to increase my website popularity.

  32. I love clicking on stuff like this, because it affirms that what I have been doing is the right way of doing it. It’s a good thing to have resources to fall back on, and I am sure I am not alone in this thinking.

  33. So as a COMPLETE newbie to this whole SEO process, how long should one expect it to take to land on the first page of Google (or at least the first 5 pages!), assuming we follow all the good advise here?

    For example, I have two new sites (http://www.servesouth.com and http://www.vpsexpress.com) for our new VPS server hosting service.

    My sites have only been up for a couple of weeks, but have been crawled several times by various robots, but obviously are not in any search engines yet unless you search specifically for the name of the site.

    Any known ways of getting to a high search spot for something as demanded as “VPS” or “Server Hosting” for vpsexpress.com and servesouth.com?

    Thanks!

    Rob

  37. my opinion is this that all you need is too be more attentive towards your website development and design if it is specific to the task more relevant to its nature and theme whatever you can say,rest is the show you enjoy.there would never be a tip about seo if you have enough efforts utilized on your on page.

  38. Wow, this is definetly something that I needed as I am just starting up to earn online. Can’t wait to read more, thanks for your help, and keep up the good work.

  43. It couldn’t get better than what you present here about how to really get lot of traffic from search engines. I most admit that you actually hit this topic on it head and make it simple for everyone to understand. Marvelous ideas right there…

  44. nice posting sir, i just a newbie who want to know well about SEO in order to make my blog more satisfied for other. by the way, do you want to exchange link with me sir?

  46. You are absolutely right man, Networking is definitely the Unsung Hero of blog SEO. Lots of bloggers networking as tool to promote their blog. But nobody writes about importance of networking. You have written about it, and you also used it in this post .

  49. I invest most of my time into adding content and link building. I still have to get my networking to work. Since I am working on my own unique list of dofollow blogs and a way they can network to get more traffic and content to their web sites.

  50. Outstanding is all I have to say! I only wish my writing skills were as clear and crisp. I wish I had your ability to increase traffic with the stroke of a pen. Your content is excellent. I thank you for your information.

  57. You can gain links by writing or creating attention-grabbing articles and including relevant keywords. I personally like interesting titles because I find then attention-grabbing. So, you must consider the title carefully when copywriting.

  66. The 3 ways plus bonus way are neatly laid out in the form of simple tips. Thanx for the good post. Hope it would help in increasing my blog traffic.

  67. Its simple yeah but lots of work…for a niche like a joke website would overcome alot of linkbaiting and networking.
    I should do lots of linkbaiting 😛

  70. It’s often difficult to get management support for SEO activities. They believe that once they have a web site, they are now on a level playing field with their competitors.

    The way I sell the concept of SEO is to explain that like with newspapers, being on the first page costs more but is worth the money if the offer and other elements are good.

  71. have finally woken up to myself and realise the importance of submitting articles.. but i was a victim of hte hype by people that promise the riches on the internet… i agree about content they are great for building traffic as i have grown my sites traffic by 600% this month! But also my profile im sure is increasing and to me that was something i set out to do

  72. Hi,
    Nice post…. but after reading all the comments from your post, i fell a little bit confuse. Why are some people disagree with you… Maybe you should make another post to answer all the comment that do not agree with you……….

  73. i have finally woken up to myself and realise the importance of submitting articles.. but i was a victim of hte hype by people that promise the riches on the internet… i agree about content they are great for building traffic as i have grown my sites traffic by 600% this month! But also my profile im sure is increasing and to me that was something i set out to do

  74. Since I have been where you are a few years ago(not sure about keywords) I thought I would suggest some articles I have been writing and posting on my site. Plus I couldn’t help but notice you are looking for SEO tools.
    If I may suggest this page.

  75. The beauty of this article is it does work. I have been working on the Internet since 1990 and I am here to tell you, it’s a constantly changing. You are absolutely right links and search engine ranking is a competitive, continuous, arduous, [I can think of more adjectives but I think my point is made]work. It does not happen overnight. I have watched my website and blog slowly go up Google, Yahoo, lycos, etc. search engines as I continue marching to the SEO beat. What I don’t get is the price range. Some SEO companies charge little to nothing to move your site up while others charge you $400 per hour. I have been charging clients a “fair” amount and have been getting a lot of work. I enjoy reading articles about SEO and I find I am learning something new everyday. Thanks for sharing.

  79. This blog is a great pool of information for the rest of us out there, I will reccomand a visit to this resource.

    Thank you

  82. I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction as far as what key words I should be focusing on. My website is pretty all encompassing with regards to the baby world and I am very interested in having this thing take off.

    We are in the very “infant” (pun indeed intended) stages of creation, so any help would be useful.

    Please email me if you have the time.
    Thanks

  83. well finally one good, whole and hell of info in one post..not to comment about seo as its real and good seo can bring great results.. but the tips mentioned here are sure shot typo for good link popularity.. isnt it?

  84. nope not really.. i’m telling people to go to my blog where i speak about link building and how to get better rankings. Have a nice day !

  85. @molica: Reading the 2nd comment and both last comments contain a link to that blogspot site. Good style and pretty relevant! Looks like I could throw a flag for comment spam.

  86. I can’t emphasize this enough: get backlinks, lots of them… contextual relevant if possible.

  87. Excellent article! Topical and well researched, this has everything a SEO Blog lover could want- and if it hasn’t it will find it for you! I am ‘beyond’ impressed! Top work!!.

  88. Does this also meen Backlink-Networks?

    I have found a link-network which includes all the advantages, what you think about it?

    Google shouldn’t have anything against it – those are after all only a few small buttons.

  89. isn’t that a bit tough to pull off anymore?

    Exactly. There are a whole bunch of folks out their claiming to be good SEO’s when the reality is that the majority are nothing more than webmasters (able to correct bad urls, tweak on page stuff) pissing around submitting their clients sites to 2nd or 3rd rate directories, whining about dmoz editors and scratching their arses and looking puzzled when you mention “good copy”.

    I’d say close to 95% of so called SEO’s are rank amateurs.

    These days, the real seo is in linkbait — everything else is either spamming (and you really have to be hardcore, AND good to do that these days) or a waste fo time con job on clients.

    SEO my arse…

  91. >>>the SEO adjusts to outrank “good copy”

    Maybe that’s why people don’t think much of the SEO industry? And with 2000 or 3000 quality, non-contrived links pointing at it, isn’t that a bit tough to pull off anymore?

  93. Regarding how to make a web page more linkable, I just launched a site that might help:

    http://bookmarkit.org

    Instead of having a seperate ‘submit this!’ button for del.icio.us, Digg, Tailrank, and every other bookmarking site on the planet… you only need one link to bookmarkit.org.

    This site will redirect you to your preferred bookmarking site based on settings stored in cookies. One link: no fuss, no muss for web masters.

  94. @Jay: Promoting RSS feeds and bookmarking at i.e. del.icio.us really can help to shorten the sandbox period.

    To boost that effect you can promote every RSS feed from all these secondary blogs (del.icio.us, Flickr, …) through FeedBurner.

  95. Great post!

    No great mystery to SEO but it takes work and time and patience.

    In one set of blogs I have I have done standard optimization (keywords, great titles, dead on content, (alt tags ’cause Yahoo likes them)) and then just blogged on. After doing horribly for the standard sandbox time each one of the blogs began to rank decently. So I just kept at it. People linked in, I asked for links, I linked out, I tracked back to other peoples very smart posts – the key thing being that there was no magic or deep dark secret.

    Two things which are worth doing for a new blog are remembering that MSN and Yahoo do send hits and those hits are just as organic as Google hits so sign up. And two, sign yourself up for things like stumbleupon and rss feed aggregators. These don’t directly boost your rankings but it gets your name out there.

  97. Quick update, im not sure how i managed to forget it, buti missed out a pretty damn important resource in my list in the original article. I’ve added it now, but for those reading the comments here it is again:

    Todd Malicoat’s Stuntdubl

    A long time online friend and one of (as you can see from the article) very few that i think truly know their stuff in the field.

  98. Im baffled, you seem to have read something entirely different to the article I wrote…

    I suggest you reread, or just call it a day and move on..

  99. Wow, Nick. No insult intended. You called people “idiots” in your post, didn’t you?

    I didn’t come here for an argument. I was surprised to see you call out SEO as unnecesssary, refer to all but a few as fakes and idiots, and then proceed to act as seo for your audience. That’s all. I’ll skip further commentary out of respect – it’s your house.

    As for SEO, when did SEO become so well defined? SEO is about optimizing to rank. Whatever it takes. As all the bloggers add text to the web, the SEO adjusts to outrank “good copy”. As they stuff keywords into thier URLs and link to each other, the SEO has to adjust to out rank that as well. You’re right it’s not rocket science — it takes more creativity than rocket science. I know – I’ve done rocket science.

    SEO changed years ago from what all those free SEO pages say is important. They are ranking factors, but not competitive SEO. Why would anyone give away the real competitive tactics on the web for free?

  100. Beautiful, Nick, and so much information in a single post. I haven’t gotten through it yet, but I’ve “saved” it in my Bloglines folder.

  101. A reletively tiny percentage i’d imagine edmond29. The truth is, it takes an enormous amount of work to really make a blog work, not to mention a lot of patience!

    Technorati reckons it’s tracking something like 50M blogs — i’ll be over half of them are dead blogs though, blogs started with good intention but soon given up on..

    A recent study said that 7% of bloggers were in it for the money, but i’d guess that less than 1% will make anything worth writing home about…

  102. New poster here – and I appreciate your article.

    In theory, your argument makes complete sense – but what percentage of “would be bloggers” do you believe actually integrate these three components successfully and build and maintain first page keyword results – or – consistent, quality traffic.

  104. All i see is insult, and no argument — if you have something intelligent to add to the conversation, please be my guest….

  105. Well Nick I don’t know what to think about you now. I thought you were smarter than this… having tried your hand at SEO and having all those SEO friends over at ThreadWatch. Maybe I just haven’t caught on to your game yet (seems too tame for controversy link bait, yet too bitter to engender a blogger lovefest). It is sooooo easy to bad mouth SEO these days. I just noted yet-another-PR-firm getting into the SEO game, and they, too took the easy route implying SEO is evil, you may not even need it, etc. I didn’t have you listed as one who takes the easy route.

    Anyway I disagree completely. Sure, in this day and age of conflicted search engines, hidden SE agendas and blah-gers, it sure is easy to get traffic. But that’s not SEO, and I know you know that.

    It honestly sounds to me like you’re bitter, Nick. Has being locked into Drupal gotten you down? In my experience, when you are SEOing and get frustrated by your inability to get the specific terms you want, it’s time to take a day off. Settling for “traffic” instead of the traffic you want is admitting defeat, as is rationalizing your status quo as “good enough”. I wish everyone in my markets would accept the staus quo as good enough. That would make my SEO job so much easier.

  106. Well you are right, there is an interdependency between content and popularity… even between structure and popularity, as a bad usability due to wrong structure will affect popularity 😉

  107. >>content and popularity

    If you want to be strict, you could boil that down to just popularity — but content, good content, begets popularity.

    we seem to agree, though the terminology differs — with blogs, what you’re saying roughly translates to content, links, networking…

  108. __ Disclaimer : I am a professional SEO __

    SEO is not magic, it is not science, there is no secret and yes everyone can do SEO in theory (Like everyone can become a marketer, physician, cook or whatever by studying and developping the relevant skills).

    Concerning Blog optimization there is not much to say for the technical part, as blog structures are quite standardized, well built and most of time well coded (use of semantic markup, dense network of links…)

    There are 3 axes to SEO : structure, content, and popularity. The structure is OK for blog, so SEO for blogs consist mainly in working on the 2 others : content and popularity. But it is not easy to write, it must be learnt. And it is not easy to develop popularity. In fact SEO is not about tricks, it is about quality and accessibility. Quality of structure, quality of content, and popularity.

  109. >>temper your expectations, and not underestimate the task at hand.

    I’d agree with that. And with these 3 steps alone, you could indeed compete — Im not saying it’s not hard work, just that it’s nothing that most people with a little web savvy couldn’t acomplish if they set their minds to it.

    Besides, you’d want to be #1 for photography? I’d rather be #3 for Nikon S345 Auto Jobbie — or whatever, you know what i mean…

  110. While the post is not the definitive resource on the entire subject of seo (that terms should be abolished, it’s an oxymoron), it is however, for most blogs pretty close to all you need to know.

    How so? If were talking about SEO for general search results (not Technorati, not blog search) then blogs don’t have to achieve a certain subset of characteristics. This is the wide-open playing field, where your photography blog might have to compete against Fuji.

    Again, my point is not to bash the principles outlined. Just to temper your expectations, and not underestimate the task at hand.

  112. Just to add to what Nick said, I use pathauto on my photography site and it works well but I started that site on a newer version of drupal plus had it installed from day one. We have a lot of links coming in to the oldskool drupal urls now and we would probably end up with a bit of a mess of duplicate content or redirects on our hands.

  113. Well, when we set up the site initially, the PathAuto module was not ready for primetime — at least I didn’t think so after testing it.

    Since then, it has been updated, and i’d now recommend it, having used it on other sites — but although I should probably install it here, Search engine traffic has never been a high priority at Performancing, it’s just not that type of site and I just havn’t got the time for one more module install unless there’s some serious benefit to be had…

    I may well do it, but it wont be today

  114. I’m considering using Drupal (inspired partly by this nice Performancing.com site) and I just blogged about my desire to have search friendly (non-numeric) URLS in Drupal here:

    http://deflexion.com/2006/07/drupal

    Since you agree that this is desirable, I’m wondering why you don’t do this, for example, why is the URL of this thread (node/322) pretty meaningless? Is it difficult to do this Drupal? Thank you!

  115. It’s worthy to note that this article has hit the digg.com front page recently.

  116. but it *is* simple and clear, Sherwood. There’s no dark magic involved, and I think that’s the point.

  117. In your dashboard, go to:

    Presentation
    Theme Editor
    Header (right side)
    Look for the “title” tags and rearrange it so it looks like this:

    <?php wp_title(); ?> | <?php bloginfo('name'); ?>

    I am new to WordPress and blogging, so, I figured someone else must be too.

    I added a | to separate the posting and the blog name for my blog.

  118. Thanks for the tips Nick, they are always useful as not only a reminder but a helpful light in the dark. I’m still doing my own thing, pottering in the dark with my blog as it were, ignorant of technical SEO – probably ignorant of normal SEO as well – but I dig the culture that my blog is in, and I think I’ve done the right things…

    I’ve even been invited to write elsewhere! I’m pleased with my success and I hope that the great ideas keep coming from you guys to help all of us on to bigger and brighter things.

  119. “If your blog software writes titles like this: My Blog Title | My Post Title, you need to change them to this: My Post Title – My Blog Title.”

    Anyone know how to do this in blogger?

  120. When anyone sees the terms “SEO” and “immediate” in the same sentence, skepticism is in order. SEO takes time, and is considerably more difficult and intricate than these rules of thumb imply.

    Actually it isnt. While the post is not the definitive resource on the entire subject of seo (that terms should be abolished, it’s an oxymoron), it is however, for most blogs pretty close to all you need to know.

  121. Chris, I’m just exaggerating to make my point When anyone sees the terms “SEO” and “immediate” in the same sentence, skepticism is in order. SEO takes time, and is considerably more difficult and intricate than these rules of thumb imply.

    *Not* because Google makes it difficult, but simply because – for any given competitive space – there are 9 other players on Page 1 trying to push you down to Page 2.

    That said, Nick did hit all the basic priciples. It’s just a matter of setting realistic expectations – something that all legit SEO’s make a point of doing for their clients.

  123. It certainly wasn’t Sergio, thanks — fixed now.

    Yes, clear and simple is the point.

  124. Was it deliberated to not put the right link to Loren Baker’s Search Engine journal?

  125. Are you saying to rank in a search engine is the equivalent in difficulty of a biblical miracle “sherwoodseo”? Strange thing to infer from someone with that login if so …

  126. Escaping from the Egyptians is easy – you can do it immediately in three simple steps:

    1. Cross desert on foot.
    2. Part Red Sea.
    3. Cross seabed on foot.

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