With the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN seemingly changing their algorithms on a regular basis, it sometimes feels like you’re fighting a losing battle trying to keep up with them. We’re all constantly tweaking our websites and chasing links in a desperate attempt to grab, or hold on to, that elusive spot on the first page of results for our chosen keywords, so is SEO really worth the effort?

Well firstly if you have optimized your site well, both through onpage and offpage optimization, and manage to obtain top rankings in the search engines, then you can get a great deal of free traffic to your site, depending on how popular your keywords are that you are ranking well for. So yes of course in this instance SEO is most definitely worth spending time over.

The problem, however, is that if you are launching a new site and plan to get the bulk of your traffic from search engines, you may end up being disappointed because it can take many months before you even get close to achieving high rankings. This is particularly true of Google and Yahoo. MSN is easier to rank highly for, but this is negated by the fact that a lot less people use MSN than Google and Yahoo.

This is why when I now launch a new site I’m focused more on receiving traffic from other sources, and concentrating almost solely on building my own list of subscribers. There are endless ways to start getting immediate traffic to a new site and start building your list.

I personally like to post in forums, write and submit articles to article directories and relevant ezines, pay for advertising in these same ezines, write and submit press releases, promote a squeeze page on traffic exchanges (if my site is related to making money online), credit-based safelists (free safelists are a waste of time) and other list-building services. I also like to write free reports and ebooks (containing links to my site) which can be freely given away (and rebranded for greater distribution) creating a viral effect.

Author: Abhineet at Goarticles.com

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Long awaited Google Knol has been launched last month, since then there is some controversy about the feasibility of Knol in the presence of other successful knowledge base websites like About.com and Wikipedia. There has also been speculation about Google Knol that it would prove to be Wikipedia Killer. Google has defined Knol as a unit of knowledge saying that Knol’s objective is to be source of basic knowledge for anything that anyone search for on the internet. Many webmasters are worried that Knol would get top ranking for major keywords, much like Wikipedia. Adam Ostrow at Mashable.com said in a post “each “Knol” is created by a single author, who can then choose to either accept or reject edits made by others in what Google is calling “moderated collaboration.” Beyond that, Knol authors can insert AdSense on their Knols and earn revenue based on clicks. In reality, this sounds a lot less like the community collaborating on authoritative articles (Wikipedia) and a lot more like a potential land grab to create content for lucrative keywords.”

After the recent conflict in Georgia it has been noticed that the detailed maps of Georgia are missing from Google Earth. This led to some rumors that Google has perhaps removed Georgia from Google Earth after the Russian retaliatory invasion on Georgia. This conspiracy may be provoked due to the fact that the Google’s CEO Sergei Brin is Russian born. What many people failed to notice is that Georgia’s neighboring countries Armenia and Azerbaijan also lack mapping data.

Google posted notice on Lat Long Blog that the conspiracy is not true and Google never launched the coverage in those countries because mapping data was unsatisfactory for Google. The product manager Dave Barth who addressed the issue at Lat Long Blog also said “We’re hearing from our users that they would rather see even very basic coverage of a country than see nothing at all. That certainly makes sense, and so we have started preparing data for the handful of countries that are still blank on Google Maps. Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, as well as other significant regions of the world will benefit from this effort.”

Apart from all this controversy Russia seems to know where they are going.