Very true. If you're constantly racing to get 'free money' from Google then you're really defeating yourself because trying to keep up with them and play a tricky game with search engines is very time consuming and research intensive.

This is very true! There's a huge difference in designing a search-engine friendly site (which you should) and trying to game the system. You risk being banned altogether from Google if you try to manipulate it unfairly.

I have a friend who builds specifically for SEO purposes and has to take advantage of the window where he is exploiting Google's system before they catch on and he plummets in PageRanking. Although he can make good money from this practice he says it's a far too tiring methods of trying to make cash from the web and is switching over to quality content after his experience of playing the other side of the game.

I think in the end it all comes down to PR, which itself is determined by the other factors (Links, IPs...). Google = PR.

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BoogieMan
http://www.funnypics.cc

Things are changing these days. Really there is no doubt that the best way achieve the highest PR is to link to pages that have a high PR themselves. Apparently they're trying to stop this from working, as really it's not the way SEO is intended.

It's not how SEO is intended for sure but it's become such a core part of the business that if Google removed that aspect of PageRanking it would be a huge blow to so many internet businesspeople. I hope that reconfigurations done to the PR system don't completely turn the whole game on its head.

Personally, I find content (changing and adding that is) is the easiest way. Oh and having good traffic flow too helps - of course.

Mind you, if anyone's got a magic wand...

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Jumping on the BANSwaggon...

www.mindmachineshop.com