Re: My Very Strange Webhost, SBI! -- Opinions, Please

On May 11, 12:06 pm, Sherman Pendley <spamt...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>
> Personally - I don't. :-) I'm no business major, but my thinking is
this:
> When one has a very limited marketing budget, it's pointless to waste it
in
> markets where so much is already being spent that one's own small effort
will
> be drowned out in the noise. So I look for op****tunities in the long
tail,
> where a little effort might go a long way in an under-served market
segment.

Indeed, that's the SBI! take on it, too: market to the long-tail
keywords, and through the viral magic of backlinks and such (since the
www is by definition interconnected) you may well wind up winning the
market for the popular ones!

> Trying to make your site rank high for common, generic words is just a
waste
> of time, and here's why: Search engine *users* know about common words
too.
>
> A parent researching child discipline methods would probably not search
for
> "spanking" - he or she tried that search once and got very mixed
results. He
> or she would search for "cor****al punishment", probably even including
the
> quotes to search for the exact phrase.
>
> So, if I'm developing a parenting site, I wouldn't suggest spending any
time
> trying to "optimize" for the word "spanking." It was hijacked as a
useful
> search term long ago, and your audience knows that and won't be using it
to
> find what your site's about anyway.

Hmm, I guess your assumption is that the audience isn't a bunch of
newbies, whereas mine had been just that...since I am a newbie
myself!  And so when I use search engines I type in newbie-like
general keywords...hmmm...I know that it's "better to be a king in
hell than a pauper in heaven" ("big fish in a small pond than a small
fish in a big one"), but then again, 5% of a million is better than
99% of a hundred...I guess I'm trying to figure out niche long-tail
keywords versus popular common ones....

> It's an ongoing game of cat-and-mouse. The search engines start
delisting a
> given trick, the SEO con artists come up with new ones.

Yes, and SBI! was supposed to take care of that with their proprietary
way of hosting websites...but now that's in serious doubt because of
the awkward feeling I'm getting from all the little weird incidents
like this image-swap mystery.

> No, that's not SEO at all. That's just a form on Google. In my
experience,
> it's not necessary to do more than register with the top two or three
search
> engines. The others will pick up on larger engines' listings anyway.
I've also
> found that search engines need about as much help noticing web page
changes as
> a cat needs noticing mice.
>
> SEO is when the engines know about your site, and you're trying to make
your
> site appear earlier in the search results.

Indeed, I didn't mean "notice" in the sense of simply being indexed
somewhere on SERP 397...just submitting your site to the engine lets
it know that it exists, okay, but no big deal.

SBI! was supposed to have some way of improving PR...providing the
good original content is there to begin with so that PR is not lost
over time due to users quickly clicking back to the SERP on account of
irrelevant or low-value material....

How is/are your site(s) doing in terms of traffic and keyword SERP?

Unless you really believe in a kind of "built it and they will come"
web-mysticism, it seems that SEO has to be a part of business
strategy...and yes I'm hoping to make money from my site, not just
enough so that it pays its own way, but that it pays for me to
continue devoting ever-increasing time and thought to it, since that
would be a good sign that what I'm providing is of real value to
many.  But they've got to know it exists in the first place!

> sherm--
>
> --
> My blog:http://shermspace.blogspot.com
> Cocoa programming in Perl:http://camelbones.sourceforge.net