They say that a picture is worth a thousand words.
But its not true.
What is true that one good picture can be worth a million words.
Brad Fallon recently cut to the chase with a diagram that says more about the reality of success on the Internet than many of us are able to express in days of speaking
Is this elegant or what?
It says: Fake content may give you a fast start, but its value fades to zero over time. Real content may start out slow, but its value grows continuously.
Brad Fallon created this diagram to explain the reality of search engine marketing.
Currently, there is a virtual epidemic of schemes to create pseudo-content web sites to trick search engines into giving web sites high rankings. Its a practice called Search Engine Spamming.
Brad points out that while some search engine spamming schemes do work for a while, they inevitably collapse and leave the schemers with a whole
lot of nothing.
Meanwhile, the guy or gal who creates a real web site with genuinely useful content has an asset that lives on and grows in value every day.
Brad intended his diagram to explain the inner workings of the search engine world, but in reality it explains just about everything you need to know about marketing and business.
Yes, you can use tricks to outdistance other people in your marketplace in the short run.
But as David Ogilvy once put it so well: “Your customer is not an idiot.” The truth always comes out in the end. People wise up and they’re not very forgiving of businesses that abuse their trust.
It’s not easy to build a business that focuses on offering real value.
Its harder, it takes more work, and sometimes, you’ll watch as scam artists seem to do better than you.
But inevitably, reality asserts itself.
The world turns – as it always does – and when all the smoke clears, edifices of built out of BS lay in ruins while the folks who make delivering real value to their customers their goal continue to stand and thrive.
Trust your higher instincts when it comes to business and remember: Deviousness is not intelligence.
You can read Brads article on how the “fake vs. real content” phenomenon works in search engine marketing on his blog.
Its called “The Net Present Value of Spamming the Search Engines”
– Ken McCarthy
P.S. For over 25 years I’ve been sharing the simple but powerful things that matter in business with my clients.
If you’d like direction for your business that will work today, tomorrow and twenty years from now, visit us at the System Club.
It is noteworthy that most who are very successful, focus on basic principles.
A few years ago, I listened to Ken Giddens talking about search engines being programmed to rank sites higher that are relevant and natural.
Brad’s picture is a basic principle of what happens when search engines recognize relevant and natural.
Great message Brad!
Brad’s message is good news for those of us who lack a “fake” gene. It also pays homage to honest plodding – faithfully put all your white hat marketing ducks in a row and eventually you’ll succeed. What a relief!
Brad strikes again with his seemingly ever expanding marketing intellegence. Everything I’ve ever heard Brad say, in person or recorded, has been genuinely focussed on ‘real’ customer value, and real good business practice. Great diagram… certainly does just ‘sum it up’
It’s heart-warming when you read some blogs like this from an experienced marketer.
I was at a forum the other day and felt discouraged when I discovered that some guys were employing and achieving huge successes with black hat methods and making stash of cash from Adsense with these methods by creating hundreds of websites. Yes that’s hundreds! In fact, they were really boastful about it.
When I read many of those comments, you can imagine my shoulders dropping with weakened knees, sinking back into my couch. It was as if I was living in the 18th Century with some cranked technology and earning droplets from one of my sites that run Adsense in comparison to those guys.
Reading Brad’s blog shows that hard work may lose the battle, but still wins the war. And that’s what counts.
Thanks Brad and thanks Ken.