Alright so I made you click the thread, good . The big secret that most people miss is that Search Engines Follow People. What does that mean exactily, and more importantly what does it mean for you and your website. Well basically it means that if you want to dominate the search engines you're going to need to stop building websites for search engines and start building websites for people. How do you think top websites like Wikipedia, and the likes TechCrunch and Mashable have millions of people from the search engines? It's because they care about creating killer content that people want to share and people will share and talk about. You want to create content that's so killer everybody on earth is building links for you. The greatest link building strategy in the world is people sharing links. So forget the BS like adsense and affiliate links and try plastering your site with killer content that people are going crazy, if people are not spamming your email box begging you for more then you're failing at what you are doing. Now get to work!
Agreed... but I would add - "Naturally" shared links are the most powerful... rather than any old link on any old page... I know Matt Cutts once said "a link, is a link, is a link"... but if you do some in depth research on where the backlinks are for the pages in the top 10 of most keywords - they are in relevant places, and usually naturally occurring Just my two cents ;-)
Content is key - and building natural links as well. If you can't do either, then you're not going to have SEO success.
I see to many people worrying about the search engines and not worrying about what people think of their website and brand and they wonder why they still fail at the internet game. It's because no matter how well you rank for a search term you'll never make it online if people don't like what you have to offer and don't like your message or website.
This is a good statement if we talk about online businesses but in some cases that is not so cost effective, depending on your goals... Let's say that you have some home business and you are repairing furniture. All that you want to do is get some more customers and do your furniture repair in your area. So, will you pay thousands of $$ to make "killer content" and pay thousands of $$ for someone to make your website and thousands of $$ for someone to lead your online business and all you need is not 3 calls per day but 6 calls per day and you are happy. So, will you invest thousands of $$ in all of that or pay $500 for some links and get that 6 calls per day and do what you want and like and not to care about internet at all ?
@m2webs in that case you would need to simply optimize for LOCAL search - now being migrated to Google Places and perhaps not worry so much about all those back links. Your focus on local search should be with 1. a well optimized site for the local keywords 2. pages / account with as many reputation / review sites as possible (ie yelp and angies list) 3. presence in local directories. We found that paying a local paper to list your business on their website (its very cheap) goes a long way (just be sure your physical address is in the same format / layout as it is in your google places page) There is more to it - but we have found that these should be the minimum focus when it comes to local results in the "o pack"