WARNING: This is a fairly long article. I would suggest going to get a snack. But come right back, you definitely need to read this.

I've read a great deal of articles on how to rank high on search engines (namely Google), get more visitors, and get noticed for those key words your really looking for. I've been working for the past 4 months on putting my own theories into practice and here is my 4 month report. (Note: I'm only monitoring on Google, I've not put any time into checking out sites like MSN or Yahoo at this time.)

First let me start by tell you what I've been basing my strategy on for the past 4 months. I've been doing SEO for quite some time and have always put much thought and effort into the actual content of websites as well as how and where I use certain key words. Over the past year however, I've noticed something, everything seems to be more and more about link backs and less about actual SEO. For instance, there was a time when meta tags were everything. If you had awesome meta tags, you were in the kill zone. However, that has been done away with on all major search engines due to widespread abuse. A combination of keywords, meta tags, and actual content then seemed to be the magic formula. Carefully balancing these components in your website meant everything. That too seemed to fade. Now it seems to be all about link backs. He with the most link backs seems to win. Regardless of what is going on from a SEO perspective. This is what I've been doing, acquiring link backs. Nothing else. You'll notice I basically have the same meta tags on every page, which haven't changed for 4 months. I have only made use of the title tags. He's me keep track of whats going on.

My New Theory

So now that I'd developed a theory it was time to put it into practice. No SEO, no changing meta tags, and no changing content. (Apart from my blog and a few spelling mistakes as I happen to be an expert speller :) ). The only thing I was to concentrate on were link backs. So I started thinking about it, What is the best way to get link backs? And it came to me. Wordpress Blogs. I'd used one long enough on another website to know that the comments users left could be used for link backs. If you input a URL your name then becomes a link. It's very simple. And that's is all I've done over the last 4 months. I a lot 20 min every evening (not weekends) to either writing a new blog post or posting comments in blogs around the Internet. 

Goal #1 - 'Freelance Website Design'

My first goal was to become a player in the market for Freelance Website Design. 4 months ago I wasn't on google for these key words. I didn't know how well this world work so I didn't get my hopes up. I started posting comments in blogs. Let me say, before I look like a spammer, that I hate spam. If you don't have something to add to a blog, or a relevant comment to make, please don't. There is nothing worse than spam and I refuse to take any part in mucking up the Internet with spam. I only post if I have something relevant to say. So I began. For my name, I put 'Freelance Website Design' and for my URL obviously a link back to this site. Then I would post my comment. I worked at this for a month. I was extremely inconsistent and kept forgetting. (They say it takes 21 days to form a habit, but I'm still not consistent). I posted as often as I remembered with those key words.

Within 1.5 months of starting I made it to page 2 of the results and stayed there for about a week. Then I made it to the home page. It took under 2 months of very spotty work to make it where I wanted to be. Only from wordpress comments. Amazing! I was thrilled. I spent the rest of the month doing the same. I didn't want to drop off the list when I'd worked this long on it. Still to this day (Sept 20, 2007), 4 months later, you can find my site on the 1 page of results for 'freelance website design'. Currently there are 2,550,000 other sites for this key phrase. Not much, but a start. Clearly my theory had some merit.

Goal #2 - 'Website Design' (Big league)

Next I wanted to to go big league. It'd been 2 months and some days and I felt empowered. Like I'd uncovered something that very few people had thought of. My ultimate key phrase, the one all designers battle over is 'website design'. I would personally probably kill for this. There are currently over 850,000,000 (850 million) different websites listed for this term. That's quite a group. Much more so than the under 3 million for my previous goal. Without changing anything except the key phrase I left in the name field for comments, I kept on. I decided I should become slightly more regular if I wanted this to work. Well, it didn't work. I'm still spotty. But I try. 20 minutes an evening either devoted to a new post, or a hand full of comments on blogs that I find insightful and interesting. Another 2 months goes by and something extraordinary happens.

I check Google for 'website design'. Up until a week ago when I checked I was no where on the list that I could find, at least not within the first 1,000 results. I was actually starting to loose hope, perhaps I was wrong about how it works, perhaps link backs aren't everything.... So I check 'website design' and I'm #64 out of 100. Holy crap, how did this happen? Out of 850+ million websites, I'm #65 on google for no search engine optimization only wordpress comments. Incredible. It's been about a week since I first noticed and today as I check I am #52 out of 857,000,000.

It's actually having an impact too. I've probably owned my domain for about 2 years, maybe more or less. I have never received much recognition and have never put much work into it. I just wanted to own my domain (alfredfox.com) so no one else could have it. In the past 2 months I've gotten many requests for website designs, SEO, graphic design, etc. So much that I'm actually very busy as of late. And I'm still climbing in the rankings.

Free Search Engine Marketing - 20 min a day (sorta)

For some this may not seem like a big deal. So what, I've got on the search engines for a few key words, who cares. Well for those people, hit your stumble button and Jog On. This means something big, at least to me. Think about it. At least with the example of 'website design' there are large corporations that pay a lot of money to be in those rankings. I've spent zero money, it's taken me under 20 min a day (average) over the course of about 3 months and I'm gaining on them. And doing what? Massive SEO? Link farming? Buying up link backs? Not at all. I've done absolutely nothing other than leave blog comments on blogs I would otherwise be reading anyway. I mean... can it get any easier?

This is only one case example. It's not 100% conclusive nor is it a guaranteed method, but it's certainly opened up my eyes to a lot of new possibilities. Think of how much money I could have burned up trying to get listed when I am getting what I was shooting for for free. I think its a beautiful thing. And I hope someone else benefits from this.

I'm going to keep close tabs on this from now on and spend the next month or so trying to get closer to the home page. Who knows, maybe I'll succeed. At this rate, I don't see why it's not possible. Anyway, I'd be very interested to hear your comments and thoughts about this. This may be one of the only truly FREE ways to get the search engine ranking you desire for the keywords you want. How cool is that?

Read Part Two...