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It seems like SEO, or search engine optimization is being commoditized these days. Everyone is into “SEO”, or is an “SEO-er”, is some kind of “SEO expert”, and there are even lots of “SEO tools” (even have one of my own), and soforth.
So what makes you an SEO expert anyway? How long you have been doing it? Well, the algorithms change frequently, so what you knew 5 years ago probably doesn’t apply today. Is it your history of results? Well, we all get lucky – even I’ve gotten lucky on some projects, but others have not been so successful. So while you have hired an “SEO Expert” to come in an wave their magic wand, the fact is that your project could have a whole new set of problems they haven’t faced before. Therefore, an expert is one who comes to the table with their toolbox in hand, with a strong understanding of what tool to use when various problems arise.
Even experts disagree. In fact, I read an article just the other day that was a compilation of SEO myths, taken from a grab bag of “SEO experts”. Well, after reading the article, it made me feel as if nothing works, and everything is a myth. I bet you could give each of these “experts” a project, and each would approach it differently, and each would get different results.
So rather than call myself an “SEO Expert”, I’d rather take the approach of being a “Professional Tester” instead. To me, SEO is like trying to get into a safe full of cash with 50 different combination locks that you are trying to “tweak” to find the right combination and open the safe. Metaphorically, the client reaps the rewards of all of the time and effort you spent trying to find that right “combination”, and you feel good because you justified your expense. Don’t get me wrong, results are gradual and likely not a sudden “gush” of leads and sales, and the rate of return for each project will vary.
So what I’m saying is SEO takes a lot of testing and trials to see what works, and to see what is driving your organic traffic. I like to keep an eye on my keyword searches to see if anything interesting pops up. Sure, we get a lot of “pear analytics” and brand name searches, but we also got some hits on searches like “ppc alternative” and “how much does it cost to acquire each customer”. Should I develop more content around these search terms? How many times should I repeat the term on the page? Should I put it in the title tag? What about meta keywords – people say that doesn’t matter any more? Does it? It certainly can’t hurt, and other search engines other than Google have been known to still value the keyword, and there is about 30-35% of searches done on other engines besides Google.
There are (3) things I would attribute to getting maximum satisfaction out of your SEO efforts, and is primarily what our Website Analyzer scores you on:
1. Relevancy – how relevant is your content to the phrases people may be seeking you out for? If you are targeting “seo expert”, is the phrase in your page content, page title, page description, URL, etc.? In other words, don’t expect to rank for “seo expert” if you haven’t mentioned it on the page several times, don’t have it in your page title or description, or anywhere else for that matter.
2. Popularity – search engines are looking for relevant and popular sites. If you have lots of inbound links, Google assesses the link and assigns a “vote” to your page. The value of the vote depends on how popular the site was that linked to you, so it’s better IMHO to get a few links from popular sites (like TechCrunch for example), than lots of links from Company XYZ. Building links to your site takes time, so be patient. Blogging is a great way to get inbound links, and if you have good content, people will link to you, subscribe to you, Tweet you and other things.
3. Structure – the architectural structure of your site can play a major role in your ability to be found in the search engines. One of the first tasks your “SEO expert” should do is evaluate things such as a) clean URLs; b) XML sitemaps; c) HTML structure; d) meta guidelines and more. I’ve even seen situation where changing host providers can make a difference. Need a new host provider? Try the Cloud over at Mosso.
So how do the “SEO experts” start? What is the process? It may vary from person to person, but I like this approach:
1. Keyword Research – determine the kinds of search terms that people will most likely find you with. Avoid industry jargon, or things that you specifically do. For example, I have a friend who’s homepage is optimized for “dominate your market”. Well, it’s likely no one is searching for that, even though that’s what they will help them do. What the searcher may be looking for is “better market share” or “marketing effectiveness”, or maybe some other common search terms. I like to use things like WordTracker or Google Keyword Tool to find relative search volumes.
2. Content Development – now that you know the target keyphrases you want to go after, start developing content around those terms. It’s usually best to target 2-3 (max) terms per page. If you want to target “marketing effectiveness”, do things like write and tag blog posts about it, generate a full page dedicated to talking about “marketing effectiveness”, label a navigation link, add it to your title tag and your page description, etc.
3. Optimization – make sure the site structure is sound, ensure there are no issues with 404′s (missing pages), or duplicate content. Make sure the site has clean URL’s, and that it doens’t have anything important sitting in Flash. Check your Google Webmasters Tools to make sure all of your pages have been indexed without any errors.
4. Build Inbound Links – now we can turn our focus to building links to the site that have contextual relevance. For example, if you are an “SEO expert”, than you would want the link pointing to you to say “SEO expert” rather than “click here”. You can start creating your own inbound links from popular sitres such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Get Satisfaction, Blog Catalog, Technorati, and others. You can write articles and put them up on Google Knol, or you might even be able to create an entry in Wikipedia about your company. All of these sites have tremendous domain authority, and will likely be on the first page of results.
Moral of the story: SEO is not a magic bullet. It takes time and patience to get favorable results, but it will be your best source of leads over time in terms of cost per aquisition.
