I first became interested in internet marketing at the beginning of the year in the aftermath of what I learned later was called Google's Florida dance.

Many marketers, who relied on SEO traffic, woke up one morning and found their source of income gone. One in particular that stood out was the Christmas tree farmer. The Google dance destroyed his SEO traffic right before the holiday season; thus eliminating that year's revenue.

There were countless stories about online marketers who claimed they were not using "black hat SEO tactics" yet disappeared from the top SERPs despite enjoying number one ranking for their best keywords for quite some time.

Admittedly I know nothing about SEO. However, based on all Google dance horror stories the following conclusions were reached:

1. Google is a loose canon. They are constantly changing how their SE indexes pages.
2. Google is secretive. You never fully know SEO rules and they are constantly changing.
3. It's Google's universe and we just live there. You are always at Google's mercy. If your SERPs get screwed after Google messes with their algo then THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT except start over. So you are in a constantly threat of having your SERPs destroyed and your income disappear.

For all the reasons above, I thought SEO was to risky for internet marketing and decided not to use SEO or learn about it and in the meantime used other methods to market online. Wouldn't be foolish to rely on a marketing method that has demonstrated such schizophrenic behavior?

Now I am rethinking my opinions about SEO because of several promising articles I read about SEO. One blurb that comes to mind says good inbound links from high ranking sites will not only drive traffic to your site; but allow you to whether Google's dances unscathed.

I want to take the plunge and start learning and using SEO to market online. Nonetheless, It still does knot make since to me to use the time and effort for SEO if Google will screw you over every other month every time they change their algo.

What I would like to know is assuming that the following is true:
1. I do not use any "black hat SEO tactics" or do anything spammy
2. I do everything within my power to get many good inbound links.
3. Follow good SEO practices
will Google leave me and my website alone. Or am I constantly threatened to disappear from their SE, during their dances, despite what I do?

I would vote for b (I understand that by "disappearing from their SE" you mean falling far in the SERPS). They (Google) are changing their algo all the time, and tomorrow you may find good SEO practices "black hat SEO tactics".
This is just my personal opinion but I think in this business we are all blindfolded trying to get to the top. ...

I'm getting so cynical...

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If google make a major change to their algo like they did on the Florida update, nothing can garantee that you will not be affected and even disapear. It's part of the game and you have to do with it.

Google and all other seach engines are only one method to market your thoughts, philosophy, products, services or whatever. Markets, customer needs, methods of distribution, etc. change relatively rapidly. If you rely totally upon anything outside of your control (like Google) you will eventually fail. The secret is to diversify your marketing/sales methods. Even doing that... you still may fail, but at least you used your brain and attempted to anticipate the market.

Change is good and we all just have to keep up with the changes, after all somone will always find a way to best rank your site in Google (and it will more than likely be posted here) unless one day Google just lock some guy in their basement and have him hand pick website rankings 24/7

If you really do subscribe to that theory then you should also never ask someone out because they may say no or even worse break up with you later, you should never apply for a job because they may not hire you or if they do they may fire you later, basically you should never do anything because it may not go the way you want it to effortlessly. Seriously, anything worth doing will come with challenges. Of course Google & all other engines will update their algo from time to time in efforts to provide better search results. Remember-that is why they are doing it-not to just to arbitrarily stop you from ranking well. If your not on top, someone else is & vice versa.

SEO has become (and now will always be) a vital part of any real company's marketing effort. It is something that has to be deployed alongside the rest of your marketing-you can't have just one or the other if you want to be successful. As for things changing-you will face the same thing with traditional advertising. A medium that you have been using may have decided to sign an exclusive contract with your biggest competitor, or an industry giant may decide to dump 3 times their normal advertising budget into this quarter to squash everyone else, or you might even launch an advertising campaign that returns absolutely no results and has to be reworked. SEO is just one tool in your tool box, and just like you can't use a hammer as a screwdriver, none of your marketing tools can replace one another.

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search engines have to follow certain ideas...they only have so many things they can organize pages via...so as long as you understand what they are trying to do and how to influence it and understand where they are trying to go with it you should be fine.

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Google never "messes" with the algos, they update them! =)
Writing for humans is a good way of getting your pages "naturaly" optimized. Some day you will be rewarded for this as Google tries to "mess" with their algo in favour of more quality serps results.
Hopefully your bussiness is of the quality that it cand stand on its own even if Google disapears from the surface of the earth. If it isn't I guess your pages are not worth visiting after all??

After all; content is king! (?)





Yes, having a bussiness that relys on only one external part (out of your control) is stupid; Google or whatever company!



You "disappearing" from the serps doesnt mean it creates a black void where you previoulsy were. If you drop 100 places, that actually means that ~99 other pages is having a +1 position. Your page isn't only affected by your seo but maybe of thousands of others seo efforts.

Besides, if shady people would stop spamming the engines and truely design their page for the user the engines would never have to update their algo

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Mmmm..and Google engineers will loss thier jobs

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Good SERP mmm...a dream