What does the recession have to do with it?

It is not really the question to answer. There are a number of the scenarios one can imagine:

1. There are less people working, so perhaps less people with the internet access.
2. People are more busy since their colleagues have been made redundant and their workload is spread on the remaining staff.
3. People just do not want to be seen surfing in the office – since they are afraid for their jobs.
4. People have better things to do but to surf endlessly.
5. …I am sure there are many more reason you can think of.

It is the first time in the history of the web (I am sure you like those ‘Biggest Recession’ phrases by now) that the overall Internet traffic volume is decreasing.

But don’t despair! If your traffic is falling, there is the SEO Consultant to get your traffic growing again!

Everyone working in the search engine optimisation industry (SEO) is asking themselves the same question: Is onsite optimisation more important than the offsite optimisation today? Are those inbound links from other sites really crucial in determining the sites ranking? Should one invest his time to do the optimisation of the page itself at all if the ranking is determined by the number and the quality of the inbound links?

Here is a test to answer to the question:

1. Register a new domain name.
2. Install some blogging software on it.
3. Set up your blogging software so that is sends a PING to the search engines when a new post is published.
4. Setup and configure the XML Sitemap generation and automatic submission after a new post is published on a blog.
5. Setup the SEO optimisation of your blog posts page – Title, Meta, URL rewriting, H1, H2,…
6. Write your first article with a Title of your blog post as the phrase you want to rank high in Google. For the purpose of this test take an easy 4 or 5 word phrase.
7. Wait from a few minutes to a few days, make a search for the phrase that is a tile of your blog post.
8. If everything is done right – you should have your blog post listed on the No 1. In Google within a week of registering a domain.

Note: there isn’t a single inbound link to that domain at all, and jet it ranks on top of the search for the specific phrase.

Conclusion:

Inbound links are important for your web site search ranking. But inbound links, regardless of their quantity or their quality (importance of the sites linking to you, and text they link to you with) cannot replace the content on your site. The test above proves the opposite scenario – where there are absolutely none inbound links, and the content on a well optimised web page itself made the page to rank on top in the search engine for the relevant keyword.

The Content is The King!