Content Overload

On a Google forum, a user "Webslave" posted the following:

With Google's view, that pages with lots of links to them should be presented first, only free tools will appear on the first pages as a result since a lot of user's link to the sites that are involved with the free tools. My company sells tools for software developers and we run a web site that is commercial and describes our tools in an effort to sell these tools. Is the content relevant? I will let you be the judge of that www.foxdata.com.

How many other commercial tool vendors or free sites do you think links to our site? I think the answer is obvious since we are not in the business of promoting other commercial products but our own, neither are other commercial tool vendors. If all the first pages are swamped with free tools, how can we make ourselves visible? Ah! Pay Google top dollars and you will show on the first page! Google has since long no interest in providing relevant search results. Their only interest is making money. Both founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin sold shares last year for $1.4 billon!

Well, Webslave, there's a lot of truth in what you say, however, I would guess that the problem with your site is not Google, but rather the complete information overload on your homepage. Do you think anyone reads any of that? If I were you (or your webmaster) I would try to reformat your homepage. tighten it up to help provide the search engines with a clear focus on what your site is about. Right now, there's just so much there that your ratios for keywords to content are so low that you don't appear relevant for anything. This would also improve user experience, as people could find your product without sifting through a ton of words.

Lesson for readers: the best way to make yourself irrelevant to search engines is to jam so much crap on your pages that they can't tell whether your site is about the widgets you sell or every alternate spelling of it that someone may type in, or worse, something completely irrelevant altogether.