[thelist] Google tactics (and search engines in general)

[isaac]

Hi,

I just wanted to throw something out there for people who have experience in
getting half-decent listings with Google.

Obviously, google is growing in popularity based on quality returns from
searches. Recently, they appear to have also added some of the advanced
functionality that everyone previously loved Altavista/Raging.com for:

ie, "isaac evolt -harvester"
will give you a listing of some of my posts to thelist, and exclude my
harvested tips, etc.

But since Google ranks (partially? entirely?) on site popularity (read: how
many sites are linked to you), does anyone else struggle to get smaller
clients a decent position?

Search for "evolt" on Google, and we dominate the first few listings -
because we have a fairly unique name, and also because a lot of places link
to us as a resource for Web developers all over the world.

Take the example, however, of a little bed and breakfast down the coast, and
how can they hope to score a decent ranking? Is exchanging links with other
similar accommodation providers the only way of getting noticed?

Does anyone have any other tricks? Often, with smaller clients, you're on a
tiny budget, and you can hardly afford to spend hours and hours tailoring
submissions to various engines. Or chasing up a million other little sites
who are usually too grumpy to exchange a link, etc.



isaac