I have attached both the PowerPoint presentation I used today and a quick mini-guide to do-it-yourself search engine optimization (SEO).  If you don’t know why Lucy and Ricky are smoking cigarettes (yes there is some scandalous content in this PowerPoint) than you need to join me for my next presentation or invite me to speak to your organization (hopefully you’ll want to know more than just why Lucy and Ricky are smoking in my slide).

Thanks to those that did attend.  I hope the information was fulfilling and that you learned something that will help you improve your customer service and marketing techniques as we move into this new world of influence-based marketing.

Hannush Internet Marketing (2011 pt 1) (pdf)
Hannush Web SEO Research (pdf)

The answer’s were very telling.

The company representative responded that the client could expect a monthly detailed analytics report, on-going keyword updates and a quarterly consultation.  He also suggested their pricing was very competitive and that they knew of competition that charged much more for the same service.

To the layman, these answers might sound reasonable, but to me they are all wrong.

First of all, on question #1: Being guaranteed that I will receive paperwork and a sales pitch for my $5,000 to $50,000 investment (I’m hoping for those higher numbers that there is much more going on that just website SEO) may sound efficient, but it misses the point.

SEO is not a destination, its the vehicle you use to get to your destination.

If you are spending over $10,000 for search engine optimization and you haven’t had the following happen, you might want to look elsewhere:

• An analysis of your business and your competition
• A consultant that you are comfortable talking with, plus one that enable you to understand and build reasonable expectations
• Firm business-focused goals established before the first quarterly session beings
• More leads, more sales, more of what your business needs…not your website or Google’s search engine.

Being comfortable that these needs are being met helps answer the second question about pricing.

If you spent $30,000 on SEO and you reach the end of the year and you’re still confused about it being well priced, you have a problem.  Obviously the consultant didn’t do their job…or they are focusing more on the “con” in their title.

When year one ends, you should have some hard numbers generated from your reports vs goals achieved.  If I spent $10,000 on a SEO campaign and I can show my company gained 50 leads (each lead being worth say $1000 each to the company) then I can determine that $50,000 in leads was well worth the $10,000 on the campaign.  If I spend $50,000 on a campaign, but I’m confused as to whether I’ve made any money directly from it, then it might be a good value or a horrible value, but I’ll never know and I’m susceptible to sales speak based on analytics numbers that are just that…numbers.  And the company may survive on numbers for a year or two, but the cracks will show soon in the bottom line.

If my consultant pulls out a report and tells me my bounce rate is 25%, who cares? If my website is three pages and has a contact form on the home page, bounce rate doesn’t mean a thing to me.  Bounce rate helps me navigate the terrain…its not what I want to achieve.

Why do so many web development companies answer SEO questions with responses of tools rather than results?  Because that is what they understand. They are in the business of building better websites, not building better businesses.  Also, that leap into the business world can leave some developers vulnerable to questions they can’t answer.  It is much safer to bring the conversation back to technology so that the client is at the disadvantage.

Yet, if clients realized that they could learn a lot more about their web developer’s SEO capabilities by forcing the conversation back into business results…they might actually find out if they have someone who can really build them a successful campaign.

If you pull one thing from this post…the business goal is what you want to achieve, not good numbers on an analytics report or top search engine placement…those are just tools to get you there.

When you write an article, you place it in a category.  A category is a general concept that the post fits, such as healthcare or IT.  A tag is more specific and helps people find hot or popular topics…such as Apple iPad, hospital care, influenza…etc.  In programs like WordPress your tags will actually create pages titled with this tag keyword…and showing only stories related to that keyword…great for search engines and for giving people a way to scout hot topics.

Check out the tags I used on this article and see how this could be useful for you and your readers.

Its time to start looking at some of the elements of your website that are critical to search engine success.

Next to the website’s URL, the site’s title tag ranks very high on the mythical search engine favorability chart.  Title tags show up in two very important places.  First, if you bookmark a page or look at the top of your browser, you’ll see the title tag prominently displayed.  But the other place a title tag is used is in your organic listing in Google, Yahoo! or Bing.  If you have the right stuff in your title tag, including those juicy keyword phrases you just spent that money on…it can make your organic listing as eye-catching as your AdWord advertisement.

So what should you put into your title tag?  How should you format it?  Here are a few tips for those wishing to use this powerful element.

• First off, don’t go overboard
  Google, Yahoo! and Bing on average only show 60-70 characters.  The other words will still get some power, but your tag will be cut off in search engine results.
• Use keyword phrases
  Okay, pick one or  two keyword phrases that are related to your page content (especially the main title of your page…the <h1> tag to you coders).  Make sure you use these keywords in your page and meta description tag also.
• Divide your content for easy viewing
  When I used to work in radio, I would cut my ads up with hashes so I knew where to breathe and how to see where things stopped and started. Having your phrases | separated | makes them easier | to read.
• Feed what they are looking for
  If they are wanting to buy, use keywords like “shop” “purchase” etc.  If your page is a catalog or information, provide more keywords related to the content.
• Put your company name last
  The beginning of a title tag is more powerful than the end of it.  Make your keywords show up first and then use your meta description tag your company identifier.
• Choose a format and stick with it
  Nothing gets more annoying than going to a site where things change drastically from page to page.  Same with your title tag…make sure it uses the same format throughout your site.

If you use a content management tool, make sure it allows you to customize your title tags or ask your developer how to affect them.  In our content management system (CMS), when you type in a title to your page, it is automatically distributed to the title tag and to other critical parts of the page for SEO.

It is also critical to make sure you are using the right keywords.  Just because they seem powerful to you, doesn’t mean they are going to get results.  There are plenty of great secondary keywords and keyphrases that can be just as powerful as the main ones.  A good keyword analysis will get you off to a good start with your title tags.

Happy editing!

My answer is usually not as simple as just “avoid it.”  I like to give advantages and disadvantages to my clients so they can make an informed decision.

So with that in mind, I also looked for some credible resources to feed their opinion on the subject.  In a world where SEO techniques are growing more and more in demand, I find that drives the decisions of most people.

My main arguments against Flash for full site design include:

• many Flash sites reside on one page which means bookmarks are useless,
• search engines like Google are learning to spider Flash but sometimes you get very undesirable results,
• it becomes very hard to maintain your own content which ties you to a web developer,
• it is another program that not everyone has access to (a bug with IE8/Vista on my computer refuses to install it) so some people may miss your whole site,
• you have 10 seconds to win someone over to your product – most Flash sites I’ve been on take 3-5 seconds to bounce up a navigation…unless you’re selling “Loading” and percentage rates, you’re wasting valuable attention grabbing time, and if your site doesn’t respect their time – do they think your product will?
• customers don’t care about cool effects – they want to know if your product is worth while, if you are selling Flash design then maybe it is worth demonstrating, but most of my clients are trying to sell something else,
• Flash is costly to develop and update,
• and with JQuery you can do many of the things Flash can do to a lesser degree but with much better search engine results (see one of our customer’s non-Flash pages).

For Flash in general, I am also not a big proponent.  I can say that I’ve been to some very nice Flash sites…but I have never bought anything from one of them because their site has a fancy Flash presentation.  In the business world, that speaks volumes.

So what are my pros for using Flash?  It makes me a lot of extra cash as a web developer….it looks nice if done right, and it is less annoying than having a site with white text on a black background (I start seeing spots when this combo happens!  …by the way, if you like this combo…bookmark this Google page for your searches: Blackle)

Other articles to read:

• Search Engine Journal Article
• SEOmoz Article
• Conversation Marketing Article

Have something to say on this subject?  Leave a comment below, we’d love to hear from you.

Both services use a “nofollow” attribute on their links to your site.  There are some ways around this, but for the novice or casual business owner who isn’t getting guidance from an SEO professional or web developer in the know are most likely wasting their time putting links in these two mediums.

Apparently Google developed the “nofollow” attribute to fight spam.  Years later, many business people don’t realize that Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia have all agreed to use this tag to stop spiders from reaching through your posts to find your web site.

So in the end, it seems Google has chosen the Blog as the preferred medium for delivery of timely content.