I have several websites out there that are more of a hobby then anything else, a lot of proof of concept stuff, some public service, but all pretty much niche stuff, and nothing I am ever going to get rich off of, well maybe never, I can hope…
Ok enough background, I used to get, still do I guess,this stupid email about once a quarter per website, from some alleged Elmer Fudd (aka PHD) telling me how he has analyzed my website, and tested it against search engines globally, and how much better it would be traffic wise if I was more reachable to non english speakers globally. Well first of all I really don’t care who can find that website, more then a couple hundred miles from where I am, and anyone who actually looked at the site would easily figure that a out. The other thing is I went ahead and looked at how that site fared against the likes of Google China, and guess what I actually rate number 1 in a lot relevant search terms. Same with India, number 2 in Russia, and Pakistan, but always top 5. I can’t figure out where all that foreign traffic is, I guess no one in outer Mongolia cares about that stuff.
So now I want to know, what do these guys actually do, and how much do they charge. Well it seems that for the low low price of ~$400 per language they’ll convert my meta tags and submit my site to relevant search engines for the language. Plus they offer all kinds of other translation services for a fee, I guess I’ll just stick to babelfish.altavista.com for my translation needs..
I have to believe that this whole SEO thing is just a big scam, maybe a short term bump, and what all the search engines say, that the best SEO is good relevant content. I have to believe this, because as much scamming that goes on with the Internet, that if SEO actually worked as advertised, BillyJoBobs Chevy Emporium on Rt 5 would stand as much of a chance for the number 1 spot as Chevrolet when searching for Chevy…
