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The Truth About SEO

When we started our website we were rookies to the internet. Sure we could navigate the internet, send and receive email, check stock quotes and the weather, but really had no clue how things worked. As a matter of fact, we're probably not a whole lot better now, but we have learned some things that should probably be passed along. SEO was one of the things we knew nothing about, but the concept sounded wonderful! Get your website in the top ten results on major search engines for terms that relate to your website. Terms that people would type into the search engines. This sounds wonderful, and would be wonderful; the problem is that no one wants to tell you the truth about it. That is until now.

What exactly is SEO? It's an acronym and stands for search engine optimization. The theory is to optimize your website so that the search engines will like it, and then rank you height for search results. For example if you sell pork sandwiches, and someone types the phrase "pork sandwiches" into a search engine, ideally you would like your website to be the first result. The theory is if your website is the first result, you would then receive a bunch of traffic, which you would. That is if people actually search for the term "pork sandwiches". The bottom line is that SEO is optimizing your website so that it's friendly to search engines.

When we were rookies, our webmaster said if we spent fifty bucks a month he could "optimize" our site so that it would be in the top search results. What he didn't explain, and I realized later, was that all he was doing was submitting the site to search engines. Terms that were proprietary were ranking well on most search engines, in fact these terms ranked number one. He said to me once, "those are good terms". Then I realized the truth. Of course they were "good terms" and we ranked very high on search results. It was because no one searched for these terms because they were proprietary! The public didn't know what a "gang hook" was, so of course if you type the term gang hook into Google, our site would come up. We quickly stopped paying fifty bucks a month for something that was accomplishing nothing! And just so you know, we're still at the top for the term gang hook.

The problem is that this is the type of thing that happens. When you're new to the arena, people take advantage of the things you don't know. The bottom line is that optimizing your site takes time. You have to pick the phrases that you want to optimize, and then incorporate them into your site. And phrases that are incredibly popular (and get searched for a lot), are out of reach to the average website. No one wants to admit this, but it's true.

The bottom line is that optimizing your website takes time and effort. You have to exchange links with other websites, write articles, distribute press releases, and anything else you can think of to get your website noticed. Don't be like we were and think that you can simply pay a company fifty bucks a month and end up in the top ten search results for terms actually relating to your website. This is a fallacy, and you might as well save your money. Think about it (which is what we should have done), if it were as simple as paying fifty bucks a month, wouldn't everyone and their brother be in the top ten results? It's unrealistic to assume that SEO is that simple. Keep plugging away, doing the things such as those mentioned here and the results will come in time.

Trevor Kugler - Co-founder of JRWfishing.com Trevor has more than 15 years of business experience and 25 years of fishing experience. He currently raises his three year old daughter in the heart of trout fishing country -