SEO: I feel so dirty.

[rfgdxm1]

A couple days ago I got a request from a non-profit organization which is involved in matters of warning people about certain dangers for a link exchange. Not long ago I got over the fear of outbound links being dangerous for Google and added a new section to my site for links to other sites on the general topic and added a link. However, before e-mailing back, I checked out how that site was doing for an all critical keyword. Terrible. And the reason was whoever was coding the HTML knew nothing about SEO. As in so bad the main page for this critical keyword isn't even used in the page title. No wonder why they are buried in the SERPs. I reworked the source code of that page, and included it as an attachment in my reply. The webmaster immediately realized I was right, and replaced the current page with the one I sent him.

"Now watch what you say
Or they'll be calling you a radical
A liberal, oh fanatical, an SEO"

-modified lyrics to Supertramp's "The Logical Song"

I feel I am turning to the dark side. Excuse me, but I feel the urge to shower for a few hours. ;)

[Wired Suzanne]

Wow, that is what I call 'service'.

[rfgdxm1]

If you think this is bad, once before I did some SEO as a favor to someone running a commercial site doing poorly on Google for no pay. I optimized it for 4 different 2 word search phrases, each with over half a million instances according to Google. That site is #1 for 3 of these on Google, and #5 for the last. The amusing thing is that I just checked and on all these SERPs there are *eight* Adwords off to the right for these search terms people paid for that I blasted this site to great Google rankings for free?! And this took just less than a day redoing the HTML. Almost enough to tempt one to go over to the dark side. ;)

[teeceo]

It is nice to be nice:). I am helping a few friend with there seo work(for free) just so we can all make some $$$.

teeceo.

[Nick_W]

I've given up 'for free' favors. It was a new years resolution, no work without pay! - and CASH not favors or links!

Last year it was so bad at one time that I spent almost a week doing favors that seemed like a nice friendly thing to do at the time...

This year the only thing I'm doing is building my sisters new baby a site. But even that is a testbed for some sofware I'm writing ;)

Nick

[EquityMind]

rfgdxm1:

When you're ready to come over to the dark side let me know :)

God if you knew the kind of money you could command based on your knowledge.....I still help out and do a lot of charity work or near free work for friends and family or for key strategic people that I know will turn around and mention me to their existing clientele, but I've had to increase my rates SIX times over the last 18 months because of the workload.

[WebRookie]

Its good to help others out as you can, and very easy to give too much. I do it here and there and plan to continue freebies to help people out. You can look at it as good PR if nothing else and helping someone else make a buck or two in this terrible economy has got to count for something. ;)