Keep it Real and Add Value for the Readers

“Every page you create should be truly useful content, something that adds value for the reader.”

This statement is indeed true, it applies to affiliates, website owners and ANYONE that contributing content to the Web. (Especially those hoping to profit from its publication). But so far as I see, there are so many people just didn’t get it. They still don’t. And they never will.

Ten years ago, you could keyword stuff, create doorway pages, use link farms and FFA sites, and even get away with “borrowing” content from another site. Affiliates were making a FORTUNE fooling the search engines. Yup, in 1999 the Web was still the Wild West.

Ken from SBI! shares some interesting stuff with his reader in one of his article recently toward to the value and quality of the content, he emphasis that:

1. Avoid the SEO and GRQ schemes that are rooted in exploiting a weakness on the Web. Those holes get plugged.

2. Contribute YOUR OWN unique well-crafted content to the Web. Keep doing it! Value is cumulative.

3. Respect your audience AND Google. They pay your bills.

Below is his entire writing, I highly recommended you to take sometime to read it.

… back in the days of Make Your Site Sell!, we predicted that the search engines would get more and more sophisticated, more adept at sniffing out the Web’s cheaters (those who try to make money in the short term through dirty, unscrupulous, and misleading methods).

The hucksters from a decade ago are long gone. Their followers simply couldn’t resist that “everyone else was doing it.” When the hammer fell, they finally saw that the emperors, without their clothes, were parasites.

But new parasites always step up to replace the previous generation. I’m never sure if they’re serious and really believe what they preach, or if the whole thing is just their content (false, but tempting) that builds traffic and earns income (from Adsense and by recommending bad products, or selling even worse ones).

The good news? They will always be here to teach us a valuable lesson in what NOT to do. And the hundreds of thousands who follow them are easy pickings for SBI! in the long run of business-building.

You need the ying to appreciate the yang.

“Keep it real. Add value.” Old-fashioned? Yup, dating right back to the beginning of capitalism. If you don’t add enough REAL value to your customer to make her feel that she’s made a profit off of you in exchange for her dollars, you are, in the long run, doomed.

As an affiliate, if you want real success promoting products and services online, you simply must add value for your audience. Let’s summarize that as…

VIVO! A Spanish word, it means… “Live!” It also stands for… Value in. Value out. That reciprocity is the road to business success, which ultimately impacts how you LIVE!

Create value for your visitors (and the Web as a whole). They are delighted to return value to you. There is no mystery why there are so many delighted SBI! Owners . Nor is it a surprise that the sites of everyday people receive thousands of visitor per day, who LOVE their sites.

It’s no mystery if you understand… VIVO!

Fool people and engines (for a while) with regurgitated content, fake link networks, garbage review sites, etc., and I’ve always told you what happens sooner or later… Sure enough, Google is hammering scammy review sites and eBay is slamming those who use hubpages, Squidoo, and Blogger, which have long been “splogger/Web spammer heaven.”

Of course, it’s not just the big guns shooting down the tricks. Web surfers are savvier than ever.

After a while, they note the fishy patterns. They smell a double-speaking, low-value page a mile away. They wrinkle their noses and surf somewhere else, never to return.

And, of course, Google tracks all that, refining their search algorithms even further. Sooner or later, they’re going to devalue links from hubpages, today.com, Blogger, Squidoo, and most of the article-marketing sites (all those that don’t work hard to ensure quality submissions).

Why? Because that is what happens to every Search Engine trick that becomes overcooked. Too many people are polluting the Web with too much garbage. And, as has always been the case (keywords, doorways, FFAs, etc.), they get slammed.

And then… reach for your earplugs. The folks who practiced this trickery will yell, scream and cry at all the forums. The gurus? They’ll disappear into the sunset, but have no fear. Look to the sunrise in the east… it’s the next generation of gurus who bear false strategies.

What does this have to do with SBI!owners? Everything … and nothing. “Everything” because “nothing,” not a single word of all this nonsense, applies to them.

Like all the major algorithm changes in the past, SBIers just keep moving ahead, totally unaffected, even unaware, of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that goes on …

Respect your audience. Respect yourself. Respect the engines. Provide them with the kind of answers, information, and resources they won’t be able to find anywhere else.

Provide them with YOUR original content. It’s not only good karma, it’s good business. And good for YOUR business.