Awarded at Toronto "Ultra Advanced SEO Symposium" Nov. 2005.

The Importance Of Valuable Free Stuff

You must have heard the lament ... Would you buy something from that person?

What's the perceived reputation of second hand car salespersons, lawyers, estate agents and insurance salesmen? Of course we're all conditioned to think of them as scheming, selfish, full of tricks and snake oil. Of course not all used car salespeople fall into this perception category. But try to convince me of that and you'll have a problem of trust and credibility.

Ask yourself another question ... who's behind these words on this page? For all you know I could be a serial fraudster sitting in Pentonville (a jail in UK) ... let me hasten to add I'm not.

The Importance Of Establishing Trust

Success on the internet depends totally upon establishing trust and instilling a sense of total confidence in the minds of potential customers.

Offering top class valuable well presented free information helps greatly to establish the following in the minds of those readers who could be anywhere up 15,000 kms away ...

A sense of trust A sense of competence A sense of knowledge A sense of comparison with other "experts" Yes, a sense that ... this guy knows what he's talking about; yes I could work with this guy etc etc

So create useful valuable (in the eyes of the receiver ... not in monetary terms) information that would help searchers satisfy the needs that brought them to search in the first place.

Make this information unique ... ie don't go and recycle stale overused information because this is a bit like treating the reader dishonestly. You're asking the contact to waste time and effort downloading, or adding personal details on what the reader might later decide to be false pretences. In this case you don't gain any credibility ... you lose whatever you might have had.

We are ethical South African search engine optimization practitioners based in Johannesburg, Gauteng. Internet marketing efforts in South Africa are still in their infancy. Search engine marketing and search engine positioning is built around 3 basic concepts - organic search engine optimization, optimizing for PPC (pay per click) campaigns and site functionality. All three areas must work together to succeed.