One of the more interesting parts about working in a net based business is that it is often very hard to put together cause and effect. There are many events that happen between a small tweak and a result in visitors, sales, or SE listings, so it is very hard to put things together.
This is doubly true for search engine stuff. For those of you who might of stumbled in here without knowing the deal, basically all websites to one extent or another try to get good listings on the various search engines, like Google, MSN, Altavista, Ask, and so on. The better we rank (closer to the top of the list) for the search words and expressions we want, the more people come to our sites. For some that is where the concept stops, the pure vanity of counting people who have read our words and consumed out thoughts… for others, visitors (aka traffic) is a requirement for making money. Potentially buyers, maybe clicking on a paying ad or whatever, or doing something that someone is willing to pay for.
Attempting to get better listings in the search engines is a game without end, without timeouts, and without written rules or clear boundries. This leads some people to go to very large extremes to get thier sites listed. Others (like me) are a little more middle of the road, concentrating on building good, informative, or entertaining websites that people would actually want to visit. No tricks or smoke or mirrors in my work.
The time delay on changes can be maddening. Google, as an example, updates their listing all the time subtly, but bigger updates (also known as a google dance) happen every so often, tossing the salad as it were and re-ranking sites and altering the listings in google. Because the amount of time between these major upheavals is hard to predict, and with a new system at google that does this shifting over time rather than in one day, it is a very hard thing to predict. So I can update a site or make changes, and it can take days or weeks to see if the results really worked. That is painful to play with.
Other things (like link exchanges, listings on blog pages, etc) happen much faster, but often have a much shorter shelf life. So in the end, much of what happens in site design, layout, and the pace of updates and listings is very directly attached to this weird web rythem that all websites follow. It is a bumpy ride 🙂
If you bookmarked rawalex’s random thoughts or linked to the site, please update your bookmarks to https://www.in-the-raw.com . I have been enjoying writing a blog enough that I decided to give this thing it’s own little place in the sun. I put in a 301 coded redirect so everything should work out okay by itself, but just in case, I wanted everyone to know. This will be the home for this site for at least the next year, so get f-ing use to it, okay?
I have a ton of other things to do today, I will do them and probably be back to post some updates later… enjoy 🙂