SEO Tips: Be the First, Be the Best
Posted at 12:54pm EST on 07/11/2007
Maybe this is an obvious point for some people, but this is something worth mentioning.
Be the first, be the best.
As my friend Michael Hampton has repeatedly told me, in my early days of blogging, “content is king.” So what else could be better for a search engine than to be the first with the content?
I’m involved with the music lyrics industry and I run my own music lyrics website. After two years of running the site, I realize that it’s really hard to move up in the rankings for keyword search terms that have been around for a while.
But then take this site as an example for newer keywords. Ginside.com has only been around for a little over a year now. My articles can rank a lot higher, even the newer articles, for specific keywords simply because the content is fresh and original.
From both experiences, I can say that the original content does give a site more authority and definitely will get preferential treatment for the rankings when it comes to the position in the results.
Florchakh
Jul 12th, 2007
Content is the king, it’s nicely said. I totally agree with you, Jon. But there is the second end of the stick, I think. It’s not enough to have fresh and original content. In most cases you are also forced to have an ability (money, readership) to take advantages of it, if you don’t want to lose and waste your ideas. Generally it works for brand new services, like a batch of first websites with music lyrics, but it will act as well if a “fatcat” blogger reads your post, and writes similar content on his PR 6 domain , for e.g. No matter on a backlink, his post will be higher than yours on SERPs, don’t you think so? I’m sick about it, one day I wrote a “hot” JavaScript code for hiding affiliate link, then plagiarist came and had it published as his own. Guess who has got a wave of traffic…
Jonathan Dingman
Jul 12th, 2007
I agree, there is that end of the stick as well.
It’s tough. And it’s hard to fight against it while still trying to make things freely accessible.
It’s hard to find a happy medium between protecting your work and making it freely available to the world — on top of staying unique.