Comments on: 7 Ways to Kill Your SEO Consultant

By: Sean

Sean — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:52:50 +0000

That’s a fair comment in the sense that the techniques you’re recommending are decent white-hat tweaks.

But I’d still advise clients to worry more about, and invest more in, generating new, relevant content, perhaps even starting a blog (Google loves sites with blogs), and generally to put time and energy into building value for their audience. There’s an obvious place for SEO in any business mix, but a strategy based on providing value will outperform nerdy link tricks every time.

Of course, the more educated clients can become about the real world limits of SEO, the better they can direct their own strategy.

By: Andrew Hickey

Andrew Hickey — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:27:44 +0000

This is a comprehensive list that covers the basics of optimizing a site, but there’s a huge hole in this approach. First, for the sake of transparency, I own a small internet marketing firm that provides SEO services. Second, I agree with almost everything in this post. SEO has been hijacked by an army of jackasses who have inexplicably adopted the sales techniques of door-to-door salesmen. There’s a ton of bullshit being slung out there. I would add that not all sites (or businesses, brands, products) are good candidates for SEO (and, for obvious reasons) most SEO firms won’t tell them that.

I would, however, argue that SEO is more complex than you make it out to be. The list you provide is a basic checklist, but there are dozens and dozens of other minor and major tweaks you can make to a site for a more complete optimization. Do some of those things appear to be frustrating or useless minutiae? Sure. But consider this – what if you implement all of the basic methods you mention above and so do all of your competitors? Theoretically, you are all on even ground and it’s a zero-sum experience all around. But if you start restructuring your URLs to make them keyword rich and implement a sensible cross linking strategy within your site (and your competitors make no changes), your site will eventually rank higher.

The point is, the basics are a great place to start, but depending on how competitive your market is, you’ll need to do a hell of a lot more.

By: Sean

Sean — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:47:23 +0000

Great article via BoingBoing.

http://powazek.com/posts/2090

“The problem with SEO is that the good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work, and it’s poisoning the web. 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.”

By: Web Site Developers New York

Web Site Developers New York — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:33:00 +0000

Thanks for sharing this informative article. Good work.

By: dan

dan — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 06:35:44 +0000

Thank for sharing this tutorial.

By: GreenAppleMedia » Blog Archive » 7 Ways to Kill Your SEO Consultant

GreenAppleMedia » Blog Archive » 7 Ways to Kill Your SEO Consultant — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:13:51 +0000

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By: Gary

Gary — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 02:08:40 +0000

Good common sense pointers that I have caught myself doing. I had thought about a few of the ones mentioned and now I think I will implement them. Thanks, I needed a wake up call.

By: Alberto Villalobos

Alberto Villalobos — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 08:17:46 +0000

Great article actually my sites suffered of contain seven h1 tags, after read this i changed all that, thank so much for this incredible post

By: Doug Motel

Doug Motel — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:50:32 +0000

Some great stuff here. It is important to point out though that business owners need to continually focus on getting fresh content onto the site. Make your site look like a useful one for the user and the search engines will treat it like one eventually.

Also, Google is ESPECIALLY interested in who is linking to you so you should do everything you can to get other trusted relevant sites to link back (preferably without you having to provide a link to their site).

By: Don

Don — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 22:35:48 +0000

I’ve been reading Website Optimization by Oreilly press and they pretty much stress the same things you mention here.

It seems like common sense advice, but people always think there’s some voo doo magic worth paying big money for. Not the case.