I have a friend who recently sold his company but wants to stay involved, probably because of pride, a desire to be engaged and to make a few bucks. Not necessarily in that order.
So he pitched the new owner on doing search engine optimization for several of the acquiring company's websites.
Trouble is, in my opinion, he knows diddle about SEO.
We discussed it a few months ago. Just talking with him you know he's not even close when it comes to developing a strategy, selecting keywords, optimizing properly, reviewing the results and revising the tactics. There are no procedures in place. I don't think he's even using a spreadsheet to track results.
He once asked me what article he could read to become proficient at SEO. An article? Seriously? An article? I don't know if I was more offended or amused by his query. That would be like saying the year I spent working at Amling's Flowerland selling trees and bushes qualified me to be a landscape architect.
I told him that I've read at least 4 books on the subject, I have attended seminars related to SEO and PPC over the years, I read several blogs daily. I've worked on and learned from dozens of sites. And that all pales in comparison to the experience of our search engine specialist at Web Asylum.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised. My friend once told a mutual acquaintance that there wasn't much to search engine optimization, that it's just "throwing some keywords up on a web page."
It's much much more than that and each of the points I'm about to outline would take more than a single article to fully explain. (Maybe an article and a Tweet! heh heh)
- There are easily a half dozen places on a web page that affect search engine rankings. They are both ON the page and in the code BEHIND the web page. Learn what usually needs optimization and develop a strategy to adjust all those areas.
- Knowing which keywords to optimize for is extremely important. When we ask customers what keywords and phrases they think people will use to find them, they often list very broad terms that would be difficult to dominate; words like "business", "financial", "eye doctor", "snow" and "builder" are recent examples. Some of the ones I cited would work better with supporting words, especially if a GEO (geographic location) was added.
- Understand that different pages should be set up differently. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to use the same meta keywords, descriptions and titles on every page of your site. For any number of reasons (a weeks worth of articles, at least) you should concentrate on different keywords for different sections of your site. Even if you optimize for similar products or services, each of those pages should be unique. But there are obvious differences between a product page and About Us.
- Search tools can help select proper keywords that your prospects are using. There are free tools to help, but if you're really serious about optimizing your site, I would encourage you to acquire 1 or more of the paid tools. Your ROI will be much higher.
- Linking is an important element of successful website optimization. Keyword-rich inbound links from authority sites is unbeatable. But even internal links can help rankings and improve user experience.
- Continuing your education is also very important if you want to be competitive. Read books, subscribe to newsletters, attend a conference or two, check out the forums.
Another important thing to keep in mind is to write good content! Google especially seems to value great content. It will also help your conversion and ultimately your ROI.
This is all very simplistic. Like many things, achieving an ROI on your efforts requires an investment of time and resources. In the case of SEO, it might be a significant investment.
It might be a better value to have it done for you so you or your staff can concentrate on other things.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my landscape architect job.
-- Kurt Scholle, Website ROI Guy
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