Teach a man to fish

Bulletin boards versus tutorials

[Mohamed_E]

My site is completely non-commercial, so for the first year I spent all my time on content and did not worry about how many visitors I had.

Six months ago I decided to see what I could do to increase the number of visitors. Early in my search I was fortunate enough to find a site with good tutorials. In half a day I learned three important things:

• Search engines and directories are very different beasts. Search engines will go out and look for you, no need to submit. Directories will not, you must submit to be included.
  
• All text is not equal! Keywords in TITLE and H1 tags is are much more important than the same keywords in the text.
  
• GET LINKS!
  

This information was extremely useful. I submitted my site to Yahoo!, Zeal and ODP. I rewrote all TITLE and H1 tags, removing the evocative prose and using appropriate keywords. And I started seeking links, an ongoing process.

Having done that I found that the site no longer had anything useful to teach me. The Google home page led my to their user support newsgroup, and a post there led me to Webmasterworld.

I had no difficulty producing a bulletted list of what the tutorials taught me. Producing a similar list for what I learned at Webmasterworld would be far more difficult. The most important thing I learned was how to learn for myself. I did occasionally post a request for advice on something specific, but mainly I read and thought.

The tutorial site gave me a fish [amatecon.com], for which I am grateful. Webmasterworld taught me how to fish, a far more useful gift.

Thanks to all of you!

[ScottM]

The link you mentioned has a quote missing:

"Give a man a fish...and it won't count against your limit for the day"

[AkanDian rain]

Good Stuff... (tear, tear)
Just another example of the POWER of the Internet---human interaction.

[Ed_Gibbon]

A little off topic, but I have always said:

"Give a man a fish, feed him for a day . . . teach a man to fish, and you'll have a hell of a time getting him to work for minimum wage and no benefits."