Back in the day (early to mid 1990s) when the Computer Man Website Design and Promotion Team created their first website, website promotion was a breeze compared to 21st century methods and requirements. The webmaster had only to insert the proper tags, submit the URL to a few search engines like Yahoo! (do you Yahoo!?) and Alta Vista every few weeks, and set back and wait… and wait… and wait.
Perhaps the biggest challenge was to keep your ISP from cutting you off before your site was completely uploaded. It was not uncommon to have to post your website in parts spurring the development of various software programs to talk to your ISP in the background on a regular and frequent basis in an effort to maintain your “unlimited” internet connection at 28800 bps or 33600 bps. Can you say, s…l…o…w ?
After that little exercise in frustration was completed, our experience showed the best and fastest way to begin to attract traffic was to create and join Web Rings. Web rings are not as important or prolific today because they are not as necessary. With the current crop of tools and html editors, any one can create and post a basic website within a few hours to a couple of days. It can even be listed on the major search engines 24 to 48 hours later with proper promotion, and begin to see visitors in less than a week if the website has something the public wants.
I think all web site developers and promoters who have been around for awhile are in agreement up to this point. But, now is where it begins to get really interesting. People having learned from dealing with lawyers and doctors that when you don’t like what one tells you call another, they do the same with respect to their prospective websites.
Enter the so called search engine optimization (SEO) specialist or engineer. He or she wants to change the whole landscape again. And, it appears they are trying to do it Microsoft style by forcing out all but their views.
For instance most of them will insist that your website have no Meta Tags. Meta Tags are dead they will say, so why are you using them. My answer, because every search engine gives them some weight. Granted some give them more importance and relevance in their rating systems than others do. But Meta Tags could just be the edge you need to get that listing just ahead of your major competition which could in turn mean the difference in tens of thousands of visitors to your website and thousands of dollars to your annual revenue picture.
Remote Helpdesk 1, in an experiment in 2007, first built a test website without Meta Tags and jumped through all the most common hoops to promote their website measuring all pertinent search engine placement data such as link popularity, search engine placement, page ranking and traffic on a predetermined and regular basis.
After two months they simply added the two most common Meta Tags, i.e.
and saw their placement move up in every search engine within 24 hours.
This does not mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that Meta Tags are the be all and end all. It does remain apparent, however, that while Meta Tags may not be as critical as they once were they are still important and may just give you the edge you need. This little bit of the document head may actually mean the difference in success and failure of your website.
In the final analysis, you, not some so called SEO guru, must decide whether you are just one of the millions of lost websites on the internet taking up space or whether you are an important contender in your field worthy of this little considered tag.
