We’re all familiar with the story of the three little pigs. One builds his house out of straw, another builds his house out of sticks and the other builds his house out of bricks. Along comes the big bad wolf who huffs and puffs and blows down the straw house. The house of sticks meets the same fate. But in spite of his huffing and puffing, the big bad wolf is unable to collapse the house made of bricks.
But a lesser known tale is that of the three little webmasters. The first little webmaster built his website with stuffed keywords, duplicate articles, spun text and a host of other on-site mischief. But along came the big bad panda who huffed and puffed and blew that website right out of Google’s search results.
So the second little webmaster built his website with original content and went out and created thousands of bookmarks, submitted his site to thousands of free SEO directories, spun thousands of articles and made a resource page with a link exchange program. But along came the big bad penguin who huffed and puffed and blew that website right out of Google’s search results.
The third little webmaster, seeing the fate of his comrades, decided he needed to make his website immune to the huffing and puffing of any rogue pandas, penguins or other black and white trouble makers that might be lurking about. How did he do it? He followed the advice of the zookeeper who let those foul creatures into the public in the first place.
Webmaster Guidelines
Unless you started learning SEO yesterday, you’ve probably read and reread Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. I don’t think I need to go in depth on these guidelines. If you don’t know them, stop reading right now and go read them. It will contribute a lot more to your SEO knowledge than silly pig analogies.
Now as SEO practitioners, we tend to focus on the obvious things in the guidelines, like including a sitemap, checking page load times, using a robots.txt file and all of that good stuff. But in my recent rereading of the guidelines, I found something that others have touched on in the past but that I consider to be profound. Under the quality guidelines section, Google asks this question:
“Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
I can tell you this much- if search engines didn’t exist, neither would about 80% of the Internet. Now ask yourself this question: if search engines didn’t exist, would 80% of your links? Would 80% of your content?
This might sound a little crazy, but the best SEO you can do right now is no SEO. Yes, follow the guidelines previously mentioned. I would consider this search engine compliance more than I would search engine optimization. But don’t go around the Internet looking for any and every opportunity to do something that is going to increase your search engine rankings.
Get Traffic Like Search Engines Don’t Exist
This is something Rand has talked about for quite some time. This is why he started Inbound.org and shares information about inbound marketing like this. I can’t stress enough how important this information is. By focusing on other traffic sources and ignoring search engines, you’ll find search engines won’t be able to ignore you.
With that in mind, I’d like to share a few things I have done as if search engines didn’t exist. Hopefully these real life examples can be beneficial to you.
Wikipedia
Anyone can become a Wikipedia editor. I’ll admit, learning their editing software is very, very tricky. But it can be done, and it is well worth it. You’ve probably noticed while reading articles in Wikipedia that some will have this little guy:
What this is really saying is, “I am a golden opportunity!” Here’s what you do. Go to Google and perform this search:
site:en.wikipedia.org “this section requires expansion” + keyword
Your keyword can be treadmill, bicycle, shoes, whatever. You will then see every Wikipedia entry with that word that has a section requiring expansion. You then see what it is they need more info about. Go over to your website and put together a comprehensive article covering that topic.
Now become a Wikipedia editor and edit the entry that needed help. Fill it out with your new knowledge you just acquired from creating an article and cite your article as a source. I’ve gotten at least 2 visitors each day from that citation link. You can too.
Blog Comments
No, your name is not “cash advance payday loan 24 hours” and you’re not commenting on blogs no one reads. Here’s what you do. Find a blog related to your niche that people actually read. Find the most recent post you can that doesn’t have very many comments yet.
If your site is www.ExampleName.com then the name you use should be Example Name. Your email should be [email protected] or [email protected]. You should attach a gravatar to this email that is either a picture of you or your website’s logo. Leave your homepage in the website field.
Now leave a real comment. Not something stupid like “your blog is pretty!” Leave a real, genuine comment. Ask a question or two. Once you’ve done this, make a spreadsheet. Keep note of the URL of the blog post you just commented on. Each day, go through those URL’s and see if your comment is live. Once it is live, keep checking back to see if the admin or someone else has replied to you. If they have, reply back. Start a conversation.
I can’t tell you how many referrals I get to my websites just from links in my blog comments. If you have something good to say, people will check you out. Including the blog owner, which can have many extra benefits.
Got your attention, didn’t I? The last point is do something to get attention. A few months ago I heard about cash mobs for the first time. I loved the idea and there wasn’t already a cash mob where I live. So I figured I would start one.
I made a website for my new cash mob and set up a page on Facebook and an account on Twitter. In no time at all I had 100 likes, had been interviewed on the local radio station as well as a state-wide radio program and at our first event I was interviewed for the biggest news channel in my state. That interview aired during the Sunday night news.
That kind of attention and exposure is what drives traffic. I tripled my Facebook likes, added Twitter followers and saw a big spike in my website traffic after that. I can’t tell you how to get attention in your niche, but stop being like everybody else! Do something different and unique and you’ll get attention.
A House Of Bricks
Remember that third little pig? He survived because he built a house of bricks. And if anyone has ever laid brick before, you know you do it one brick at a time. Building an entire house of bricks takes time. Your panda-proof or penguin-proof website won’t happen overnight. But if you just comply with Google’s guidelines and then get traffic like Google doesn’t exist, you’ll find that all the huffing and puffing of any assortment of wild creatures won’t blow you away.
