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Good SEO practices are looking more like good business practices

I recently had an e-mail exchange with a long-term client who wants to drive more traffic to his web site with SEO, a perfectly reasonable desire for someone who wants to increase business in hard times.  Unfortunately, web site owners are often told by “SEO experts” that by following a specific recipe, they’ll have more new business than they can handle. Real SEO experts don’t make such claims.

 

My client’s marketing consultant provided me with copy and keywords to post, which I dutifully did.  Less than 24 hours later, I received an e-mail from my client asking why his pages were not doing better in Google and Bing.  Now, I’m not an SEO expert, and I’ve never held out as being one, but I think it’s fair to say that adding a new press release with some targeted keywords will not result in a #1 listing on a specific keyword search on a specific search engine less than one day after being released into the wild.

 

I haven’t follow the SEO scene for years, but there are a couple things I do know:

 

  1. Without research, it’s impossible to know why any particular competitor comes ahead of you on certain keyword searches.  Knowing why this occurs requires an intimate familiarity with your competitors and the online content they serve.  It takes time and effort to gain this knowledge, and it’s expensive…if only in the amount of time spent gathering it.
  2. The practice of SEO has been a sort of arms race between search engines that want to connect users to content they’re looking for, and businesses that want #1 rankings.  These objectives are often in direct opposition to each other (sometimes blatantly so).  In the old days, it was easy for SEO “practitioners” to get high search engine rankings through simple keyword stuffing, doorway pages, and other simple deterministic methods.  As search engines became increasingly sophisticated, so did the SEO methods used to game them.  The more elements and nuances that search engines took into account to determine content relevancy, the more that professional SEO began to resemble old-fashioned reputation management, positive word-of-mouth, and adherence to honest business practices.  The bottom line is that there are fewer and fewer shortcuts to driving traffic using SEO.
So what advice did I gave my client?

 

  1. Know what you’re passionate about.
  2. Know what services your business is best positioned to deliver.
  3. Know what markets you serve best.
  4. Review 1-3, and then reduce and focus your web content accordingly.
  5. Having trouble with 1-3? Be honest about assessing your strengths by asking yourself this question: what are the things I do that others in my industry would say I make look effortless?
Again, I’m no SEO expert, but I suspect that by focusing your SEO strategy on 1-5 above, you can effectively move the needle.  Basically, I advocate for a back-to-basics approach.

So what do you think…am I off-base?  Does my advice suck?  Would love to read your comments.

By Paul Schantz

CSUN Director of Web & Technology Services, Student Affairs. husband, father, gamer, part time aviator, fitness enthusiast, Apple fan, and iguana wrangler.

One reply on “Good SEO practices are looking more like good business practices”

I doubt very seriously you can aforfd the best SEO company on the internet even if someone could narrow it down to just one. Companies like SEOmoz.org get $1000/hr or more. I am an independent SEO consultant with no where near the resources of a company like SEOmoz.org, and I charge $100-125/hr depending on the job and type of work. Most people online looking for SEO think $5-15/hr should get them a good SEO. But most of the people willing to market themselves that low are either 1) VERY inexperienced or 2) live in a 3rd world company, have learned a few buzz words related to SEO, and now “claim” to be SEO experts.Figure out how much money you’re willing to invest in SEO and then search for the best SEO firm that fits within your budget.

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