I went to a small high school in New Jersey. I had a great time, and the teachers were fantastic, but there wasn’t much in terms of competition. My SAT score was pretty high, and I took it my senior year so I could get into an Ivy League college. The first college on my list was Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It’s an amazing school and one of the best colleges in the world (I’ll be going there as a freshman this fall). My GPA from high school wasn’t THAT great (it was okay), but I knew that my SAT scores would give me an excellent chance at getting accepted into Harvard.
So when did this change? When did writing become a competition for me? Well, the answer is simple: Google started using algorithms to judge their search results for users. Let me go back before that happened though… Before Google became what it is today (a powerful search engine) people used other engines such as MSN Search or Yahoo! Search Engine to find information online about things they were looking up on the Internet. For example if you were looking up “How many calories are in an Oreo?” you would use one of these engines instead of Google because they didn’t have it at that time yet! This all changed when Google came around… When they started applying algorithms to determine how their search results rank above others in their database searches. Winning is great, and I love competition, so it was a natural fit!
I use Google search quite often. It’s pretty much the only search engine I use. If you’re like me, you probably don’t use anything other than Google when searching on the web (except for Bing occasionally). This is why my brother told me about an article that was posted in The New York Times. He thought it might be interesting for me to read! It was about how Google search results were being affected by SEO practices that companies were using to outrank their competitors in their database searches. In this article there were two examples given: one of which talked about how some doctors at a hospital fabricated records so they could “outrank” their competition and make more money at work; and another example had to do with a law firm who used negative reviews of other firms as “search engine bait” to lure business away from them. These are just two examples given in the article, but it is just scratching the surface… There are hundreds of other articles where people have used unfair tactics against competitors (with success) such as hiring an employee or family member to write bad things about your business/competitor under several different user names/aliases online.
What does all this mean? Well basically that everyone is trying everything they can possibly think of to outrank everyone else on Google search results! It’s kind of like what happens when someone leaves their house unlocked while they’re gone. Now there’s a good chance that someone will come in and take all of their stuff! It is a constant battle being fought by all businesses, organizations, and individuals to outrank the competition. One thing I have learned from this experience is that you have to know your audience! You can’t just write about anything you want. If you’re trying to reach a global audience then it doesn’t matter what the content on your website is about; but if your target market consists of teenagers or college students then you need to know what they want when they Google something… For example I am currently writing an article for my blog on how social media has changed the way people do business today. This was my idea because I see so many businesses online who are not using social media at all in their marketing strategy! This is where my target audience comes into play… My fans don’t know how important social media has become in our society today so I’m going to be explaining why it’s important and how it can benefit your business/social life!
I think everyone needs a little bit of competition in their lives otherwise we wouldn’t be striving for greatness like we do now-a-days.
One of the things I love most about writing is the competition. It makes me want to do better than everyone else! I love Google search because it pushes me to write better articles, and in turn, other people will read them and they’ll like what they see! This is just one example of how writing can be a competition… But remember that you have your own style as a writer and that you have to keep working on it!