Forum Moderators: open
I use Google for quite a lot of things:-
* Know about something ("Buckeyes Track History")
* Find where i can get something that i know of ("Cheap Calling Cards")
* Find what others think of something that i know of ("Traffic Modelling using TP+" )
* Track recent developments ("Biography of Bill Gates")
* For Fun and trivia ("SpongeBob Trivia")
* Self-development ("What to do with life?")
The thing most of people who write/visit here are apparently wanting to get some traffic to their website and ofcourse to make some money out of the services and products they sponsor or sell. I am assuming that many people here are those who own a website (medium or small scale) and sells a number of stuff with a major competitor around. (Am i correct?)
Hypothetically, lets say X wants to buy a "widget". His sources of information would be
* non-online resources (TV, yellow pages, newspapers, Guides, Magazines, referal from friends, etc)
* online resources
Advantages of online resources are the exposure to numerous sources, anonymity etc..etc...One of the reasons someone would want to buy or get some services online is to get it cheap and fast and remain anonymous. But disadvantages are 'So many to choose from' and 'reliability'.
I am simply amazed at the time they spend on tuning their website to match search queries. What is the point in getting #1, when the user going to the next search result, when he realises that it is not what he is looking for?. People here go crazy when their website goes 2 positions down, their header and hidden links, blah..blah..blah...
Exposure comes by providing good services rather than tweaking the knob or watever else that can be tweaked. I dont recall Google ever made a banner advertisment (or the utterly annoying pop-ups) in their website or anywhere else. Even in the new AdSense, they didn't even put a single reference to google like ("Powered by Google"). They dont even care how they are ranked in their own index. All they care is 'how to give best service to the users'. Besides they are suprisingly frank on giving hints on how their system works. I looked long and hard at how Inktomi works and I couldn't find anything relevant than masked garbage. Even google publishes on their research works. What more could you ask for, when the game of this business is secrecy? Would webmasters been better off if they never told about pagerank or that they count the number of backward links?
I am not saying people here dont know that or dont do that. Just that, Web is a better place with Google. Does your site make the web a better place? Thinking on these lines will be most beneficial rather than having tons of argument on when the update, why this, why hidden text..etc..etc.. Ignore sneaking on how Google works (that's their job)..Just let the system work. Web will be a better place and hopefully, with your website contributing to it!
These are IMHO..Fire away your comments. Any sensible comments are gladly appreciated (even, requested).
Thanks
Go Google!
An SEO is interested in relevant users. When there are over 5000 widget sites, his job is to get a clients site as high as possible on the keyword 'widget' or something else relevant. If your interest, however, is scoring on keywords that are irrelevant to the site and in that way attracting an irrelevant audience you're a spammer, not an SEO.
Oraqref
That is really the best question of all. By keeping that in mind - enhancing the users experience - a webmaster is likely to have a successful site in the long term.
Excellend post Chndru! With all the SEO's at WebmasterWorld, it's nice to see a plain user posting their views from time to time. Brings everyone back to reality (including me!).
Jim
Is this the goal of a owner of a commercial Website (which many of us here are)?
Hhhm, I think my goal is to maximize profits, and do it ethicly.
It adds to the web the same thing any other SE adds.
Does it add fun? does it add musical creativity? does it add animations? Does it give the curve of sinY when x goes from 0 to 360.
Nope, but it points you there.
Now, does it make the web a better place? Why should it? All sites can be found using other SE?
I think the big G is over-rated, and if it wasn't for it's catchy name alot of people would have left it alone ages ago.
Because of its catchy name it has became popular, thus reaping the finacial benefits allowing them to expand.
If you are looking for beds for your grandma, you'll find them on all SE's......
Also, a better web for you may be different to another's ideal.
From a web-designers point of view it causes alot of stress. Just because of G's popularity, everyone HAS to try hard to get their site indexed. Why, because of people like yourself that check G to find and buy. Who-ever is at the top gets your custom, and your money and your e-mail for future offers!
2) Substance. Some people care about this, and can't appreciate the hype. Google gets high marks, despite (or perhaps _by_) omitting or deprecating many commercial sites in some competitive niches. In difficult informational searches, I haven't yet found anything comparable. Other than the traditional "ego" searches (I rank well for my name), I don't know how any site ranks, and I habitually go 50-100 sites down in the listings to find interesting stuff. (Caveat: I don't buy anything online except books.)
3) Control (we might call this the Sauron approach: "one ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them") Again, this path is effective for lots of users, who don't need a choice, or don't want to have to learn how to make a choice. (These, of course, are your ideal advertising marks.) M$N goes this way -- seize and raze the browser market, then use that monopoly to force M$N home pages and searches, capitalizing on the ignorance or carelessness of some users. It isn't fair to say they have no concern for quality. It is just that their definition of "quality" is "maximizing M$N advertising revenue." Google has a little "control" effect right now (they get the AOL and Yahoo users by default) but they could lose Yahoo any time.
Does your site make the web a better place?
Yes, it does. My site offers a service for free. If they are happy with the service and find it to be valuable, then I get the chance to earn their business.
The thing most of people who write/visit here are apparently wanting to get some traffic to their website and ofcourse to make some money out of the services and products they sponsor or sell. I am assuming that many people here are those who own a website (medium or small scale) and sells a number of stuff with a major competitor around. (Am i correct?)
Ummm... let see...well, it IS called Webmasterworld.
The website I created for a 20th class reunion was strictly for specific visitors - my old classmates. there was no need to worry about SEO. We gave everyone the address and they went there. The same for the community information website. It was in the local paper that most everyone read. they got the address and went there. Commercial sites are a different world entirely.
You bemoan the labor these skilled people put into their craft, but you unknowingly benefit from their skill when you do actually find "cheap calling cards".
Disclaimer: I use the Internet primarily for information. I only buy airline tickes online.
First of all, nice post... a user perspective, not a seo :)
It is true what you said about if it's not link #1 I will go to link #3 and buy there... but would you buy from #77 even if they have better offers? How could you know.. people don't go after page 3.
So that's the work from a lot of people here, make you see their sites.
Cheers
/SwiZZ
p.s: Being #1 or #4 doesn't make a difference for me...being #1 helps only my ego :)
"Google is No1 ONLY because of its catchy name and fast index page."
"It adds to the web the same thing any other SE adds."
Yes they do have a brilliant marketing brand and they have done really well to market it over the years but one must ask why they are who they are today. In my opinion, they are the forerunners of SE technology on which almost every other SE has modelled themselves. If it wasn't for them we might not have the web we have today......respect is due. Of course Yahoo is another favourable SE and I like them just as much as google but google just have that slight edge over the rest of the competition.
We must all admit that it is a lot better than having MSN reign supreme....isn't that a scary thought!
"Now, does it make the web a better place? Why should it? All sites can be found using other SE?"
Sure this is true, very much so. The only thing I have noticed maybe just in my market is that all the serps of all the other SE's are very similar to google's serps. Either cause they are provided results to them or those se's have modelled their search function around G's
My verdict.....long live the G. We will all rue the day anything happens to them;-)
Think EUO, not SEO
[blog.outer-court.com...]
However, it does greatly help to analyze your log-files to know what people enter in Google to end up on your site, even if you don't know which of those actually bought something, followed one of your ads, or whatever they could do on the site (unless you got a very good tracking system). But this really will put you into the visitor perspective, and you may suddenly realize what phrases and keys people put emphasis on. E.g. I get a lot of "natural phrased" questions, like "How do I ..." so then you can think about it like this:
If a visitor just asked "How do I ...?", how should I deliver the answer she's expecting?
Then you can possibly re-phrase existing content or keep this in mind for future pages.
BTW, you may not have your own webspace, or homepage, but you posted here, so in other words you used a content management system to publish your information. Think of yourself as a webmaster if you want... and you seem to know much more than I'd expect "normal" users to know.
Found something..might worth the read...nothing new..just a good compilation of some under-emphasized stuff. [australia.internet.com...]
Thanks
p.s If mod sniffs the link, can you post a search term to get to there?
