Ask the SEO Guru

Today is all about freedom. Freedom is wonderful and I believe should be given to every living human being on the planet without them even having to ask for it. It should be like the air we breathe. it should just be.

But sometimes the dreams that freedom offers aren't so free. They cost money. What I want to do is expand the horizons of your own freedom to do and go where you dream. The easiest way I know of is through residual passive income. That is available to you on the web. And the good news is, it isn't that hard if you are simply willing to learn a little and spend a little time.

Let me ask you, how would YOUR freedom be better if you could still study, still work, still spend time with your friends and family BUT earn an extra Rs 1000 per month? What about 5000? what about 1 lakh! :O Well there are people doing that and even more right now and YOU can be too.

Adsense can do that for you if you just understand and apply a few simple basics. Banners ads, text ads, sponsorships, affiliate programs or even selling your own home made jewelry or maybe your own recipes from your webiste. The possibilities are endless. And you have the FREEDOM to learn how to get traffic, top search engine placements, how to make money from your videos on youtube and about a thousand other ways. I can teach you. I don't know all the ways and I can't make you rich without working at it, but I can show you a lot of things you didn't know before. I can open your eyes to why some people make money online and others don't. I can show you a lot of ways that bring you that passive, residual income.

AND as our free hosting family grows, others will learn and they will teach you too. I am promising everyone right now that I will do all in my power to see that any one who has a desire to help others will have a voice right here at Techndu. There is great power in a community that shares knowledge with each other.

Soon, with just a little focus and dedication on your part, you too will transform from the student to the teacher and then the circle will be complete. Remember, the more we give, the more we get.

For todays topic, I want to point out a concept that I first mentioned publicly years ago but it is still very relevant today. This is the first thing you really need to understand and accept about SEO. Once you understand this concpet, the rest becomes so much easier. Here ya go:

We do NOT manipulate search engines.

I've seen SEO, (whatever that is), defined as the art of manipulating the search engines. That is false. If you set out to place a web page on the first page of results for a target keyword or phrase thinking you are manipulating the search engine, you are doomed to fail. Thinking you are forcing the search engine to do anything is a mistake. Thinking you are hiding anything from a search engine is a mistake. The only answer to top placement is recognizing what a search engine does, accepting that, assessing the potential rewards and risks and working within those confines. In other words, learn and accept what a search engine wants and then give it to them they way they like to get it.

It is often very difficult and time consuming to identify exactly what it is a search engine does and how it does it. Algorithms can be very complex and just how far you want to dig is up to each individual doing the digging.  It really has nothing to do with how smart you are. It has much more to do with how much time and/or money you are willing to invest to learn the quirks of a specific engine.

With many people, myself included, there comes a point of diminishing returns where it makes more sense to simply understand the concepts and base your actions on educated guesses more so than researching another 100 pages under another 100 phrases on another search engine. Also, keep in mind, success breeds success. As long as you apply the concepts and your sites capture those top spots and generate sales, then you can accept that you are right and act accordingly.

The only person or persons who can manipulate a search engine, are the persons who have access to the admin panel and/or source code of that specific search engine. If you can't get to the admin panel, you can have no effect whatsoever on what that search engines does. All you can do is construct data that you feel is most likely to fall within the parameters of the algorithm. That is NOT manipulating search engines, that is learning how search engines work and then manipulating your page. No matter how vehemently some may disagree, that is a fact! No one can "help" a search engine find what they are looking for anymore than anyone can "make" a search engine do what they want. Search engines just do what they do. They are only a machine!

This may seem like a minor point to some, but this is the main concept that has caused so much division within the search engine marketing community. The misunderstanding or failure to recognize this concept is the reason some people try to hide content thinking they are fooling the search engines and why some people become so militant about saving the planet from search engine spammers. Both camps are missing the glaringly obvious.

I have no interest whatsoever in taking one side or the other. To me it is a stupid, pointless, circular debate with nothing but losers on both sides regardless of the outcome. You have to decide for yourself what to do with the information I pass on here. I only share it for the purpose of telling you how I became good at search placements in the hope that you become able to achieve top placements for yourself, hopefully making your web site more successful and a better resource to your target market. For those of you who want to know how to get more organic search engine traffic, learning, understanding and accepting this concept is the first step.

Any comment or question?