Mystery SEO

You can’t just take someone’s word for it that they’re operating with current SEO principles, tools, and skills. SEO forums have been around for years (just ask Rand), and hundreds of people are reading REALLY OLD posts about SEO and building a company based on the principles discussed.

SEO isn’t like mathematics - the principles are not universal or timeless. They shift, morph, and change over time. How do we know this? Because search engines like Google and Yahoo! are updating their algorithms and methods for ranking individual terms based on experience, complaints, and mistakes. Google is constantly evolving. Not nearly as quickly as some would like to think (this isn’t anywhere near artificial intelligence), yet still faster than many SEO companies and independents can keep up.

Here are 5 signs that you’re dealing with an SEO. If the person or agency you’re dealing with makes these statements, they do NOT understand up to date best practices.

5 Outdated and Stone Age Ideas for SEO:

#1 Search Engine Submissions
This should go without saying. DO NOT PAY ANYONE TO SUBMIT YOUR SITE TO SEARCH ENGINES! This is a scam or an idiot. Either way, save yourself some time and money and move on. Any SEO worth a grain of salt doesn’t waste money on search engine submissions. I’ve discussed this in another post, so I won’t belabor the point.

A second issue here is the number of search engines these scammers supposedly submit to. There is ABSOLUTELY no need to submit to 20 search engines, much less 200. In this day and age, you do not need to even think about more than four search engines, and that’s pushing it. The only four worth considering at this point in time are Google, Yahoo!, MSN Live, and Ask. You’ll get more traffic from a directory like Business.com than the rest of those less popular search engines (and probably more than Ask also).

#2 Google Sandbox
The age of the Google Sandbox is over. Deal with it. Yes, brand new websites used to not exist on search results for six months or so. It’s very true. This happened to my first website. It suddenly appeared after a few months (yet still had no backlinks). The key phrase here is “used to.” With the mad blog craze and the dependency on search to deliver timely news results, Google has since altered its algorithm to include new sites and content almost immediately. This is part of Google’s attempt to deliver timely and accurate results for up to the minute news.

#3 Reciprocal Linking
Dozens of companies posing as professional SEO agencies are pushing reciprocal linking or “link swapping” on ignorant webmasters and marketing managers. This is an outdated process. Google learned how to tell the difference between reciprocal and one way links and at some point penalizes sites for participating in swapping links. Just as with link buying, Google disapproves of any practice that muddies the waters of its link-based algorithm. While there are supposedly hundreds of factors contributing to the ultimate ranking of results, links have always been and always will be a very important factor in determining rank.

Each link pointing to an external web page is supposed to be a statement of importance and relevance by the person adding the link. Throw in link swapping and links become worthless. Suddenly everyone can have as many links as they want. All they have to do is trade, thus rendering Google’s algorithm mostly useless.

#4 Google Pagerank
Anyone can install the Google Pagerank add-on for Firefox or Google “page rank checker” and find 10 different sites that will tell you your site’s pagerank. Google knows this, and that’s why higher Pagerank does not equal better rankings. There are simply too many factors used to determine search rankings for obsessing over pagerank to be worthwhile.

#5 Ranking Reports
If a monthly ranking report is all you have to show for your SEO dollars, something could be wrong. Ranking reports aren’t bad, of course, and neither are they meaningless. But they are growing increasingly irrelevant in today’s online culture. Ranking reports are beneficial primarily in tandem with analytics reporting and interpretation. After all, though we may tend to obsess over our rankings, we’re really after the traffic, right? And if there’s a better way to drive traffic to a particular page or site, wouldn’t you rather know than throw money at something less effective?

Example: some websites really don’t need much organic SEO work done unless new content is created. If your site contains 10 pages or less, you can only target so many popular phrases. The rest go untargeted because you lack the content to successfully go after any more. In this case, your money is better spent on copywriting, blogging, and PR.

Another example is this one company that sells satellite photo services for large land owners as a security measure. This company’s marketing manager was happy with the traffic received on most pages, and wasn’t willing to spend any more on SEO. Because his target audience is so small, he found other ways to reach them effectively. There is a certain website where his type of audience goes, and he simply pays for a banner ad at the top of the homepage. This simple technique drives excellent leads to his website. Again, not a solution for everyone, but experimentation CAN pay off.

Well, there you have it. As always, you can ask any question you have and I’ll do my best to deliver a quick and complete reply. And if you know of other stone age practices you want to call to our attention, feel free to add them in the comments section.

Ask.com has been fourth place search engine since its inception. Google, Yahoo, and MSN Live all drive more traffic to websites like yours. Ask has made some interesting moves over the past year, and this latest move is no different. FOXNews.com reports that Ask.com will unveil its new privacy control today. This means that the terms you search for will be purged from Ask’s records within mere hours, compared to the industry standard of 13-18 months.

Google originally pitched the idea of data recording under the guise of personalized search. The concept states that a search engine that remembers what you’ve looked for and clicked on will be able to modify search results and deliver more accurate and relevant information to each user tracked. Some users think it’s a great idea. Others don’t want anyone knowing too much about their habits or interests.

This has been a year of major rebranding for Ask.com. They’ve ceased trying to compete with Google and Yahoo strictly on the basis of search results and have instead rebranded to be the Web 2.0-ish search engine with cool looking features and cross pollinated services. For users preferring a slick looking search experience, Ask is definitely the way to go. Still, their algorithm does not drive the most reliable results to your doorstep, making it still a subpar search experience.

With this new privacy control, individual consumers are the obvious target, as with the rest of Ask.com’s marketing strategy. It’s not an industrial use search engine, but it can be a fun and enjoyable search engine. There’s definitely a market for fun and appealing, though I wouldn’t be shocked to see Google rebrand at some point in the next two years to totally obliterate Ask.com’s current niche.

I’ve only heard this question a few times from a client, and that just proves that most clients haven’t taken the time to notice it is true. At the most, your website can only rank twice for any given keyword phrase. That would seem strange to a company whose every page is well-written and targeted for their industry’s primary keywords. Nonetheless, Google has limited each website to two results maximum in most cases (some long tail searches may still yield additional results).

Matt Cutts recently referred to this as “host crowding”, which is as good a name as any. Host crowding has been guarded against for more than a year, and Google is apparently perfecting it’s algorithmic defense.

How does this host crowding fix affect my company?

Simply put, this means that you don’t need to target more than two pages with one keyword phrase. Keep in mind, however, that the combination of one consistent phrase with a unique secondary phrase could potentially help you cover the gamut of keyword phrase combinations based on one primary word or phrase. I’m not recommending you tack on a word or phrase onto each page. I am simply saying that it IS possible that you could rank for various combinations that might bring you some traffic. It’s also just as possible, however, that you could diversify your keywords targeted and your page copy more and actually draw a wider net of visitors to your site.

AB Testing is not a bad idea. If you want to see which method is better for your site and industry, take at least four pages and optimize two of them with the same primary phrase and give them both unique secondary phrases. See how those pages perform and how traffic increases/decreases based on your changes. Compare their performance with two other pages whose content and title tags do not share the same primary phrase.

Feel free to send me any questions you may have.

I heard a teacher once say that some of his best lectures were ones that applied directly to him. You don’t have to be perfect to teach.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at blogs and social media. As a social media marketer, it’s tempting to dabble in all the social media sites out there. There’s a temptation to believe that you must work your way into the “IN” crowd in all of them in order to successfully promote your clients. Well, unless you have no life and spend 24/7 skipping around from one site to the next, there’s simply not enough time in the day to establish yourself at the top of every site. Besides, there’s a new one launching every week (at least).

When it comes to social media, you can definitely spread yourself too thin. Imagine trying to reach the top of the pile on Digg, Reddit, Propeller, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Pownce, MySpace, Facebook, Virb, Mixx, and two dozen other sites all at the same time. It simply won’t happen. It’s like owning and operating seven blogs. Who in their right mind can contribute to seven different blogs day after day after day? I ask this question mainly because I HAVE seven blogs and I can’t do it. Life gets in the way. It doesn’t matter how much time we spend plugged in.

You’ll pick up the desire to join and master everything if you read SEO and Web 2.0 blogs very regularly. These folks don’t have enough to discuss concerning SEO, which is why they talk about the latest and the greatest social media/networking websites. But even they, as hallowed as “they” may be, cannot master every site. They may have a Twitter account, but do they twit even every month? They may have rocked on Digg once upon a time, but have they dugg or submitted much in the last three months?

You’ve gotta know your limits. Pick a few sites to master, and allow yourself the right to be a novice elsewhere. For instance, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that you could have a rawkin’ Digg, StumbleUpon, and Twitter profile. That’s feasible. But if you’re really trying to establish yourself within a community, there’s not much of a chance that you can simultaneously rawk over at Propeller and Reddit. It’s just too much. So let’s briefly look at our options and settle on a method for handling this current state of affairs which I will affectionately term social media overload.

Option 1: Social Media Hopping
Akin to church hopping, the social media hopper will spend a good three months maximum establishing himself/herself within a given online community. Once they’ve become accepted and recognized, they take a hiatus from said community and hop on over to a new one. Each new community joined grows into a position of acceptance and mediocre popularity, then the switch is on again.

The Pros: The thinking behind social media hopping is that once you’re in, you’re in. You can always return and promote something later if you’re well connected. To most everyone else, it just looks like you’ve been busy or on vacation. So when you pop back in a few months later to submit a few articles or promote a new client, you’ll experience average to above average success.

The Cons: Hopping around from one community to the next won’t earn you top dog status. Take Digg, for example. The top dogs are focused on Digg. The reason they have so much influence is directly related to how much time, energy, and effort they have spent establishing themselves in the community. As a hopper, you’ll gain medium results at best, unless you somehow manage to befriend a top dog and they do the heavy lifting for you.

Option 2: Limit Yourself
Limiting yourself can be a strain on the ego. Some feel the need to mark their territory, somewhat akin to a dog marking each mailbox in the neighborhood so that all the dogs in the neighborhood know who is the top dog. Logic dictates that you have a better chance at reaching top dog status on a few sites compared to dozens of sites.

Pros: Quality versus Quantity. More time spent developing relationships and community presence ALWAYS pays off in the end. Enough cannot be said for quality time. Sounds like we’re talking about family or couple’s counseling, doesn’t it? We are, in effect. These aren’t people you’ll see daily, but they’re people you want to be able to depend on to help promote your future stories, sites, and clients. In order to gain their respect, you have to show up regularly and give to them first. It’s always easier to trust a giver than a taker.

Cons: Lack of universal presence. By limiting yourself, you obviously won’t have a presence in every social media community. You can’t influence everyone everywhere. That shouldn’t be your goal, however. Think strategically. Would you rather drive thousands of interested visitors to a client’s site, or drive dozens of visitors via two dozen communities? Do the math.

Option 3: Social Media Marketing Hybrid
For those of you who simply cannot restrain yourselves (because let’s be honest, who can?), be as strategic with your ADD as you can. Focus on 2-3 communities and dedicate yourself to building your presence there every day for one full year minimum. During that time, keep your eyes open for new social communities popping up everywhere. Go ahead and join each community and bookmark these for later.

At the very least, you’ll have your name or nickname spread across the socialmediasphere and you’ll have your spot reserved. No one else will be able to register under your name. THEN, when you have time without causing your primary networks to suffer, slowly incorporate yourself into a few of your new registries over time. Don’t rush. Consider these extra networks as fun, not work, and only talk to a limited few people whom you can sustain conversation with. Pick your few connections wisely, as they will likely serve as your platform to the rest of the community later. Over the long haul, you’ll have some firmly established connections despite your lack of constant use.

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I know that web marketing / interactive marketing / social media marketing lends itself to the ADD/ADHD crowd, so to each his own. Some form of structure IS actually healthy, despite what your compulsive impatience says to the contrary. Stick to a plan and you’ll see greater results over the long term. After all, that’s what we’re doing here, right? We love the gadgets, the widgets, and the sweet new designs, but in the end, it’s still all about driving results. Choose wisely.

That is an excellent question. There are hundreds upon hundreds of SEO blogs and informational websites out there now. In fact, most everything has been said by someone else (and repeated a hundred times by newbies). So with all the clutter out there, how do you know which sites most people are reading?

I love this website - Compete.com. This site runs free traffic analysis on most websites. As long as the website has been around for six months or more and gets more than a couple thousand visitors per month, you’ll probably find data on it here. Without joining for free, you can check and compare three domains at a time. After you join for free, you can check and compare five domains for free simultaneously.

With this information, you can keep throwing out popular SEO domains and see which are really popular, and which are full of hot air. Just so you know, if you search for MysterySEO, we would appear to be hot air because we’re new and have done no advertising. I know that seems to contradict the logic of actually having and updating a blog, but you’ll see the reasoning more clearly in the months to come.

So, let’s take a quick look at some of the more popular SEO blogs and sites. We’ll just look at monthly visitors for now. We’ll compare the month of October 2007 to give you a snapshot view of site popularity.

SearchEngineLand.com - approx. 445,441 visits

SearchEngineWatch.com - approx. 424,735 visits

SEOMoz.org - approx. 383,716 visits

SEOBook.com - approx. 375,425 visits

ClickZ.com - approx. 273,147 visits

Sphinn.com - approx. 262,443 visits

MattCutts.com - approx. 253,636 visits

SearchEngineJournal.com - approx. 249,712 visits

MarketingPilgrim.com - approx. 188,105 visits

There are, of course, other resourceful websites that did not make the cut for this post. Please note that many of the more well-known SEO blogs currently receive somewhere between 30k and 65k visitors per month. This does not mean that they are not valuable resources. They just didn’t fit into today’s metric.

Feel free to comment and contribute other SEO resources that you believe fall under this “most popular” category. I’ll look each one up and respond.

Through one of my other websites, I was just solicited for a link exchange by Link Helpers. I managed to chuckle despite how annoying these requests are. I get a request every month or so. It irritates me because these companies exist for the sole purpose of exchanging links for their clients under the guise of professional SEO. This is why it pays to educate yourself and take the mystery out of SEO. You need to know when you’re being taken for a ride.

Link exchanges worked five years ago. Maybe even still three years ago for some industries, but the folks over at Google aren’t idiots. If you participate in multiple link exchanges, you run the risk of serious penalization from Google. Sites have dropped from page one to page ten over such discrepancies.

What’s so wrong with link exchanges?

The problem lies in the method of acquiring links, and this is always the case. Links weigh heavily upon search results because Google prescribes to an ideal: that only someone who values the content or message of your site will link to it. Links are supposed to be a sign of popularity, authority, and validity. Link exchanges and link buys defy Google’s measuring stick of relevance. It is for this reason that Google penalizes hundreds and thousands of websites for unethical linking campaigns.

I use the term “unethical” somewhat loosely. Google’s algorithms are based on ideals, which of course do not always agree with reality. Reality is that some morons are good at personal branding and networking. They go to conferences and workshops and organizations where they network and build relationships with a core of people who link to them. It’s like a popularity contest of sorts. How are you supposed to earn backlinks if no one can find you to read your pages? How do you get the message out there prominently enough to earn recognition and greater exposure?

It’s a catch 22. I have never done a paid link campaign for any of my sites, and you can tell. I received tens of thousands of visitors for just three blog posts that I wrote at the beginning of this year. They were HUGELY popular, but I don’t think I earned a single link out of those tens of thousands of visitors. Why? Because I draw the wrong kind of visitors. Most of my visitors are consumers and readers, not website owners or web professionals. My target audience on that site is the crowd that feel extremely self-congratulatory simply for using Google’s search engine with greater efficiency. Anything beyond a search is too high tech for them. A blog is still relatively confusing for most of them.

You may own a website and have no knowledge of search marketing or linking campaigns. You may come across some company offering “link exchanges” or “reciprocal linking”. Do yourself a favor and avoid them. While some websites benefit for a short time from link exchanges, most of these websites are caught and penalized by Google. After you’ve been penalized by Google, it will take you some time and effort to get back in their good graces.

Before you jump at an offer to receive an amazing deal on search marketing, feel free to drop me a line and check on the legitimacy of their offerings. MysterySEO is NOT an SEO company, so we in no way compete with other agencies or individuals. We’re strictly here to offer experience and insight that will help you make wise decisions for your web marketing campaigns.

This may be the first time I give him credit, but I have to acknowledge Identity’s post on SEOMoz entitled, How Do You Role Your SEO? His post was insightful and worth reading. There, I said it. I hope my tongue doesn’t swell.

Working for a search marketing agency or an interactive agency large enough to have a search marketing division will play an invaluable role in the career of ANY SEO. Many SEOs start off as individual consultants who saw a need and learned what they needed to get some contract clients. Some SEOs are trained in-house because they expressed an interest in changing roles. Then you have your agency SEOs, who probably experience the fastest pace and most frequent challenges of them all.

As an in-house SEO, you may learn quite a bit about succeeding in your company’s industry. Perhaps you can even turn that into a niche specialty down the road. But for many of you, you’ll find that in-house work limits your exposure to multiple industries. Unless you’re in-house in a major niche industry with plenty of opportunity for advancement, agency experience stretches your ability to solve problems among multiple industry categories. What works for retail might not for industrial. You get the point.

There are hundreds of small agencies around the world where you can serve a dozen or more clients and really develop a sense of universal best practices and industry specific recommended tactics. Even most of the larger agencies will assign each SEO several clients, so you get the benefit of encountering unique problems and challenges with each site and the opportunity to overcome them.

Learning to deal with people is essential in any business venture, and SEO is no exception. I have witnessed many a meeting where the agency folks and the client weren’t speaking the same language. The difficulty is in realizing that regardless of your position, you are comfortable with a set of terms and ways of describing what’s happening that might be foreign to the other party. I’ve seen agencies who behave like snobs, and insist that their clients learn how to speak “correctly” about SEO. I’ve seen clients interrupt agencies and tell them how it’s going to be, regardless of whether their position is actually the best one. I’ve seen clients banging their head into the wall (not literally) because they couldn’t understand the gibberish.

There are lots of challenges and opportunities to get frustrated. But in facing those frustrations and slowly working through them, you develop new people skills and more advanced problem solving skills. These are a few of the qualities that make a top tier SEO.

My advice: If you are looking to enter the search engine optimization fray, look for an internship with an agency. Turn that internship into a job. Keep in mind that other agencies and regular companies have very different ways of doing things, and just allow yourself to grow in that busy environment. Once you’ve developed your resume, working for an in-house agency should be much easier because you are well-prepared to deal with change and conflicting opinions. Some of you will find that in-house work is boring after the fast paced lifestyle of an agency. I’ve had anywhere from nine to twelve search marketing clients on my plate at one time, and trust me, that will stretch you.

Each of us has our own path to take, so I don’t want you to feel that this post is telling you that there is only one right way to go about joining or growing in the SEO industry. Far from it. These are my thoughts that will ring true for some percentage of the population that think like me… I’m pretty sure there are at least a few of you out there.

We’ll skip to step three because you don’t need me to spend time ranting about defining your purpose. If you can’t figure that step out, no amount of web marketing advice will help you succeed. You either sell, service, entertain, inform, warn, promote, identify, locate, socialize, or some combination of these.

Once you’ve determined your subject and purpose, you need an information architecture. An AI is exactly what it sounds like. It is the diagram of how your site’s information will be structured. Essentially, it functions like a pyramid. The home page is tier one. Your main navigation contains tier two (usually something like About Us, Products, Services, Blog, Contact Us, etc). Most of your second tier pages will drill down to multiple more specific pages in tier three. Tier three pages may drill down to multiple even more specific pages in tier four. And so on.

Each tier is a set of sub topics of the tier one level up. Keep your information organized by theme. In most instances, all like-subject pages should dwell within the same group. Dogs and dog breeds and dog breed characteristics should all be easily found one after another, stepping down from one tier to the next. You should have to hunt for dog breed characteristics under a separate section called Man’s Best Friend. Keep in mind that the goal every time is to make accessing information an easy, intuitive exercise for your visitors. Whatever makes the most common sense is what you should do.

As you create your information architecture, this is also where you assign names to each page. This is important because these page names will ideally be the only thing after the “.com/” in your URL for optimization purposes. Keyword phrases are essential. For that reason, you will either do your keyword research prior to this step or you will revisit your IA afterwards and edit your page names.

Keep in mind that anything deeper than three levels will not likely be visited as often by visitors who enter through your home page because users want to find what they’re after fast. Search engines, however, will deliver users to your deepest page if it is indexed and authoritative on a given subject. In the off chance that your company automatically receives more traffic through the home page via direct visits (if your brand name is extremely popular), then you will need to pay extra attention to site search functionality and ease-of-use for deep content.

This is so basic it SHOULD go without saying. I’m writing it down for you so you will know without a doubt that you should NEVER throw a site together until you have solidified a subject, a theme, and a goal. This isn’t SEO, honestly. It’s common sense. But it’s common sense that apparently many of you lack.

Why am I wasting my time mentioning this? Because so many clients need major overhauls to their site and need to start from scratch in order to accomplish their goals. Why waste the time and energy getting frustrated with your first website? Why not do it right the first time? What a novel idea.

Everyone’s in a rush. Everyone needs a website yesterday. Most small business throw something online quickly because they need to legitimize themselves in order to land the next client or reach the next growth phase. That’s nice and all, but any decent director of operations will tell you that the ONLY efficient way to handle your website is to spend less time and money by doing it right the first time.

Go ahead and limit your site to a theme and a goal. Despite the popular advice, keeping your options open is a dumb idea. You want to be known for what you do best. That is your key to success. Define who you are, who your audience is, what you have to offer, and how you are going to deliver. Again, I know this is ridiculously basic, but you’d be amazed by how many sites need to be blown up and rebuilt. That only happens from either poor planning or evolving identity.

Once you’ve honed your subject down to only what you REALLY do, make sure your domain name fits the niche. Keep in mind that an optimal domain name contains the primary keywords you will be targeting. This is not a requirement, only a suggestion. But keep in mind that there is automatic authority given to websites based on their domain names. I automatically ranked #1 for my name when I launched danieldessinger.com even though other sites had ranked well beforehand.

This step is half web strategy and half branding. In all things, know who you are, what you offer, why you are worth it, and how you will deliver it. Once you’ve got that down, it’s on to step two.

I realized after the last two posts that we have not orchestrated a first steps list in order to spare you from having to do and redo all the time. So let’s start with the basics, and establish a flow chart that shows each step in the beginning of optimizing a website.

1. Know Your Subject

2. Establish Your Site’s Purpose

3. Create an Information Architecture

4. Competitive Landscape Analysis

5. Keyword Research

6. Create META Tags and Title Tags

7. Write Page Copy

8. Complete Web Design

9. Implement Copy and META/Title tags

10. Test for Usability

11. Launch Site

12. Implement Internal Links

13. Submit to Directories

14. Post New Blog Posts

15. Request Links from Blogs & Websites

16. Digg, Reddit, Propeller Submissions

We’ll cover these as necessary in the future. For now, this is a basic step by step outline to show you how to approach site creation and optimization.

Best of luck!