SEO Wizz

The Threefold Mission of Search Engine Optimisation

Tim — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:06:59 +0000

A question that is often debated is “What is SEO?”, many think it’s about creating keyword optimised pages, others think it’s about creating Google friendly site architecture, you have those who think it’s all about quality content and those who think it’s all about links.

Whilst all of the above are valuable SEO techniques, none of them describe SEO in a broad sense.

So what is it? Is it ranking higher on Google? Is it simply driving organic traffic to your pages? Well in my opinion SEO or search engine optimisation (or even optimization for those of you over the pond) is so much more than this; SEO in my mind is quite simply the most powerful marketing tool you could ever want.

In this post I am going to try and explain what I mean, I am going to go through what I think is the threefold mission of SEO, (by the way that’s just a term I made up )

As you can see from the above image I believe the 3 main areas of SEO marketing are core market ranking, brand promotion and long tail optimisation, all are needed in a successful SEO campaign but let’s break this down a little.

Brand Promotion

How do we promote our brand through SEO?

Well it’s simple really, as your site grows more people will become aware of your services/product and if your good at what you do your brand may be passed by word of mouth, how valuable do you think it would be for someone to say “simply search [you brand] on Google and they’ll pop up”?

Let me show you something before we go any further;

As you can see last month there were 160 clicks on my site from keywords including my brand, now I know the figure isn’t huge but as the brand grows so will the traffic.

Think about it, it’s not just word of mouth business, say a visitor somehow drops on one of your pages, reads and likes it but forgets to bookmark it or subscribe, they come online the next day and fancy reading your content again, how are they going to find you? Probably by typing your brand into Google.

Ranking for your brand is something you need to implement immediately and it is so easy. If you have a solid link profile the chances are you already rank, however its good practice to try and get your brand name in your title tag.

If your site is new it is best to start by creating some social media profiles using your brand name, these will rank quickly and help channel traffic searching for your brand to your actual site.

Long Tail Optimisation

OK I know I have banged on about this enough so I will keep it short.

Long tail optimisation is optimising your deep content for low competition keyword variations, it’s a slow way of building traffic but one that will pay huge dividends.

Read my post here on long tail optimisation.

Once you have mastered this optimisation technique you will be able to grow your organic traffic with every new bit of content you add to your site.

Long tail traffic will not convert as well as precision targeted traffic but with a little keyword research before each new post or article and over time you will see a profitable return.

Core Market Ranking

At the start of any SEO campaign we do our keyword research and we identify our core market, or the keywords with the most amount of traffic and profitability.

These keywords are going to be the hardest to rank for and it may take you up to a year or even two years before ranking for your most competitive term.

This is very much a long term aspect of your search engine strategy but when you land this one it can take your business from minor profitability to huge profitability.

Your homepage will usually be targeted at these keywords and this is where the majority of your link building will be focused, I’d say as much as 80% of your link building efforts need to be aimed at landing these terms. The long tail and branding is not about links as long as the content is there the rest will take care of itself, the power keywords on the other hand require huge link building efforts and your aim should be the top 5 if not the number 1.

Conclusion

So why is it important to implement a full SEO strategy?

If you only concentrate on your core market it will take you years to see results and you will probably give up, if you only concentrate on branding and long tail optimisation your simply missing out on huge earning potential.

You need to incorporate all these strategies to create a successful campaign and this in my opinion is what SEO is, using Google as a platform for marketing your business on multiple levels.

Anchor Distribution and Anchor Text Penalties

Tim — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:41:47 +0000

I want to address something today which seems to be a concrete SEO principal yet I see very little evidence around to justify the theory.

The theory goes something like this “Over optimising your anchor text can cause a Google penalty, as Google have filters in their algorithm that pick up on anchor text manipulation” , you may have heard something slightly different but the idea is the same.

The above theory poses a few questions, namely;

1) What is anchor text optimisation?

2) Should we engage in it?

3) Can we over optimise our anchor texts?

This post incorporates some factual research with what I consider my own thoughts and feelings on anchor text.

What is anchor optimisation?

I am sure most of you know what anchor text or link text is but for those of you who may not it is the text used to create a link back to your site, or the text in the middle of the ‘a’ and ‘alt’ tags. This is anchor text and optimising simply means to include the keyword you are targeting within it.

Simple really, if you have a page targeting the keyword “search engine optimisation” then you try and get as many anchored links as possible with that text in, this is also known as ‘keyword sniping’.

Should we engage in anchor optimisation?

OK, first let me ask a question; Do you want to rank high for competitive key phrases?

If the answer is yes, then YES you need to optimise your anchor text whenever possible. I think I explain this best with a little factual research.

After analysing the links of the top 5 sites for 15 different key phrases, the answer whether or not to optimise seems clear;

As you can see on average the sites had 34% of all their links anchored with the exact search phrase they were ranking for and on average 40% of their links were anchored with a variation including the exact key phrase.

Example

Exact = search engine optimisation

Variation = organic search engine optimisation services

Not a variation = search engine marketing and optimisation

Variations were only counted when the exact keyword in the right order was within it.

On top of this information the average site in the top 5 used an average of 20 variations all including the exact match within them.

What does this tell us?

Clearly it shows that if we want to rank high on Google we need to be targeting our keyword in the anchor text.

What About the other 60%

On average 60% of the links did not include the keyword and used other types of related keywords and variations. Remember all links carry link juice no matter what they are anchored with, however Google clearly puts a good amount of weight on the anchor text therefore you cannot rank for a competitive term without optimising the anchor text.

So the other 60% will pass link juice and authority but will do very little to help you rank for a specific term.

Can we over optimise?

Now I can’t say that I have ever had a site been penalised for over optimisation of anchor text, however Aaron Wall at SEObook claims he was hit in the early days of the site. There have also been other reports of anchor text penalties because of manipulative behaviour.

I am not sure if I buy it, primarily because it would then become easy to sabotage a competitor’s site, just build a ton of links with the exact anchor in it.

However to be on the safe side I would recommend using variations as well as an exact match.

Remember you are only going to be in control of a percentage of your links, so these are the ones you have to make count. I would recommend picking an exact keyword and around 15 – 20 variations of it, use the exact text 7 times out of 10 when writing articles, submitting to directories etc… the rest of the time use a variation, try it on a rotating system.

This means you are keeping things safe and in line with the top 5 sites on Google in the above test.

The rest of your links will be out of your control and could come with a range of anchors, there is nothing you can do about that, just keep creating the anchor text links.

If you are in any doubt of the absolute power of anchor text, do a search for ‘caffeine’ look who sits at number 2!!! Google with a page that has nothing to do with ‘caffeine’, want to know why? Anchor text.

Then type in ‘click here’ what do we have? Adobe!!! That is because all of their links are anchored click here!!

I hope this answers any questions you may or may not have been having about anchor text, don’t be scared by those who tell you that you will be penalised, you need to optimise them in order to compete, simple.

How To Analyse Link Growth Effectively

Tim — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:01:55 +0000

If you are actively attempting to optimise your website you will no doubt be monitoring your growth. Google rank, organic traffic and indexed content is something we should definitely be looking at, however there is another important aspect and that is the growth of our link profile.

There is a fundamental problem with trying to monitor your link growth, firstly there is no tool that can list 100% of your links (Don’t worry Google knows about all your links but chooses not to show them), the second problem is knowing how many of those links contribute to your page authority.

What I want to do in this post is go through some of the ways we can check our link growth, how we should monitor it and which statistics to use.

Right lets jump straight into it:

Google

OK the obvious place to look for links is on Google,

Simply type in link:yourdomain and it will show pages that link to your domain;

As you can see from above this is the snap shot from SEOwizz.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking, only 11 linking pages????

and here lies the problem;

The Problem

Google only shows a tiny percentage of the links to your site and in actual fact my count using this method fluctuates between 11 – 72. The reason for this I do not know.

Before anyone thinks Google is discounting links because of low quality or something, first know this.

I have links from over 50 PR4 pages including sites like SEOmoz, I also have links from a few PR5 and 6 pages, none of these show when I perform a link search on Google.

This is not the way you should be tracking links in my opinion and frankly means nothing in terms of keyword rankings.

I have consistently ranked on the first page for “google seo” and “seo techniques” despite massive fluctuations with the link count on this search.

Google Webmaster Tools

OK you can open up a webmaster tools account and submit and verify your site, once this is done Google will show you how many links are pointing to your pages, but again this is only a portion of the pages:

As you can see from the above pic, I have 2534 links pointing to the domain and 342 to the homepage, this is a more accurate figure in my opinion but again Google still only shows a partial amount of links, in my opinion Google only show the strongest links here.

The Problem

The main problem with the webmaster tools count is that it fluctuates so much, it is a good indicator of how many quality links you have pointing to a domain but it far from an ideal way of assessing popularity growth.

Yahoo Site Explorer

Now if you head on over to yahoo site explorer you will certainly get a better idea of where you are in link popularity terms.

Now there are some fluctuations on here and still even though it shows a lot more links it is not all of them, however this is the one I recommend on using when assessing raw link popularity, in fact any SEO tools I have ever used usually fall somewhere in between webmaster tools count and yahoo, usually closer to Yahoo.

The Problem

As I said yahoo is so much better for assessing raw popularity however it doesn’t give you any info about the quality and this is the hardest area to get around.

SEO Tools and How I Assess Link Growth

This is my advice and it is how I assess the link growth of all my clients, I will be mentioning certain tools in this section but they are not affiliate linked or even endorsed, I recommend them because they are the best.

Link Popularity

Already answered this one really, yahoo site explorer, this is how I asses link popularity growth but not how I assess how link quality is growing.

Tools

The SEOmoz Linkscape tool helps you to see how many quality links you have pointing to your page and how many route domains point to your page, you can actually get this information free by setting up an account, of course if you want in depth info you would need to go PRO, which in my opinion is only worth it if your site is making a real income for you or if your an SEO professional.

Some Things To Note

- SEOmoz only shows how many quality links point to you

- The tool performs a crawl of the web every 4 – 6 weeks so if you build links today you might to see them on SEOmoz for a couple of months.

As well as the SEOmoz tool you can also purchase SEO Elite, this allows you to see the PR of the page pointing to you and if the link is followed.

My advice is this use yahoo for link popularity and SEOmoz or Google webmaster tools count to assess how many quality links you have pointing to your page, but remember these only update every 2 months.

Why Don’t They Give Us It Straight?

The only way any tool could provide us with every single link pointing to our domain is if it could crawl the entire web and only Google possesses that kind of power. So why don’t they tell us about all our links??

Well the main excuse is competition, Google don’t want competitors to be able to discover everyone of your back links so they don’t make the information available. I guess you could then argue that they could provide it in the webmaster tools info, yes they could, why don’t they??? No idea other than maybe they don’t want to assist anyone to game the algorithm.

So when it comes to analysing link growth stick with yahoo for link popularity and SEOmoz/Webmaster Tools for link quality.

This post came from a question I was asked by Mike at HTS Tech Tips. If anyone has any questions feel free to forward them to me, I am happy to address any questions in emails and posts.

Do Blog Directories Help SEO?

Tim — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:52:59 +0000

This blog posts is based on a question I was asked by my good friend timethief and it relates to blog directories. Technorati, blogcatalog, bloglines etc… all directories where you can list your blog and get a link back to your site; in return these directories normally suggest that you fire a link back to them.

So let’s get straight to the point and really we need to answer it in 3 ways.

1) Are blog directories worth joining?

2) Are the links from directories worth getting?

3) Should you send a site wide link back to the directory? (normally in the form of cute badge )

Let’s discuss this in the above order;

Should You Join A Directory

This is the simplest to answer, joining a directory and participating in the social aspects of it are a completely personal decision. I have been a member of blogcatalog for a while now and every now and again I join the forums, I also get involved with Yahoo answers and have the old bloglog member’s box at the side.

This is not for the purposes of SEO, this is simply to meet new people and input my knowledge here and there when people are struggling to understand SEO concepts.

So, should you join a directory?? Yes if you want to benefit from an online community and develop new relationships, just like using stumble, twitter, digg or any other social platform.

Are The Links Any Good?

A link is a link at the end of the day but for the purposes of this part of the post let’s concentrate on link juice.

In order to gage how much link juice these directories pass I went to my SEOmoz tools and looked at my top 445 links.

My actual ‘blogcatalog’ directory link did not make it into the top 445 (being beat by articles on article directories), I did however get a link from the discussion area but it passed zero in terms of link juice:

Technorati made it in the top 300 just passing 0.03 link juice, yahoo and other directory listings were nowhere to be seen.

OK, however even a zero link is worth it if it passes anchor text, ermmmmm, nope just a bare link at these directories.

So no juice, no anchor text and no relevance, are these directory links really worth it?? Let me answer that at the end of the post, sorry to keep you in suspense

Should You Link Back?

Most of the links we send back to blog directories come in the form of badges we litter our sidebar or footer with. Should we??

Well let’s look at this logically:

It’s not a reciprocal link

It won’t be penalised for been reciprocal as the link from our sites point to the homepage of the directory and the link from them comes from a deep page, it’s what is known as triangular linking, not as bad as reciprocals but not great.

What are we left with?

Simple, you are left with 10 badges on every page of your site leaking link juice and helping the directory gain link juice. Even if you no follow these links it is still lost link juice since Google’s link evaporation announcement, in that no follow links might as well follow as the link juice is lost either way.

So my answer is straight forward, I do not recommend linking to every single blog directory out there, all you are doing is building their rank whilst diminishing your own.

So We Don’t Bother Submitting Our Blogs To Directories?

Ah well, not exactly.

You see even though these directory links carry very little link juice and you cannot anchor the text, they still carry something just as important, trust. If you have a link from technorati, blogcatalog, fuelmyblog or any of the mainstream directories, you have links from highly trusted sites. This will help build your trust and enhance your rankings.

So, to some up:-

YES join directories to socially interact
YES Get a link from these directories
NO Don’t link back to the directory with badges that appear on every page of your site

You may have noticed I’ve removed the badges I had to blogcatalog and technorati, I was going to keep them on hoping someone might favourite me but that hasn’t happened, so I got rid as they offer no other benefit to my site.

This is all my opinion and I am sure there will be social bloggers out there telling me I’m wrong, but that’s life I guess.

Hope this has helped decide how you might deal with blog directories in the future.

Fresh Content = Indexed Content = Recognised Page = Recognised Links

Tim — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:38:01 +0000

I don’t think I really need to say anymore than the above title really, but feel I need to raise something as some people are obviously not getting it. Let me just give you a snippet of quite a rude email I received only last night.

SEO Wizz, I have been reading through your tutorials now for the last 6 months and quite frankly I think they are inaccurate and misleading. One of the link building methods you seem to make a big deal out of is article marketing, after implementing what you taught I have to say this technique is laughable and only newbie’s and amateurs must try it. How can you call yourself an SEO consultant whilst giving such lame advice??

As you can imagine this took me back a little, I know the SEO advice I give works because, well, I use it

Anyway I thought to myself should I entertain this email or delete it with the daily spam I receive; I decided to email Mr X back.

After a few bits of correspondence I realised this guy had suffered at the hands of money making scams and online opportunities for the last 3 years and was still getting nowhere. This made me feel kind of sorry for him so last night (still only 3 hours after receiving the initial email) I had a look at his issue. He sent me the articles he had wrote and where he had submitted them.

Things were pretty much in order, good length article, good English, structured nicely and anchor text at the bottom, OK there seems to be an issue.

I couldn’t figure out why these links weren’t counting until I started looking at all the articles he had published in the last month in the author sections.

All the articles were similar with literally one or two words changed in each paragraph, after another email I discovered he had been spinning multiple copies of the same article.

Ahhhhh!!! Everything makes sense.

So here’s the problem and if you have been spinning articles you might want to read this;

Fresh Content

This is the fundamental principle anybody performing SEO should know. Google needs fresh, unique content, I am not just talking about on your sites but on any page you decide to get a link from, if the content is copied or even if it is slightly changed, the chances are the page is not going to be indexed.

Indexed Content

If a page is not indexed any link you have on that page will not count, it is a waste of your time and energy. Why would Google want to give you credit for a link from a page it can’t even be bothered to add to the index??

Making Article Marketing Clear

If you are going to article market, fine, however don’t expect great results by writing 1 unique article and spinning it into 20 (for anyone who does not know what spinning is, it is when you make some of the words in the article variable and software changes the phrases between articles). If you are going to article market correctly you need to write a new piece of content each time, this maximises the number of links you will receive back.

Will only one copy of your article be indexed?

If you write an article and publish it on 30 different directories you may notice that only ten of the directory articles get indexed therefore you have 10 links. These articles will no doubt belong to the article directories with established domains and domain authority. So why publish to as many directories as possible??

Even the low value directories will hopefully increase in authority and trust, therefore one day your article could be indexed, however if your article has been spun 20 times and is published on the same domains the chances are it will never be indexed despite how powerful the domain is.

Are You Against Spinning Articles?

I am not against anything that works and doesn’t get your site banned, unfortunately article spinning is a technique with limited effect. If you are going to spin an article I would suggest creating 4 to 5 variations on each paragraph and having 3 variable titles, on top of this spin it 5 – 7 times max but don’t be surprised if it is rejected from the major directories. This will still not mean all are indexed but it will up the chances. You may consider this a little grey hat but if it works and doesn’t cause a penalty why shouldn’t I tell you?

So to finish up, content needs to be fresh and unique not just on your own site but on any content network you use to get links.

Article marketing works, every internet marketer out there knows this and is implementing some form of article marketing strategy to rank highly. The guy in the email was simply lost in a world of lies and scammers, it’s a shame but it’s a learning curve many of us have to come through.

Like I say to anyone struggling at this game, if you want to know how to rank, study and listen to those that are doing it.

A Few Things To Shout About

Tim — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:49:52 +0000

As you will notice by the title this is a 100% non-optimised blog post, I decided there were some things that have happened on this blog and in the wider community that you will probably be interested in reading about this weekend.

I try to make most of my SEO posts as informative and instructive as possible but every now and again you have to shout about your own blog a bit

Some Hard Data

OK first of all SEOwizz was recently referred to by Rand at SEOmoz, the link was to the Link Building Factors article I put together about a week ago.

Anyway the main reason I am highlighting this is not to say ‘look at me’ but is too strongly advise you to head over there and read Rand’s article. It shows some great data around Google’s ranking factors and which ones are closely lined up with Google’s current rankings.

Warning – The article is filled with data, some of it is quite complex so read it a few times

Unlike my link factors the SEOmoz team look at on page factors also and reveal interesting data around the use of headings, something that has long been an SEO must.

Anyway, seriously read it.

Maximising Your Google Experience and Maintaining Rankings

Tim — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:50:59 +0000

Recently the vince or brand update has reared its ugly head. Matthew Trewhella of Google recently stated the brand up date was aimed at maximising the user experience, “every time a Google user has to enter a second search, Google considers this a failure”.

You can read a little bit more about the brand update at SEO Book.

So how do we use this information for our SEO efforts? I have always been of the opinion that bounce rates are not really a factor in the Google mix yet; this is mainly due to the fact that not everyone uses analytics so how would a ranking algorithm based on bounce rates be fair?

OK, so if it’s not bounce rates how else can Google measure the quality of the results they are showing on the first page of queries?

I guess it’s really pretty straight forward, click through rates. If your site sits on the first page of Google but has a low click through rate for its position, the chances are the page will slowly lose ranking, I personally believe that an algorithm to this effect is already in place.

Up until recently SEOwizz was ranking first page for “Google Search Engine”, clearly it wasn’t what searchers were looking for and I had 1 click in 3 weeks, safe to say it dropped back 3 pages and probably more now.

Right, knowing this should make us automatically consider click optimisation, increasing the number of clicks we receive to our sites and there are a few ways we can optimise this;

Title Tags

When it comes to title tags it is easy to simply consider using keywords separated with hyphens but looking unnatural. I made the decision a while ago to include my brand in the title tag in hope that users may attach a little more trust to the listing. It can be a tough compromise when it comes to the title tag, many advise to ask a question in it, or even use capitals to grab attention. I personally say leave that to adwords marketing, stick with using the right keywords in prominent positions but making it sound a little more natural and human.

Meta Description

It is debatable as to whether or not Google takes the meta description into consideration, we know meta keywords are a total no go and Google recently confirmed this, for a change

Right, but even if they do not use the description in the ranking algorithm, we know for a fact relevant keywords with in it are bolded, just like an adwords ad.

So the same applies, use the keywords in a prominent position, in my opinion use them twice. This will make your listing stand out which will increase click through rates and hopefully rankings.

Ranking with a twist

I am not going to insult your intelligence by stating “ranking higher increases click through rates”, however I am sure you have been in a position where you are stuck on the first page in 4th or 5th position and the sites in front of you have millions of links? Is there anything you can do to increase your visibility without increasing rank?

In my opinion, yes and it was spoken about recently at SEOmoz, it is the idea of indented listings. This is where a site is listed and then has a sub listing directly below, slightly indented, hence the name.

Rand at SEOmoz runs through how to do this but it is really simple.

Find the listing you are ranking on the first page for
Find the page on your site which is most relevant to the keyword the initial page is ranking for (if you want to find which pages of your site are relevant to a particular keyword simply tap “keyword site:your site” into Google search , this will bring up a list of your pages in order of relevance to the target keyword.)
Link from the initial page to the new page using the target keyword
If the new page has few external links, use articles and link partnerships to build some authority.

The video at SEOmoz goes into a little more detail if you want to skip over and watch it.

What will this do? Simple, it will cause your site to stand out more and will significantly increase your traffic on that keyword.

I tried to do it on my Bing SEO articles but rank number 1 for the keyword now anyway. This is a great way to increase organic traffic as a whole to your site, so I would suggest skipping through your analytics to see if there are any keywords you get traffic on that can be enhanced.

OK, so in my opinion these are the best ways of increasing your click through rate and rank. Of course having you major keyword in your URL helps but that’s a little obvious to state.

SEO – Its All About The Links

Tim — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:33:55 +0000

Just a quick post today but something I think you will appreciate and find interesting.

I feel recently that all I have been posting about is backlinks, in-depth analysis, opinion and of course proof. Surely there is more to SEO than simply links, right?

Yes I believe there is but the thing is, links play a huge role, in fact a lot of the time they are the overwhelming factor.

I read quite a few SEO / Internet marketing blogs and I sometimes get a little cheesed off at the level of depth they go into. Sure I have done many in-depth tests into the SERPS but at the end of any test I usually highlight what really matters, links, links, links.

Just for the sake of it let me give you a quick example.

When I first started the SEOwizz blog I got a lot of links from friends and online buddies anchored with the term “seo consultant”, which is a fair description. In fact I did think about targeting it heavily in the early days but decided the traffic was not heavy enough and it wasn’t particularly the audience I wanted to attract. In fact after running a few adwords campaigns I was convinced the only people searching on the term were the SEO’s trying to rank for it.

Anyway as you can see from by homepage, I in no way what so ever target the keyword “seo consultant”, in fact I don’t think I have the keyword on the page and as you can see my title tag does not include it.

Despite this major disregard towards that term I rank on the second page in 17th! Plus, don’t forget this is a pretty competitive term;

The only reason I rank for this term is down to links or more specifically keyword targeted links. Take a look at all the other pages on the first 5 pages of the SERPS, 98% of them use the “seo consultant” term in their title tag, the most powerful on page factor, yet I out rank most of them.

I don’t know how many of you remember school if not I can, and can tell you that popularity mattered. It didn’t matter if you were the ugliest person in your year if you had a list of friends all pointing at you saying you were cool, you were in your peer groups eyes, popular.

SEO is pretty much the same, sometimes like school it is unfortunately so, if you have enough links pointing at you saying what you want, whether it be “seo consultant”, “karate expert” or “worlds best geek”, it doesn’t matter get enough friends vouching for you and Google will reward.

So I’ve made my point but what am I getting at?

We all read deep and meaningful articles on SEO, yes I even publish the complex nonsense here too but at the end of the day I take such an interest in the SERPS out of sheer interest and not because I need to do it to rank highly. Of course I also do my research to ensure I am prioritising my client work correctly, I have a responsibility to them to do so.

What’s the difference between an SEO expert and the average webmaster?

At the end of the day anyone could learn how to implement SEO techniques, I always say only around 20% of it is particularly complex, the rest is time consuming and frustrating, trust me on that

The other difference of course is wisdom, if you’re an experienced SEO you will know not only what it takes to rank but where to go to make it happen. SEO’s are those that can answer the what, where, why, when and how questions and not just give you a detailed description of SEO theory.

I get so frustrated at SEO blogs that blurt out “hey you need links with your text as anchor”, that does nobody any good. Where do you get those links? How effective are links from A,B and C? How do you manage to get anchor links? Which directories carry weight? How fast should these links be built? Which sites can I get some quick links from??

These are the questions people need to know in order to rank highly online; this is the difference between SEO in theory and those who can actually rank a site.

So no matter what you read here or at any SEO blog, remember it’s all about links.

A Reluctant Response to an SEO Rant

Tim — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:51:26 +0000

I don’t how many of you have read Derek Powazek’s post Spammers, Evildoers and Opportunists, if you haven’t go over there you’re in for a good chuckle.

The post is basically a mindless rant targeted at the SEO industry and anyone involved in it.

When I first read it I simply thought “classic linkbait”, I had no intention of responding with a post or even leaving a clever comment at the bottom. The post had no real substance and was based on an uneducated opinion of SEO.

Then I popped over to Search Engine Land to read Danny Sullivan’s comments on it and that’s what triggered me to write this post and give some sort of response, even though I think it is undeserving of it.

The reason why I am responding is simple, if no one speaks out against the post then people who know nothing about the industry are lead to believe Derek. Also I have had a little search traffic on terms like “seowizz derek powazek” and “Tim grice seo derek powazek”, so obviously some people are interested in what I have to say on the matter, don’t know why but hey!!

I am mindful of not making this a personal attack, Derek is entitled to his opinions and I am sure he is ultra qualified in his field, but making blanket statements like below, is rude and naive;

Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken by people with brains or souls. If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned.

And so, like the goat sacrifices and snake oil salesmen before them, a new breed of con man was born, the Search Engine Optimizer. These scammers claim that they can dance the magic dance that will please the Google Gods and make eyeballs rain down upon you.

Do. Not. Trust. Them.

You see what I mean.

I provide SEO services, I don’t dance and I’m not a scammer. I am clear and completely transparent about what I do, I provide clients with expert advice on SEO and do things that business owners simply can’t find the time to do themselves. SEO is not a quick and easy task, it takes long hours of research and implementation.

Anyway the best way I know to answer Derek’s rant is by pulling a few bits out that I think are particularly ignorant.

SEO is easy and obvious?

According to Derek this is how to optimise a site;

Look under the hood of any SEO plan and you’ll find advice like this: make sure to use keywords in the headline, use proper formatting, provide summaries of the content, include links to relevant information. All of this is a good idea, and none of it is a secret. It’s so obvious, anyone who pays for it is a fool.

I know don’t all laugh at once

Just sort out your page, fill it with keywords especially in the headlines and the jobs a good one

Sorry for the smiley faces, I can’t help it.

I have lost count of the webmasters I have had discussions with who have built great sites, coded to perfection, flat architecture, keywords in headings, title tags, content, and optimised URL’s (Derek doesn’t use keywords in the URL because it’s a personal blog). They have all created a great resource and some have even created excellent tools but guess what, they still can’t get any search engine traffic. They have indulged in social media which has driven thousands of stumblers and diggers and facebookers etc… but guess what, they made no sales.

If SEO was as easy as Derek makes out every site would be ranking at the top of Google because there is a lot of quality out there, unfortunately the bulk is unseen because of people who have the “build it and they will come” mentality.

The Darkside!!!

Apart from optimising onpage keywords and formats Derek implies the rest is blackhat accusing SEO’s of the following;

Occasionally a darkside SEO master may find some loophole in the Google algorithm to exploit, which might actually lead to an increase in traffic. But that ill-gotten traffic gain won’t last long. Google changes the way it ranks its index monthly (if not more), so even if some SEO technique worked, and usually they don’t, it’ll last for a couple weeks, tops.

Firstly I don’t know if any legitimate SEO who finds loopholes, yes there are spammers and blackhats and SEO cons, however cannot the same be said of any industry including web design and development? Again I have spoken to multiple website owners who have been ripped off and mislead by designers and developers, shall we drop blanket statements about them? Only if you’re as naive as Derek.

Real SEO’s look to give a clients search traffic longevity, some clients want results quick but guess what, SEO is not a quick fix it’s a long term marketing plan.

Were simply spammers

Again another ignorant blanket statement;

SEO cockroaches employ botnets, third-world labor, and zombie computers to blanket the web with link spam. 99% of spam comments to blogs are these kind of links. The target of these links is not the blog readers, it’s Google.

Cockroaches, nice guy.

If you’re an SEO, when was the last time you spammed? Employed third-world spammers or sent out botnets? Did these tactics not stop working years ago anyway?

Derek, I am sure there are people around that still undertake these tactics and your right, they are cockroaches but real SEO’s have nothing to do with this type of activity.

SEO bastards are behind worms that attack blog services like Blogger, WordPress, and Movable Type. Some hack into the blog templates themselves to insert links that are hidden from the readers of that blog, but visible to a Google crawler.

Please, this is where it starts getting embarrassing and Derek shows just how naive he is about the industry.

What more can I say?

Derek’s guide to online marketing

That’s it. Make something you believe in. Make it beautiful, confident, and real. Sweat every detail. If it’s not getting traffic, maybe it wasn’t good enough. Try again.

I agree make something great, however what if it is great but still doesn’t get traffic, or do you actually believe every great resource, tool or service out there get’s traffic?

Instead of just leaving a potentially great site and starting again how about trying this;

Create a great resource
Research keywords searchers use
Implement onpage optimisation
Create a flat site architecture
Link internally and using relevant keywords
Have a content creation plan that incorporates longtail keywords
Create an xml sitemap and submit it to Google
Build links to target pages through social media, viral marketing, content distribution and press releases
Be patient, consistent and have faith

Is this spam? Is this web development? My opinion, NOPE.

This is a marketing plan, this works, this drives traffic, this builds authority, this is SEO.

So if you’re reading this and feel a little torn about SEO, please don’t listen to the rants of people who know nothing.

Every multimillion pound corporation out there has an SEO team. The Telegraph only a year or two ago implemented SEO strategies and increased their traffic by over 2 million a month, SEO is worthless? Was this simply web development?

Look I’ll let you make your own minds up.

My feelings are simple, you want to rank high on Google you need SEO, not Derek’s divine plan but real SEO. If you want to listen to people like Derek, be my guest, less competition means more opportunity for those who know how this industry works.

If you want to read another response to Derek head on over to Aaron at SEO Book

Sorry if you found this too rantish, I know lots of people have responded around the web but felt it my right as an SEO to give clear insights into the industry.

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