I know many individuals ranging from web designers to business owners who like to believe that creativity, ingenuity, and hard work will win out in the search engine optimization wars and that "inspired" or "genuine intention" websites (sites that didn't get their rankings by spending thousands on SEO firms) will outrank those trying to buy their way up. Some even go so far as to claim that SEO is dead and that in the new internet market place user popularity is everything.
In many cases this is absolutely true; a number of promotional packages just don't work and most expensive SEO firms can be outdone by faster-moving technically-inclined individuals or by smaller companies that are extremely active in the online networks.
You can buy links, you can purchase advertising, you can promote, promote, and promote and you may still not be able to spend enough to acquire the same rankings and traffic as your competitors. People see this all the time and immediately jump to the conclusion that it's becoming harder and harder to buy your way the top or manipulate Google and the other search engines. However, this couldn't father from the truth.
It's easier than it's ever been to buy your way to the top. It just takes a commitment to be more aggressive and think on a larger scale then most companies or individuals are comfortable with. Before you stop reading, I'm not talking about doing anything unethical like spamming anyone; I'm talking about using money differently as a motivator to sway the online arena.
Currently, when I read about people trying to buy their way up in the rankings, it involves buying massive amounts of links, paying internet marketers and SEO consultants and setting up different types of link baiting schemes, like contests, tools, and other promotions. Now these are all great and can work, but the reason why I see them fail so often is the overly commercial nature of their site when compared to the fierce competition from indie content producers and other less commercial websites, who acquire most of their links for free along with immense traffic from social bookmarking and networking websites.
So how do you buy your way to the top of the rankings and outdo your competitors? Well, you're going to need some money, but it can easily be done. Instead of buying the links or the link bait, buy the main content creator, buy their creativity. Put them to work on a portion of your site and give what they create away for free. They'll be happy, because they're getting paid, and you'll rank for absolutely anything, because you'll have more of the most valuable content that everyone wants with links to your commercial sections all over.
There is an abundance of creative talent active in the online arena which desperately needs money. In the beginning of the internet revolution, the connected individuals with talent and creative ideas where either too busy making themselves rich or working for now defunct dot coms. But the bubble burst in the early 90's and the web grew and grew.
It's now full of extremely talented individuals creating an enormous amount of valuable content, but lacking one major thing. Money. Few sites are monetized properly and even the high ranking, non-commercial websites are starving. With your financial backing, they'll be able to produce better content and more of it and the "free" version of your site will generate all the traffic you want. Connect it to the commercial part of your site and you'll dominate. The internet community will also embrace you, because you're providing access to quality free content. The beauty of this system is that everyone wins.
Using a blog as an example (indie content takes many forms, a blog just provides an easy example), how many blog entries could you buy for $2,000 per month? You could probably find a talented individual willing to just write blog posts all day at that price. Can you imagine an industry blog updated everyday with multiple, extremely high quality posts and articles, all edited to perfection, spell checked, and packed with attitude? You would rank for anything you wanted and receive far more links and traffic than you possibly could with the same PPC budget or traditional SEO budget.
Of course, if you combined all three you'd have one killer website with rankings that would be very hard for your non-commercial competitors to touch. That's SEO for deep pockets, but it is rarely done.
