June 30, 2007
Taking Shortcuts
Just a little rant from yours truly this morning. And yes I realize it comes down to human nature.
But why, why, why is everybody seemingly always looking for some magical shortcut? Even when they should know that shortcuts almost never lead to success?
This question pops into my mind almost every day. Especially with I'm dealing with or answering questions other webmasters and even experienced SEOs pose. Everybody seems to always be looking for a trick to get higher search engine rankings or more sales. And it just doesn't work that way!
The exact same fundamentals and foundation that worked to get a site to rank highly in the search engines in the prehistoric times of Search a decade ago are the same ones that still work today. Good, basic SEO, dotting all of your i's and crossing all of your t's, building credibility by creating a unique, useful web site and attracting links from other high quality sites is still the best way to make money on the web.
Sure that takes time and a lot of hard work, but there's really no way to shortcut the process in a way that practically guarantees success that will continue month-after-month, year-after-year. If you try to shortcut the process by cheating you may get a little more money up front, but eventually it always comes back to bite you in the butt.
That's just the way the world works.
The same is certainly true if your site is already getting traffic and you're trying to improve conversions. Are there tools and methods you can (and should) use to make the process easier and more understandable? Sure there are!
But this doesn't mean that you can just make up stuff and consider it a valid conversion test. You still need to take the time to construct and run your tests to see what works best for your site and your visitors. This hasn't changed in forever, going back before there even was a World Wide Web if you want to talk Basic Marketing.
Contrary to popular opinion I do understand the urge to do something that brings in more money in the short term. So I understand why people want to shortcut both the rankings optimization and conversion optimization processes. But I'm here to tell you --again, since I've been saying this for years-- that there are no shortcuts to building a quality site that converts well and will make you money over the long term.
What frustrates me most is when a person asks these silly questions, seemingly gets it when told shortcuts don't work, then comes back 6 months later to ask the same basic question because they've read some other "guru's" latest ebook about how to make a killing in two months.
It just doesn't work that way folks!!! So if you really want to build a long-term business that brings you long-term income, forget about all of those Make $50,000 In The Next 60 Days tutorials out there, accept that it takes time and effort to build a business and get back to work!