I have had websites for a long time. I think I developed my first one in 1999. I did take some time off but eventually came back online in 2006 and have had some presence in the form of websites ever since. I experienced moderate success and some monumental failures. My latest attempt is my custom coin website custom-coins.info.
I was spoiled in 2008 by some almost instant success with some action figure websites I started. I took advantage of some of the search engine loopholes that existed back then. 2008 or 2009 was my best year online, I’m NOT sure which but they were both pretty decent, however one did stand above the other.
The search engines have changed a lot since then. As I look back on it now, they probably had too. Some of the loopholes were pretty big, obvious and used extensively by people like me and that’s one reason they were shut down. Additional reasons would include spammers, scammers and probably just some pretty unsavory individuals exploiting said loopholes.
My websites didn’t fail me necessarily – not as much as I failed them. See I did something really stupid. I rested on my laurels or felt an unearned since of accomplishment and thought I had reached my pinnacle. Like there was nothing left to do beside count my money. Well the money stops when the traffic stops and a website should also be known as an unending work site. The job of a webmaster is never complete if they are responsible for everything regarding their website. The fact of the matter is that a website owner always needs to be thinking about marketing their site, unless your website is in the top 5000 websites on the internet or your brand is a household name or you’ve hit a level of income that you’re satisfied with.
The truth is I like to blame Google for some of my failures as a webmaster but the harsh reality is that I was the one who chose to do things the way I did them. No one put a gun to my head and made me do things my way except for my own free will and ignorance. I thought I could short cut my way to the top and stay there. NO sir!
Don’t ever let anyone tell you it’s easy or at least don’t believe them. The reality is that you can still probably achieve a high SERP for certain keyword phrases without a ton of work. That’s always going to be the case. However your most competitive keywords are still going to be a huge challenge unless you do one main thing above all else; okay two things. Make your website nice and be credible.
Credibility is the thing that Google seems to value every bit as much as any SEO. Of course you still need a solid back link profile and original quality content but credibility is incredibly meaningful. Stop and think about this. Google created Google Plus for two reasons. One, to create their own form of social media and number two, so webmasters and web authors could claim their own original content.
Credibility my friend. Honestly you can look at the webmaster tools that Bing and Google offer as your website’s first level of credibility and it goes on from there. You can claim your content using a Google profile, claim your website using Alexa and WOT, buy a SSL certificate, put your website on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the list goes on.
The desire and or need for more credible websites and webmasters was the spearhead that changed search results and search algorithms forever.
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