Search Engine Optimization

Since launching my first web store in November 2007 I’ve been reading tons of information on the subject of Search Engine Optimization and have discovered the quest for first page to be a frustrating challenge.

When my site launched I achieved second page ranking within a sort time span; an unheard of accomplishment by many ‘experts’ standards. Over the past weeks I’ve had plenty of phone calls from people in the web marketing industry trying to sell me online advertising or their method of optimizing my site and when I mention I’m on the second page of Google there is a stunned silence on the other end followed by the question, “How long have you had your site launched?” because they simply can’t understand how it’s possible for a newly created site to be positioned that close to the top page of the search engine.

As of this writing I’m not listed in the top 100. That happened before; just after Christmas 2007 when, upon reading more information on optimization I used the advice and changed some things on my site and bam. I was sent to Google hell. Not a fun place to be for anyone, and there are many there right now with me who don’t deserve to be there but are trying to get out.

I had managed to redeem myself by undoing what I had changed and hallelujah, I was put back on the second page within a couple of days.

Should have left well enough alone but I did it again and yep, I’m currently back in Search Engine purgatory and wonder what in the world I did to achieve punishment this time. According to everything I’ve read I should be nearer to the top than ever before but instead I went backwards—a lot.

What I don’t understand is how some of the sites on the top page remain there when, according to everything I’ve read, their sites aren’t optimized nearly enough. One of the sites doesn’t have more then two “keywords” in their Mega tags and the two they do have have nothing to do with the content of their page. According to ‘authorities’, my site should have taken them down a peg or two but instead I’m nowhere to be seen and they continue to reign supreme while others, whose pages are clearly more ‘optimized’ burn in Hades.

Of course there are still plenty of people around who would willingly ‘teach’ me the secret to success for a price I simply can not afford so I continue to study optimization, and wonder why the whole top page thing couldn’t be simpler and fairer for everyone. After all, a keyword search for my product yields 278,000 sites for the same item. This means, since there can only be 10 on the top page, others are NEVER going to sell anything unless some leprechaun spreads his luck upon them.

If the Search Engines would create a way to rotate the sites so that once a day the results very with different ‘stores’ everyone could have a piece of the Internet pie, and since it appears as though the stores currently sell dealerships and or affiliate programs they would still be making money each day I can’t fathom why rotation wouldn’t be a better method than the optimization game.

I’m not betting the Search Engines are going to jump on my idea like a dog to a bone but what the heck. Since I’m currently in their hell I don’t have anything else to do but dream.