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"Not sure about who is confused but I love when people speak their mind. My clients will disagree with you. In fact, if they didn't get tangible results I'd cease to get clients.
Blanket statements are good for one thing, smothering the truth. The latest Google index is nothing more than data to be analyzed in order to provide better optimization. I never look at the index as good or bad, it's just another opportunity to continue the learning process.
Next week it will be business as usual. The SEOs that have been at it awhile took a look at this index, shrugged and started the analysis. Some clients panicked and reached for the phone, others smiled and started preparing for an increase in business. Next month, the exact same thing will occur all over again. I love this business... "
So, since we have some confusion here as to the utter worthlessness of SEOs, let me elaborate on my statement.
( First let me say that I never implied SEOs are more worthless than, say, ODP editors. All humans have some inherent worth, no matter how small. )
First, let us accept the fact that Google is like a god. You can be tops on Yahoo! ( which I am ) and still Google sends more traffic.
I make this point because I mean to show that SEOs are not needed where Google is concerned.
They may be nice if Yahoo! gives you an bad initial listing, w/o any of the keywords you tried to stuff in there. SEOs usually can brown nose a Yahoo! editor into adding four or five keywords back into the descrition.
But for Google, read this:
Be very careful about allowing an individual consultant or company to 'optimize' your web site. Chances are they will engage in some of our "Don'ts" and end up hurting your site.
If Google says not to do it, don't.
I had several top listings on Inktomi and Google, paid a pro several thousand to optimize it, and boom, no traffc. Just like Google says.
I know of a competitor, with $29 million invested in their URL, and thanks to SEO they have no top listed keywords. Thanks to SEOs they get to pay Overture and Google Adwords for all their traffic.
SEOs like to say, "You won't get to the top w/o us". Its BS.
Google is set up to give optimized sites nothing, while sites who don't give a damn about Google get top listing. ( Not in all cases. )
Case in point:
<META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="Microsoft Word 97">
<TITLE><snip></TITLE>
This site has a #1 listing for <snip>. It has no keywords. And it has a title of <snip>
Now if that isn't getting to the top in spite of yourself, what is?
SEOs are not needed. They do more harm than good.
Content is everything.
[edited by: Marcia at 3:41 am (utc) on Sep. 29, 2002]
[edit reason] no specifics, per charter and TOS [/edit]
Domain Name
Content
Page Rank
Targeted Link Popularity
URL Name Extension
Theme
Title
Keywords within the first 25 words of the page.
Keywords scattered about in the body text
Keywords within the last 25 words of the page
Cross-Linking
Changing a few lines of text evry month.
Making a Keyword bold.
A few other minor additions.
It is really pretty simple or should be.
Unless you want to generate tons of traffic becasue you own a Gambling or Sex site, you only need to Optimize for GOOGLE and Inktomi anyway.
Well said.
But I wouldn't pay much for it. I hire someone and train them how to do it.
The scam comes in when a search engine company tries to force you into only ranking phrases and not single keywords. I would be out of business if I had to live on key phrases. If you are a good SEO you should be able to rank a single word.
I had one of the really well known SEO Experts tell me that I should check out that he was ranked in the top five on GOOGLE under the phrase 'key west bed and breakfast". He claimed that this was a great accomplishment. It is a joke.
I see your point, but the best SEO has to be the site owner (unless it's some computer-phobic CEO of General Motors), because he/she will put more blood, sweat and tears into it than any fly-by-night "expert". He will also put the effort in to achieve the necessary industry recognition - i.e backward links. I think they would only do sensible optimisation too, because they would appreciate the financial consequences of being caught with their pants down.
I tried a guy once who had done SEO for a newspaper and to be honest I don't think it achieved much. No harm done thankfully. Even though our business is more successful than I thought possible (because of Google basically), I still watch the sites like a hawk. I would never trust someone else to do that.
I eould not be able to do SEO for anyone else like I do it for myself because I just would not have the same motivation.
Magic The Gathering from Wizards of the Coast is the most complex and ever changing game ever constructed. It out-sold Monopoly and Trival Pursuit combined over the life of both these games in 1 1/2 years. They now run $1,000,000 tournaments and the world championships are on ESPN. I'm ranked 9th in my state.
Being your own SEO is best. Most people cannot even write a solid page without knowing the products inside and out.
SEO's are being faded out. Even Yahoo is almost gone. I have 10 very good listings in Yahoo for the same site under different terms and I get almost no traffic anymore.
Agreed. It is by far the most complicated engine to optimize for ever. It is more complicated than the rest of them combined. Certainly more complex than the average site owner can muster. You can tell that just by the number of posts here and the number of repetitive questions.
From what I've seen, there are about a 20 to maybe 30 seo's in the world who have really nailed Google and know where the max-out points really are. And those guys rarely talk. This aint the days of alta and infoseek - they've learned their lesson and their craft. We've talked about trade secrets before, and some of the seo's out there deserve patents for what they are doing with Google.
>able to rank a single word.
There is little reward to try to optimize for a single kw. The ROI is next to nothing and the competition is intense. The amount of work required to nail that single keyword outweights it's reward.
I'll cede the competition 500 referrals a day under "widgets" and take a 1000 off dozens of variations of "fuzzy widgets", "green widgets", "green fuzzy widgets", or everyones favorite "green fuzzy widgets for sale on fridays in maine". I'd do twice the referrals they do and a few thousand percent more ROI. Leave the single keyword playing to the big guys. I don't want to rank fantastic (top 5) under one keyword, I want to rank "good" (top ten) under a thousand phrases.
>I absolutely love doing SEO, almost for the sake of doing SEO.
It's like doing the NY Times crossword in pen. Very rewarding until you make a mistake. (I've not found any White Out for seo yet ;-) It's always driving in the rearview mirror.
1) The person hiring the SEO needs to have a clue. (so does the SEO) People still think that meta tags are the answer and often want to believe they are the answer because they want to cut a check and be done with it.
2) People looking for SEOs or even looking to hire an agency for an online media campaign need to be competent enough to come up with an RFP. In several years of agency work, not one client has ever come to us with any idea of what they want to do. This includes small businesses and Fortune 1000 companies. Granted, client education is part of the biz dev process, but for people sometimes in charge of hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing dollars the level of cluelessness is unbelievable. It is rediculous to hire an SEO firm or consultant, or marketing agency without at least have a vague idea of the desired end result. 99% of the time, the client knows their business better than any SEO or marketing agency. Strategy needs to be defined by the client or with a lot of client input. The job of the consultant or agency is to set realistic expectations and bring them to reality.
3) SEO is not and cannot be something done in isolation. In the days when AV and Ink ruled the web, doorway pages ruled the day and could essentially be treated as a media buy. Unless you are creative with frames or are still in the cloaking business, SEO that gets a decent conversion rate does not happen outside the site.
4) The fact that SEO involves writing content "optimized" to drive sales and get traffic is beyond the comprehension of many people. If a site hasn't taken SEO into consideration in the early stages of the planning of the site, the end results are likely to be severly limited.
One agency put out a bunch of press releases in the last few months touting around 15mil in new and rollover SEO business with an average client engagement of 180k/year. SEO needless? Not in the opinion of many of these blue chip clients. Sometimes cash is more plentiful than common sense in large companies. However, when you consider the amount of understanding that may come from in depth SEO and analysis of language patterns, search terminology, user behavoir within the website, 180k a year might very well be a bargain to a company whose average sale is $100,000 or even a mortgage company that pulls in between 5 and 25k on a mortgage.
SEO and SEOs are essential to many business when the SEO and the client are on the same page and work well together. SEO that increases rankings, traffic, and sales, can be more effort and more costly when purchased and performed as an add on service than when it is incorporated from the start. In this case, SEO may not be an appropriate term, online communications services may be more appropriate. This is distinctly different than PR flacks and traditional corporate commnications folks in the offline world because it must target, talk to, and connect with real people.
When purchasing SEO services:
1) Don't expect to write a check and see your rankings increase. It just doesn't work that way.
2) Be prepared to devote time and resources to it, think of your SEO as a partner in your business.
3) The client has to educate the SEO about their business, the SEO needs to educate the client about SEO
4) Be prepared to make visible changes to your site
5) Ask questions, lots of questions.
6) Expect that it is an iterative, ongoing process. If you want to do a 3 month "trial" SEO program you'll probably waste your money
7) Don't put much faith in anyone who promises ODP listings :)
8) Establish metrics and goals and measure them
9) Use the knowledge gained from SEO in other marketing initiatives. If you are buying AdWords, keyword banner rotations, sponsorships, or something else, pay attention to the keywords that work for you in SEO and leverage them across other ad programs. This includes the keywords you buy and the language you use in banners, other ad units, press releases.
ODP listings are easy. They won't drive much traffic but I can have a site listed in a couple of days.
A meta description of:
National Widget Association, Association Of Widget Producers, Widgets.com, Widget Association Of North America
And keywords along those lines.
The SEO in this case failed to understand that those association sites have high PR because they have thousands of incoming links.
Simply copying the page titles gets you nowhere.
I was gonna recommend getting a full refund.
Or, is there any valid reason for this type of SEO?
On the other hand if they charged for Keyword Analysis then it would be another matter.
If your example is representitive of the quality of the work I would have deep concerns abot the SEO company involved. Though there may be good mileage in being second or third in the rankings for the name of an industry association.
I just added 10 listings to ODP in the last week.
"I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it."
Ashleigh Brilliant
Keyword analisis, huh?
"Though there may be good mileage in being second or third in the rankings for the name of an industry association."
How could he ever be listed in the search results for an association? He is not an association and the word "association" never appears on any page of his site, except on the title and meta tags.
I could put "nud* tee*" on my title, in my keywords, on in my description, but it ain't gonna get me a top rank for that word unless my page includes those words.
How could he ever be listed in the search results for an association? He is not an association and the word "association" never appears on any page of his site, except on the title and meta tags.
I could put "nud* tee*" on my title, in my keywords, on in my description, but it ain't gonna get me a top rank for that word unless my page includes those words.
You are completely correct, in order to rank on a phrase then you need to consider the overall optimisation process, not just title, keywords and description. However there are many ways that you can get a good ranking for a term about an industry association. Such as promoting the fact that you are a member, doing a synopsis of the relative merits of various associations and so forth.
It works. You can even get multiple listings for the same site in the same and different categories.
Note: the going rate is a free Google T-shirt for a full description of each such seo. ;)
[googlestore.com...]
Just kidding.. kinda.. :) :)
GoogleGuy
Not good enough. I've been wanting a Google sweatshirt for over a year, even wrote the Googlestore requesting they carry them. For a free Google sweatshirt to wear to the mall, I will confess.
Marcia - I agree. They are really passing up a good bet here. I'm sure these would be a bigger money-maker than AdWords. ;)
