Welcome to our blog!

Searching the Searchers is a blog that we just felt had to be created.

The information we discuss on this site is probably already out there somewhere. In fact, we know it's out there because we've seen it floating around, but as the directors of a medium-sized Editorial Services company who have to spend a lot of our time educating our clients about how to use search engines properly, we figured it was time to stop reinventing the wheel and simply put the information in one single place.

THE REALITY OF SEARCH ENGINES:
They change. A lot. In fact, search engine engineering is a really inexact science, complicated by the continuing evolution of searchers themselves, and the continual creation of new ways for spammers to exploit them.

But just as search engines themselves change, so too do the people using them. At one time, internet users clicked on advertising banners. Then they got sick of the abundance of banners and started developing 'banner blindness'.

So then the advertisers moved to pop-up ads, which also worked for a while, but soon they too were found to be intrusive and negative.

Then came the affiliate programs, where every website owner thought they'd get rich off Amazon link commisions, only to find that if everyone is selling, nobody is buying.

Then came Google AdSense, a basic, text link advertising method that some people exploited for thousands of dollars early on, but once everyone else figured out their tricks, Google changed the way they do things, and advertisers started getting smarter, as hundreds of thousands of websites about nothing, built to raise the search engine ranking of another site altogether, sprung out of nowhere and were embraced by nobody.

Which leaves us with now - the great 'what next' period, where everything from Podcasts to product placements has been touted as the next big thing.

SO WHAT IS NEXT?
We say it's time for a reckoning in internet website promotion. Now is the time for things to be thrown out and started from scratch. Banner ads actually work sometimes, if you don't overdo them, or at least keep them subtle (like we do!). Affiliate programs work okay as well, if you're smart with them. And yeah, AdSense can work too. Over time. Even the Amazon links will make a guy money eventually, if you use them wisely.

So this blog is about how you can make the best of online promotion and advertising opportunities, without killing yourself trying.

We'll do a weekly column discussing what people are searching for this week, and we'll take a look at a variety of self-promotional tools that may, or may not, make you wealthy. Read on, and make sure you bookmark us.

posted by Oz @ 6:34 PM