What Professional SEO’ers says Works and What Does
First thing’s first: watch the video below. It’s only about 4 minutes long and it’s about SEO. An MSNBC show ‘Consultants Corner’ talks with an SEO professional about what the three top things for SEO are.
Edit: Screw embedding it. Here’s the link: watch me. Originally found on Web-Design-Book.
For those of you too lazy to watch the video here’s the low down. It’s in very basic terms through out, but the three “top reasons” are as follows.
- Good Content
- Back links
- <title> and<meta /> tags
If I was serious enough about my company (this is hypothetical) that I need to SE market my “widget” or other imaginary product, I would talk to a friendly web developer such as myself to find out what SEO is and how it works.
If I got an email from some random person asking this, the first thing I would tell them is this:
If they say anything about good content, back links and meta tags, get far away!
Why would I say that? First of all there are much more immediate methods to improve your SERPs and if they’ve gotten to asking around, they have already heard it, and chances are they’ve started on this already. It’s no secret to anyone that good content and back links are good for SEs. Why?
Good Content = Visitors = Back links = PageRank
As for the Meta and Title tags issue… If you don’t have these, fire your web developer or whoever did your page and get someone with a shred of competence!
Get to the point…
Alright, so what actually does work? Here are some proven things that will help your cause for search engine success.
- Keyword Density. Basically if you want to have “funny videos” or “widgets and gadgets” turn you up on the first page in a Google search, you better damn well make sure Google can tell that your page is about “widgets and gadgets”. Check your keyword density with this tool, via iwebtool.
- Use the <strong> tags around your keywords. This tell the spider what is important on a page. Similarly:
- Have keywords in <h1>. This is really big, actually. H1 tags are the top headings of any page. If you don’t use them, again, fire your“web guy” and get a competent one. They don’t have to be obtrusive, but use them.
- Free Directories. Want backlinks? Don’t we all? Find a good list or go to some sort of marketplace and get one of the random guys that offers “500 directory submissions for $9″ or something.
- That competent web developer you hired after firing the one who was lost in 1999 is priceless to your SE cause. The only thing better than a million pages of premium hand written content and more back links is experience. Period. The most useful SEO experts are not those from big time consulting companies that will charge you $10, 000 for a chance at the #1 position for an impossible search like “cars” or “video”, but in the niche SEO guys. You want someone who has experince in search engine marketing for your market.
And to close it off, I’ll leave you with my favourite quote from the video, paraphrased of course.
Watch out, we’re going to be getting really technical here… HTML 101 ahead! AHHH!
G’day 
Leave a comment
Lyndon Antcliff
March 17th, 2007 at 8:42 AM
Hi John. Thanks for taking the time to comment on the video I put up. Shame you cited youtube rather than web-design-book.com though.
I don’t agree with you that everyone knows that good content and backlink are what you need. First, not everyone knows what a backlink is. You didn’t until you learned what it was.
It’s a problem with SEO bloggers that because they learn something they expect everyone else to have learned it and if they don’t know it then people are idiots.
I was speaking to a friend the other day and he didn’t know what a blog was, he certainly didn’t know what a backlink was.
The point is, all information is unknown until it is known. To blithely say no one knows stuff is missing the point. The video was aimed at a specific audience and communicated very well.
Also I disagree with you on keyword density, it’s best ignored and to let the information flow naturally. Afterall that is what Google is after.
Connor Wilson
March 17th, 2007 at 10:46 AM
Yeah, thinking about it now it is a shame I didn’t think to link to you in the first place, but I got that up.
And to restate my point, which I probably didn’t make clearly enough, I’m not referring to the average person who might not know what a blog or a backlink is, I’m talking about the person who has a website, and is looking into hiring an SEO firm to help out their placements.
I’m sure you would agree that when hiring anyone to do something for you, you would first shop around and do your research. In doing your research, it would be as easy as well… searching to find the good content, backlinks and meta tags argument.
And I agree with letting content flow naturally, but you could definitely look at your shampoo site (aforementioned in the video) and try to get some good density going to help out a little.
The reason I mentioned keyword density was because recently it solved my problem as being listed #2 for my name (not John :P) in a matter of two days, and had before as well, but I took some keywords out to make it look more natural. In the end, it still looks natural, and I’m not planting them in my posts, but I still get the effect.
Zach Katkin Fort Myers
March 17th, 2007 at 1:37 PM
I agree with Lyndon. Although your points are valid, a lot of people (non-SEO savvy or internet savvy people) think SEO is some magic sauce you lather on top of a website. Most of the tips you offer are also usually included in a decent web development package, clients are looking for above and beyond and are not typically interested in the technical details.
Connor Wilson
March 17th, 2007 at 3:34 PM
That is a good way to put it, and maybe I am giving people a little more credit than they deserver
Lyndon Antcliff
March 18th, 2007 at 5:11 PM
Thanks for the link.
I see people like us who dedicate time to SEO like an expert plumber. I expect the plumber to know all that he os she needs to know. I do not expect to know much about plumbing, not even the basics.
Instead of learning about plumbing I go about my business making money so I can pay the plumber to learn how to be a plumber and do the job.
I expect a business person who wants the job done to be completely ignorant, who pays experts to build his site and perform SEO. Whilst I am doing his SEO, he is running his business.
It’s not that the business man is stupid or uneducated, he just does not need to know the nuts and bolts. All he needs to know is if it can make him money. So something like the video posted can bring him up to speed.
Web Design Cornwall
March 19th, 2007 at 4:50 AM
Also, given that at least 90% of web designers have no knowledge of SEO - it’s hardly fair to expect Pete the Plumber to know about it.
There’s so much conflicting and out of date information about SEO that there’s a real barrier to entry .. in other words you’ve got to read A LOT before you start to understand what’s going on.
Connor Wilson
March 19th, 2007 at 3:48 PM
So I guess in the end, people really aren’t as smart as you would like them to be, or as they could be. And I definitely see the point of, if designers probably don’t know any thing about SEO, then how could the random company owner?
And thanks for the replies guys, it’s always great to have a little discussion with my superiors so to speak (I’ll get a book out one day ;))
Mr. Continental Warranty
March 28th, 2007 at 3:00 PM
Why is it that site structure is always forgotton about in this nice little seo discussions. C’mon we’re broadcasting information to the people who are seeking information and are turning to so called “experts”. If you look at the thousands of realtors that have framed websites, that are templated… with a cms that only allows them to control content- optimizing under broader phrases is difficult .. because aspider parsing through code to find content or stagnent content with no internal linking is awful.. can we say supplemental index? Site structure and internal linking is a critical component to this discussion and is always forgotten about… shame-shame
Connor Wilson
March 28th, 2007 at 6:19 PM
Site structure and internal linking are two things that your competent web developer that you hired do anyways, or should. Again, if they don’t they’re not doing a such a great job
Login »