Since the introduction of Internet search engines, people have tried to figure out ways to manipulate the search results with varying levels of success. With search engines firmly established as the number one source of consumer information these days, it’s easy to see why people would want to see their sites listed at the top.

In the early days, shortly after the fall of the bulletin board systems, it used to only take a little bit of creativity (a.k.a. keyword stuffing) in a web site’s meta keywords tag to get your site to rank at the top of the search engine results. As the online competition grew and Google’s “link as a vote” system of ranking sites was introduced, the first SEOs began to emerge. During the early days, a typical SEO would study the search engine results in order to figure out how best to manipulate them. Tactics such as cloaking, door way pages, keyword stuffing alt tags and Google bombing soon emerged as ways to “beat” Google and get your site at the top of the list. For a long time, SEOs were able to demonstrate incredible results by simply exploiting weaknesses in the search engine ranking algorithms.

One thing to remember about search engines in general is that they make money by providing the highest quality search results possible. Because of this, search engines began developing teams of people to counteract the black hat techniques that were being used by SEOs. While it is still possible to get a web site to rank for a phrase by exploiting loop holes in the search algorithms, this is almost always a short term win. Eventually, the hole will be plugged and your site will go back to 3rd page obscurity.

The better way to search engine success is to focus on who is currently winning the terms you want to win and consider those sites your competition instead of Google. By analyzing your true search engine competition, you can determine what those sites are doing right and what they are doing wrong. By turning your site into a better resource than its competitors for the keyword, while avoiding the mistakes made by the current keyword winners, you have a real shot at securing a permanent position at the top of the search results.