That includes a depressing number of website designers, some of whom actually tell their clients that SEO is a waste of time and money, and that it’s quite unnecessary these days because Google is smarter than ever before… Au contraire – it becomes more and more critical every day, as website numbers expand exponentially! Lack of knowledge is not confined to website designers, it also includes a number of wanna-be SEO firms who make outrageous claims about their special relationship and affinity with Google etc, but have little idea of what it takes to consistently succeed in attaining Top 30 rankings.

Be very aware that in most cases website design is taught as an Art, not as a Business discipline. Website designers are rarely taught anything about search engine optimization, and few are interested in mastering the skills required to produce optimal results. That’s all very fine and dandy – but it leaves a lot of website owners desperately disappointed in mediocre results! You’ve probably heard the analogy about building a shop in the middle of a forest too, I bet? Seriously, it really does not matter how beautiful the site is – if no one finds it, then it’s just a gorgeous waste of virtual space.

Content is Still King

Regardless of the various conflicting opinions, Google conspiracy theories and misinformation, it comes down to a very simple concept – content quality, and accurate content classification. Content is where many sites fail dismally! The sites that thrive are those with well written, well organised original, interesting and useful content. Don’t copy other peoples stuff. Aside from being illegal, at best it immediately downgrades you to second best… As a general rule, from an SEO perspective, bear in mind the most fundamental issue – Google loathes duplicate content!

Classification

There are literally millions of websites, each competing for viewers in a particular niche. Reasons for their existence vary across the A to Z spectrum – advertising, entertainment, comedy, educational, humour, informational, music, news, promotional, sports, wine, video, zoos… you get the picture, right?

In the world of books we have the Dewey decimal classification system. Every published work is assigned an ISBN number, and libraries classify all books under a rigid hierarchical subject classification system. It’s not perfect, but it works pretty well because every one uses and understands it! Erudite people write insightful book reviews, which are sometimes included in advertising and promotions. Hold this thought, its relevant to a following section. You want to find a book on a particular topic, or by a specific author, you do a search and Eureka! You’ve found it, there’s a list, even! The best books are reviewed multiple times, and take pride of place in the “best sellers” rack.

Relevancy Ranking

Using different terminology, search engines are trying hard to do the same thing – to give their searchers the most accurate list possible, containing exactly what they want, so they can pick and choose from it! Unfortunately, there is no Dewey classification system on the web. The closest thing to a hierarchical subject listing is the Open Directory, Yahoo, or one of the thousands of other web directories – all of which are inconsistently organised into completely different illogical structures!

So, here we have Google and other search engines trying valiantly to index and categorize the billions of pages on millions of websites, in hundreds of countries in a multiplicity of languages. Then, they have to calculate each page’s relevance to specific search queries…

Are You Helping or Hindering?

That’s where YOU come into the picture… It’s a big, big task – have you made any effort at all to help Google to help you? Or is your website fuzzy and unfocused, with no clear statement of content or purpose? In most cases, sites are constructed with vague intentions to do SEO as an optional extra sometime in the future… What, you want Google to do everything for you?

Done Any Homework?

Do you have any idea how your primary audience searches for the information, products or services you offer? Do the pages on your site describe your content using terms your clients use? Because that’s the only way Google can match searchers with relevant content! What? You actually forgot to do any market research before launching the site? You have no accurate, researched, hard data on the keywords your potential clients would use? You asked your friends at work for ideas? Absolutely incredible!

Let us pretend you’re looking for clients for your small bed & breakfast business in Christchurch, New Zealand. You are optimistic that potential customers in New Zealand, Australia and the UK will be able to find your website amongst the millions of competing B&B pages on the web, be convinced by your persuasive advertising copy and elegant pictures… you’d also like them to come and book directly with you, to avoid hefty commission payments on the dozens of B&B Advertising Directory sites who also want you to pay to advertise! Dream on!

So You Want Google To Work For You?

You’d really like Google et al to help connect your potential clients to your business via Search Engine Results Pages by making your site No.1… And you certainly want “qualified” traffic from Google, visitors who are specifically looking for exactly what you offer!

Anyone who thinks they can survive online without Google, Yahoo and MSN is either a thoroughly well-rounded idiot, or is a household name who does not need to advertise to generate qualified traffic. There is no middle ground.

But here’s where it gets hard! How will Google do that? What solid information have you provided Google in your on-site content, and in the off-site links to your site? Have you got a Domain Name which encapsulates your business type and location; Bed-Breakfast-Christchurch.co.nz? Or a cryptic name, like; BnBChChNZ.com? Of the two, which is most likely to give the SE its first clue as to what your site is about?

What is On-Site SEO

Think about it this way… Does your home page have an explicit and accurate Title that provides a direct and unequivocal statement of the site’s business purpose in 70 characters? Does the Title say “Bed & Breakfast Accommodation, Christchurch New Zealand” or does it say “Welcome to Dusty Lodge” or something equally asinine?

Does your home page have an explicit and accurate Description that provides a brief outline of your business purpose, unique selling proposition, and call to action, encapsulated in 150 – 200 characters? Or does it contain some vague warm and fuzzy drivel about beaches and sunsets?

Keep the book analogy in your mind, and take a look at your Home page, particularly the first heading and first paragraph… “Welcome to my website” is not a productive approach! What does it tell your visitors about you? It tells me that you are at best naïve and both you and your website designer need SEO counselling! And think about that first paragraph… is it an accurate summary of the site’s reason for existence? Eliminate that fruity, cheesy, fluffy verbiage immediately!

If your website is required to deliver a return on investment, particularly by selling products or services, or delivering customer service, informing or entertaining, your really need to accurately describe your website’s content, and allow it to become visible online. What’s that I hear? Oh, you want it to make you rich as well? But you don’t really want to make a serious commitment or effort to do the job properly? Right… good luck with that! And remember that old GIGO acronym – “Garbage In, Garbage Out!”

What is Off-Site SEO?

This may surprise you, but some people are dishonest about their site content. Frankly, some people handle the truth in a very awkward fashion indeed… Telling Google that your site is about Pamela Anderson, when its actually selling Bart Simpson comics, is deuced annoying to the people who visit it! Therefore, Google and other SE’s decided long ago that some external verification of every website’s content would assist their efforts to deliver the most relevant SERPs to their clients. Makes perfect sense to me…

How is this achieved, I hear you ask. Well, you’ve heard of links, right? Back to the book analogy – think of good links as being like a series of book reviews! What if lots of people are writing positive things about your site? What if multiple, external, widely distributed sites are all saying that your site is about “Bed & Breakfast Accommodation Christchurch NZ” huh? The balance of probability that your site is relevant to such a search is positively impacted by this external confirmation! A coincidence of keywords in on-site content and off-site links reassures Google immensely! Those keywords in the off-site links are referred to as anchor text, and should form the link title.

No, Its Not Rocket Science

Frankly, search engine optimisation, in the pure sense of the term, is not particularly difficult to understand, or to do. The aim of the search engines is to provide their customers with the content most relevant to the search they are making. Therefore, your salvation lies in making your content relevant to the known searches! Do some thorough keyword research, learn and understand your target audience’s searching behaviour. Plan pages that target specific, high-volume, low competition search phrases.

Don’t be vague, don’t waffle, and help Google to help you!

When the economic gravy pot is bubbling merrily, and there’s ample business gravy slopping over, even the mediocre get a share. But when the economic ice age casts midnight shadows at noon, and credit wolf packs softly pad the empty streets, howling balefully at the waning moon… then, when you’re sucking the last congealed streaks of business gravy off your tarnished website spoon, ask yourself… Can you afford your website to be second rate, disorganised and drifting ever further into the icy wastes of mediocrity? With a better understanding of why  SEO is so important to your website’s success, will you continue to ignore it?

Author’s Bio:

The SEO Guy, Ben Kemp, is a veteran SEO consultant who provides a guaranteed personal service on all projects. Drawing on a decade of SEO experience and website design and 20+ years of work in the IT industry,  THE SEO Guy’s Blog provides advice on SEO and WordPress CMS website design issues.

Web: www.ComAuth.co.nz plus www.Website-Designers.net.nz

Copyright Statement: This article may be copied for use on your site providing its not edited, and the Author’s bio remains intact.

More importantly, its because there is a very high mathematical probability that a site that is genuinely about a specific topic ALSO includes multiple iterations of related words, phrases and terms e.g.;

• nouns, verbs and adjective variations

• word derivations

• synonyms

• hypernyms

• hyponyms

Therefore, the major search engine algorithms’ are now applying the concepts of “latent semantic indexing” and taking into account all word relationships within the site. Whilst an algorithm might lack “intelligence,” the mathematical model is quite robust and delivers extremely accurate relevancy assessments. To apply the concept of LSI to your site, its a matter of NOT over-loading your page with primary keywords (spamming) but instead, using variations to more accurately describe your topic or theme; E.g. using the term “SEARCH” the following options appear;

Variations or derived words; searcher, searched, searching,

Synonyms  – query, queried, querying, seeking, looking, finding

Hypernym: activity, examination, examine, higher cognitive process, investigate, investigating, investigation, look into, operation, scrutiny, see.
> Synonym: explore, hunt, hunting, look, look for, lookup, research, seek.
> Hyponym: angle, beat about, browse, cast about, cast around, comb, cruise, divine, drag, dredge, exploration, feel, finger, fish, forage, foraging, frisk, frisking, fumble, gather, go, go after, grope, grub, hunt, leave no stone unturned, looking, looking for, manhunt, nose, poke, prospect, pry, pursuance, pursue, pursuit, quest, quest after, quest for, raid, ransack, ransacking, re-explore, rifle, rummage, scan, scour, scouring, seek out, seeking, shakedown, shop, strip-search, surf, want.
> Derived: searcher

Noun
> Hypernym: activity, examination, higher cognitive process, investigating, investigation, operation, scrutiny.
> Synonym: hunt, hunting, lookup.
> Hyponym: exploration, forage, foraging, frisk, frisking, hunt, looking, looking for, manhunt, pursuance, pursuit, quest, ransacking, rummage, scouring, seeking, shakedown.Verb
> Derived: searcher.
> Synonym: explore, look, look for, research, seek.
> Hypernym: examine, investigate, look into, see.
> Hyponym: angle, beat about, browse, cast about, cast around, comb, cruise, divine, drag, dredge, feel, finger, fish, frisk, fumble, gather, go, go after, grope, grub, hunt, leave no stone unturned, nose, poke, prospect, pry, pursue, quest after, quest for, raid, ransack, re-explore, rifle, rummage, scan, scour, seek out, shop, strip-search, surf, want.The purpose of the example is to show that there are many ways to describe the same activity, product or service. 

How to Apply Latent Semantic Indexing

Implement LSI on your site by thoughtfully including variations, derivations, synonyms, hyponyms and hypernyms of your primary keywords and phrases. You will more effectively convince the Search Engines of your content theme than you would by stuffing multiple iterations of the same primary keywords into those page/s!

Yet Another SEO Article by;

Ben Kemp, aka The SEO Guy (nz)

Web: www.comauth.co.nz

Email: SEO

Contact us for a Free SEO Site Review….

So, how do you choose an SEO firm to entrust your business to? I believe that there are some simple checks to put in place before committing yourself to any SEO proposal, no matter how attractive it might seem.

The following sections lists a dozen few ways you can identify some potentially good SEO firms, and how to eliminate the dodgy ones, and thus reduce your chances of being disappointed.

1.) How Well Does Their Own SEO Site Rank?

Do a search for search engine optimisation, seo rates and/or seo firm on the country-specific version of each of the big 3 major search engines – e.g. Google.co.nz, Yahoo.co.nz or XtraMSN.co.nz. Alternatively, go to the main Google.com etc site, and search for nz seo, seo rates, or new zealand search engine optimisation (or your own country-specific version of those). The SEO market has become very competitive out there, but you should expect the SEO business you are contemplating doing business with to be on Page One on each search engine! If not, drop them from the list of possibles, because how much help could they possibly be to you? A list of 5-10 potential firms should quickly emerge from this process.

2.) Request For Proposal

From your initial research, you should have a list of contenders you are considering entrusting your business to. Contact each, and request a site review. This usually a free service, and will invariably result in a detailed analysis of your site, and a proposal which sets out what remedial action is required and should include an indicative costing to achieve this. Having now received a series of these, apply the following criteria against each one.

3.) Guaranteed Inclusion in Google/Yahoo/MSN

If an SEO firm offers a guarantee of inclusion into any major search engine, or assures you that they have a special relationship with a major search engine, immediately drop them from the list of possibles. Frankly, search engines simply do not enter into such relationships. That would be as likely as a close friendship between a poacher and a gamekeeper!

4.) What Are They Proposing?

There are two key ingredients to web site optimisation, and if both are not assessed and addressed, drop the SEO firm’s proposal from the list of possibilities!

• The first element is on-site optimisation of individual pages to improve organic or natural search engine rankings. This involves keyword research with associated analysis of the business products and services. This is the most important aspect because it delivers ongoing traffic which is essentially free after the initial work is carried out.
• The second key element is link analysis and recommended remedial action. Basically, the more links to your site from trusted sites carrying high Page Rank, the better. Insufficient links can mean your site appears not worth indexing. Proposals to increase your 1-way back-links from web directories and other trusted sites are good. Use of blogs, and article marketing is also current best practice. However, should there be any suggestions for participation in link propagation schemes, or placing main emphasis on reciprocal link strategies etc, drop the SEO firm from your list because they are not up to date with current best practice.

5.) Google Adwords & Yahoo Search Marketing

Some SEO firms boast that they are certified Adwords practitioners etc. That’s all well and good, but what they mean is that with YOUR money, they are real confident of getting you top placing in the keyword bidding warfare! There can be some short term benefits in that, but guarantees along those lines are not overly helpful to your business. If a proposal places primary emphasis on Pay-Per-Click, slip it down to the bottom of the pile!

6.) References

Can your SEO firm provide you with some reference sites they’ve worked on successfully, case studies, and/or some clients or web developers you can contact for comment? Bear in mind that there are likely to be some commercial sensitivities that apply constraints.

7.) Is There Value in 1 Year Contracts?

Frankly, not to you! The hallmark of a professional, ethical operator will be a fixed price contract to carry out the initial remedial action on the site. As a reassurance, they will usually let you know that ongoing support is available if required, because the rules of the SEO game do keep changing. The best SEO practitioners do not attempt to lock you into 1 year contract because they know the initial work will often take 8-12 weeks to deliver full benefits, and the project cost will usually include a built-in monitoring component over that initial period. It is, in my view, a little unethical to double-dip on the project costs!

Not only that, but what if you are not happy with the results of the SEO firm or their level of service? A 1 year contract might just guarantee you receive a full 12 months of unsatisfactory services! My advice – do not lock yourself into a long-term contract until you have grown comfortable with the SEO team you are dealing with.

8.) Fixed Price Contracts

Insist on one! A professional SEO firm will set out exactly what is wrong with your site, and explain the precise remedial action in a coherent and logical fashion. The actual work will be specified and a total cost provided. It is customary to require payment in advance. This is usually 100% for smaller jobs, which I would define as less than $1500. For larger projects, expect to pay a 50% deposit with balance on completion and/or when Top 30 rankings on agreed keyword terms show a demonstrable improvement.

9.) How Much Should It Cost?

Well, each proposal should come down to a judgement by each SEO firm on how many hours of work are going to be involved in the project. However, some seem more inclined to make an assessment of your ability to pay in big chunks! There can be obvious, huge discrepancies – its common to see variations of 1000% e.g. you will see that some firms initial cost proposal can be 10 times that of competing SEO firms! From your point of view, you want to know;

• How many pages are going to be amended
• What will be done by way of increasing incoming links
• Are articles being published, and if so, how many?

Reduce it to a known quantity, compare apples with apples! When you are systematic about it, the choices become more obvious, and a decision becomes easier!

10.) You Need to Know What Will Be Done

An SEO professional will involve you at each step of the process, providing you with a preview of all site changes before implementation. You will be able to measure progress of the work on a page by page basis, and see the results in your site traffic statistics as well as SE ranking reports. As in all aspects of life, failing to plan is planning to fail! If there is no plan, no road map, don’t expect a happy ending or any rights of redress.

11.) Black Hat vs. White Hat SEO

There are other danger signs to be aware of. If your SEO proposal suggests cloaking, redirections, doorway pages, hallway pages, invisible text, multiple domain names for duplicated content etc, immediately drop the company from the list of possibles!

There are many Black Hat SEO operators who prefer to attempt to subvert the Search Engine guidelines, essentially looking for rapid, short-term ranking gains by ANY means, instead of taking a responsible, professional approach. If your site is caught up in any scheme like this, banishment from search engine indexes is assured! Essentially, good White Hat SEO involves thoughtful restructuring of site content, within the SE guidelines and parameters, and taking no risks of any kind.

12.) Who Are You Dealing With?

Does their site have some personal profile information? Are you dealing with a seasoned IT industry professional, a kid fresh out of high school, someone moonlighting from their primary job, or maybe somebody who has English as a second (or third) language? SEO is very much about words, semantics, languages skills and this, plus broad SEO project experience over several years, should be a key indicator to consider!

Your web site is an integral part of your business. The people you work with should have an intuitive understanding of your business, products and services, and should by now have demonstrated that they have given your particular circumstances some personal attention. Some, on the other hand, may have merely used automated site assessment tools. From the initial proposal, and exchange of emails with questions and answers to clarify any issues that have arisen, do you feel a sense of rapport with anyone? The best people to work with are those you are comfortable with.

I hope that this has proven a useful and thought-provoking summary of how to weed out the space cadets, cowboys and make-a-quick-buck operators. I really hope you do find yourself a competent, professional SEO practitioner, because they are out there, toiling away. doing a great job for great people like you!

Good luck!

Well, someone at Microsoft was listening to webmaster’s comments and MSN have responded! Now, you can at least get MSN’s search results to show your correct site title by adding a meta-tag or two on your Home page. They suggest either;

• (meta content=”NOODP” name=”ROBOTS” /)
• (meta content=”NOODP” name=”msnbot” /)

(NB: I’ve had to change the “< " and ">” to get the tag to display)

Now, if you were an optimist, you would use BOTH meta-tags in the hope that some other SE’s will eventually follow MSN’s example, and check for the tag…

I’m often asked if the Domain Name is important, and I have to say yes, the selected domain name is a very important element in the overall scheme of things, for a variety of reasons. Some of these are outlined in this article.

Keywords in Domain Name

The search engines assign some relevance/importance to the words used within the domain name. You can see some evidence of this in Google’s search results, where any words in your search term that exist in the URL are highlighted.

When starting a new site, it is important to maximise whatever advantage the name might give you! I can’t say for certain just how important it is, but as sure as God made little apples, every little element that you have working in your favour can only be regarded as “a good thing”

There are limits… not only to the total length of the URL, but in terms of what might be acceptable, and the only thing the SEO experts are consistent on is all having a different opinion!

However, here are a few thoughts;

• From a total length perspective, there is a limit to what people are prepared to type in…
• keyword spamming would not be a smart idea here as in any other area…
• Some suggest separating all words with hyphens, others say use only one hyphen at maximum…
• I’d say two to three primary keywords is enough – any more and it becomes difficult to enter accurately.

Dot.Com or Country-specific

The choice of domain type does have an effect on the way the search engines categorise the site. If you are a New Zealand or Australian business selling to a lot of USA or UK clients i.e. if its a global deal, then a Dot.Com URL is arguably a better option. Not least of this is that its easier to get it listed in some international directories.

However, if you are marketing a specific NZ/AU product/service in the domestic markets of New Zealand/Australia, then a .CO.NZ or .COM.AU is the best choice.

With the increasing trend of search engines towards “Local” content, explicit in the Google.Co.NZ, Google.Com.AU and Google.Co.UK, it will become more and more difficult for a non-country-specific site to dominate within a specific country. To put that in context, a Dot.Com site will struggle to out-rank a .Co.NZ site in Google.Co.NZ…

Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alta Vista, Lycos etc are all expanding their country-specific indexes. These do (kind of) get incorporated into the main index in the parent Dot.Com site, but you would need to be more specific in your search for a country-specific product.

E.g. if you were on Google.com, and search for “mats” the results would be different to carrying out the same search on Google.Co.NZ (having specified NZ sites only).

However, if you searched on Google.Com for “mats new zealand” the result might well include sites which ranked highly on the Google.Co.NZ search.

Multiple Domain Names

You CAN have the two or more URL’s pointed at the same site… but I would not advise any attempt to actively promote more than one! There is a danger that the SE’s could could punish you for attempting to get duplicate content indexed, which is a forbidden practice.

However, it is completely legitimate and common practice to point multiple URLS at the same IP address;

• To prevent competitors pinching your domain name/s on .com, .biz, .info etc etc.
• To prevent confusion e.g. the client types the “wrong” URL, but still finds you – e.g. a miss-spelled version.
• Having a longer keyword-rich URL to maximise Search Engine ranking gains, and a shorter (easier) one for people to type in to get to the site.

You could easily a Dot.Com URL for advertising purposes, letterhead, business cards etc, and even use it as Google Adwords “display URL” but be careful to only use the primary (.Co.NZ) URL for all search engine promotions, link building, search engine and directory submissions.

Approximately 90% of searchers will not go past the 3rd page of results! Something like 60% will not go past the 2nd page… So if your business is not listed on the first 3 pages of search engine results, its certain that you are missing a lot of potential clients for your products and/or services.

I still think it is a useful discipline to insert the targeted keyword phrases for the page into the tag – as a reminder of what you are attempting to define about tthe page, if nothing else.

However, I also observed an interesting Google ranking result on a client’s site recently, where the Home page ranked surprising highly for several keywords that existed only in the keyword meta-tag. E.g. one of these keywords was “MPIO MP3 Player” and it was not listed in the Title, Description, Headings, Body Text or in any of the links pointing to the site.

So, on that basis, I think it is worth being specific and including approx 200 characters of relevant variations of the page’s primary keyword phrases.  

A well crafted description will also be used verbatim in most search engine results displayed to searchers, meaning you can actually control what is shown. There are two common problems with Description tags;