Back To Basics
THE SEO FOR DUMMIES ISSUE
Something For Nothing!
I'm old enough to remember the good old days when a business needed to put an ad in the local Yellow Pages. (n.b. If you don't know what a 'Yellow Pages' or even (gasp) a 'phone book' is, young person, just Google it.) Anyhoo, for a lot of us, the Internet often seems to promise 'something for nothing'. Virtually every low budget client I encounter thinks (or hopes) that a well-designed site is a one-time cost which guarantees them good search ranking forever. Boy is that wrong! So this issue I wanted to take a few minutes to discuss some basics about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Yes, this may be stuff you already know, but it never hurts to have a quick refresher. And besides, if you need more advanced ideas, you can always go to the web site and check out the SEO Tips. Lots of good stuff there.
On The Page Vs. Off The Page!
Now, if you are a doctor, a plumber, a contractor, an artist, a charity, or even just a lowly web developer, you probably have lots of competition for the keywords people will use to search for you. Unfortunately, the contribution your web site makes to your SEO ranking is often about twenty five percent of your score unless your product or service is completely unique. And by unique I mean that nobody else does what you do—not common but it does happen. In any case, this part of the SEO equation is called 'On-Page SEO'.
As you may have heard, the original Google algorithm valued pages and sites based on how many other sites linked to them. So to rank high, you needed a lot of other sites with links to your site. So the current state of affairs is a lot more complicated than that; so much so that I would call that original explanation as accurate as saying that men wear pants and women wear dresses. Not very precise. But it's a good starting point.
While we're talking 'history' I want to stop and mention that, in the beginning lots of sites tried all kinds of kinds of goofy techniques you may have heard about for trying to fool Google and artificially raise one's score. For example, occasionally, you'll still see pages where a word is repeated a zillion times. That was one of these silly ideas. A lot of unscrupulous companies created the mistaken notion that there is some 'magic' you can pay people for in order to instantly improve your ranking. Google has spend a lot of time and effort to root out any attempts to game the system. In addition to the fact that these tricks do not work, they also risk your being punished by Google. And by 'punished' I mean removed from their search engine entirely! I don't mess with that stuff and neither should you. We get our rankings the old fashioned way: we earn them.
OK, nowadays, there are many, many factors that determine the ranking of your page, but they all have to do with activity; your site has to be getting talked about. So you have to constantly be taking steps to make sure that people are talking about your site in order to be noticed by the Almighty Google. And 'active' is the key word. You cannot expect that a web page, no matter how well-crafted (the on-site SEO) will somehow magically draw the world to you. Instead, you have to take ongoing steps to make that happen. And that is the other seventy five percent of SEO, Ladies and Gentlemen: trying to attract attention on a regular basis.
Even If You Don't Need SEO? You Need SEO
OK, so what if you don't care about SEO? What if your site is a one of a kind that should always be at the top of the page? You should still care about SEO for a couple of reasons.
Remember again that most of your SEO score is based on people talking about the keywords you use. Let's say you have a site that sells Genuine Model T Engines. (Please don't write and tell me that there are 327 Model T Engine makers. I'm sure there are. It's just an example.) There is no one else who does that so you shouldn't have to worry about SEO, right? OK, well someone starts a Facebook Page on Ford Model Ts. As you would expect, lots of discussions of Model T engines break out. Sooner or later, those discussions will overtake your web site's search ranking simply because (duhhh) Facebook has so many more visitors than you. And here's the thing to think about: unless those Facebook people are explicitly mentioning you it's quite possible that your keywords will drift off the first page results.
Now you might say, "Hey that's not fair! Those are my keywords! I make that engine!" Sure, but people aren't mentioning your company (or rather, you aren't keeping yourself an active part of the conversation!) Google doesn't value your site because it's static. Get it? Solution: Start taking part in that Facebook page. Become active! That let's you take control of your SEO fate. Well that was easy! You bet. But now multiply that by all the venues that may be talking about Model T Engines. If it's more than a couple, it's probably not worth your time to DIY. That's where having me manage this task for you starts to make sense.
Secondly, there's this thing called 'reputation'. Your site will show up in Google Reviews and Facebook and Yelp and a dozen other places like 'Top Ten Model T Engine Sites.' Probably those mentions will be highly positive. But the Internet is full of people with an axe to grind and all it takes is one to skew your search ranking (or worse, make that one bad notice stick to the top of search results like a pimple on prom night). Unless you are regularly monitoring your reputation (and taking steps to influence it if there are complaints) again you are at the mercy of other voices. Fortunately, the solution for this problem is the same as before: be pro-active! Regular monitoring of what the web says about you, plus pro-active work to dampen the effects of any negative remarks is cheap insurance. So again, a professional saves you time, worry and potentially money. In addition to taking the monitoring process off your hands, if problems do arise, a pro will know how to handle them as quickly and efficiently as possible.
A Word About Organic Living
I've noticed lately that most people calling for the first time will drop the term 'organic' when asking about SEO. Maybe it's to show that they've been doing their homework. But my impression is that there is a lot of confusion about this term and so at the risk of sounding like a dictionary nerd, I want to provide a small amount of correction. I'm hugely over-simplifying this but for openers you can think of 'organic results' as 'unpaid results'. It means your rank based on your web site and then all the real people talking about and linking to your site. (Most of what we've been talking about so far is 'organic').
Generally, paid advertisements are considered 'non-organic' because the page ranking is not being influenced by facts and real people's opinions. Which makes sense; you're trying to give your site an artificial boost—hence the opposite of the term 'organic'. The situation starts to get fuzzy when it comes to reviews and sites like Facebook where advertisements definitely influence the ranking of search terms based on money. But those are topics for another issue! However, in general, it is the goal of Google and Bing to try and make organic results as sincere as possible (we actually use this term a lot in 'the biz'). If a search result ranks high, Google wants visitors to know if it's being paid for. And in fact, most searchers do click a lot more often on unpaid (organic) results because they tend to trust the algorithm more than high ranking paid results. Now this doesn't mean that advertising is not a good idea (it is!), but again, that's a topic for another issue! For now, let's just say that it's a good idea to use paid advertising when appropriate, but not to try and compensate for poor organic SEO.
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Like I always say, I know you're busy. Hopefully my occasional nags help you think about ways to improve your marketing. But even if you don't have a thing for me to work on at present (shocking but possible) drop me a line anyway and let me know how things are going; market-wise or otherwise. It's always good to hear from you.
Best,
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