We live in a world where everybody wants the latest and greatest. Somewhere along the way, we have concluded that the newer something is the better. If we are buying a CD, it has to be the latest release from the new one-hit wonder; we don’t care if the songwriter couldn’t tell melody from harmony or that the singer is incapable of carrying a tune; all that matters is that it’s new in optimisation.

Each fall hundreds of people scramble to get to car dealerships, frantic to drive the next year’s models, barely capable of waiting for them to be unloaded off the truck, it doesn’t matter if we are six months behind on car payments on last years model which is in perfect running condition, we’re blinded by all the bells and whistles that the new cars have to offer.

People will stand in a long line, overnight, in an electrical storm to simply spend an unhealthy amount of money on the latest electronic gadget just because it is brand new; we don’t care that in just a few months it will be a fraction of the cost; we have to have it now.

Even internet service suffers from the right now syndrome. For years, we were content with dial-up service. Sure, it was slow, but it was that or nothing. Heck, we hardly noticed that it took hours to download a simple file, days to upload a couple of pictures, download a video… that was practically unheard of. We didn’t know any better.

Now that the world has found out about all the new options for internet service, we have to have them. It doesn’t matter that it is double the monthly cost, or that we have to default on our student loans in order to purchase the necessary equipment. If it is cordless, faster, and designed with the latest technology, we have to have it…right now.

We don’t care if the old stuff is made with better materials, lasts longer, and is cheaper. In our minds, old equals junk.

Search engine optimisation is one spot where we should force ourselves to shed our weird inhibitions about old stuff. When it comes to search engine optimisation, age rules over youth.

Search engine optimisation is the art and science of making web pages attractive to the search engines. The more attractive a website appears (search engines are attracted, not to beauty, but to repetitive algorithms), the higher it ranks in the search engines’ search results. A low ranking could potentially be the kiss of death to an internet-based business because studies have shown that internet users seldom look past the second page of hits.

Search engines use web crawlers to determine a website’s ranking.

Older websites and the webmasters who manage them have had more time to develop and maintain their algorithms. They are already itemised and ranked by the search engines. In some cases, it can take three months for a web crawler to get around to spidering a brand-new website that has been submitted to the search engine; old sites are already appearing and gaining customer recognition. If an older site has been around long enough to have earned a loyal customer base, even if a shuffle in the rankings causes the aged website to be bumped from a prime ranking position, loyal customers will still look for it.