It Woz The Blog Wot Done It!
Posted by Paul Woodhouse at February 15th, 2005
I’ve just had a phone call from some chap asking me if I’d like to be #1 on Google within the hour.
I let him babble a bit until he asked me whether it was something I’d consider paying for. I knew the end was nigh and that I could piss on his chips by mentioning to him that we rank #1 for stainless steel planters and that the SERPS have improved significantly this past month across the board. (You can view a screenshot of them here)
I then went onto mention blogging and that he really ought to give it a whirl.
The poor bugger started to splutter as he realised he might have just bitten a bit more off than he could chew and didn’t even have a straw leg to stand on.
I don’t deny that he could’ve plopped us up there within the hour and it’d probably be a worthwile experiment to see how it goes. But, we’re a small business on a tiny budget and can assure you that paying for such services is out of the question.
It’s about a year ago that I started the Butler Sheetmetal Ltd site and also the first time I’d ever touched one. I’d never touched a blog and I thought SEO and SERPS were something you had to attend when they stopped your welfare benefits.
I’m entirely self-taught and, although it might be a steep learning curve, t’internet isn’t that bad a place to learn about t’internet. I’m hardly saying that I’m now an expert, but I’ve certainly read those who are and applied their wisdom - sometimes well and sometimes not so well. I also understand there’s plenty still to learn and improve upon aswell as keep abreast of.
But, if I could go back a year knowing what I know now, the only thing I’d have done differently would be to have a blog from the off. It’s now the most crucial aspect of our web presence by a country mile.
It’s just a shame that it took so long to work it out.
I agree with the net being a great place to learn net skills and wisdom. First thing to do, and it’s not a lot of fun, but you can become a genius quickly, is to learn how to evaluate online information credibility. This has to be the first lesson in the education process. Otherwise, all the rest can potentially be worthless garbage, and you wouldn’t even know it! To newbies, start at Consumer Reports Web Watch, then learn how to go to reputable edu, org, or industry leader sites, and link to what they point to, rather than doing search engine expeditions into possibly malicious rogue site territory, where spyware and Trojans abound.
http://www.consumerwebwatch.org
http://www.counterhack.net
http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html
Watch out for “web credibility” sites that are con jobs.
And you’ll soon find out the con sites as there’s generally more than one of them spouting the same nonsesne moonlighting as some kind of authority.
Thanks for that, Steven.
It’s always fun to get a call from one of those scam “SEO” companies (who give real professionals a bad name). Since they really know very little about the field, as you so wonderfully pointed out, it’s often fun to get them to announce how little they really know. Perhaps it might give them pause about attempting to scam other business people.
He was so certain of himself, though. I’ve found SEO to be quite painstaking at times and is one of the reasons why I love having a blog. I know I could probably do it better, but it’s worth blogging for the SEO benefits alone.