(Blog-Off II Entry) The 6 Things SEO "Experts" Won't Tell You, But I Will.... (The BIG SEO Lie)

A Note For My Readers: Many of you have been used to me writing my articles on Stuff For Success about networking and social media. For this article, I have ventured into the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which is a very important topic in the marketing world. As a definition, you can think of SEO as anything you do to make Google, Bing, or Yahoo visit your page.   And now, enjoy:

Please note that there are many excellent SEO's out there.  The goal of the following article is to open your eyes to those that aren't so "excellent."  

It's all over the Internet.   Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the hottest topic out there.  Bloggers think that if they write “7 Tips on How to Improve Your SEO” for the 800th time, they will get millions of hits. Companies are – suddenly – feeling the need to create whole SEO departments. Webmasters are compelled to write their content just for the search engines.

And everyone else? They just don’t care. But I have something to say to all of you....Here is the most important thing you should know about most of the stuff you read:

IT'S ALL GARBAGE!

In this economy (and don't get me started on that) if there is a general misunderstanding about a topic, EVERYONE is going to try and take advantage of it on it. Have you noticed how many career “experts” have suddenly popped up during the recession? Well capitalizing on the same type of confusion, these so-called SEO “experts” have popped up all over the place claiming that they know the answers to make all of your internet traffic dreams come true.

A company with which I did some consulting has 10 million dollars in revenue. The guy spent 1.5 million a YEAR on ADWORDS thinking it would improve his search engine placement.  (Adwords are those little advertisements on the side of Google that you never click on...) I almost cried. And then when I tried to find his site, it was nowhere to be found in any search engine. This type of thing is a marketing travesty and it shouldn't be happening.

My goal here is to make sure you understand the reality of modern search engine optimization. So when you go to “optimize” your site, or hire someone to do it, I want you to make sure you take the right advice and know that there is specific experience you should be looking for that can help you do this job correctly.

So without any of my further blabbering, let me get to it:

1. SEO takes a LONG time: There are no shortcuts to getting your content to the top of Google, Bing, or wherever else.... especially in the popular categories. A major category in determining where your webpage comes up is how long it has been there, also known as Aging. Don't believe me? Run a search for a popular topic. Try “How to Network.” Even though I humbly think some of my networking articles are MUCH better, Google proudly displays a page from 2005. The first article isn’t even from the past two years and with people losing their jobs left and right since 2007, networking has been a subject of research that has exploded the last few years. Additionally, search engines are reading through billions of pages. If your site is not important, it takes a loooong time to update in search engines.
2. The Actual Algorithms Are Secret: Algorithms in this sense are the complicated methods search engines use to determine what pages should be shown for each search. It has been said that no one outside the actual search engines actually has a copy of the algorithm that determines search engine result pages (SERPS) and it is constantly changing. So how is it that these “experts” know what to talk about? Well, actually, it isn't really true that nobody has a copy. Most of the basic algorithms are patented or in provisional patent phases and patents are public but you have to know where to look for them.
3. The Days of the Meta Tags are Long Gone: A website owner used to be able to talk directly to the search engines by using “hidden” codes called meta tags. However, the only use for the tags at this point is in order to declare the title of the page. It doesn't matter what your tags say the subject of the page is. In fact tags, if repeated on your site could hurt you. In fact, Google added a keyword tracker in their webmaster tools. It seems to me that they are trying to suggest that they are reading the actual text content of the site? Additionally, writing content that repeats repeats repeats repeats the keywords doesn't work either. You will get a site banned from a major search engine that way and that is an awful thing.    Amendment: The "description" tag is also still pertinent as it describes your page to the search engine.   (I forgot to include this)
   
4. Not just any backlinks will do: Backlinks are when websites link to yours.   Many know that an important factor in SEO is how many links you get coming to your content. What some don’t know is that they must be high quality links. As we previously established, there are plenty SEO companies and individuals who will gladly take your money to submit your page into spammy links directories and link schemes. They may work temporarily, but because this is not the way search engine companies want you promoting your site (it's considered spam), your site could be quickly removed from search engines. There are quality directories that still exist such as the DMOZ and Yahoo and if you can get your site onto one of these, that’s a bonus. These are human edited and search engines give credibility to this characteristic. This brings us to my next point:
5. Search Engines are Meant To Work For Humans: Back in the beginning days of search engines, it was possible to simply “optimize” your page to attract the search engine to the page. Seeing this as an opportunity, many took advantage of this and found ways to cheat the system. They wrote sub-par (and downright bad) webpages designed to get top results through spam-like tactics. As a result, search engines, which, ironically, happen to be written by some of the smartest people in the world, were redesigned and none of these old techniques work anymore. There is NO way to search optimize your page legitimately aside from producing quality content and getting others to link to it - EXCEPT to utilize:
6. Good Coding Practice: You know all of those SEO changes that people are willing to come in and make for you? Guess what. They shouldn't need to.  Code should be free of errors that would otherwise prevent search engine "spiders" from being able to crawl through it.  Think of it this way: you wouldn't want to read a book littered with grammatical errors. Search engines hate reading webpages with grammatical errors too.  These errors could make your ranking suffer.   There are tools such as the w3validator that will help you identify these errors.  One change you can make immediately is to make sure the titles of your pages contain the key words for your page as well as the URL (also known as a permalink). This is VERY important.      Thank you to James Allen of St. Louis for assisting me with this point. 
   

Real SEO People are Hustlers and Great Networkers in Real Life. From my rants we have established that quality links to your site, age, and good coding practice are the main ways to influence your search engine rank. Well once you register a domain and have your code written properly, then establishing quality links is the only thing you can do. There are only two ways to get these, and one of those is pay major advertising dollars to get them from high quality sites. The other is to get someone who is VERY good at networking, both online and off, who can get out there and meet the people who run these sites and convince them of a reason to link to you. It's a very specialized practice that few are good at. But that's an article for another day. Let's hear what you all have to say!

Update:  As of 12/04/09, evidently Google is making all searches personalized.   This means that it could become possible that you will no longer discover sites that you didn't know you were looking for.   This could have a HUGE effect on the SEO world.   I would love to hear your thoughts and discuss here as well.   This news is from the google webmaster blog.  

Directly quoted:

Extended Personalized Search
Starting this week, we are extending Personalized Search worldwide to users who are signed out of their Google accounts, and in more than 40 languages. Now when you search using Google, we will be better able to provide the most relevant results using 180 days of Google search activity from your browser. For example, since I always search for "ADA" and often click on results about the programming language, Google might show you those results before the American Dental Association results.

Conclusions: Sam Diener joins Blog-Off2 from Philadelphia, PA, US.   He started Stuff For Success, The Sam Diener Blog.    In five months, he has built an audience of nearly 25,000 readers, and has guest blogged for major US sites such as Under30CEO and the Personal Branding Blog.   Feel free to read more at the Sam Diener Blog.   

Oh, and if you don't mind.... click this button to help me share:

Comments

[Google Sem Services]

It is a great posting. I find it so help. I will come back and see how it goes on

[Sam Diener]

Greetings and thank you for e-mailing me regarding Stuff For Success.

Due to extremely high workloads, and in order to be more effective and efficient with my time, I check my e-mail at 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM EST. I will certainly get back to you at one of those times.

If your correspondence is urgent, please feel free to give me a call at 215-821-6726.

I look forward to responding to your inquiry.

Best Wishes,

Sam Diener

[Seo Sem Services]

This an interesting approach. It is common to take care of SEO from the individuality of ones' blog or web while leaving the incredible opportunity social media offers aside. This post clears up the way to better understand the way both activities interact and the steps to be taken to get the best results in your way to success.

[Sam Diener]

Greetings and thank you for e-mailing me regarding Stuff For Success.

Due to extremely high workloads, and in order to be more effective and efficient with my time, I check my e-mail at 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM EST. I will certainly get back to you at one of those times.

If your correspondence is urgent, please feel free to give me a call at 215-821-6726.

I look forward to responding to your inquiry.

Best Wishes,

Sam Diener

[Dissertation Help]

I love your blog so much, and there are just some differences with others'. Hope there will be more wonderful things in your blog. Happy every day!

[Sam Diener]

Greetings and thank you for e-mailing me regarding Stuff For Success.

Due to extremely high workloads, and in order to be more effective and efficient with my time, I check my e-mail at 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM EST. I will certainly get back to you at one of those times.

If your correspondence is urgent, please feel free to give me a call at 215-821-6726.

I look forward to responding to your inquiry.

Best Wishes,

Sam Diener

[seo services philippines]

Thanks for the good info! The ideas and insights are very worth reading. You really gave valuable information..:)

[Sam Diener]

Greetings and thank you for e-mailing me regarding Stuff For Success.

Due to extremely high workloads, and in order to be more effective and efficient with my time, I check my e-mail at 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM EST. I will certainly get back to you at one of those times.

If your correspondence is urgent, please feel free to give me a call at 215-821-6726.

I look forward to responding to your inquiry.

Best Wishes,

Sam Diener

[SEOP Inc.]

Great stuff. I agree 100%. There are just some things some SEO don't share. And it sucks that they don't share important things like these.

[Sam Diener]

Greetings and thank you for e-mailing me regarding Stuff For Success.

Due to extremely high workloads, and in order to be more effective and efficient with my time, I check my e-mail at 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM EST. I will certainly get back to you at one of those times.

If your correspondence is urgent, please feel free to give me a call at 215-821-6726.

I look forward to responding to your inquiry.

Best Wishes,

Sam Diener

[Alvin]

YOu are true at you point everyone can do seo, can we little bit find what the alogrithem is?

[Sam Diener]

Greetings and thank you for e-mailing me regarding Stuff For Success.

Due to extremely high workloads, and in order to be more effective and efficient with my time, I check my e-mail at 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM EST. I will certainly get back to you at one of those times.

If your correspondence is urgent, please feel free to give me a call at 215-821-6726.

I look forward to responding to your inquiry.

Best Wishes,

Sam Diener

[Link dozer seo review]

great and straight to edge post, now its hard to get through all the crap that all those so called gurus are trying to sell , specially to newbies:
I assume what in fact google would like to convey to us with search algorithims, is to act just like in normal life and you ll do good with your website, publish benefit and your voice will be heard; dont know exactly how is at your country but where i live - Slovenia we obtain a saying that goes: good voice stretches to the 3rd town (share value), and the bad reaches up to the 9th (bad neighbourhood); keep up with great work ;)

[Sam Diener]

Greetings and thank you for e-mailing me regarding Stuff For Success.

Due to extremely high workloads, and in order to be more effective and efficient with my time, I check my e-mail at 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM EST. I will certainly get back to you at one of those times.

If your correspondence is urgent, please feel free to give me a call at 215-821-6726.

I look forward to responding to your inquiry.

Best Wishes,

Sam Diener

[Free SEO Report]

Thats an eye-opening article. Its very important to measure SEO activity and results.

[Sam Diener]

Greetings and thank you for e-mailing me regarding Stuff For Success.

Due to extremely high workloads, and in order to be more effective and efficient with my time, I check my e-mail at 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM EST. I will certainly get back to you at one of those times.

If your correspondence is urgent, please feel free to give me a call at 215-821-6726.

I look forward to responding to your inquiry.

Best Wishes,

Sam Diener

[SEO Services]

Good advice. I have noticed that too many web site owners are getting sucked in by so-called experts claiming to get you top 3 rankings for 50 keywords in a week. SEO is a marathon, not a sprint, be sure the company you are working with understands that.

[Sam Diener]

Greetings and thank you for e-mailing me regarding Stuff For Success.

Due to extremely high workloads, and in order to be more effective and efficient with my time, I check my e-mail at 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM EST. I will certainly get back to you at one of those times.

If your correspondence is urgent, please feel free to give me a call at 215-821-6726.

I look forward to responding to your inquiry.

Best Wishes,

Sam Diener

[Dissertation help]

Its great to see that people are sharing quite profitable information with each other and now we can move our selves to a new era.

[Sam Diener]

Greetings and thank you for e-mailing me regarding Stuff For Success.

Due to extremely high workloads, and in order to be more effective and efficient with my time, I check my e-mail at 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM EST. I will certainly get back to you at one of those times.

If your correspondence is urgent, please feel free to give me a call at 215-821-6726.

I look forward to responding to your inquiry.

Best Wishes,

Sam Diener

[Dissertation help]

Its great to see that people are sharing quite profitable information with each other and now we can move our selves to a new era.

[Sam Diener]

Greetings and thank you for e-mailing me regarding Stuff For Success.

Due to extremely high workloads, and in order to be more effective and efficient with my time, I check my e-mail at 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM EST. I will certainly get back to you at one of those times.

If your correspondence is urgent, please feel free to give me a call at 215-821-6726.

I look forward to responding to your inquiry.

Best Wishes,

Sam Diener

[joe]

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[Sam Diener]

Greetings and thank you for e-mailing me regarding Stuff For Success.

Due to extremely high workloads, and in order to be more effective and efficient with my time, I check my e-mail at 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM EST. I will certainly get back to you at one of those times.

If your correspondence is urgent, please feel free to give me a call at 215-821-6726.

I look forward to responding to your inquiry.

Best Wishes,

Sam Diener

[Seo Consultant Hertfordshrie]

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[Rahman]

You've summed up the most important items like some other ones. Yet, it's good to write and remind people of what good practice in SEO is.

Thank you for writing it clearly and correctly.

[Kloudy]

Thanks for this article, I appreciate your work. We are Affordable Social Media Services provider for Small and Medium Businesses WorldWide. Engage with Customers Where they Are, with Content they Value. Please Visit us at www.kloudsocial.com

[Sam Diener]

Greetings and thank you for e-mailing me regarding Stuff For Success.

Due to extremely high workloads, and in order to be more effective and efficient with my time, I check my e-mail at 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM EST. I will certainly get back to you at one of those times.

If your correspondence is urgent, please feel free to give me a call at 215-821-6726.

I look forward to responding to your inquiry.

Best Wishes,

Sam Diener

[SR WORKS]

Thanks a lot!
this artcle gives complete and usefull knowledge about the SEO, clearing the underlying facts.
SEO helps in reaching mass at the best pace of finding the best ariticles.

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You can reach us at: www.srworks.biz

[Kloudy]

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[hilarious videos]

I don't agree with your last point with the code w3c VALIDATION ...... i saw and have and see many well ranking sites wich aren't w3c valid i think this w3c valid think is TOTAL BS

As for the rest i allways tell the clients the thrue and by telling the thrue i lost some clients but it's better this way ...

[peter wilson]

If you want to find out if the expert is expert talk to their clients.

Easy.

[Sam Diener]

Skip - thank you very much for the thoughts.

Rich - eventually you gotta learn man!

[Skip Shuda]

Sam - a great overview of SEO blocking and tackling. Nice work. And of course, SEO awareness in creating content off the Web site is always helpful (e.g. as in using SEO for Social Media efforts).

[Chris DeMartine]

It isn't easy to get others to link to you even when you have good content. You have to have great content and webmasters and bloggers need to find you in the first place. Inbound marketing and outbound marketing are both important -- there are just more options to choose from nowadays.

[Michael Rance]

IMO I think SEO is overrated. The emphasis is on OUTGOING marketing , and as stated is time consuming and not cheap...and you STILL may not compete against the 4 similar sites above you .
Money better spent on a REALLY great product or service where the customer comes looking for YOU...and they will find you. I drive across town to a mexican food dive...no advertising...past the heavily advertised places ...to wait in line. Great products, experiences, will be found without Google...not an original input...but that is how I buy

[Craig]

Tru dat ... an important job of the SEO "expert" is educating clients -- and potential clients -- and fellow marketing professionals -- about the very realities you note. Anyone trying to game the system will, themselves, get gamed. It's a tortise and hare digital world we live in, and the smart money is on the tortises.

[Rich DeMatteo]

Hustle Hustle Hustle, especially for those not understanding SEO like me

[Stephen Da Cambra]

Hi Sam,

I enjoyed your post. I was a well written overview of SEO. I tried reading all the comments so I wouldn't sound repetitive, but you have so many!

While I don't pretend to know much about SEO, I work closely enough with it to know that it's constantly changing.

The readable code you mention has always been a must, but other SEO tactics have evolved in the three years I've been in internet marketing.

An optimized web site and a regular dose of an article or two a month (to get links) used to get you decent rankings after 6 months in many cases. Now it's sems more like a year, depending on the market, product, site, etc..

We also used to recommend a 6-8 page web site for starters, but now we are developing more 10-12 page web sites. Search engines like to see lots of good content and many of the articles we used to send out for links are now being put onto sites to boost their content.

I've seen significant jumps in rankings just by adding 150-200 well written words (if I do say so myself) of SEO copy to a site's homepage - something we didn't do when I started.

So, I would add to your SEO points that, not only do you need quality content, you need lots of it and you need to keep adding to it as long as you can maintain the quality.

Of course, I am a copywriter.

Cheers, Stephen

[Karthikeyan Kuppuswamy]

Hey Sam,

Nice writeup very lucidly put.

My thoughts:

SEO must always be kept in mind while creating a blog/online site because ultimately you want it to reach as many people as possible and the best means is by people finding you. So have your code and content in a manner that search engine like and understand best.

Once you have designed an Search engine "friendly" blog/site then you have to ask yourself what value are you adding(is it something new?) . If you are are able to answer this question then you need not worry search engines will find you, however where most get stuck in the loop is when they do not have clear answer to the question and the workarounds begin...

Here is an example. I have a blog on refurbished iphones that ranks #2 in google ( http://refurbiphone.blogspot.com ) for a very popular keyword "iphone refurbished" , This blog even ranks above apple! why?

Simple, its the first ever blog/site to talk about refurb iphones. Like you(Sam) pointed original content matters. So we need to stop spending more time on working around the system and focus more on providing unique and valuable content.

as always thats easier said than done ;)

-Karthik

[Jeff]

Good post man! Very informative.

[Jose Miguel Bataller]

I agree with the post, at the end of the day search engines work hard trying to rank websites in a natural way avoiding any possible manipulation using unfair SEO techniques.

[Joe S.]

Sam -- this really is a great post and it really generated a ton of discussion. It is a shame that the moderator on LI deleted that 28 post discussion.... That's unbelievable.

[JeffM]

Have a remarkable product or service, and you'll never have to worry about SEO....ever! You'll get links because you deserve them and the serps will reward your popularity. Marketing IS the product! Thank Seth for that one...

[Michael Durwin]

I agree with all of them with the exception of meta data. Tags are still very important, but not by themselves. Why are blogs ranking so high, content and tags. People are using tags as a way to navigate. Tags in blogs, and keywords, description and titles all need to be carefully crafted, and yes, not repeated, to augment the content.

[Learning Treasures Homeschool Resources]

Thank you for a very basic article on SEO. All the comments were helpful too. I know aging makes a difference due to the traffic etc I get to my sites before I even did much with them - just had some basic content and owned them for over 6 years before I decided to monetize with adsense. Saw immediate earnings and couldn't figure it out until I realized age of a website makes a huge difference!!

One of my sites I lucked out on the URL is www.childrensrecipes.com title Cooking with Kids - I rank between 1 and 2 for both keywords. I didn;t know way back then you were supposed to make your title and url the same !

Thanks,
Belinda

[Fusedmind]

One of the most honest and clearly stated overviews on SEO I have read. It boggles me that there are still companies who fail to perform SEO on their sites.

Additional tips (I didn't read all of the comments so this may be redundant):
1. Read, study, and implement recommendations given on Google Webmaster Tools
2. All of the Search Engines are now indexing micro-blogs so now it is vital to be involved in the digital media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn...etc.)
3. Make sure you are using Short Tail AND Long Tail keywords for delivering the most traffic possible that fits your product or service.

[Mike Limieux]

Sam --- great article. Very helpful information.

[Yomi Ogunrinol]

Despite all the import of sales pitches, packaging, presentation and all the like, nothing sells better than a good product. A good product sells itself, no matter where on earth it's tucked away in. Heck, why do companies spend fortunes digging miles into the earth in search of black gold? SEO is relevant and will assume greater importance in the years to come but one should start with a good product first of all

[Sam Diener]

Alright guys... I am done here for now. That was the last comment I am posting because I need to get out of the house now, as you can see my friend Scribbz just said....

Blogging is hard work!

Good luck to all of the competitors!

[Sam Diener]

@bobflenner --- thank you very much for your compliments.

@scribbz -- you are too much buddy... I am just wrapping up

@Shireen -- I am glad you learned something!

[Scribbz]

Sam.

I had no idea you knew all this. Great job, looks like you are really trying to change the world. But here's a newsflash, its saturday, come out and stop blogging haha.

[Shireen H.]

Sam - this is quite a good piece that you have written as when you did consult with us this was all stuff you referred to as important.

I am glad WE didn't spend 1.5 million dollars!

[SBCEA]

I wanted to share this comment that came from stumbleupon..... there about 12 comments there but this took the cake:

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! About two years ago I came to a company and the first thing I did was fire the SEO Consultants. They were doing way more harm than good. Hiding text on pages. Repetitive tags. Calling everything Sex because (as they told me five minutes before I fired them) "Sex is always a highly searched term." Our referral rate from Google was horrific, to which they said (two minutes before I fired them), "It's only our job to get you higher rankings on Google, it's not our job to get people to click the links."

[Sam Diener]

@Christa ---- Very, um, philosophical. Haha, but yes, you do need to know this stuff as a writer. Definitely as a copywriter....

@Lauren --- thank you very much for your thoughts!

[Sam Diener]

Rich --- I think that the best way is to follow the hustler advice. As I said, link-building is essentially building friendships with the webmasters and getting them to list you. Meeting offline first works so much better than trying to be for those links. In fact nothing will happen if you beg. Take it from experience.

[Bob Flenner]

Very interesting and well done. I just joined the Digital Marketing Group on LI and found this article. since I just started in a SEO technology firm, I have been learning as much as I can about SEO and this was very helpful Good job.

[Craig Taflin]

As always, excellent information Sam.. You always do such a great job researching a topic and informing all of us of the truth. Keep up the good work and I look forward to you next blog.

[Rich DeMatteo]

Sam - I know zero about SEO, except that the "thesis" theme is helpful for SEO. I seriously know zero, but I feel that I'm a strong blogger with a voice that is heard easily.

What I lack in my technical SEO know how, I do make up for in hustle. I enjoy my blog and i enjoy making connections. It's not work for me, so I feel i"m able to build up a solid readership just on that alone. For people not technical, what would you suggest they do?

[Lauren]

This is a great article.

I have been working for a company that has quite a large presence on the internet. Usually, our clients come by word of mouth, but I can agree that this sort of optimization is quite important.

However, I agree with other commenters such as Mr. McPhereson that providing great service and using technology properly will produce the results you need.

Thank you for taking the time to write this.

[Christa M. Gutzler]

Ahh, the array of knowledge and down-to-earth appeal to your articles and input. By amassing this array and articulating it here, you are thereby bypassing the need for SEOs and other agents for mass appeal. This is, however, not the case for any and all writers, contributors, and organizations seeking exposure.

The point? Yours and other articles are being unearthed by a more effective mechanism known as truth. I will not allow my comment to imply that you should rest on your laurels of influence, but instead I think the very receptiveness evidenced by the plastering of comments, the plastering of debateable items works to your advantage and to that of your argument.

In a world impacted by the progressive nature of technology, here, specifically I wish to note the internet, etc. at such rapid speed, new "truths" are reported each and every millisecond in terms of the optimal ways to maximize exposure, marketablibility, expertise, etc. thereby almost rendering the term "expert" or "leader [within a focused discipline or target subject] meaningless, akin to when one repeats the same word over and over again and there is a panicky feeling that almost convinces us that it is not an actual word.

Again, you may ask, what's the point of this comment, tangent, rant? All information transferred via the internet these days must be taken "with a grain of salt" and truth can be subjective and only is uncovered by applying what one suspects to be true to one's own agenda with vigor, try it out, experiment, put in all your energy and resources into following through until one can deem something (an idea, a theory, a strategy) invaluable.

As a writer expected to learn more about SEO techniques and methods, I learned a lot from this article and for that I express appreciation.

[Mark Kennedy]

Very well said, Sam. This is exactly the way our agency thinks. Many businesses believe that you can cut corners with implementing good SEO strategies and that's just not the case.

[Sam Diener]

@Steve and James H.... very good points... I am not so sure about India with the contracting out.. They aren't that much different then us at this point.

@joywebber -- want me to do it for you?

@JL peterson --- I agree!

[Sam Diener]

Mr. Weber,

I am aware that there are many real SEO's out there. Certainly this is not meant to be an attack on all of them... just some...

Therefore, I have added an extra disclaimer to the top of the article.

I do want people to leave here kind of chuckling, not offended.

Happy Holidays!

Sam Diener

[Gerald Weber]

You have covered some very basic aspects of SEO here are are mostly accurate however...

The issue I have regarding this article is that it assumes that all SEO are inherently evil tricksters that are out to take advantage of unsuspecting people.

I really think there are a lot more "social media experts" popping up all over the place looking to cash in.

My main point is this....

Not all lawyers are bad, not all cops are corrupt, and not all SEOs are shady tricksters looking to prey on the innocent.. Sorry but that is just judging an entire career field off something you heard or experienced…

[Sam Diener]

Tony....

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you here, but I do have a response to your LOOOOONG comment..

1. I would agree with you. In the smaller keywords, as I mentioned (I think), it does take less time.

2. They are still a secret right ;) ?

3. Yeah - I had to make that amendment quickly. This is a hot topic so I want to make sure I don't have people trying to come find me and steal my keyboards.... (I have 2)

4. Yes!! This is why link builders (SEO's) are hustlers... I can grab lots of friends who run webpages, and all of a sudden... I have links!

5/6 fair play!

[JL Peterson]

Interesting points here. I have noticed that in 2009 SEO & Paid Media have been the new IA & Experience Design, which in 2007 & 2008 were the new black.In our industry we shift from focusing on the customer via experience to "forcing" the customer via overexposure depending on where budgets and revenues are expected to fall. It's troubling, to me, that when companies are the most concerned about making a sale, they take the least personalized tools in the box and go for the "low hanging customer." No offense to anyone in any skill arena here. To Dick's point above - the use of all appropriate technology - ongoing and as needed will keep the sales funnels churning.

[Liam]

This is very helpful in growing my non profit mission work at http://www.itmagazine.net

[Sam Diener]

James.... I made some changes.... you are now credited in the article :)

[Jame Allen]

I would word it something like this...

" Make sure your website is coded correctly. Errors in the code of your website can possibly prevent the content on your website from being indexed properly by the search engine spiders, and cause your search engine rankings to suffer. There are plenty of free tools available that can analyse your website code for you. I myself use the W3 validation tool provided by W3.org "

This way people won't get confused and believe that "W3C validation" is required to rank well in the search engines.

[Sam Diener]

James.... on that last "coldest beer in Illinois" bravo!

I myself appear for "successful people under 30" (I like that)

To be honest with you, I think we are talking about much worse code than what you are referring to. Code that, in fact, wouldn't be able to be read by the robots. Do you think that simply it is that W3validator line that makes that sentence debatable?

[Sam Diener]

Kirsten --- sorry it has taken so long for me to get back to you on this.

I would be honestly curious how many people really do click on those ads. As a seasoned web surfer, I am a master of ignoring them, as I anticipate most of my Gen Y friends are as well. In fact, until I realized what they were, I barely took notice.

It would be interesting to see what happens when and if Google puts these ads on the left side of the screen!

[Joy Webber]

Wow - this has certainly opened up a can of worms for me as an SEO technophobe. Perhaps you could recommend someone to do it all for me? That's probably safer than trying to work it out for myself. There are some who can and some who can't and some who just plain won't! That's me and I'm in the market for an expert like Sam. Great stuff Sam - you left me way behind about a third of the way through but I salute your expertise and the clarity with which you shine a light for others to follow. All best. Joy

[James Allen]

I'm sorry if I did not make myself clear. What I am saying is that valid code does not always achieve total validation by W3C standards.

If I check a webpage with the W3C validation tool, the first thing the tool checks to see, is what type of document the webpage is labeled as. If the document type is "DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN", it will grade the page against predefined standards associated with that particular document type. If all of the code in your document matches up with the codes that have been previously associated with DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN, then the tool reports it as being valid markup.

If I copy and paste a third party widget to my page that contains code ( maybe a snippet of XHTML code ) that is not in the predefined list of codes associated with "DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN". The W3C validator will report an error, when in fact, all the code is valid. It renders and works perfectly across all browsers because a browser will respond to XHTML elements within any HTML document type.

Here's another example I just now found on a site that I built last year for a local sports bar, I just checked the homepage with the W3C validation tool. Mind you that I validated the page before I published it. While in the process of submitting the site to the search engines, I pasted a verification meta tag issued by Google and MSN into the section of my page which is type: "DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN". Both of these verification meta tags have a "/" included within each tag at the very end. ie....

and

Those two little forward slashes are causing 5 errors according to the W3C validation tool. The site was indexed by Google and MSN after these verification meta tags were added. Despite the fact that the site has not been valid according to the W3C tool since it was indexed, it has still ranked in the #1 - #3 position in the organic search results for well over a dozen relevant search phrases on both search engines ever since it was indexed in August 2008. If you would like to check it out for your self, the site is www.SetShots.net

or just Google one of these phrases:

"set shots"
"Hillsboro Illinois tavern"
"sports hillsboro il"
"pool hillsboro il"
"beer hillsboro il"
"mixed drinks hillsboro il"
"darts Hillsboro Illinois"
"sports bar 62049"
"bar 62049"
(or my favorite)
"coldest beer in Illinois" etc..

[James H]

Steve, your above comment is completely correct, I would also add that there is difficulty in conveying the sentiment in which any copy should be written. Non-english speakers tend to struggle with emotive writing.

However, SEO is definitely more than submitting to search engines. There are very few niche's left to target, and with only 10 spaces on the first page, competition is tough.

SEO is not magic or complicated, its just time consuming. However, it definitely works, it DOES get a website ranked higher.

[Steve S]

I think that a lot of SEO will eventually be subbed out to India. You don't need to be a really proficient English speaker to do it. However you do need to speak the language.

My web host Fatcow.com offers some free seo. You submit keywords and the like for free and they submit it to the search engines. That might be enough for some websites who aren't that dependent on E Commerce etc.

From my experience doing business with Indian SEO's their English writing skills leave a lot to be desired. I recommend hiring native English speaking writers American or English. I wouldn't sub that out.

[Tony Dimmock - SEO Consultant & Internet Marketing Specialist]

Hi Sam,

Good article re the reality of SEO - below is my comments from a small biz perspective:

1. SEO takes a long time.

True for very competitive markets, but not so for small businesses vying for top spot in their local town, county or state. Aside from ensuring that every page on your website is optimised for your main keyword terms (Title, Meta Desc, H1/H2/H3 etc, Alt Tags, Keyword-optimised content, Internal Linking Structure/Anchor Text), try putting your town & state/county into your title, meta description and 1st 100 words of your page and see the difference. PS Make sure your town/state/county is at the foot of your page aswell...

Back this up with Digg / LinkedIn / Facebook / StumbleUpon / Naymz profiles / articles and entries into local online directories and ensure your profile name (and first few sentences of text in your desciption) explains what you or your company does and you're in.

2. The Actual Algorythms are secret.

True, but if you want Google to marry you and stay your partner for the long-term, provide RELEVANCY on every web page you have. On-page / on-site optimisation (as above) plus quality, inbound links (those that Google see's as an authority) are the two main areas to focus on. Stop for second and put yourself in Google's shoes. How can they tell your website is valuable? Inbound Links - end of (natural are gold dust - paid links, not so). And if you haven't taken the time to optimise your pages to ensure that Google supplies your pages to your ideal customers, why the heck would they (should they) rank you higher. As you rightly say, the industry is full of SEOers who are BS their way into many small businesses pockets. With algorythms, no-one knows the finer details, apart from my favourite two words - Relevancy and Trust...

3. Days of the Meta Tag are long gone.

Thank God for your amendment, was above to rant and rave ;-)

The Meta Description is a very powerful piece of text that should give a potential website visitor a reason to click. However, recently Google have been adding large snippets of the page text to the Meta Description aswell. So as long as you have no Crawl / Spider roadblocks (Real bad code, Java, Flash etc) you should be fine. Think of every page as it's own website and make everything on there pertinent to the subject of the title.

Meta Keyword Tags are not used by Google, but the jury is out whether Yahoo or Bing still use them. My suggestion, include them for best-practice purposes and to remind you (if for nothing else) the main keyword terms your aiming to optimise for).

4. Not just any backlinks will do.

Agree completely - you still see many SEBS (search engine BS) companies touting the line "for £xxxx i'll get you 500 inbound links within a month" or "we'll submit your website to 1000000's directories (link farms!)". My advice: 1) provide great, useful, unique content and webmasters will link to you naturally, 2) go after links from reputable, trusted and high PR websites and 3) here's a little gem: meet up with potential link partners and move it forward from an "online" relationship to a "real" relationship - works wonders...

5. Search Engines are meant to work for humans.

Your comment "There is no way to search optimise your page legitimately aside from producing quality content and getting others to link to it" should also include the SEO components I mentioned in point 1 above. If your Title Tags say "Joe's Bookshop" then a single word like "Services" or "Products" etc, your not going to appear in Google Rankings for terms you haven't optimised for - simple as. Google is not a mind reader - it's morning coffee, mid-day snack and bed-time reading is text. Small addition: when writing web pages, write for humans first then search engines...

6. Good coding practice.

Excellent advice - SEO starts with clean, validated coding and web hosting. But, you know something, most website designers are just that - designers. Many add "SEO" or "Internet Marketing" to their portfolio of services on their website, but most don't have a clue. If only programmers would optimise the site from the off with all the correct keyword terms! However, designers design, business owners own businesses but Website Marketers like myself market websites - this means comprehensive keyword research and analysis (incl online competition research) is done BEFORE any optimisation takes place. How can it? If you're not sure of which keyword terms (relating to your products and services) are most searched for or have the most / less online competition in order for you to rank well, you can kiss being found online goodbye. I tell my "new website" & "website revamp" clients the following advice: BEFORE employing a designer: Research your keywords, research your online competitors, think about typical client personas, write keyword-optimised copy, map-out the navigational structure, build in calls to action and conversion strategies, then when you have this - give the job to a good designer who can design AND NOT BEFORE.

Have fun and Good luck!

Tony Dimmock (Owner of Dimmock Web Marketing, based in Hitchin, Hertfordshire UK)

[Naveen Shukla]

Hi Sam,
I have a different view on yuor comment. I dont think less leads and less conversion should necessarily mean bad product. It has to do more with the type of the product, and the price of the product. When I used to sell websites at USD 399 it used to sell like hot cakes, now when I try to sell a product worth USD 4000, it takes time to convert those leads.
regards,
Naveen Shukla

[Sam Diener]

@james Allen --- I am not afraid of you!

Alright James.....

Are you saying that code shouldn't validate in the first place when it is written? How then can you be sure that it will work properly in all of the browsers it is delivered to?

Believe president Obama? Huh? (just kidding)

Certainly I am glad you don't need help attracting new clients. That's awesome!!!!

Sam Diener

[Kelly Ann]

Hi,

Wow, was this interesting!

I learned a tremendous amount here about SEO, and it will certainly be helpful in the promotion and success of my own website (which I will not mention because of the contest regulations).

I've come to the conclusion that SEO is just as much of a specialty (from my perspective) as the programming languages. I'm by no means an IT expert/specialist. Learning programming languages cannot be learned overnight or in a very short time, and I don't think that SEO can be either. This post was decidedly informative and peaks my interest further. And as far as not knowing the algorithms, I leave it "in the category of" things I probably will never figure out. Life is like that sometimes, and I'm ok with that.

Job well done, Sam!

Kelly Ann

[Sam Diener]

WE NEED DISQUS ON HERE!!!! (PANTING)....

[Sam Diener]

@lou -- "Also since reading your article I was poking around at some of the spam posts about Best Bang for your buck and SEO services touting they got their client ranked #2 for "Dentist in east bum worcester county MA" and you have to put the quotes... it literally pains me to think people are paying money for this stuff. So hopefully your article might save someones pocket."

Doesn't that make you sick to your stomach!?

@eric goldman ---I totally agree with you. You really should be incorporating SEO with your marketing effort!!!

@joseph and paulette - THANK YOU!

[Sam Diener]

@Lou and James.... what a great exchange... I am going to have to stay out of that one..

@jake- I am a little worried about your link exchange program.... how long have you been actually using this technique?

[Dick Ervasti]

A good deal of Web 2.0 arguably presents a far more slippery slope than any other tech trend of the century. Naturally, the herd is always the last to know about something, and SEO is no different. I have come to learn that if every third or fourth person at a cocktail party is dropping the buzz-phrase SEO in one way or other, it clearly has become a deprecated subject.

These days, people seem to always be looking for short-cuts to successful results. I believe SEO is now just another lazy man's short cut to the hard work of creating sticky, robust, vital content and then taking the time to create serious, thoughtful, and compelling linkback relationships. Most of the killer algorithms now require the above-mentioned hard work, and SEO is no longer a solution by itself. Granted, in your niche marketplace, SEO may put you on top for a short while, but if you live only by SEO, you will surely die by SEO. Eventually, your competition will beat you because they are willing to hardwire their site for success by doing the hard work.

Blogs as short-cut marketing tools have been dead for years. SocNet may well go down the same road, dying under its own useless weight or getting constrained by policy or the simple common sense business notion that spending so much time on the computer leads to productivity losses, not gains.

Over the past 15 years or so, new tech has often reminded me of the new toy given to the narcissistic child. They play with it so hard and fast that it ends up broken in pieces, only to leave the child craving the next new toy. Will ALL these new technologies go the same way? I hope not. Hard work, and the use of new technology in MODERATION, will always get you where you need to be, without all the wasted time, bandwidth, and unnecessary drama.

[Kirstin]

My profile shows that our business started as a national yellow page placement agency. In the interest of change and survival, we started an interactive division about six years ago. In that portion of the business, we develop, implement and track SEM campaigns, primarily with the ReachLocal platform and sometimes just with Google Adwords, depending upon the client.

We are disagreeing on the statement "(Adwords are those little advertisements on the side of Google that you never click on...)."

True, we have had some businesses that generate lesser than expected results. However, we try to target our businesses and their goals appropriately and actively manage the campaigns. As such, more often than not, we return great results.

I am not saying SEM is better than SEO or vice versa. I think they both have relevant applications and benefits to the client.

[Sam Diener]

Kirstin --- what does your service do... is it directory submission?

Are you talking about the ADwords? Which part are we disagreeing on?

[Michelle Cartier]

Great post. I still stand by good content. In my opinion people are always using content begin their search and with social media becoming more and more intertwined, especially long tailed searches I think content should begin to get a strong hold. Having worked with both "awesome" and "some" web developers you really have to do your homework. The awesome ones have clean coding and very good standards. Sure anyone can spend some buck getting quick #1 rankings, but I want my clients to have sustainablity and that is like aging a fine wine. Well worth the time and effort. (however I do think seo does not reward as much as it should)

[James Allen]

So.. You want some more of this! LOL

Most of the marketers and e types that you addressed with this thread do not have the programming knowledge to be able to tell wether or not the errors reported by the W3C validation tool are effecting the spiders ability to index the content properly.

Most cannot validate their websites code themselves either, and I don't know any legit programmer that will work on validating their sites for nothing. So therefor they would have to spend money on a programmer to sort through all the code and try to validate it. And in the end, if complete validation is even achieved, it could have no effect on their websites rankings in the search engine results. Do you really want to be standing at the other end of some advise that causes someone to waste time and money?

I don't care if President Obama calls me himself and tells me that he is your supporter that posted that comment. I have tested this myself. Even when Google itself says something will effect rankings, I test it out on a dummy site to make sure it is accurate before I apply it to a clients site. I am not posting this in hopes of attracting new clients. I am currently spread to thin as it is and I don't have any more time to fight today. Maybe tommorrow...,

[Kirstin]

I like the article and I appreciate your information and insight.

I have to disagree, however, with your swat at SEM. These campaigns can be executed effectively with a realistic budget and generate tremendous ROI. All of this can be done in much less time than it takes to optimize a site. As well, one can use the search term data to populate copy to actually help improve SEO.

[Joseph Keith]

Sam,

Great article! I can feel your frustration!

I agree with you on point #1! I run in to this day after day, clients expect to be #1 in Google over night because they saw an ad that made a promise.

I am also in agreement with you on #2. No one can know what the exact algorithms are. Too many SEO's write for the Search Engines and not for their customers. Google is changing this as well; you will start to see a change geared more towards content and relative links.

As far as #3, I do believe that Meta Tags are not as important as they use to be but I think they are still a factor. Although when I speak to clients I do not mention them.

#4 I do not agree with though. While relative/ranked links are best and are weighed more by Search Engines, any link helps.

While the idea of #5 is good I do not think the Search Engines are there yet. There are still too many unrelated pages that come up in a search.

Now #6 is well stated, but in most situations developers get the content from the Marketing Department or Copy Writers. So, if something is misspelled it is not their fault.

To sum it up, I agree with most of your article and think it is right on point. While most SEO's are great sales people, it is still a time consuming task and companies should think about bringing someone on staff or out sourcing to a local company to handle SEO/SEM.

-Joseph

[Sam Diener]

Before I respond to some of the comments.... I do want to point out something. This is somewhat of a shameless point/demonstration of concept.

For my last article in this contest, I wrote about why Linked-In and Twitter were so small. In this article, I wrote about how it is important to have others linking to your great content. As I said, if you are a great networker, it will happen naturally.

Well, I not going to say I am an excellent networker, or that I am the best.... but I do want to share how one blogger took it into her own hands to blog about me.... http://jayneh.wordpress.com/ (This is going to help with SEO, and is a great demonstration of my point on how it happens naturally).

[sity]

Excellent piece! With SEO it really does start with the basics! I understand that now... thank you. I feel like I can address my clients' questions about SEO much better with the info you provided.

[Sara]

I have to say I agree with your article, with the amendments. Though I wouldn't be so quick to be so harsh with SEO experts - not all of them are sharks. That said, unless you're managing multiple websites - it's something that can easily be done in-house, especially with more and more CMS websites.

[Joseph Skursky]

Sam, great stuff! I like your style and think that more imposters need to be rooted out in every part of society. Well done!

[Paulette Bennett]

Good article, Sam!

[Sam Diener]

@chris -- it actually isn't that the article has developed more links. It actually has less than mine. Really, aging does come into place here...

[Chris Garlington]

Your article seems to imply that an older article is better for getting higher ranking on Google but that doesn't make sense. The 2005 article you cite as an example might be ranked higher because it has been able to develop more incoming links in the last 4 years. I would say aging is important only when it proofs a page by becoming more relevant to more people which makes for more usage of that page.

[Lou Neofotistos]

James,

I agreed with a lot of what you had to say and the underlying factors remain the same if you can pay someone else to do ti for less of a "ttoal cost of ownership" for you then it makes sense to do. Its all about ROI and "opportunity costs" if you are losing out on other opportunities by spending the time doing your own SEO that all has to be factored into TCO. Makes perfect sense, I was just trying to help paint a more detailed and in my opinion accurate picture :)

Also an example of potentially bad SEO came out of this thread which should help a lot of people here too: "just ask my brother and those 1000's of directory submissions over the past few months" Spamming directories unless of course every one of those 1000's of directories were legitimate submissions for your legitimate related products. In that case I apologize :)

[James Hunt]

Hi Lou,

Thanks for the supportive reply :)

Personally speaking, if i can get someone else to do my job, and i pay them less than i charge, then i let them do it...(just ask my brother and those 1000's of directory submissions over the past few months)

It means i can crack on with other stuff, like running my business. (which is seo lol)

[Lou Neofotistos]

| Yes it is true!!! Anyone can do seo, anyone can cut hair but i still choose to pay £50 for my wife's stylist! why?? because its done professionally, looks good and will keep its shape long after its done. |

One big piece of the value and quality difference is the equipment they use. I think a much more relevant analogy would be mowing your lawn. Since we all have a lawn mower in the garage, or a computer on our desk. I will continue the analogy and add some humor by, going out on a limb and saying to a point SEO is more about experience than skill.

I would also add something to your equation below:

1) How much is an hour of my time worth?
2) How many hours will this take?
 added 3) How many times you will be paying them in the future to do it again and again as maintenance is necessary to keep top spots

Multiply the two answers, and if it is substantially more than paying an seo, Then multiply the amount of times you will be paying the SEO and realize the true total cost of seo!!

There is definitely a lot of upside to getting some help, creating a great foundation, etc etc but… another analogy is coming… If you hire a chef over your house to make you dinner, you will eat well for a night (or every night you pay them to come back, or I guess everytime you cook the same meal you watched them make) but when you have different ingredients or want to eat something else you have to hire them again or go back to ramen… Learn how to cook, you have the pots and pans already 

| Its all about "rich dad, poor dad" why do something yourself if it is financially better to outsource |

Again I agree this makes sense on some things but often not on things that require maintenance. Not only will these things require maintenance but if you learn the basics of SEO you can actually develop for SEO the first time instead of putting a bunch on paper then paying the SEO expert to change it.

-Lou