Feb 02 2011
I have a love/hate relationship with SEO: I love it when it works; hate pretty much everything else about it. But therein lies the rub: SEO works.
How well it works is directly related to how much time (and often, resources) are put into it. And it can certainly test your patience when you don't see results for 6-12 months. When you do see results though, it's quite satisfying.
Take for instance, our favorite salon and day spa: Avenue Salon Spa. For the past 2 years we've concentrated quite a bit on SEO for Avenue and while they didn't see the results and benefits overnight, they sure are reaping the rewards today.
For a number of search terms Avenue ranks number one. And for some terms where they don't, they rank top 10. But as any good marketing pro will tell you, ranking isn't enough – it's a start, but it's gotta get you real results. Fortunately that's exactly what Avenue has experienced.
As if dominating the search results wasn't good enough, in the 2 years we've been working with Avenue, the number of new clients that come has steadily increased month over month. Better yet, a significant number of those new clients go on to become regular clients. Those two things alone have contributed to a steady and continual rise in revenue – and this with a recession going on!
Admittedly, that's a very short and simplified story demonstrating that SEO works. And to top it off, we've been able to replicate similar results for other clients in different industries.
So what does it take to get these kinds of results? While it's easy to simply state that it takes time and hard work, I don't intend to leave you hanging like that. Here are a few tips:
Don't overdo the keywords
Keywords in the keyword meta tag are rarely, if ever, used by Google(1). They used to be until some folks decided to get naughty and stuff them with as many keywords as possible, thereby killing off their relevance and relationship to the content on the page. Use them, sure, as some search engines will look at them. But keep them to a minimum and only use what's relevant to the content on that particular page. By the way, this also means keeping your site pages clean – stuffing those with keywords won't fool Google either.
Keep your title tag simple
Similar to the keyword meta tag, some people like to stuff keywords in the title tag. While having some keywords in your title tag is important, it's distracting and impractical. The title tag is what shows up in Google as the link to that particular page on your site. Having a boatload of keywords makes that link virtually unreadable. More importantly, I've never seen any sites using this "technique" rank well. Keep the keywords down to one or two, make the title easy to read and keep it related to the page content.
Link building is critical
While tweaking keywords, meta tags, and the title tag on your page can help (or hurt) your rankings, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that nothing is more powerful than link building. That is, having other sites link to your site, especially sites that are related to the site's or page's topic. Don't misconstrue this to mean that you should do a bunch of link exchanges with other sites. That used to work but has less of an impact on Google these days as its able to sniff out reciprocal links pretty well. But if you manage to get linked to on a site where you didn't ask for a link (i.e., a one-way link), that's hands down, the best kind. But it's also hard to come by because it means your content needs to be good for anyone to want to link to it. (I never said this was going to be easy.)
Directories help, but don't get crazy
Submitting to online site directories such as DMOZ or the Yahoo! Directory certainly help, but not as much as you'd think. If you have the dough, submit to some critical ones, if nothing more than to get some traffic and exposure, but don't overdo it. Just because it's a one-way link doesn't mean it's as good as John Doe with a heavily-trafficked blog linking to your site because he found it interesting.
Monitoring is essential but don't become obsessed
If you're like me, you can quickly get consumed in constantly checking your rankings and worse, tweaking things too often. Don't get obsessed. Google is crawling sites all the time but how quickly it will rank a page or site is anyone's guess. It's certainly important to check your rankings every couple weeks or so, but don't overdo it – you'll go crazy trying to figure out what SEO gurus can't (i.e., how or why Google does what it does). You're much better off creating good content that people will read, find value in and hopefully link to.
Is that all there is to it?
Yes and no. It's not rocket surgery but it can require the patience of a Tibetan monk. If you can handle that, you may be able to do well on your own. Just beware of all the scammers out there – and there sure are a lot(2). But if you're unsure where to start or what to look for, it might be a good idea to hire a pro.
1I'm focusing on Google because it's the number one search engine today. Your SEO efforts should ideally also include – at the very least – Bing.
2Biggest flag to look for: any claim that they'll get your results overnight or in a week.