SEOs........the TRUTH, Please!

Tiger

Whenever someone claims to have figured out google SEO I do a google search on them to see if they come up p1. So I googled Pool Builders Austin just for kicks. It came up B but then p3 isn't anything to brag about. Theres another austin pool builders address w/o the dashes that beat it. Always good to check peoples references.

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Nathan

Image Removed... lets keep this site ad free please. Thanks

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Nathan

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

Ed the Roofer

You missed the image in the quoted post.

Ed

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deckman22

You spent 20K on a website & SEO? I think you may have overspent.

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RidgeWalker

Guys most of you have covered the basics of SEO. I personally think that Content is King.

Google is looking to rank sites with the content that it thinks your users are looking for based on their search terms.

Plain and simple.

Back links, on page optimization, site maps, etc. etc. the list goes on.

Nothing but NOTHING beats great unique content that is going to satisfy Google's users who visit your site.

SEO and SEM are two different animals. You can dominate google with SEM and do nothing to optimize your actual web site for the search engines.

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ns8814

Just out of curiosity what would we be willing to pay for the #1 position of our desired keyphrases.
Also what kind of traffic are you guys getting per Day.

I know I show up #1 for several of my targeted Key phrases.
I am receiving on average of 40 Unique visitors per day.
2/3 are from my targeted area.

msteinhoff

Matt's Basic SEO

• Most people are lazy. Don't be lazy. Do the basics (TITLE, H*, ALT, etc.). Most people don't even do the basics, let alone do them well.
• Most content sucks. Have good content. If you won't read it, neither will anyone else.
• Be specific. Don't aim to rank for 'plumber'. Aim to rank for 'plumber City Location'. In most trades, your customers are local. Beating the 50 plumbers in your area is easier than the 50,000,000 plumbers worldwide.

Bonus Truth

• Don't confuse web traffic with profit. If your web site can't get a potential client to contract, it doesn't matter if it gets a bazillion visits a month.

Bonus Rant

• If you claim to be an SEO expert and you call me to solicite my business, you darn well better be on the front page of Google or I'm hanging up. You wouldn't believe how many calls I get from people claiming to be Sergey's brother-in-law with top secret Google tricks that will energize and explode my web trafffic. Yet, half a dozen combinations of searches later with the 'SEO expert' on the phone with me, I can't find their web site. {click}

Cheers,
Matt

MarkyMark

Could you please explain this? Apparantly I must be one of the lazy people

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msteinhoff

TITLE

If you look in the title bar of your browser, you'll see some text. That text is pulled from the TITLE HTML tag.

Some people never set TITLE to anything. There are millions of web sites where the front page has 'home' as the TITLE tag. Very poor design.

One step up from 'home' is a TITLE tag that never changes. All pages on a web site have the exact same TITLE tag. That confuses the search engines. How can every page on the web site have the exact same content?

For TITLE to be effective, it needs to accurately represent the contents of a web page in 80 or fewer characters.

If you were a Quick Guys Plumbing in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, your front page might have a TITLE of...

Plumber Palm Beach Gardens - Quick Guys Plumbing

Notice how I put the generic version of the TITLE first, before the company name. The front of the TITLE is more important than the end (especially if the TITLE is truncated). People who are looking for 'Quick Guys Plumbing' will find you no matter where you put that string. Your aim is to find the people who search for 'plumber palm beach gardens'.

ALT / A HREF TITLE

Every picture on your web page should have an ALT tag. When a visitor hovers his mouse over a picture, he'll get the text of the ALT tag near the cursor. Search engines read ALT tags to help figure out what a page is about. They add bulk to your web page.

The A HREF TITLE directive is displayed when you hover over links. You may want to link just from the phrase 'residential plumbing' but you may want to have 'residential plumbing in palm beach gardens' in the A HREF TITLE for more direction.

If -- please don't -- you design a web site that is mostly graphical, ALT tags are absolutely essential. If you're web site is mostly text, the value of ALT diminishes as the amount of text increases.

H1, H2, H3, H4

Text headers and subheads are important. Not as important as they once were (style sheet cheaters have hurt subhead influence), of course, but I still give them a fair amount of thought when I'm designing a page.

Not only do they help clue real live people in as to the important themes of a page, I do believe search engines get hints from the tags, too.

Final Truth

Knowing the rules is sometimes less important than knowing why the rules exist and how the rules interact.

We all know roofers who know the code for six states backwards and forwards but who we would not trust to shingle a doghouse. Some SEO experts, I'm afraid, know all of the 'rules' and still can't rank.

Cheers,
Matt

msteinhoff

In the specific case of your web site, I see you are using FONT directives to increase the size of your text. I'd rather see you use H1, H2, etc. tags to delineate the importance of certain phrases.

You're also not using A HREF TITLE directives on your internal links. There are 1.2 billion links on the internet for the phrase 'About Us' and 'Contact Us'. You're using those phrases without any additional clue. Why not use an A HREF TITLE of 'About Electr-Safe, North Carolina Electrical Contractor Serving Raleigh'? That would help you geographically.

Nice work on your image ALT tag on the outlet. I'd also add an IMG ALT to the main logo at the top of every page. Don't miss the opportunity to add relevant text.

Your main TITLE does change between pages (good) but isn't very specific and doesn't pimp your service. How about 'North Carolina, Raleigh Electrician - Electra-Safe Electrical Contractors' for the fron page? TITLE is what generally shows up in blue as a clickable link in Google so if you can get an advertisement in there, you should because that is all anyone may see of your web site.

Cheers,
Matt

MarkyMark

Matt,

Great explanation of the terminology. And a big thank you for the tips specific to my website.

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jmda

I have been doing a lot of SEO. The person who did my site knows a lot about it. Domain name, links, on page they all account for something with google.

One thing I just did is ad a link directory to my site. So if anyone wants to swap links go to my page at house painting louisville and ad /link_directory at the end in the navigation bar. There will also be a link on the site in the next week or two.

Most of the categories are construction related, if anyone has suggestions on categories, please share.

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Albrecht Painting
Louisville, KY
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WestCoastVinyl

Affordable seo services or consultation, look at this short article on local search. It may help but you should know it is the trend, West Coast Vinyl.

msteinhoff

You lost a lot of credibility with me, WestCoastVinyl, when your blog entry suggested that people sign up with MerchantCircle. That company is a hot mess if not an outright scam.

Cheers,
Matt

Solar Control

I think West Coast Vinyl dot Com has their white hat SEO down to a tee. The various links to twitter, youtube and other video sharing services all contribute to what looks like a successful internet presence. Even their home page has a PR of four.

Merchant Circle does have a reputation of using deceit to sell ads. However, if you use their free listing service I don't think it implies anything negative about you and your business. IMHO.

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msteinhoff

I'm not knocking their web footprint, just the company they keep. One's online reputation is critical and MerchantCircle brings taint.

I'm becoming jaded when it comes to Google's Page Rank. My backyard raised vegetable garden (which hasn't been updated since late may and only has a total of 35 pages) is PR3 and my family's bicycle touring web site is at PR4. The Florida food site I run for a family friend is also PR4.

Crazy! How is it possible that these sites do so well? If I can rank so well, speaking of taint, how can Google's Page Rank mean anything? The main ContractorTalk page is PR4 for crying out loud and I know it has a heckuva lot more traffic, unique viewers, content and links than any of my sites.

So, in short, I don't get too hung up on Page Rank anymore. It's like seeing a muscle car with 800 horsepower under the hood... Yeah, that's a lot of power, great. What can you do with it?

Cheers,
Matt

RidgeWalker

Like I said,

CONTENT IS KING!!!

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WestCoastVinyl

Not saying that we like merchant circle, but its used for
exposure on the internet, getting exposure to quantity of these type
of sites. We can care less of what merchant circle is, its like being
shown on "service magic" if we can get some link juice from them
that would be great. but for their service, nah!!

Cheers!

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DQSpec

SEOs........the TRUTH, please!

The truth is it's combination of things and Google changes it every 6 months or so, in fact they just changed a few things recently for local placement.

Thundercow has given you some good ideas but be careful with links, Google looks at links that are relevant and gives you credit and not just because you are linked to a high traffic site. Make sure you are back linked as well.

My question to you is this:

How important is a first page placement for your company?

Do you think it will be a benefit and get you more business?

What is a new client worth to your business?

carlsore

While Google has made all kinds of algorithm updates and changes over the years, a few things have remained constant.

1. Good Relevant Content - They want to serve their users with the BEST, most relevant content to their search.
2. Relevant Backlinks - They want to see other websites linking to your content (with relevant anchor text)

The only other items of great importance to me would be (in this order)

Title tags,
Page file names (kitchen-remodeling.htm),
Image ALT tags/descriptions
Relevant domain name if you can.

I do not worry about H1, H2, H3 tags, keyword density, or impeccable code. Let the geeks worry about that stuff. Does it matter? Sure, just not as much as #1 and #2.

Concentrate on #1 and #2 and you WILL gain ranking. You can create all the great content you want, but if you're not aquiring the relevant backlinks Google, Yahoo, etc... will likely NEVER rank you unless you want to wait a very looooong time for the results.

I've been marketing online since 2002, and have attained top rankings in Google (and every other SE) for not only my own services but also my clients. It's not rocket science, it's not really all that technical, you need some time and a basic understanding of the rules.

SEO is arguably one of the largest "snake oil" industries on the web with a scam pretty much around every corner. I think the best advice given out in this thread was that if you can't find the company on page 1 for their own target keywords how are they going to help you any????

Carl Sorensen