Google, Google, Google! Why do They Make Life so Hard?

April 19, 2012 - PRLog -- Why do they make it so damn hard for us new website owners to get noticed?!  Have good content they say... I have.  Write articles and press releases we are told... I have written numerous.  Use linking phrases in your articles we are told... so I do.  Use linking phrases for the terms you want to be searched for... so I do! But now we are told we cannot use the same linking phrases because they will be considered spam.

This is the point at which I started hysterically screaming and cursing.  The big boys do not have to jump through the numerous hoops that the little guys do and their sites are guaranteed constant exposure.  Of course they advertise on Google which helps, but they do not need to do this because their brand name is all they need.

If you have read my previous blogs you will know I have been attempting for a while to get my site noticed and reap the rewards with thousands of hits.  Blizzard will be releasing an expansion to World of Warcraft very soon and it is unashamedly targeted at the Chinese market.  I would like to be very visible for this launch but I really don't know what more Google want from me.

Most of the sites I am competing against do not market the brand new player niche and many of the guides that are written have very poor content.  Indeed some of the sites are appalling and the content is threadbare, yet I cannot compete for the term "World of Warcraft Guide" or even "New to World of Warcraft".  The latter is the name of my website, so you would have thought that it would be a fairly simple process to rank on the first page for it, but the last time I searched I could find no trace of my site!  As I said in a previous blog, these two terms are the only ones that have significant traffic for my niche so it is imperative that I rank highly for them.  However "world of warcraft guide" is so damn generic I have no chance whatsoever of ever being able to rank for it, and the term is not very useful anyway because most of the traffic will not be new players.  

According to the Google keyword tool my previously favoured search terms "new world of warcraft player guide" and "world of warcraft beginners guide" do not get searched for.  To be frank I cannot believe people do not refine their searches to try to find what they are looking for.  I know I do and surely I am not unique?!

Anyway back to Google's decision to penalise websites for spamming the same linking phrases.  What I want Google to tell me is what the damn difference it makes?  How is it any less spammy to use "world of warcraft guide for beginners" than "world of warcraft beginners guide"?  The point I am making is; how the hell do I get the right exposure and traffic for my hard work without getting penalised?  I feel Google are unfairly restraining my right to "trade" and are creating barriers to entry into the market place.  Apart from Google's obvious domination of the search engines, and hence the Internet, what legal right do they have to restrain trade the way they do?

I know we do not want the Internet to be dominated by useless affiliate advertising only websites and that quality should be the objective of all website developers, but I seriously wonder whether it is right that Google alone should decide.  I would like to see a bit of democracy in action and I'm not talking about democratic capitalism, because money is not the webs raison d'etre.

# # #

Philip is a website developer and writer. His latest project is: http://www.new2worldofwarcraft.com . It is aimed at new World of Warcraft players and is a comprehensive free guide.