So, if someone asked you, "Who in the World is Dave Cottrell?" would you know the answer? Just who is this guy on Hello Hello who goes by the pseudonym of “login?” What kind of person would choose an ID like that?

Well, if you did a Google search for Dave Cottrell, you would find that our Dave Cottrell is the first of some 3+ million listed, and is actually listed three times on the first page. On Yahoo, for the same search, out of about 891,000 dave cottrells, he shows up 3^rd, 5^th, 6^th, 8^th and 9^th, as of 10/15/09 on the first page. If you plug david h cottrell into the same search, you get 3, 6 and 8 out of 106,000 on Google and 3,4,5 and 9 out of 805,000 on Yahoo.

So, the question is, is this because of a great amount of time, effort and dollars being spent on SEO to stroke one man's prideful desire to get his name to the top of the world's largest search engines, above virtually all of the millions of others world wide with the same rather common name?

The answer is, no. Dave Cottrell's name has risen to the top of the search engines because he blogs, posts on forums and walls, uses a signature file in email, forum replies and bulletins, and doesn't just copy and paste replies, comments and blogs everywhere.

This brings us to the whole point of this short article. The best way to get to the top of the search engines is to get noticed by the search engines! Search engines love unique content. It doesn't have to be long, nor does it even have to be particularly well-written. What it does need to be is unique. Cutting and pasting the same information over and over again all over the internet can be considered spam by the search engines and do more harm than good.

A signature file, while not unique in itself, will not get canned as spam, unless that's all you paste everywhere, since the content that you attach your signature (sig) file to is unique. A sig file is simply a very short bit of information usually with your name, contact information, very short ad and link that you put at the end of everything you post or email anywhere.

Dave Cottrell's name has risen to the top of the ranks on the two biggest search engines in the world. So if someone was to ask you, “Who in the World is Dave Cottrell,” you could simply tell them to look at page one on Google or Yahoo, and their search for information would be narrowed down to the top ten instantly, but what good is this to Dave Cottrell?

That IS a very valid question. Having your name on page one of Google or Yahoo is a great way to impress your friends and dazzle your acquaintances, but it really doesn't do anything for your business when you're selling cameras or cell phones and someone types those into the search bar instead of your name! However, just as a name rises in the ranks from using sig files and posting, so do the links and search terms in that sig file!

Hello Hello is coming up in Alexa rankings by having a lot of traffic. However, it can also get a lot of traffic coming from the search engines because of unique content being created and posted on the wall, in blogs, in classified ads, in comments, in bulletins, and in any way that the collective creative minds here can come up with. Being creative will bring up the rankings of the creator with each post, plus it will bring up the rankings of the site that is being posted on. Better rankings mean more and better quality traffic for the site and for the person posting. More traffic means the Alexa ratings will come up, and more people will see the posts, ads, articles, and so on, which will bring the rankings up on the search engines.

The bottom line is, whether on Hello Hello or anywhere else in business on the internet, anything that will bring better quality traffic, otherwise know as “targeted” traffic, and more of it, will bring in more revenue, meaning your bottom line just got better!

Of course, Dave Cottrell, or “login” as the server here on Hello Hello knows him, doesn't mind having his name at the top of the search engines, but that alone sure doesn't taste much like a sirloin steak at a nice, expensive restaurant, but when the simple techniques that it serves as an example for are used, that sirloin steak can become a reality for anyone. Furthermore, if this one method is used consistently and persistently, why settle for a restaurant in your own town?

It doesn't matter where you start, only that you do. Start now.