This week, I was wrapping up 3 clients websites, and realized I will finally have time to restructure my own site.

It's funny - I started this blog over a year ago, when I realized too much time was passing without me attending to my site. But time hasn't magically appeared - I have less of it than ever. So be it- work comes first for a freelance SEO writer.

But now I am back around to that starting point again - I am looking at rebuilding/redesigning my own site as soon as I can cut these other 3 loose. It is both daunting and exciting - I am looking forward to rebranding myself and my company.

How it has Changed
A lot has changed about the way I do business in the last 5 years. 5 years ago, I was very heavily a web copywriter. My gigs rarely strayed from me cranking out content that was put into other people's sites. Business was great, and I was fat and happy.

Then, as time wore on, my own interests ranged more toward the strategy and development sides of things. I was building more, involved more in the concepts and execution of larger initiatives, and stretched my wings a bit.

Creatively, this was great. While writing was still my strongest suit, being able to develop strategies and plans and technically execute them was becoming really attractive (and lucrative) for me.

Cut to now: In the past couple years, open source code is changing the way people develop websites. My ability to use various open source solutions, to modify and optimize a variety of solutions, is again changing what I offer my clients. So it is time to reflect this in my marketing, particularly in my website.

So in the next two-to-three weeks, I will be rebuilding the Articulayers site. I will be blending open source code with my own tweaks, and will build something that has modular growth as part of the design. I will be catering to aspiring SEO copywriters, as well as giving my clients a menu of related services that I can offer. I will have some advice, some case studies, and some freelance seo tips.

Great fun!

Studying the Competition

A big part of successful SEO work is studying the things that are working for your competitors. Once you have entered your niche and start to go head-to-head with other companies vying for the same prize, you can study and learn from what they are doing to help improve your own efforts.

Viewing the Number of Pages Indexed
One important measure of a site is the number of relevant pages indexed by the engines. It all starts here, really. Do a "site:---" command in the engines and compare the number of pages in your site to that of your competition. While page volume in and of itself is not the most important element of SEO, it is an important measure to monitor and improve. You should always be adding relevant content to your site--this is a big part of organic SEO. But if you are not getting your pages indexed properly, they might as well not exist...so if you see a competitor has hundreds or thousands more pages than you, look at how they are accomplishing it, and see if there might not be a good strategy in there for you to also employ.

Viewing the Back-Links
One of the most crucial elements of SEO is links into your site, or back-links. You should already know that you can do this by using a "link:--" command in some of the engines. Yahoo has the most extensive list to review, but Google works as well for this command. I tend to use Google first, and then run a check in Yahoo to see what Google is not counting.

But just as you can do this for your own sites, you can also run this check on your competitors. See where they are receiving some of their back-links, and you might be able to identify sites where you too can get a few links back to your sites.

Viewing the Source Code
If a competitor is doing better than you, it sometimes helps to see what they are doing in the code. You can do this by clicking on their page, and using a "view/source" command in your Internet browser. The source code will open in a new window, usually in a text format.

Look at the meta tags, the page titles, and the keywords used within the code that is not immediately visible (such as image alt attributes). Are they saturating the keywords better than you? Are they using headings and bullets that you aren't? The source code is closer to what the spiders see, so there may be things revealed that you can adopt and use in your own building strategies.

Keep an Open Mind
If you think you are doing everything right and you are still not achieving your goals, be open to what the competition is doing. Be ready to admit that they could be doing things better, and be willing to try new ideas. Some things, like age of the domain, are hard to control. But other things, like page volume and back-links, are certainly within the power of any SEO writer.

I always try to stay aware of what my competitors are doing. Some of them have more money than I do, and some have less concern about staying "white hat" and 100% above board to achieve their goals. This means I will sometimes lose a battle, but I typically can hang tough and win the war.

I have a fair amount of tried-and-true tricks up my sleeve to make things click the way I need them to--I spend at least 50-60 hours a week, every week, studying how the algorithms are shifting and behaving. I have sites that I use purely for testing theories...and I am constantly balancing risk against possible (or probable) gains. I read experts blogs, and if I don't use all the techniques, I certainly can get some good info out of them. In my experience, by the time the blogs are chattering about something, the technique is already overexposed and probably short-lived.That's fine by me--it still helps me to see what other people are looking at, and how these people might be applying these techniques to sites I am going up against, head-to-head.

I like competition. I like being challenged to beat someone at what we do. By no means do I always win--but I can certainly give most sites the organic SEO boost needed to improve traffic.

A Saddened SEO Sigh

So I had an old client, one that I helped about 2 years ago with some SEO work.

At the time, this client was concerned because his company website was not ranking for his targeted keyphrases. I worked with him to help create a new, improved structure, and wrote a bunch of stuff to help him hit his organic goals. The results were very positive--we entered the Top-10 SERPs for most of his targets, all without using anything more than some relatively simple and inexpensive on-page strategies.

So his traffic improved, and the site started doing really well for him. Great!

Here's the Rub
Since his traffic improved and site conversions were up, he decided to upgrade the site. A good move for sure, because the look and feel of the one we had optimized was pretty weak.

He found a new, fairly expensive developer who made him a new site. It was built with some solid UIs (user interfaces), allowing him to update and edit his content on a whim. Sounds great, right? Sounds like he was taking steps toward making the most of his web presence.

The problem?

There was no way for him to build new pages, or add to his basic site structure. Worse still, he had no way to control the meta data or individual page titles in the new site. There was only one page title and one set of meta data--so all of our wonderful optimization and SERP mastery was now for naught.

Sure enough, as soon as the new site was indexed, all of the precious SERP positions disappeared. His new developer was not very SEO savvy, and told him that the single set of meta tags was all any search engine needed (WHAT???!!!)

I wept, quietly on the inside, for my client...I knew he was pretty well hosed by his new, fancy website, and his developer's attitude would prevent him from improving in something very crucial to his success. My hands were tied.

The Moral
Bells and whistles are for trains, not websites. If you want to really service your customer base, make your site appear in the engines when an end user is typing in a search. Help them find you.
For my old client, he came to me imploringly, seeking some SEO juice. I suggested a few things, but told him that he was really missing a valuable piece of the puzzle, and he shouldn't expect it to work as it had for us in the past. I explained why the meta data was so valuable, and suggested some off-page strategies to make up for it. He had spent too much money on his new site to pitch it or start over, so he is doing what he can.

But this caused me to heave a weary SEO sigh twice:

1. My client looked to upgrade a successful organic site, but did not consult an SEO before making a success-crushing decision...and the decision made could have been avoided.
2. My client's new developer was telling my client bad, uneducated and inexperienced SEO information, and my client (though I thought differently) didn't know any better.

These are things I have always dealt with as an SEO writer and web developer. But it still makes me shake my head...and sigh sadly.

Oh well...there's always more to do.

A Typical SEO Evaluation

This week, I did an SEO evaluation on a potential new client's site. The things I found were pretty common mistakes, so I thought I would genericize the situation and offer them here. The purpose is to give you some things to look at if your own website (or a client's) is struggling in the search engines.

This evaluation took about 2 hours, and focused only on the site's ability to enable indexing. I'll break it down into the 4 main issues I found, and some simple, cost-effective solutions I offered.

Issue 1: Page titles and meta data were all the same across the board. What it looks like to me, was the site builder created the html header for one page. He then simply copied it into all of the other pages as he built out the site. This can be a good way to build sites from scratch, but the specific information in the head tags needs to be changed prior to launch.

• SEO Solution: Use unique description, keyword, and title tags. Focus on a pre-researched list of primary, secondary and tertiary keywords. Lay out a spread sheet with all of the pages and their specific content for each tag. Each page should have a unique, hand created and strategically focused set of meta data.

Issue 2: No alt attributes used in image files. Across the whole site, not a single image I found had an "alt name" attribute assigned.

• SEO Solution: Add alt attributes to the html tags for every image. This markup is to enable users who are visually challenged to still "read" the non-textual parts of your website. It is referred to as "Section 508 Compliance." The use of keywords here is not as important as describing the image accurately.

Issue 3: No Site Maps.

• SEO Solution: Add site maps. Generate an XML site map as well as an html site map that is accessible to the user. If applicable, create an RSS feed. Site maps are not guarantees that every page within them will be indexed. But site maps do tell the search engines what you want them to look at, and they do often help a site get more thoroughly indexed.

Issue 4: No Method of Measurement Being Used. The site owner really has no idea what is happening on the site--who visits, what they are looking for, what they are doing. There are some potential e-commerce opportunities being missed, and the call-to-action is muddled and soft across the whole site.

• SEO Solution: Add tracking and increase visibility and accountabilty of all calls to action. Set a baseline so there is an achievable, measurable goal.

There were other issues in the execution of the site that offered chances for optimizing, but these simple steps above were enough to get them started in the right direction.

From my end, it is pretty easy to optimize these things and make sure the site is getting properly indexed. As an SEO writer, it is important to always do this before doing anything else. It is truly eye-opening to see how many times these relatively simple things can improve a site's ability to gain organic SEO power.

And then the fun can really begin!