Back in mid 1990s it was easy to achieve high search engine rankings. Just tweak your META tags and site copy with keywords and submit. Then, as more and more webmasters started to catch on to META Tags, it became more difficult to beat competition. Many companies turned to spam tactics such as hidden text (the same color as background of page), hidden links (using 1 x 1 pixel gifs to hide them), doorway pages stuffed with keywords and cloaked content, all designed to be seen by search engine robots and not humans in an attempt to trick search engines into giving site a higher ranking.

Thankfully, over past few years, achieving high search rankings has become fairer and more straight-forward. The search engines have given less weighting to META tags and more relevancy weighting to sites that are popular, of high quality and contain unique, relevant information. Most search engines have developed comprehensive spam filters that weed out spammers from legitimate sites and penalize sites caught trying to cheat system. Google in particular has led charge for quality over quantity.

Fortunately, web site aspects that most search engines prefer are also those that visitors prefer. Build a quality site with plenty of text, up-to-date, relevant content that other sites link to, a solid navigation system, submit it by hand to popular directories and search engines and you will be on your way to high rankings in no time. It's not difficult, it's not tricky and it certainly doesn't involve any black magic.

That's why I find it difficult to understand search engine optimizers who party like it's 1999 - using invisible text and hidden links in some pathetic, misguided attempt to trick search engines into believing their site content is most relevant. I mean, what are they thinking? I've heard excuses like "the search engine guidelines are unclear so we have no choice but to push envelope". Give me a break. The search engine guidelines are quite obvious to those who are actually good at SEO and understand what is necessary to achieve results for their clients. Many search engines even publish their guidelines clear as day on their sites. Unfortunately, it seems this industry is full of lazy non-performers who prefer to rely on outdated cheat sheets that haven't worked for years.

I am so sick of all cowboy SEO firms who clog up search engine indices with meaningless keyword-stuffed pages, in a vain attempt to dominate search rankings with their client's sites. Don't they do any research? Don't they read search engine guidelines? Don't they understand these tactics are fruitless and ineffective? Don't they know these techniques haven't worked for years and are regarded as spamming? Don't they realize they are putting their client's sites at risk of ranking penalties or outright banning? Don't they care about long term effects and future of their client's web sites?

Yesterday was like most of my days, yet while writing yesterday’s article, I stopped mid sentence, and my thoughts went back to an ezine article I read early that morning. It was one of those times when your thoughts completely jump to another circuit -- you know kind.

Quickly I dashed down hall and corner with lightening speed. Not. Just walked. I had always wanted to write that, I know cute, Catherine. What caught my attention was contest announcement in that ezine. I remembered that Janice (name not changed to protect innocent) would be interested in information since she wrote poetry. I found it and e-mailed her info. Cut and dry, huh? I thought so to, but not quite.

Later that evening during our coaching session, Janice mentioned how she appreciated information but she didn't write poetry for children. Oops, I didn't even see that important detail. However, she appreciated thought and explained that it gave her a flash of another contest she knew about that she had always wanted to enter. As she was talking about this, I remembered my childhood try at poetry. "Now where did I put those" came to mind.

Yes, you guess it; I went looking for my old poems after call. Including staying up past midnight reading them again and chuckling on my mindset at time. I even wrote quote a few on President Kennedy’s death -- but that’s another topic. I chose three, submitted them, and went to bed pleased with myself about taking some action with them.

Did you know that difference between a light bulb moment and an aha moment is depth of experience in whatever is occurring. Light bulb is flash, aha is when you make connections between that and other experiences in your life.

This morning aha part of light bulb moment hit me -- marketing aspect to all this. In order to give you a complete picture, let me including "ad" I found in ezine. This is a quote.

*************** AD ********