| I learned of SEOwalk on June 20, 2005 when a web hosting client emailed me the details of the SEOwalk competition. In an already overburdened schedule the time came to decide whether I wanted to enter the SEOwalk contest or not. Although we get pretty good search engine placement on some of our desired keywords, I'm also known to be one who believes SEO (search engine optimization) can largely be overdone. It bothers me that in the early days of the internet we used to bring our offline experiences to share on our websites and on mailing lists yet now the main topic of discussion seems to be about search engines. Where we used to learn about new people, places and things, lately IMHO, we've gotten just a bit boring. We need to get back to our focus on who we are, what we can share, and for merchants...our own products and services. As the person least likely then to enter something like SEOwalk, I checked out the rules and of course the current search engine results for the term SEOwalk. I saw some familiar names and some not so familiar. I saw people dutifully following 'the rules'. I saw people who had even copied the contest rules (content!) verbatim onto their entry pages. And there lies the biggest problem with search engine optimization.... Rather than directing people to the content they're looking for on the web, the search engines are now dictating in many cases what that content should be. I received little unique value from most of the SEOwalk entries. Only then did I decide to enter the SEOwalk competition. I've actually taken this contest as a challenge... Is it possible at all to provide unique content *and* please the search engines? Or are we stuck creating our content and dedicating our lives to what the search engines believe to be right? Sure...I optimize my sites and am willing to optimize sites for our clients. Yes, we know 'the rules'. No...I try not to worry about it too much. In my case it's the rare person who finds us on the web and 'signs up' without knowing anything else about us or our services. This is just not the way people normally find hosting and design services in this day and age. To further complicate matters, we also know how people 'break the rules.' And we see them get away with it. And we even know why they get away with it. It's a moral dilemma, of course, to not follow suit. It's especially tempting when an unscrupulous site pushes your ranking down on a set of key words, particularly when they consist of your own domain names! Sometimes they get removed, (presumably from a complaint) then *the technology* brings them back like magic. So in an attempt to bring unique and valuable content to the internet while appeasing the search engines (Notice I used the word appeasing and not catering to!) we decided to turn our SEOwalk entry into an entire website. Most of the time you're marketing a whole website rather than an individual page, right? This will also give us the opportunity to test (as we always do) before your eyes the effect that various things may have on the outcome of your rankings in the search engines. You can probably tell already this site does not look much like the other SEOwalk entries. You'll be able to watch our progress...here! We've put the big 'eye' above so that you'll know you're in the right place ;)
Test One: Since the first month's competition winner is to be selected on the last day of this month that gives me ten days to get a 'whole new site' indexed by the engines...
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