Forum Moderators: open
PHASE 1 (1996-99?)
I 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).
We 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.
Fortunately 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!
I 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!
The 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.
I guess we are late 1999 or early 2000 by now, and yes, 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. Guess 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 'Black 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. Should 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 that they would rank sites on merit as much as possible if we (webmasters) developed good, ON TOPIC informative sites for the keywords in question. OK then - we'll see. I took that course (generally) and hoped that 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 that they take the decision, as RC Jordon states, to accept "collateral damage". I can't accept that at all and never will - and 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 will just have to see - but so far so good - and 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 +)
The future I guess....
My hopes:
- Google continues to play fair and continues to understand that 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.
- It does NOT buy into the idea that 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 Fears:
- 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. 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).
- Obviously another fear is that my sites take a hit for no good reason, as above.
- And another is that Microsoft sneak in 'smart tags' or some other unethical unreasonable attack on clean search engines via their control of the browser market.
The Industry:
- I'd say the signs are OK, considering it is fast becoming accepted as a mainline advertising media channel. No-one likes a monopoly, but I think we have fallen very lucky that the near monopoly has been acquired by a firm like Google with some decent principles. When you think about it, some of the other SEs would have exploited this really horribly... they would have very much devalued the web itself. I think therefore Google do deserve some latitude when things go off course a bit, as they have recently. Everything is relative in this game, as in life.
FINALLY
Karma. 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.
Sir Francis Bacon: "Knowledge is Power"
I agree with the "put something in first..." principle.
Chris.
Excellent post Napoleon - a good fun read and interesting retrospective of the last few years.
I also remember those heady 1996-1999 days. I was spamming like crazy very succesfully too (though like you didn't sell much, and never really intended to - was just a competitive streak in me raising it's ugly head).
I took a break in the middle, and here I am back in 2002/3.
Times have changed, for the better, and I do believe in your overall philosophy. You can treat people as stupid for a bit, but to be succesful long term, you need to inject a little soul. And I think that's your overall conclusion.
TJ
The days when all you got from the serps were keyword stuffed, megga crosslinked, multi animated gif'd banner farms with a black background promoting porn.
And that was for the phrase "second hand ford parts"
How things have changed.
I never managed to get to grips with SEO in those days, how I wish I'd stuck at it though.
What I have learnt over the pst 2 or 3 months while on WW is the same point that you put across so good in this thread. And that is - "In order to gain... first you have to give"
But When I look at it in perspective I can see that these days are just as interesting and I guess any time entering the SEO sector will be. The game is always changing and being 19 I have lots of time to experience what you once did. These are exciting times we live in. Technology grows with leaps and bounds everyday and of course the search engines will follow. It is quite dawnting thinking where will we be in 10, 20 years. The evolution we have taken as a community (even though I was oblivious in the fledgling years) in the last 7 years! It is astonishing. 7 years that is all. What of 14 years 28 years.
I am sorry to carry on but I find it truly eye opening. The concept of this evolution. The way things are going it could be the case that in a decade all technology as far as computers and IT are concerned could be built solely around the internet. Performance etc. could be judged on how easily a piece of technology is intergrated with the web.
Well there is my 2 cents. Thank you for posting that Napoleon. Really interesting to read someones story from back in the day;-)
Happy Surfing
Skye
hehehe, damn good read Napoleon, thanks!
Nick
Something I have noticed among the SEO's that post here is that MOST of us are "over the hill". Like a fine wine - perhaps you have mature before becoming an effective SEO...
Y'all have a nice day!
Chris, VSOP.
Maybe at the same time you can play with other sites utilizing the most efficient SEO techniques: time to time you can have new sites that can fly high, until new radars are implemented. You risk the plane (SITE), but the pilot (SEO)survives!
I think that a lot of spammers adopt this strategy.
Maybe Google in these days is adopting filters that monitor new sites: how they grow, how they increase linkpopularity etc. Probably is easier to kill spammers when they are taking off.
I learned that I like to sleep at night! Playing on the edges is like... well, skating on thin ice. The world can (and probably will) collapse at anytime.
Get the right content, built in the right way, and other people will do a lot of the work for you. They will WANT to link to you and your site will grow in stature.
Yes, it's harder than dodging the SE bullets at first, in that creating content takes time and effort. But in the longer term it is far easier. That's certainly how it has worked out for me (though just reading another thread some guys might not like me for saying it).
Those days when a load of 1 pixel hidden links at the bottom of the pages cross linked were enough to give all of your sites great listings are gone.
Looks like content is king now days and its the only way to keep our sites up there.
I share the fears of some of the others posting on this thread that paid for stuff gets better listing, although I hope that search engines stand on the principle that the provision of the best quality results rather than he who pays wins kicks the pay for top listing out.
Unfortunately like us the search engines need to make a return, Looksmart shafted us first then Yahoo. Google has been fair in its own way although I know that a lot of us are still licking our wounds from the last update. I'm hoping they don't sell out and go the same way.
