Chapter 4: The SEO blitz begins

After getting the site up and running, next came the task of getting listed. I thought, once I had the content I would just have to put it up and the search engine spiders would pop through it and I would be well on my way.

Google often talks this strategy up, just write info that people want and the links will flow in, which will raise your relevence, which cause your site to rank better, which will bring more links, repeat ad nauseum.

I quickly found that the toughest part is getting those first few readers. Especially now, when almost all keywords are deeply entrenched.

So in order to start getting links, one must embark on a large campaign of link exchanges with other sites to build that important PR. So I started emailing other sites that had to do with backpacking asking for link exchanges. However, naturally sites that have better PR are also generally aren't as interested as sites that are on the lower end.

I was lucky to have a couple sites exchange links with me, which was enough to at least get my sites indexed. But I would say I must have sent out at least 50 emails to related sites and have gotten at most 10 responses. I've read that some people set a goal of getting 50 or so links a week. I am really skeptical how they get that without paying for them.

But so I started plugging, cold-calling to try and get links, submitting to every directory I could find. And I finally got indexed, and ranked on the 28th page or some for my keyword. Whoa boy, looks like I have some work.