SEO

If you play the SEO game…

If you play the SEO game you should not wine about losing the ball (or the whole game) every now and then. The Search Quality team is doing a fine job in the Netherlands right now by giving +30 penalties and blocking old school directory like linkfarm pages like www.goedbegin.com and www.startnu.nl.

Rule number 1.

If you game the system, really; Don’t wine! Get up, LEARN and try again.

Rule number 2.

If you game the system, game it good. Go Full Monty or don’t do anything at all.

Rule number 3.

If you game the system, do it on disposable domains. Don’t take risks on your brand-name.

I’m really getting sick reading the Google Help Groups with all people who believe Google stole their traffic. Especially if you’re not ranking for Jiba in top 5 anymore. Do you really think your website with some ratings should rank top 5 for brand-names? Of course it was comfortable like a warm bath getting all that Adsense money, but is it really that good of user experience? Get a hold of yourself, improve your website, add value and don’t be stupid. If you can’t live up to that, you should not play the game at all.

Reactionary vs. Visionary SEO

After reading the post from Shoemoney about SEO not having a future I’ve started to think. First off, I think he’s right. SEO is a Goldrush the last couple of years. A lot of ‘snake oil salesmen’ (by Jason Calacanis) are making a quick buck with some meta keywords and title stuff. Others have great linkfarms and dozen’s of syndicated RSS feeds, which gives them and their clients a bit of linklove. I think that these SEO’s will go out of business as the game get’s harder and harder. No big bucks to be made anymore. No easy money.

The people who are game in the industry right now, will stay on top. They always found good ways to get good, converting traffic and they will be able to do this in the future as well. After that I got another small epiphany.

All those people who are stepping in this big link bait trap that Jeremy pull off. Those are reactionary people. And probably do reactionary SEO as well. The whole problem is that by doing reactionary stuff you are never going to be on top of your game. Google isn’t reactionary, Apple isn’t. Microsoft is, look at where they are, not being able to buy Yahoo.

Apple is doing visionary stuff. Steve Jobs said it right: If you design for what people want, the product will be old by the time you’re able to sell it, and will not have everything people asked for. You can see very well how that’s been working for Apple. They dictate the market and even the whole industry, with the iPod and the iPhone. Google had a visionary look at the whole way web pages should be indexed, sorted out and displayed. This was a big guess, but it turned out pretty ok. Especially with their idea’s about how to monetize it.

The same goes for SEO’s. The good SEO’s are on top of their game. They are visionary. They actually have an idea about where the market is going to and they have an strong opinion how it should be done. By having a visionary look at things you’ll always be able to bypass the stuff that is going on and take shortcuts into news area’s. Reactionaries will always be second best.

Now ask yourself, and be fair, are you a reactionary SEO or are you a visionary SEO?

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