Is SEO the Secret Sauce?

With the economy doing slow laps around the toilet bowl, many business owners are starting to panic. They look at a shrinking income coupled with rising costs, and they realize there is trouble ahead. Many of them are looking for any answer to try to breathe new life into the business. So is SEO the secret sauce that will save the day for businesses now struggling?

It sounds weird to hear me say this, but most often, probably not.

I believe SEO work is important for any business seeking to gain web traction. As a freelance writer who specializes in SEO, you know I believe that content is king. But SEO is a part of a web business, not a magic pill to suddenly turn the tide of the badgered economy.

A Little Syrup for the Eggo Above.
Ok, I know that probably sounds mighty waffle-like. On the one hand I think that every business on the web should be doing some SEO work, but on the other, I don't want them to think it is magic.

In actuality, for many businesses, organic SEO might be magic. A little SEO work by a professional can have some pretty quick results, and quick results make anything easier to swallow.

But for many businesses, it won't. Chances are pretty good that if the current state of economic affairs is the thing that is driving you to now consider SEO work, you likely have bigger issues to iron out. Does this mean you should rule it out as a strategy? No...not by a long shot. But it should be a strategy that works with others to improve the entire financial picture of the business.

One way to think of it, is say your business is like your arm (stay with me here...). Your arm gets cut, and starts bleeding. The cut is deep, and you need to think of a way to fix it.

• The Band-aid. One option is to go to the bathroom and put a band-aid on it. This may help a little with the bleeding, but since the cut is deep, it may not help much. Using only a band-aid you might also have some issues trying to get your arm to heal correctly because you are dealing only with the result of the cut - you are treating a symptom, not the issue.
• Getting Stitched up. Another option is to go to a Doctor for stitches. With stitches, you will invest a little more, trust a professional, and take a little longer to see the full effects of how it helps your arm heal. It may slow you down a little, but the professional is interested in the long-term healing of your arm. They want to close the wound, stave off infection, and help you get back to 100% use as soon as possible. If the professional knows what he or she is doing, you won't even have a scar.

So if you are thinking about how SEO might be used in your business, don't think of it as a band-aid that will allow you to survive a rough economic slide. It may work for you this way, but it also may not...and this is a dangerous bet for many businesses.

Instead, think of organic SEO as a careful, deliberate and ongoing effort to keep your business strong and healthy.

A freelance SEO writer is not a rainmaker. A genius, perhaps. A wizard or miracle cure, probably not.

So if you are freelancing for some businesses, make sure not to blow smoke up their collective dress about what SEO will do for them right now. If you are a business owner looking for a way out of tough economic conditions, think of organic SEO as a good tool, but certainly, only one of many. Be sensible.

True organic SEO work takes time. It takes effort. The work really never ends. It can be insanely profitable, while bad SEO work can be insanely expensive.

And the Beat Goes On

I am amazed at how truly easy it is to get a website going now.

In the past few weeks, I have done some projects for people, and have been reintroducing myself to some of the bountiful world-o-plenty out there these days.
I started building sites right before the Internet bubble burst, back in 1998. Horrible sites, they were indeed. But there was a fair amount of complexity in getting an html site to render properly everywhere. So we got hired to make it so, and things were good.

Always Changing
In the early 2000's, I started to see a rise of better coding, better websites. I learned .asp, and tried to keep up - but it was getting increasingly hard to stay on top of new things, they were simply changing so quickly. But we were all busy, because someone had to do it.

Cut to this week. I start a hosting account for a client, and literally have 3 sites built and live within 2 hours. Granted, they were blogs, and from easy one-button installations, but that is exactly the point. It was soooo easy.

Another thing I have wanted to do for my clients for years, is to connect a CMS to their site so that they can maintain it themselves. But, the technology behind all that was fairly expensive back in the early 2000's, so I kept little bits of code here and there when they were appropriate. But I never did get a full-fledged CMS tool out of it - those that could do the coding, wouldn't unless there was a lot of money involved.

Cut to this week. I build a template of a couple page designs in less than one day. These will be the framework for a 70 page site, that is built to grow over time. I will be able to migrate all the existing content into this format in a couple of days. Using a Dreamweaver page template and connecting the owners with Adobe Contribute, they have 100% editing power. A CMS that works like a charm.

Change is As it Is
Point is, the only constant is change. All these things involved in creating and maintaining a website change the way I can offer value to my clients. The more I know about how to save them money and still deliver a strong product (very important) the more valuable I am. So I look for things like the Contribute set-up, and I know what to recommend to my clients so we both get what we want.

Stay on top of as much of this stuff as you can. Web technology, coding standards, options and opportunities. It is always changing. If this aspect of freelance seo writing is more frustrating than energizing, you are probably in the wrong line of work.

Frankly, I love being able to offer more to clients, even if I have to rely on new open-source, or "borrowed" technology to do it. In the old days, people who built things were very protective and anal about it. My old coding buddies would berate me for saying so, but I like the shortcuts out there these days - it's nice to have better, out of the box solutions that are affordable.

Blogging Tips

Though I don't employ any blogging strategies in this blog, I actually do know quite a bit about doing it well...I have been studying them for years.

I am not very experienced in using them for PPC/adwords kinds of strategies, but I do know how to create materials and get involved in communities that get you out there. I know some simple things that can make your blog successful.

I am not going to leak these tips out here, but I am writing a pretty detailed document on how to do some of it, from the ground up. I want it to cover most everything you need to know to get a blog up and humming. While it won't be here, it'll be infused in some way on http://www.articulayers.com/ in 2009, which is when I will finally release a new site for my own company.

In the meantime, if you are considering blogging and want some good, basic tips on getting it going, feel free to give me an email, and I will be happy to send this document to you.

Please - Look at the Spam Posted in the Comments of the Last Post

Here's a link: http://freelanceseowriter.blogspot.com/2008/08/my-non-optimized-blog.html

I just don't understand why some people think this will work.
"Dan" (or Sanjay) worked so hard on finding a simple contextual connection in my post to advertise his business, he disregarded the most basic rules of blogging...add to the topic, silly.

Normally, I would just kill it.
But Dan (or Sanjay) makes a good point--no wait, he doesn't.

He offers nothing of value, but wants to do it on my blog instead of his own. Although I am sure he has plenty of like-minded gunk on MANY blogs of his own, as well as many thwarted efforts to offer these wonderful comments on others' work. When you really think about it, getting something for nothing is a long, easy road of try and try again. He (they) have lots of failure to look forward to, I am sure.

So I left it there instead of deleting it like I normally do--and I sincerely hope this schizophrenic author figures out a better way to make a living. In the meantime, be sure to never visit his site, or the one being hawked. He'll be unemployed soon enough, reflecting on "the good old days" when he was a web "professional."

And NEVER, EVER think that comment spam is an SEO strategy worth pursuing.

What he does on my blog is similar to what the rest of us do in the bathroom.
Grunts and all.

My Non-Optimized Blog

I assume most people seeing this blog realize pretty quickly that it is not optimized at all. I am doing this on purpose--everything I do outside of this blog usually means intensive SEO, so I am not interested in it for this blog.

What?
I know, an SEO writer avoiding SEO on his own stuff makes no sense. But there are many reasons to do something, and in this site, optimizing does not serve my purpose as much as simply writing when I have time. It is like a focused diary for me...a way for me to simply keep writing, but in a much less formal way than I do for my clients.

If I were going to optimize this thing, I would:

• Link specific words and ideas to other sites
• Strategically blend in my keywords
• Become more verbally active in related blogs (to pull in readers)
• Quote other bloggers
• RSS feed it to the world
• Put social media links in it
• Target my subject matter
• Monitor traffic patterns
• Use my titles as linkbait

I am sure I'd do more too, but you get the point.

I had someone ask me directly this past week why I am not optimizing this, so I thought I'd explain.

I actually started this blog because I wanted to sort through some ideas I had for redoing my own site, http://www.Articulayers.com It has served this purpose for me already--I know I want to do 2 new sections of content on my site when I rebuild: one on SEO tips, and one on topics of interest for college students working on an English degree. I have been testing some ways to do this both on this blog, as well as on a couple websites I have out there, hidden from the world. It is slow going, because my workload has been very demanding this year...and my own site is perhaps not quite what I want it to be anymore, but it is still fine--for now.

Rest assured, when I do move this blog, it will be optimized.

And my site will be better because of it.

Multiple Sites or One?

I have been implementing some new strategies for some folks this week, and sometimes, I get asked which is better - to do many sites (like a microsite strategy) or simply putting more power behind one.

Like everything in SEO, there is no really simple answer here, but I will offer my own advice and experience.

Why Have Multiple Sites?
You might wonder why you'd even want to have multiple sites. Here are a few good reasons:

• More potential SERP results. In most cases, a single site won't have more than 2 results on any SERP. I sometimes sneak in a few more, but rarely. Yahoo is for some reason a little easier on this than Google, but neither one is very consistent. But, add a few more unique sites into the mix, and your potential for term domination increases. I say this, but ask you to be sure to note the rest of this post as my qualifier in saying it.
• Isolate tracking. On one gig I have right now, I manage about 70 sites. Of these, 2 are open for search--the rest are copies (that I intentionally block from search) on unique URLs, placed there to isolate the results of specific initiatives. It helps the business to track ROI on an effort without complicating things--I built out a few templates, so that I can enter in graphics and phone numbers but otherwise leave everything else as-is. Sometimes there are better ways to handle this, but for this client, it makes sense and works well.
• Try different approaches. Let's say you have a successful site, but want to see if you can do better by trying something new. If you start another site, you won't have to risk what the first one is doing to create a new avenue for exploration. Rather than split-test a site that is performing, you can take an entirely new direction with a new site and see what you can do with it. If it too becomes successful, you are in a great place. If it flops, no biggie...your main site is still there thumping away. Pitch the dud, and try again.
• Zero-in on a tiny aspect of the big picture. Let's say you have a site on fishing. You can launch another one on fishing boats, another on fishing gear, another on great fishing destinations. Each one is smaller, but more focused on the info it offers...can result in better SEO saturation, and better user interaction with each specific property.

There are many more reasons I am sure, but that is enough to help you see why this is sometimes a good idea.

What are some Problems with Multiple Sites?
While it may seem like a great idea, there are some things to be careful with if you are launching multiple sites.

• Duplicate content. Don't think that putting the same site out on different URLs will work...it won't. Don't think you can lift pages, swap a few words, and make all of it work. The engines are only getting better--and believe me, it is not hard at all for them to find and penalize duplicate content.
• Same Host. If you host all of your sites on one server, the search engines see it immediately. This can make them look more closely at what you are doing, which in turn, may make them decide to only show some (or worse, even none) of them.
• Same Site Structure. Same as above--if every site you launch has the same code "skeleton" (even with unique content in each), it is easy for the engines to see this, and possibly penalize you.
• Same Registered Domain Owner. Ditto to above.
• Updates/Management. The more you have out there, the more you have to update. The more you have to pay. The harder it is to maintain exceptional content across the board.
• Loss of Strength. If you have multiple sites and the engines see it, they may reduce the overall value of any one of these sites. I have seen this happen, but it is not something I can directly put my finger on - like "this" caused "that" positively. But I do think it is true--one site, one host, one registered owner can actually help you to rank a little bit. More so in Google than Yahoo or MSN, in my experience...I think it is because Google tries to be pretty proactive in thwarting spammy stuff.

Again, these are but some of the potential drawbacks--but the possibility of potentially harming your efforts should be enough for you to reel it in a little, and make sure you do things very carefully.

So What's the Best Thing To Do?
I don't think you should blanket this question with one answer. Handle it uniquely for each situation. I usually suggest at least 2-3 sites for any business - but some are handled perfectly well by expanding on one. It simply depends on what you are facing.

If you do decide to look at multiple sites as a strategy for a business, consider these tips for better results:

• Use multiple hosts if you have more than 10 sites.
• Use the privacy option when you register each domain. It costs a little more, but it is worth it to disassociate yourself from them completely, or at least, make it harder to draw a straight line between them.
• Use various site structures and different coding methods.
• NEVER duplicate/share content between them.
• Limit your links between them (may eventually hurt you, sometimes, penalizing all of them as a result).
• Make each one legitimate for its targeted audience...create real value in each site on its own.

Not the be-all-end-all on this subject by any means, but hopefully, you get the idea.

It All Starts with the Keywords

This week, I have taken on a couple of new clients. It made me think of how important the keywords are to any SEO project.

The most common thing I see is someone thinking a keyword will work, when it won't. Guilty of this one myself--I often think people will search on something specific when they in fact, don't. This is why you should try to limit your guessing in choosing your targeted keywords.

Start With a List

A business owner, or a freelance SEO writer on the job needs to free-associate some terms with the way they want the business to be perceived. List them out--that's what whiteboards and legal pads are for. Think of what you want the website to do, what the company offers--simple, basic ideas or more specific ones. Write them out and don't edit them. Do as many as you can.

In my experience, the initial list you develop here is seldom the list of keywords you will actually target in SEO.

Not to say you can't target them, of course...and you usually do. But the list a business owner and another web professional creates, and the list a street-level web user creates may not line up. They will usually intersect through obvious keywords, but many business owners are surprised to see the really odd things people type in an engine to find them.

There is often a gap between how intimately someone on the inside considers the business, and how a potential web customer sees them, or more accurately, searches for someone like them.

An SEO copywriter steps in here, to help bridge this gap.

Use the Tools

Take the brainstorming list, and run it through some really basic keyword analysis.

There are some great free tools to use to get a look at search volumes for specific keywords in various engines. Some even offered by the engines themselves. I suggest to try a couple out to see which one you like. I use more than one usually...simply because they all offer something different, and no one of them is perfect. I also like to gather as much data as I can before making a decision on keywords.

So get a few tools you like to use. Plunk in your keywords, and a good tool will not only show you the search volume on that specific term, it will list related ones. This helps you see things clearly from a user's perspective. Don't think of a keyword report like this as the Bible, or something carved in stone...try to see it as a direction.

I usually export out these lists in full, into Excel. Then I manually cull the lists, tossing out duds, and non-target worthy results. I sort the data by search volume, and the list starts to take shape. I combine the best words from the initial brainstorming list (because these are important to the business) with keywords from the analysis (because these are important to the web users) and I am able to map out a clear strategy where everybody wins.

Everything I do, depends on this list. I need to create pages that answer needs...a user's and my client's. I depend 100% on the research and data behind the keywords that make this all click together in our favor.

Take the time to really understand the keywords and search habits of your audience. Don't guess, dig deeper. The results are always worth it.