If your SEO fails, what is next?

[adbart]

From personal experience, I can tell you that trying to gain a good search engine ranking for the keyword "web design" is practically impossible.

Does anyone have any ideas on this front?

Also, what would you recommend as good alternatives to search engine rankings in order to get more traffic?

[janeth]

Nothing is impossible, but you have not even tried to rank for web design.

At best Yahoo shows 31 links to your site.

Google shows 2 and MSN shows 11.

Your links point back to your URL and are not using your keywords for the anchor text.

Your site does not look to be optimized very well.

And your starting off with a very hard to get keyword.

[vri]

Generally with broader and more competitive terms it comes down to resources and time. You can get into the game by focusing on a specific niche. Your Area + Web Design, Profession + Web Design etc.

I also ran into this article that seems to address your question. Sales Without Search Engines

[adbart]

Cheers vri. Interesting article.

[chabbs]

Great article vri.

I'm a strong believer in building brand recognition. When people know your site and visit it by typing the url or because they have it bookmarked makes seo efforts pale in comparison. SEO is important to do, but once you've set the foundation move on to building a brand name.

In the last major Google update "Allegra" I lost all of my traffic from Google. Let me tell you that the first few days were hard to believe what had happened. Days and weeks went by with absolutely no traffic from Google. Even though this happened I had protected my site from this type of event by building link partnerships with other sites. The fact that people liked the content on the site made them link to it without me requesting it and this built hundreds of inbound links. I continued getting traffic to my site because I had built a brand. People know the site and kept visiting daily. The best part of all was that my sales were not affected at all. Google may bring a lot of traffic, but it doesn't mean that it converts very well.

When I lost the traffic from Google I made changes to the site. The changes were positive and Google has started sending me healthy traffic again.

The moral of the story is this; don't rely solely on seo to make your business or site run. Use it, but think long term and build something that people will remember and come back not because they found you in a search result, but because you made their experience on your site memorable.

Ray Croc said it best;" Take care of the customers and the business will take care of itself".

[greeneagle]

Dittos adbart,

That's a very good article by "Split" vri, thanks! "Sales Without Search Engines" is well written, informative and straight to several points.

I couldn't agree with the "Wide Spread" concept of using different readily available and inexpensive tools to generate "Generic Links (IBL's)" any more. - It's simply using the multiple tools or digital "channels" available, to accomplish a powerful common goal - Promotion. "Multi-plexing" the digital Promotional Input makes sense.

I admit I hadn't explored the SEOGuy Site in the depth they merrit, prior. I am impressed! There's also a related article/thread there that I'd like to draw attention to, entitled; "Why You Need Outbound Links", that has some value.

I haven't personally experienced the so-called; "Google Sandbox" yet, but the concept has some logical value, so I have reservations about drawing the same test conclusions. Never-the-less, there is good value there.

Ken

[adbart]

What do you think about this "outbound links" theory?

I must say, it seems to be relevant, but just far too easy.

If they really are valuable, then why doesn't everyone fill their website with relevant o/b links?

[greeneagle]

Maybe you can help me adbert. I have a client with 2 IBL's recognized by GOOGLE and only a handful of significant OBL's.

Why did they go from a PR4 to a PR6 last update?

Is it better to give than receive now?

Ken

[adbart]

Maybe you can help me adbart. I have a client with 2 IBL's recognized by GOOGLE and only a handful of significant OBL's.

Ken,

This count of inbound links is misleading. Google apparently only gives a "random sample" at any one time (most certainly to disadvantage webmasters from having good information). It may be that your client does have more than 2 IBL's though... I clicked on the URL you give just now, and it came up with 3.

Why did they go from a PR4 to a PR6 last update?

As for PageRank, goodness knows. From what I've researched over the last 24 hours about this outbound-link phenomenon, it seems that the significance of OBL's really does help PageRank status.

I guess this means also that SERP's are affected by the existence of relevant OBL's, but I remain sceptical of their real value.

One of my sites, a golfing equipment e-business has had relatively little SEO done in its favour, and that managed to score a PR3 after the last update.

I fail to see why, unless Google really is becoming content-driven. The evidence suggests otherwise.

[eeko]

I have to agree with the theory that OBL's are now just as important as IBL's. And to take that a step further... I have come to believe that all IBL's do not have to point to the index page. If you site structure is good then an IBL to an inner page which is good for the visitor will eventually help to boost that inner pages PR and ultimately the index pages PR down the road. Cross linking certain related internal pages will also help. This of course is a long term process and patience is the key.