Brent Hodgson, Copywriter

Once upon a time there were Three Little Pigs Internet Marketers.

The Three Little Internet Marketers each dreamed of fortune, financial freedom and earning a passive income online - and one day they heard that Search Engine Optimisation was the key to their dreams.

Deciding to “give it a try”, the Three Little Internet Marketers set out to build their fortunes using SEO.

The First Little Internet Marketer

The First Little Internet Marketer came across a Clickbank site selling an SEO eBook - “Fast SEO Results Through User-Generated Content”. The salesletter spoke of overnight rankings on sites like Squidoo and Hubpages.

He sent his $97 via Paypal, downloaded the eBook and set about building his riches through Squidoo Lenses.

He worked hard, and it wasn’t long until this Little Internet Marketer began to see results - receiving a consistent stream of traffic, and the occasional sale. This encouraged him to build more pages on Squidoo, with each new page multiplying his traffic.

It didn’t matter that he didn’t have full control over the site’s content - he was making money. And there was no way Google the Big Bad G would possibly blow this sweet deal down.

“The eBook said that if the Big Bad G blows Squidoo down, and sends my pages down in rankings, I can always just to move onto other User Generated Content sites!” he squealed confidently. “I can’t lose!”

The Second Little Internet Marketer

The Second Little Internet Marketer scoffed at this strategy.

“It’s practically spamming Squidoo! It’s not for me.”

He read some blogs that spoke about the growth of video online, showing statistics, and explaining Google was now ranking video in search engines results pages really easily.

He decided to follow some tips, and create YouTube videos on longtail keywords that would generate traffic to his site.

It was a lot of hard work - but when he was done, his YouTube videos ranked well for several specific product names - all long tail keywords.

The Second Little Internet Marketer danced a little jig in delight!

These product names were “buy” keywords, and he was receiving a steady stream of new customers to his site.

He was making money. And there was no way the Big Bad G would possibly blow this sweet deal down.

“Video is the way of the future! The Big Bad G has to listen to what the market is saying.” he squealed confidently. “Anyway - YouTube is a Google asset. Why would they devalue this asset by knocking it down the SERPs”

The Third Little Internet Marketer

The third little internet marketer was skeptical of these strategies.

He’d been around long enough to see the rise-and-fall of keyword spamming, adsense article sites, reciprocal link strategies and other strategies that promised overnight result.

He decided that a more natural SEO approach was the best approach.

• Creating a site for users, not for search engines;
• Writing genuinely valuable content for his visitors;
• Building the type of site people would want to link to;
• Establishing relationships with other sites in his market;
• Building links from these topical sites;

His strategy wouldn’t get overnight results like his two friends’ strategies - in fact, it would take months - but once it was ranking well it was less likely to be “blown down” by the Big Bad G.

This was a wise approach.

Then the Big Bad G came along…

The Big Bad G was big, but he wasn’t bad. In fact, his motto was “Do No Evil”.

The Big Bad G just hated it when Little Internet Marketers exploited imbalances in his website ranking algorithm to get sites ranked with little effort.

You see, the Big Bad G was at the top of the food chain - his job was to make sure natural selection took place - that only the strongest sites survived at the top of the rankings.

The Big Bad G couldn’t allow people to achieve easy rankings!

He had to huff, and puff, and TWEAK HIS ALGORITHM.

The bit with the Huffing and Puffing

The Internet Marketer who had built his strategy around Squidoo was first.

“Little Marketer, Little Marketer, stop this at once”

“Not by the cash in my Clickbank Account!”

“Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your sites out!”

The Big Bad G huffed and puffed, changed his algorithm, and blew Squidoo Lenses down the rankings.

The First Little Internet Marketer squealed and ran to Hubpages… Then Tumblr… Then Netscape… but each time the Big Bad G would follow, penalising these sites, and sending his User Generated Content tumbling down the rankings.

Eventually, the First Little Internet Marketer gave up on SEO in despair. “It just didn’t work anymore.” he complained on forums.

The Second Internet Marketer’s Turn…

The Second Little Internet Marketer was left largely unscathed by the recent huffing and puffing… But it wasn’t long until The Big Bad G decided that video content was over-represented in results pages for long-tail terms.

Again, the Big Bad G huffed and puffed and changes his algorithm.

Suddenly, the Second Little Internet Marketer’s stream of new visitors from YouTube dried up.

“Oh well, it was good while it lasted” he sighed in dismay, and moved on.

And finally…

This whole time, the third little internet marketer’s site was largely untouched by these algorithmic changes.

That’s because he had been concentrating on building genuine value to achieve rankings, instead of a site that exploited an weakness or imbalance in the Big Bad G’s system.

So his site had been steadily creeping up the rankings.

Occasionally, the third internet marketer’s site would face the Big Bad G’s huffing and puffing algorithmic changes, and his site would go up or down a few places.

But being built so solidly, on a foundation of quality content, genuine value and natural
links, his site was steadfast and reliable in its rankings.

Eventually, his two internet marketing friends saw his results, and came around to share his view.

They realised that Google’s algorithm is designed to let quality sites “float to the top” naturally, and part of this is making it hard for sites to rank well quickly and easily. That’s why only sites that put in the effort over the long term achieved long term SEO results.

The time and effort that they spent exploiting a “trick” meant that they built no value or asset for themselves, and when the “trick” was discovered and closed by the Big Bad G,

their efforts had gone to waste.

The moral of the story is simple:

Don’t look for the latest Fast-Rankings SEO trick - focus on building a valuable website.

Sooner or later “holes” in Google’s algorithm are closed, imbalances balanced, and the SEO tricksters will be left with little to show for their hard work.

Oh, and don’t be a greed turn you into a Little Internet Marketing pig either.

Brent

Popularity: 9%