Back to a Few Basics

Steve

Sex Story

Life can be very confusing for a newbie, there is good advice spread all over the Internet on how things should and should not be done. How to get listed with link lists and TGPs, how to get good search engine placement, how to do this and how to do that. Sadly if you try and follow everything you read you'll just end up in a confused mess.

The simple fact is that many of the people you see around the place posting on newbie boards and making a big noise really don't know their ass from their elbow. Their advice is often poor and misleading and following advice like that has the same result as following the road to perdition.

This week instead of a site review I would like to look at just a few areas where newbies tend to get misled and hopefully provide some clear paths and unequivocal answers.

One of the first problems that confront newbies is what to them seems like a mass of confusing rules for webmasters who want to submit to link lists or TGPs. Everyone seems to have their own individual rules and satisfying every link list owner seems impossible.

Well the secret is to look rules and compare what you find on one list with the rules that you find on another. When you do that you will find that there really is no need to panic. Although they might be written in different ways and at first glance may appear totally different most link lists have rules that are fairly generic in nature.

For example the rules for my link list are written in a different style to those of someone like Cleo and it would be easy to think that our rules are mutually exclusive. Yet when I build a site that suits my rules it will also fit right into Cleo's rules too.

It certainly doesn't happen with all link lists or TGPs but if you look carefully at the various lists' rules you will see that one size generally does fit all when it comes to free sites and TGP galleries.

Newbies, right from an early age, begin to appreciate just how important search engine traffic really is. To try and learn more and perhaps capture that elusive number one spot on a search engine result page newbies go searching for all the advice they can find.

They don't have to search far for advice because it seems as though every man and his dog are experts on search engine optimisation. Sadly most of them have not got a clue and one of the biggest furphies that you will hear from them is that Google does not read alt tags or meta tags. If Google doesn't read those tags then there isn't any need to bust your boiler including them on your site right?

Wrong! Google certainly does read meta tags. If your site is graphically intense and there is not much in the way of plain text on your site then Google will head for the meta tags. Google also reads alt tags so for every image that you have on a site, and that includes banners, add an alt tag that contains a few key words.

As I mentioned on the board earlier this week, there is proof that Google does read alt tags so add them to everything you can. I know that doing all the nitty gritty stuff of adding meta tags and alt tags can be boring and seem like a waste of time but when you don't do that basic optimisation work you are potentially letting sales slip through your fingers.

Even if all you build is TGP galleries don't forget to optimise for the search engines. Even a TGP gallery can attract search engine hits so make sure you use every chance you have of making a sale.

Speaking of TGP galleries, there seems to be a belief around the industry that TGP galleries have a finite life span and after that the gallery can be taken down. The fact is that Marie and I are still getting hits to and sales from galleries that we built several years ago. Many TGPs place galleries into their archives, search engines pick up TGP galleries and send hits long after the gallery might have passed its use by date.

You can also put your old galleries back to work again. When you have a few galleries built and out earning their keep you can increase their earning potential by building a hub that lists some of those galleries. You can even build your own TGP and stock it with nothing but your own galleries.

Never discard your work just because you think it is time expired. Search engine spiders don't seem to understand the concept of 'out of date' so they are just as likely to pull up one of your old galleries and plunk it down on the front page for a good search term.

Finally let me trot out something that really really bugs Marie and me and she has certainly mentioned it several times in other places and I think it is worth repeating here too.

If you are a newbie looking for advice in other places besides VNWR never be swayed by a person's avatar. Sexy avatars, even if they are a genuine photo of the person behind the nickname, are no guarantee that the person knows what they are talking about. Never ever take advice that offers an easy way out of a problem or suggest that you will succeed faster if you cut a few corners.

The plain fact is that in this business the only way to succeed is by sheer hard unrelenting work, day after day and week after week. You also need to accept that sometimes the least sexy people on a board, the ones who are blunt and don't mince words, are often the ones who really do have a clue and who can provide you with the best help and advice in your quest to survive and prosper.

Steve

To submit a site for review:

Send an email to Steve and put 'site review' in the subject