I’ve heard this time and time again, but didn’t pay attention to it as I focused my efforts mainly in terms of optimizing my positioning in search engines… and like most webmasters, I focused on Google: “Never rely on one source of traffic only.” Easier said than done, I agree, but in the long run, it’s the smart thing to do. What if tomorrow you lose your rankings in Google for some reason? Well, if that happens, you’re screwed.

The main reasons why most webmasters rely on search engines are as follows:

• Traffic from search engines is free. Yep, no need to pay a dime, so technically, everybody is put on an equal footing and if you work hard, you can make it. I said “technically” because we all know that in practice, the more money you have, the more you can allocate to SEO, but anyways…
• Traffic from search engines is the main source of traffic for most websites as people nowadays go straight to search engines to locate information on the Web.
• Traffic from search engines is at the core of the goodwill of many sites. Traffic = Goodwill = $$$.

But how to get traffic from other sources? Pay-per-click, pay-per-impression, affiliate programs, etc…?? Well, that won’t work because those techniques work best when you sell products online. What if you don’t sell anything? What if your plan was to get traffic through SEO and make money out of that traffic by selling ads? –> 0 + $5 = $5

If that’s the case, you’re trapped and it will be very difficult to get out of it. If your business model if to make money selling ads through high traffic sites, it won’t make sense buying traffic to then resell it. –> -5$ + $5 = 0

That’s the big headache many people are now faced with. The solution? Get out, change your business model, or revisit your SEO strategy…

Search engines are there to retrieve the most relevant information when people do searches online.  Their role is to search for information.  It seems that they now want to have a say on content also.  Believe it or not, advertising is content.  A link is content.  Whether that link is relevant or not, it remains that the link is content.  The fact that Google started to penalize websites for selling links has resulted in many taking those links out or rearranging their sites to address Google’s new guidelines.  This is the start of search engines becoming active participants on the Web.  Now, we have to take Google’s views into consideration, in addition to making sure that our visitors find what they’re looking for.

According to Google, whatever they do is to make sure that they can continue to provide good search results…  So it’s our job now to ensure Google’s success?  This is not the only thing.  Google also has mechanisms to allow webmasters to rat on each other…  Common, please, spare me the ##$#@$@#$.  Google has become way too intrusive and there is growing discontent.  Yes, not only me!  Sure… the aim is to provide for better results, but when we follow their guidelines, it leads us nowhere… and next thing we see?  Spam sites ranking on the first page of Google’s results.  Penalizing good sites is not the way to go, whether they sell links or not.  GOOGLE: Go against spam sites, sites that are BAD, and please, please kick out spammers out of your Adsense program because by keeping them in there, you are actually feeding their spamming.  So please, before going against good content on the Web for whatever reason, just target poor content first.

Matt Cutts sent a note to the Search Engine Journal giving a brief explanation of what went on the past few days with the PR update. Indeed, paid links were the main targets.

See: Matt Cutts Confirms Paid Links & Google PageRank Update

Well, that’s not coming from me, but from Jamie Harrop, who guest posted on John Chow about the latest PR update from Google.  Interesting mention in that entry about Google making a mistake by penalizing influential blogger Darren Rowse at ProBlogger.net.  ProBlogger, which went down from PR 6 to PR 4, is back up at PR 6.

See: The PageRank Ripple - PageRank Is Dead!

Most search engines have evolved from only offering searches for “text content” to now offering searches for images, videos, blogs, news, etc. Good SEO should stay in tune with the evolution of the Web, which is in big part influenced by search engines, responsible for connecting users to content.

For some topics, optimizing images can reap major rewards. For instance, if you do a search for “paintings,” the top of the results page will show 3 images. Imagine if you could get your image to be one of those 3. Those results rank even higher than “traditional search results.”

The following article gives some basic and simple tips to optimize images: Optimizing Images Deliver Online.

Starting ventures or projects online have their rewards and difficulties.  One of the major hurdles is to create a space for oneself amongst all the competition.  How to get noticed when there are literally billions of websites out there?

The subject of this entry is not to discuss how, but “when.”  Most projects start with a hope.  A hope to make it someday…  That hope, however, becomes reality when from “soliciting” attention, people come to you to offer partnerships or to present themselves.  Of course, your responsibility as the owner or webmaster is to always increase the visibility of your site, but as people came to me, that was the triggering point for me in telling myself… “well, this project of mine is starting to show potential.”  Potential because others, in addition to myself, are starting to see “something.”

When you receive validation, that is a real morale booster.

SearchEngineWatch.com has an article on how bloated pages can have negative consequences in terms of user experience, search engine rankings, and Web analytics: Surfers, Crawlers Find Bloated Pages Hard to Digest.

* Slow loading pages are like long line-ups, except that in the real world, people are more patient… going to another store actually requires them to walk. Online, however, the next website is only a click away.