anam32 - 2:48 am on May 3, 2003 (gmt 0)

Hello, new here and no expert on any of this, but learning all the time :-)

I have a new site that went up around mid-March. It isn't in Google yet (yes, I know, patience...something I confess I am short of ;-) My main 'competition' consists of a one page site not updated since the year 2000, and another site that hasn't even existed at all for some time. These 2 results make me wonder if all this SEO is ultimately a bunch of hogwash. How can those sites remain in the index, and be at #1 and #2 to boot? The search term is very narrow, these sites being about a particular person.

I have never spammed and have tried to apply everything I've gleaned from reading around the net in trying to optimize the site. META, alt tags, not too many outgoing links, very good/relevant title and description, good and highly relevant content, no Javascript, no cookies required, no Flash, no frames, etc. It is the single best resource that has ever been out there on its subject matter, bar none. I don't have a ton of incoming links at this point but I've gotten a few well ranked sites linked to me. Have I just wasted my time on being so diligent? Can anyone explain why 2 dead pages have been on top for so long (at least 6 months that I can recall offhand, and likely far, far longer). Is it really all down to incoming links?

Don't know if this has any relevance but Overture listed it very quickly. Unfortunately their link goes to an internal page. Is that a terribly bad thing?

Thanks for your thoughts :-)