I follow tons and tons of threads on SEO, SEM, Google, etc. I have been doing this for just about six years. One thing I often see is that there are people who want quick answers to why they don't rank well or how they can become rich in days. When they don't get the answer they like, they rant on how unhelpful the "experts" in the field are.
A WebmasterWorld thread member, wheel, was very smart about his post. He initially posted a teaser saying, I built a site five years ago, did SEO for a month on it and it still ranks in the top ten for a competitive keyword with zero additional work. Of course, we all wanted to know how he did it and he strung us along. But that was part of his plan, his plan to get us listening so he can follow up and blast all us newbies. He said:
The secret is, there is no secret. There are two themes that run through this and all the other forums, for years. The first is, everyone's looking for the latest trick or secret to ranking. The second theme is all the experts (at least the ones that I read) tell us to forget the glitter and develop proper backlinks.And people repeatedly don't like the answers from the experts - to forget the glitter and develop proper backlinks. We want a quick technical answer. We don't want to hear what basically means 'try working hard yourself'. The experts actually aren't holding back some big secret or the latest trick. They ARE telling you directly and specifically what to do. Hard work marketing your website is what gives high long term rankings, not some technical gimmick.
It is true - SEO, money, happiness, etc, doesn't come easy - it requires work. Wheel, did explain how he got the site and his other sites to succeed in the search results, but it wasn't over night and it took work. For more on how he did it, read the thread and get to work.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
