So this is going to a be a semi-informational and semi-rant type post for today I’m afraid, I’m sure you’ll learn something about SEO but most of all you’ll learn something about business ethics.

SEO is a coveted industry, it’s a bit like Formula 1 in a way… everyone is trying to achieve the same thing but no one wants to tell eachother what works and what doesn’t because everyone else is the competition. As a result (and as I’ve said many times before) the SEO industry is secretive and very often dishonest, which is what I’m going to touch on today.

This blog isn’t specifically geared to teaching SEO techiniques, it’s meant to cover all the bases whether you’re providing SEO yourself, or whether you’re a small company considering taking on a company to perform SEO work on your site – as such this is really an article for everyone to take note of, not just the techies.

SEO has a nice little foothold compared to other web-services, there are no REAL measurable results, there is no definition of what it is, and almost no one understands it. How brilliant is that? Companies are charging thousands and thousands of pounds (a MONTH) for an invisible service! Which reminds me a little too much of a certain emperor with new clothes.

The problem with this is that it makes it incredibly easy for SEO companies to rip off their clients, after all, how can a client question the quality of the service which they receive when they neither understand nor know what it is? – I for one really hate this mentality, I’m not in business to make money by ripping people off, and the proof is in the pudding – 90% of the enquiries that I get to my web design and internet marketing business are based on word of mouth recommendation.

So enough preamble, how are SEO companies ripping people off?

Well talk to any SEO company and they’ll likely tell you that the work they carry out consists of an ‘initial’ SEO evaluation of the site, followed by a monthly ‘maintenance’ fee for ongoing specialist work. The truth however, is a little further from this pretty picture that they paint for you.

The initial fee, regardless of the sometimes astoundingly high price, is almost always justified – the evaluation of a site down to the last detail takes a LOT of work and all of the work carried out and the documentation provided takes specialist knowledge and skill. The biggest benefit that any site will get is in it’s initial SEO work, which really is an all-encompasing list of changes that need to be made in order to improve the site.

The monthly maintenance crap on the other hand, is exactly that, crap. You are generally charged £250-£25,000 per month (depending on how many hours work you want done), and the companies will happily tell you that this is necassary to ‘maintain’ your high rankings in the search engines.

Well I’m going to tell you exactly how YOU can do that, without paying them!

All that ‘monthly maintenance’ work consists of is link building, and quite often in the form of spam which is more likely to hurt you in the long run than help you. For those not familiar, link building is the process of acquiring as many links as possible all over the internet coming back to your site; this is done by posting comments on blogs, posting on forums, starting additional spam blogs which only exist for the purpose of link building, and using YOUR money to pay other sites to link to you.

This is NOT specialist work, anybody can do this and you could pay a 16yr old schoolkid less than minimum wage and he would probably do a better job than most SEO companies (who do it so much that they are bored to tears and only put in a half-hearted effort anyway).

The only monthly fee that can be justified is a consultation, a small review of the site each month to track it’s progress and offer further advice to the site owner about what THEY can do to keep improving it.

The second you hear anything about a 12-month contract or fees based on rankings achieved – run for your life from the scammers!

Here’s what YOU should be doing on a monthly basis

• Update your site – as often as possible, daily is best.
• Start a blog, and USE it, this contributes mostly to the above point, and also to the next one.
• Add content, add user reviews, add articles, add detailed hand written product descriptions.
• Actively seek to get reviews of your products from other sites, send out freebies if you have to.

Doesn’t look like much does it? That’s cause there’s not much too it! It’s really a case of time rather than effort, you just need someone who will actively do all these things for you.
Bare in mind that starting a blog and NOT using it is generally worse than not starting one at all, so think long and hard before you do, and assess whether or not it’s something that you will have the time and resources for, but know that if you do, the rewards are plentiful.

And finally

Reputation management is something that is becoming more and more popular (and important) these days on the web, you should regularly scan for sites linking to you.

Go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ and type in your url, this will give you a full list of all the sites linking to you.

You don’t want contentious or sites with a bad reputation linking to you, both for branding reasons and for SEO reasons, as in the long run all the people who try to cheat the search engines get found out, and penalised.

So

I hope you’ve learned something, remember the true form of SEO is honest and consists of improving a site to make it rank better, not gaming search engines or trying to rip off clients for services that don’t do anything.

Don’t agree? Or feel you’re being ripped off right now? Drop me a line in the comments and tell me what you think!

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You may be confused by this one, possibly even a little surprised and angry that the world has been lying to you for so long telling you that you need to ‘optimise for search engines’ when you don’t need to at all. The underlying aspect of search engines that we always forget is that, not only are they programmed to act like users, but they were also created, and are controlled, by users.

The similarities between elements that are important to search engines and elements that are important to users, are strikingly obvious.

Let’s take a look

• Titles and Meta Content
  • Search engines: Use this to pick up on what the page is about, and rank it accordingly.
  • Users: Use this to pick up on what the page is about, and decide whether or not to use it.
• Header Tags
  • Search engines: Use them to assess what the main bodies of text are about, and rank the page accordingly.
  • Users: Use them to quickly see what the main bodies of text are about.
• Anchor Text
  • Search engines: Use is to understand what the page that is being linked to is about, and rank that page according to its relevance to the anchor text, and the quality of the inbound links.
  • Users: Use it to understand what the page that is being linked to is about.
• Alt Attributes
  • Search engines: Use this to understand what the image is of, or what it is representing.
  • Users: Use this to understand what the image is of, or what it is representing. Particularly disabled users, and people who browse with images turned off.
• Page Copy
  • Search engines: Use this to establish which search queries this content is relevant to.
  • Users: Use this to establish if the content is relevant to what they are looking for.
• Strong Tags
  • Search engines: Use this to pick out important key phrases within the copy.
  • Users: Use this to scan the copy and pick out the most important words.

  I could go on all afternoon, but I won’t because I’m sure you get the general idea by now.

  So many people go crazy when trying to ‘SEO’ their sites, they think ‘right, here are some techniques to use, lets apply them to absolutely everything’. Which unsurprisingly, doesn’t work.

  Real SEO is User Optimisation because…

  Think about the techniques you’re using to rank higher, and now ask yourself this: Would a user appreciate it? If the answer is yes, then the chances are that a search engine will too.

  Here are a couple of examples

  You add 35 key phrases to your page copy, and but them all in strong tags.

  • Users say: I can’t read it, it looks terrible.
  • Search engines say: Its spam

  You use clear anchor text throughout your site that is relevant to the page which is being linked to.

  • Users say: This is really easy to navigate, I like it.
  • Search engines say: The anchor text is relevant to the page content.

  Again, I could go on, but I won’t. The jist of it is that if you’re pissing off your users with your ‘optimisation’ attempts, then you’re probably annoying the hell out of search engines too.

  Write your site, your code, and your content for your users. It doesn’t MATTER how many people find you in Google if your content is worthless to the visitors. Create your code and your content for users and you’ll see a nice correlation to your rankings too.

  SEO does not mean tricking search engines for ranks.

  Search engines work by looking for the best sites to rank.

  SEO means IMPROVING your site until it’s good enough to rank.

  More from the ‘Real SEO:’ series to follow…

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I’ve already talked previously about how Google page rank works and yes, this is based on linking. What I also said, (but probably not clearly enough) is that links do NOT equal positions. So many people think that in order to optimise their sites, they need to go out there an sign up to every social network imaginable and spam them to hell with links back to their site. Not only does this not help with search engines, but it hinders you with traffic, as you will become known for being ‘yet another spammer’ – causing people to ignore/block you altogether.

Having links will NOT get you positions, if you are already ranking for a key phrase based on other SEO elements, then yes PR may help you that extra little bit from Google’s point of view because you are considered to be an ‘important’ site, but again this cannot be achieved through spam links.

Where’s The Pitfall?

If you are doing the SEO, then the pitfall is that it will get you nowhere, you won’t see much benefit from it in the short run, and in the long run it may get you banned from certain sites, blacklisted, or even penalised by Google themselves depending on how extreme you get. If you are paying for the SEO, then the pitfall is that you are paying for a service that a 14yr old could accomplish, dropping links into random sites, and it still isn’t helping! Link building is NOT SEO.

What is Linkbuilding Then?

Linkbuilding is just that, building links. It should be named as no more or less than acquiring links from other sites, you should not charge or pay a premium for this service as there is no skill, knowledge, or qualification required!

But Then… What is SEO?

SEO is clean code, SEO is using the correct code, SEO is key phrase research, SEO is targeting your online marketing demographics through specific pages on your site, SEO is usability for both users AND search engines, SEO is coding and designing your website how it should have always been in the first place.

SEO does not mean tricking search engines having you rank highly.

Search engines work by looking for the best sites to rank highly.

SEO means IMPROVING your site until it’s good enough to rank highly.

More from the ‘Real SEO:’ series to follow… here

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