PHASE 1 (1996-99?)
Affiliate Marketing Residual IncomeTax Deductible Items (its)Taxable Items Real Estate Mortgage Non-deductibleI began my SEO life as a search engine spammer, as I believe most of the 'old guard' did, whether they admit it or not. That's how it was done in those early days. Content WASN'T king by any means.
It was actually quite easy. The works: hidden text, keyword stuffing, etc. Back it up with single doorway pages all over the place and there you have it. A real dogs dinner but flying high in the then predominant engines (WebCrawler, Infoseek, AV, etc).
Bar Graph softwareHeadlines softwareData managementData grouping softwareDownload GRML PioneerWe got away with it I suppose because the net was so young. It was still heavily techie driven and largely a techie tool. Indeed, I too was approaching it too much from a techie rather than a business perspective - so despite high rankings I was making virtually nothing. It was just a fun pastime in a bizarre but compelling sense.
Pioneer Report MDIGRML web browsersTree MDI GRMLHeadlines MDI GRMLGRML Bar GraphsFortunately I learned, eventually. Actually, I was partly pushed: the twin demands of greater search engine sophistication, and the need to make a living were both converging horribly upon me.
PHASE 2 (1999-2000?)
I began to develop sites that would make at least some effort to persuade people to actually buy stuff. Sites that actually had some information and decent content on them!
GRML Intranet SoftwareGRML BrowsersIntranet SoftwareGraphsHeadlines MDI Web BrowsersI didn't fully understand the direction I was taking at the time, I simply realized that "Hey, Buy It Here... Now!" wasn't going to fool anyone. So some sites in my really messy empire were starting to be mildly useful. I started at last to make a bit of money. Helpful to buy food with!
Pioneer Report MDI GRML BrowsersTree GRML Web BrowsersBar Pie Graphs ChartsGraphing softwareHeadlines BrowsersThe search engine world was also changing. Alta Vista (which at the time was SO easy to manipulate) was starting to put its own sized 10 foot into its own prospects. Every decision seemed to be designed to lose its searcher base. Excite, Lycos and others were still significant players (having previously seen off WebCrawler and Infoseek), but Google was appearing on the radar ever more prominently.
There were still a few neat tricks around though... almost guaranteed to propel you onto the front page of AV for example. Anyone recall the free listbot service from Microsoft? This set you up with a nice page to attract members (on Microsoft servers)... a page that to AV had what would equate I suppose to PR6/7 nowadays. Set it up correctly and you had a nice 1 to 1 link from that page. Bingo... I had at least 50 such pages in place. Ahhh... those were the days.
By late 1999, or early 2000, I was starting to lurk around WebmasterWorld. Nice... there ARE other folks into this game as well. Still... I had not yet fully embraced the concept that to sell you had to fully speak buyer/visitor language. I could bag #1 on AV, but sell very little, if anything. I was evolving like the search engines I suppose.
PHASE 3 (2000-2001?)
I suppose I was always heading there, but being a bit of a lefty/liberal I now decided to create sites that were actually useful to people - create good solid informative sites and see what happens. I did a couple... stacked with info and selling only as an incidental aside.
GRML web browsersPioneer ReportMDI GMRL web browsersTree MDI BrowsersGRML BrowsersGuess what? You don't need me to tell you... they were far more effective than anything I had done previously. Frankly, that came as a real surprise. Aligned with this is the progress of Google. It is by now becoming the biggest player, but by no means dominant yet. Just as well.
Wallop! A few months later.... PR0 day! Disaster... half my old empire goes. No prizes for guessing what sites survive. Fortunately, the surviving sites are enough to get by on. But this is a turning point and an eye opener. I had escaped 'Miserable Monday' (Blue line Day?) under Alta Vista, but this time I was in tatters. Excessive cross linking had been my undoing.
PHASE 4 (2001-2003?)
The new approach.... I create the most informative sites in their respective sectors. Really heavy on info, much lighter on selling. Sites I am actually proud of because they offer something completely unique (IMHO). This is a pro-active, thought through, decision.
hould I continue to play the edges, to try to out think and dodge the filters six inches behind my backside (fun as it is)? Or should I develop for where search engines ought to be NEXT year or the year after, and be a little more patient in building traffic. Obviously I adopt the latter strategy.
I expect to climb slowly as Google/etc improve their aglo's, and meet at #1 somewhere in the future. I know it's risky in some ways because it assumes Google WILL improve and that heavy/good content and sensible linking WILL deliver as expected (to large degree that was already evident and had been for a while).
The other aspect of this was the 'social contract' concept. Google and others were essentially saying they would rank sites on merit as much as possible. If we (webmasters) developed good, ON-TOPIC, informative websites for the keywords in question, Google would reward us. OK then - we'll see.
I took this course (generally) and hoped they would keep to their part of the bargain and would have the technical ability to deliver it and stick to it.
PHASE 5 (2003)
Well yes, I suppose it's been working for a while. My sites rank well in their particular niches (by the way - totally different markets to earlier ones which I pretty much abandoned with PR0). It isn't easy though - content heavy sites take work, as does managing them properly and inviting links (I tend not to badger people by the way - if the site is right they will come to you).
There are not many short cuts to building a real class site. My concern these days is largely at getting hit unfairly and unreasonably. I've seen dolphins caught in some of Google's tuna filters... it can happen. The risk is they make the decision, to accept "collateral damage".
I can't accept that at all and never will. I especially can't accept it if it is me who is damaged! I'd be so hacked off I'd go back to spamming and with a clean conscience about it. We just have to see - but so far so good. My decision to 'go straight' still looks sound. But I'm a nervous puppy, especially at present, with Dominic wobbling all over the place.
PHASE 6 (2003-2005)
The future I guess.... My hopes: - Google continues to play fair and continues to understand it has a partnership with the webmaster community. If it sets guidelines and people keep to them, it should create reasonable stability (which is important to most businesses). Both sides prosper.
This does NOT buy into the idea collateral damage is fine. It isn't fine - it is totally innocent people (I don't mean me) suffering as a result of a cold calculation. Ethically unacceptable.
My Fear is "Money talks". We've seen search engines sell out to PPC, bought in rank placements, and worse. Look at MSN propping up Looksmart and their outrageous scheme switch last year (2003).
I'd hate Google to lose the ethics and quality commitment it has demonstrated thus far - but it is bound to be under continual pressure (eg: to extend sponsored ads and adwords into the clean returns space).
Another fear is my sites take a hit for no good reason, as above. Another is Microsoft sneaking in 'smart tags' or some other unethical unreasonable attack on clean search engines via their control of the browser market.
As far as the Industry, the signs are OK, considering it is fast becoming accepted as a mainline advertising media channel. No one likes a monopoly, so its good Microsoft hasn't been able to dominate the search engine space because of competition from Google.
When you think about it, a monopoly have been exploited really horribly. They would have very much devalued the web itself.
Everything is relative in this game, as in life.
FINALLY
Read the story above as a whole and it kinda fits doesn't it? As soon as I started putting something in, other than greed for that statistic of being #1, I started reaping some rewards. As soon as I started building stuff that genuinely helped people, I started to prosper.
Anyhow... that's my broad brush background and snapshot of the past and present, which may prove mildly interesting to some. It's a rough ride in which it is SOOO easy to get squashed, either by your own mistakes (I lost a prime site just this week through an accident!) or by events and the search engine market itself, which is NEVER stagnant.
We are competing using a medium which itself is competing - a recipe for instability and unpredictability.
