Introduction
Optimizing your website for search engine placement is referred to as Search Engine Optimization or SEO. There are gazillions of companies out there that will do this for you for a fee. They tell you that they will put you on the first page of search results on the search engines. The problem I have with this, is how many customer do they have? If they have enough customers to run a viable business, it seems they will have more than ten fighting for the same placement.
When I first got deeply involved in SEO, I was working on Junk Yard Dog®. At that time, I ranked high on Google and Yahoo for keywords like "Junk Yard", "Junk Yard Dog" but I ranked 53 for "Used Auto Parts". After I became a member of STW , I learned enough that within 3 months I ranked number 2 on Google for used auto parts. Now, 4 years later, I vary between 3 and 5 on "Used Auto Parts", but number one on many other keywords.
Check out these keywords on Google:
| Used Auto Parts | Junk Yard | Salvage Yard |
| Used Car Parts | Junkyard | Salvage Yard Auto Parts |
| Junk Yard Auto Parts | Auto Salvage |
Now, see what Yahoo has done to me:
Search Junk Yard Dog's meta description tag in quotes
Search Junk Yard Dog's Meta Page title in quotes
If you can find Junk Yard Dog® in the search results, you have more patience than I. I have contacted Yahoo about this and they say I must have violated some of their submission rules. That is a load of crap. I am still in their directory, but have been blacklisted in their index. When I first got in their index in January, 1999, I was getting 250 visitors per day, and it just went up from their, and for years, I got more traffic from Yahoo, than any other source. Here is what happened. A few years ago, I paid Inktomi for paid inclusion via Network Solutions . I paid for these sites. Junk Yard Dog®, Used Parts Central and A Place to Go and some others. After the first year, I didn't feel it was worth the expense, and did not renew. Then, I disappeared from Inktomi's search results. I didn't care, I hadn't been getting any traffic anyway.
Then D-Day came when Yahoo purchased Inktomi and started using the Inktomi index. These three site now disappeared form Yahoo.