Does Your Website Work? Does It Make You Money? There are NO Magic Bullets Anymore ...

Oh, for the Good Old Days when ranking in Google was easy and when MFA sites were GUARANTEED to make their owners money within 3 hours of starting.

Now most of you will not have a clue what I'm taking about. The reason is that unless you've been a successful player on the search engines for quite some time you won't even know when those days were never mind what worked in those Good Old Days. Do you know what terms like MFA or arbitrage mean? You see them every time you search Google but maybe don't recognize them.

It's getting to the stage, at long last, that the vast majority of SEO spammers and search engine spam techniques no longer work so well. The first major wind of change was the "Florida" Google update. This is a quick run down of what has happened since "Florida" first blew in November 2004.

For newcomers to the SEO world "Florida" was a major update of the Google search engine algorithm, it was named by the SEO community after the real Florida Hurricane because of the damage it did to so many websites.

Websites by the tens of thousands that had enjoyed very high rankings on Google suddenly and without warning disappeared off Google page rankings overnight and permanently and just before the peak Christmas season as well.

This was the first big hit Google made in its ongoing battle with SEO spammers. These hits have been ongoing ever since with "BigDaddy" that started in March 2006 being the latest.

On July 11th 2006 the "long awaited" attack on PPC MFA sites started.

Just a few of the techniques that no longer work on Google and BE WARNED these are still being touted as ways to make fortunes overnight are listed.

1. Meta Keyword tags have not been used for Google rankings at all for about 2 years (although most South African webmaster still push these as the way to rank well on Google.)

2. Link farms and web rings have been made taboo.

3. Guest book spam has been obliterated

4. Auto blogging abuse made redundant

5. Abuse of comment spam on blogs made a waste of time

6. Auto directory creation made a futile exercise

7. Google scrapers have been punished and those remaining will be

8. Benefits of reciprocal linking downgraded substantially to make it almost a waste of time trying to get reciprocal links

9. MFA sites demolished overnight to the massive advantage of genuine Adsense publishers and Adwords advertisers. Also known as Arbitrage.

10. Mini sites geared to exploit Google PageRank made ineffective and another waste of time

11. PPC affiliate abuse controlled better.

12. Importance of Title tag downgraded with advent of LSI which is still in its infancy at Google so expect more big changes here.

There is no doubt whatsoever that what worked to get high free rankings on Google even 6 months ago (end 2005) is no longer enough. Take a look at many search results these days and you'll see that the Title does not even include the keyword you typed in.

Do You Know Why Free Search Is So Important to Google

Google make money from displaying ads on the right hand side of their free search results. This is an income model that is making an absolute fortune for Google. It will continue to make a fortune for Google but ONLY so long as the relevancy of the page 1 free search results are relevant and useful to the searcher.  This is why they will continue to wage war on any website that finds its way onto page 1 without being relevant and useful.

• This means one thing ... unless your site is doing what Google wants you to do then you will lose any free positioning you might have had. If not today then very soon ... and Google wants only thing. It wants well organized unique and useful content that others will want to find.

• If you're still hearing stories from web designers and web masters about the importance of meta tags, and remember even Title tags are less influential then be very wary of such advice.

• And if you hear somebody telling you they can guarantee you any kind of Google ranking then RUN, don't walk in the OPPOSITE direction. Nobody can guarantee you ANYTHING on Google.

It Really is NOT About Flashy or Pretty Websites

There is more to marketing your website on the internet than just a great design and a great layout.  There is a whole science around getting visitors to your website. The science of marketing on the internet has developed in leaps and bounds and search engine marketing is at the leading edge.

This site is about search engines and provides you with basic information on how to conquer those hard bits that will prevent your web pages rising in the search engine rankings on Google, Yahoo, MSN or Ananzi.

You need to get up to speed and stay there ... that's if if you want to get targeted traffic from free Google listings.

The ONLY book that in my opinion tells it like it really is and more importantly WILL BE into the future has been written by Mike Grehan and this book is now in its second edition. The reason why I give my book away free on this site is simple ... SEO has gone way beyond what my book talks about. While the contents remain valid so much has happened since I last updated it that I'm happy people use it as a kind of primer. It will no longer provide you with enough information to achieve the success that I have seen by adopting and using the information it contains.

You can be number 1 on page 1 of Google tomorrow but only by using their PPC engine ... Brief articles on the important aspects of Google's PPC (pay per click system known as Google Adwords). Click the image below to learn more from Google directly. I have used their system for almost 3 years and it works ...

Google reports that of the 500 million world-wide searches made every day that approximately 50% are unique.

NEW ... I have put my whole book on line for you to read. Click the link at the top of the page ... or click here My Whole Book Free

Links to Useful Information on this Site

Your website SEO success checklist ... follow this checklist and your website will work for search engines and visitors alike. Ignore any of the items on the list and you will make it much more difficult to succeed.

About 80 articles covering many aspects of Internet Marketing and SEM or search engine marketing

Web marketing articles from newsletters written by Tony Roocroft

Don't believe promises and guarantees to rank highly in major search engines ... no matter where the promise comes from.

The growth in usage of search engines along with the increasing sophistication of web sites with regard to SEO best practices means that ranking well on search engines is becoming increasingly challenging. Two years ago competition was a fraction of what it is today and with more and more websites implementing good SEO, in order to rank on page one today means your site needs to be in the top 0.005% of competitive pages. That's a tall order in anybody's book.

There can be no cast iron guarantees made about ranking well on search engines. Such claims made are dubious at best and downright dangerous at worst. Spamming techniques have been used and abused to the detriment of numerous websites.

The content has been created by Tony Roocroft in the most part and is based upon practical experience and success. Today Tony owns and operates well over 100 websites and every one generates revenue ... Tony offers 1 on 1 personal or telephone consulting at the rate of R500 per hour excl VAT.

As an introduction you might want to read my latest white paper entitled "Why South African Retailers Do So Badly On Google and Other Search Engines". You can download the pdf or visit the web page.