Posted 17 August 2003 - 06:50 PM
"On another topic, I have been reporting a spammer..."
Here's a novel idea, and I'm not being sarcastic, but why don't you just focus all of that energy into making your site the best it can be.
I'll be frank: I'm a webmaster of gay adult websites. After losing my job in March, I put up a site in April and started building a little empire. I managed very quickly to get top spot on many keywords. I've noticed, however, that there's one company in particular that I just can't beat. They have hundreds of pages that are all basically the same page but titled differently. If I go after one of the words they "own" I'll come in second. (By the way, if some kind soul who knows anything about cloaking wouldn't mind contacting me privately, I'd like someone to verify my hunch that these guys are cloaking. I not looking to cloak myself, I want the piece of mind of knowing there's nothing I can do to beat them.)
Initially, I thought about going on a reporting campaign, but I thought about it and came to the following conclusions. Does Google care about one adult site cheating out another? Probably not. How am I assured that I'm not being penalized for complaining too much? And I imagine if complaining actually got any substantial results then search engine optimization companies – and porn and gaming sites – would employ people to simply sit there all day long and complain about their competitors.
And finally, all of the time and effort I might spend on checking keyword rankings and filling out report forms could be better spent tweaking a page on my site, or writing a new article, or any number of things that might improve my site.
I'm very big on karma these days, and particularly corporate karma. I think that all I need to do is create good quality sites that provide my visitors with what they are looking for and delivers what I promise them. I steer clear of all of the regular rip-off schemes in the adult busienss, and I don't employ tricks or cheats to get good rankings. I write a lot of content for my sites: stories, articles, descriptions, reviews, and they're all working at bringing in traffic. (My revenues are doubling about every three weeks.)
So, while the competition has the number one spot for a lot of great keywords, they're killing themselves. People will get tired of seeing they're crap; people will begin to see their URLs and recognize them. I think they are cheating the system to get a number one spot and they will eventually fall.
During the month of July, one of my sites got about 16,000 visitors; during the first two weeks of August, I've already surpassed that. So, I think my strategy is working, and I recommend that you try the same.
And just a small example of corporate karma in action: there's a large fastfood chain that spent a couple of dozen years chopping down rainforest, polluting the environment with styrofoam, and paying it's employees abominal wages. Now, all of that bad behaviour is coming back to bite them in the butt. They are now handing out napkins two at a time, doling out ketchup a package at a time, and charging extra money for extra packages of sauce. In other words, they're having to kill themselves to make every dime.
Don't kill yourself worrying about what your competitor is doing. Ultimately, you have no control over what your competitor or Google do. Focus on what you CAN control. (Sorry this was so long, I hope you get something out of it.) Make your site great; you'll convert more of the traffic you do get, and you'll probably get more through word of mouth.
Good luck
Dzinerbear
