In This Chapter

• Content matters
• The benefits of organic linking
• The future of Google

The history of technology has shown time and again that no one company can retain its monopoly hold on the industry. A cursory glance at the rise and fall of the Netscape Navigator browser, Yahoo! hierarchal website directory, VisiCalc, and Lotus 1-2-3 reveals that companies come and go with the whims and ever-changing needs of the user community.

This is true in your business segment, too. Whether you have a restaurant, a video rental store, a manufacturing facility, or a home-based weaving cooperative, competitors appear, succeed, miss changes that occur in their customer community, and fail. But not all businesses fail. Some companies ride the waves of change and continually remain on top, whether through acquisition of smaller competitors or just a superior ability to stay plugged in with their customers.

You're more likely to have a successful company too, because you're exploring different ways to grow and expand your business, identify new product lines, become more involved with your customers, and rethink marketing and sales in this new web-based information age.

The last few hundred pages have been focused on how to work with Google and use its tools and software to attain your business goals and grow your business with Google. Some day another search engine will eclipse Google, however, and become the site of choice for finding out about your industry, your product line, and your company.

Your need for findability won't diminish when that happens. The techniques explored herein have been developed to improve your ranking with all search engines. By following the legitimate suggestions and eschewing the inappropriate tricks, by genuinely building a good, interesting, information-packed website, you'll always come out on top.

If the possibility of Google losing its top position in the search engine world concerns you, remember that Google has hundreds of engineers perpetually tinkering with the relevance score formula, identifying automatic methods for detecting SEO tricks, and trying to get closer and closer to the mythic perfect search engine with optimal results for every search.