Designing a great looking website is good. Putting it on a strong information architecture is better.
Rolling out a newly optimized website is good. Checking it first is better.
Investing in SEO is good. Investing in ROI is better.
Optimizing your e-commerce site is good. Using optimized concantenation schema is better.
If social media is the darling Cinderella of the current marketing world, then link building might be the u___ (unrecognized?) stepsister. When I describe link building and its important role in creating a company’s Web presence (see SEOmoz’s What is Link Building? for a definition/details), most people furrow their brows and say, “Sounds like you’re talking about social media.” (Cinderella gets all the glory!)
So, we’d like to end, once and for all, this unnecessary cause of forehead wrinkles by tackling the FAQ: What’s the difference between link building and social media?
I’ve worked with a number of website designers and developers over the years, many of them good people with a plethora of skills I couldn’t even dream of having. But one thing gets under my skin: when developers claim to know SEO when they clearly don’t.
Many developers do have a solid grasp and understanding of SEO concepts and some even dig in to become tried and true SEOs as well. Those that fit this latter group are few and far between, and those from the former group know as much about managing an SEO campaign as a community organizer knows about managing a country.
Many (but not all) developers know what it means to create a search engine friendly (SEF) website. But that is not the same thing as optimizing a website for top search engine ranking performance. Think of building a website as building a car. You may have created a high-performance machine, but it’s not ready to compete in the Indy 500 when it rolls off factory assembly line!
Our team The Pit Crew has read some informative and helpful articles on Web marketing this week. Here are our picks.
What makes a good SEO? Is it just about having knowledge of search engine algorithms, being able to tweak code for the biggest ranking impact, or inserting keywords into a page to give it a better keyword focus? Is SEO all about search engine rankings or is there more to this than meets the eye?
Several years ago I wrote, “Gone are they days when SEO focused exclusively on top search engine rankings.” I wish I was right about that, but unfortunately, we still see a lot of SEOs doing just that today. Not the good ones, mind you, but still, far too many.
Today’s top-tier SEOs are getting out of the search engine ranking business entirely. Well, maybe not entirely, but they understand that there is so much more to online success than a top position for your keywords. Many clients still need convincing.
Keyword research is an important part of the optimization process. There are thousands of ways, tools and resources to do keyword research. Every SEO has their own methodology, favorite data and ways to organize and sort through that data in order to create solid keyword lists for their SEO campaigns.
But there is more to keyword research than just the research. You have to be able organize and sort your keywords into groups that will allow you to optimize them most effectively into your website.
This post will walk you through the organizational side of the keyword research process, using a customized keyword research spreadsheet I have created to make the process easy. You still have to do the research, but this tool helps us create keyword lists for on-page optimization.
Let’s get to it.
He doesn’t know a thing about conversions or usability.
He thinks his way is the only way to do SEO.
Recommendations for your meta keyword tags are considered “critical.”
When all your competitors are buying links but your SEO recommends “playing fair.” (via chrisfaron)
A recent discussion on Sphinn got me thinking about the value of keyword rankings in the overall scheme of measuring SEO performance. Do rankings matter? If so, should ranking reports be a part of the success metrics SEO’s provide their clients?
There are a lot of ways to measure the success of an SEO campaign and rankings can be a relevant factor, but that should not be the only factor. Heck, I’m not even sure it’s one of the top 5 most important measures of success! But instead of just yelling, “ranking reports suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck” at the top of my lungs, let’s look at how we can accurately measure the value of any particular keyword ranking. I think you’ll find a lot more here than meets the eye.
SEO is like a car. You can’t just ask “how much does SEO cost?”
SEO is like food. Quick, cheap SEO and has little long-term value, while healthy SEO costs more but has a better long-term effect.
SEO is like a chair. It’s something you don’t want to collapse underneath you. (via @mflem25)
SEO is like ice cream. There are a lot of different flavors of SEO strategies that bring satisfaction, and you usually want to try more than one.
SEO is like music. The foundation hasn’t changed since the beginning, but the application of SEO evolves with time.
SEO is like kids. A lot of work goes into it and you can’t be guaranteed of the results.
SEO is like a surgeon. Sometimes you have to do a lot of website surgery in order to cut out the sickness.
SEO is like a doctor. If you don’t follow the advice of your SEO, you’ll never have a healthy site.
SEO is like a diet. It’s easy to know what to do. Not so easy to do it successfully. (via @mflem25)
SEO is like getting in shape. There are no shortcuts to good results. (via @mflem25)
SEO is like exercise. If you don’t keep at it, you lose the benefits of it.
SEO is like gravity. What goes up eventually comes down.
SEO is like the Jones’s. If you are only keeping up, you’re falling behind. (via @PaschenM)
SEO is like Inspector Clouseau. Even the most bumbling SEOs can still stumble across a solution.
If you ask people if they want to be successful, almost unanimously, they will say yes. But if you watch what people do, you’ll see that they are neither interested in nor committed to doing the things that are required to become successful.
Most people look for ways to “succeed” by investing the least amount of effort possible. That’s why the lottery makes so much money for the government. One dollar can make you extremely rich. If you’re extremely lucky.
(Don't wait for the movie!)
E-Marketing Performance: Effective Strategies for Building, Optimizing & Marketing Your Website Online
