Why SEO is pointless

It never ceases to amaze that people ask about SEO. For some reason, to them, it's a big mystery why their pages don't make the top ten pages for search like: "video games" or "construction" or "hot blonde girl sex". Seriously.

Rather than do my own long, under-researched explanation, I'll point you to Derek K. Miller's, Boosting your search ranking: it's no trick.

The reason other sites might return higher ranks than you are is that they are very popular, and if you have just redesigned your site, it contains much new information that hasn't yet propagated everywhere. In essence, Google is a reputation machine—the rank of a site is determined by how many others link to it, and by how many link to those sites, and so on. When information about you appears on the sites of major newspapers or well-known webloggers, for example, their pages may outrank you until those news items get old, and it's possible that may always be the case.

If you're concerned about your ranking, read the whole thing. Otherwise, do the simple thing: create good content, good enough content that others link to you, and save your money.