Problem 3 With SEO - The odds against your success are enormous. Any SEO expert worth their salt will tell you that in order to get substantial amounts of traffic from a search engine, you MUST be on the first page of results for "popular" keywords. A really honest expert will tell you that ideally you should be within the first 5 results. For the purposes of this let's just look at getting to the first page of results. No matter what search term or phrase you type into any search engine there will be HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS if not MILLIONS of results. Let's use the example of "Web Hosting" as a search term. Search Google for that now and you will see this at the top left of the results page: Results 1 - 10 of about 127,000,000 for web hosting 127 MILLION PAGES!!!!!!! We want to be on the first page, how many spaces are there on the first page? There are 10. So let's divide that number by 10 which gives us odds of: 12,700,000 to 1 of making the first page. The odds of winning the lottery are only 14 million to 1. Just to drill this in, we have set up a search box to search Google for any term you enter, the page will then divide the number of results by 10 and give you the odds of making the first page. Type in keywords or phrases that you would like to see your site on the first page of a search engine for. Try a few different keywords or phrases. Click Here To Do A Few Searches (Opens in new window) Hopefully by now you are thinking "Holy ****!" Just think again about those odds, and you are investing your time, or worse, money in this? Even if you beat those ASTRONOMICAL odds remember your work can be undone in an instant with an algorithm change over which you have no control. The "experts" will tell you "Yes, but there are many search terms you can target". They are correct, but all of those search terms have enormous odds too. Then they will tell you "You need to target search phrases and not key words". Sure, it may be easy to get to the first page of results for the term: "The worlds best dating site for women with yellow teeth and pink eyes" But how many PEOPLE will search for that? Not many, they will search for "online dating", "dating", "free dating", etc. ALL of which will have millions of results. Isn't it funny how the SEO people never tell you any of this? How many times have you seen these types of ads? "We guarantee for $xx we will get you to the top of Google for your chosen search term." Promises they can't keep! Email them and tell them you have 15 different dating sites and you want them all on the first page of Google for the search term "Online Dating". Silly, isn't it? There are only 10 spaces on that first page. They can't possibly deliver their promises. This is of course added to the way the web is affected as we discussed on the problem page. Finally, we would like to clear up some linking myths circulated by the SEO "Gurus". Linking Myths Dispelled Click Here