Carrying out SEO reviews for potential clients it’s sometimes my unfortunate duty to point out their sites suck. There are two ways to respond to inconvenient truths such as this:

1. Keep asking for alternative views until someone tells you your site is great and it’s Google playing games
2. Take the bull by the horns and sort it out

I know what I’d advise…..

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The thing is, there’s something very revealing, refreshing and sobering about actually watching people on your site. It’s somehow not as dry as analysing yesterday’s data. It’s a bit like the difference between a CD and a live gig, a bit rough round the edges but more real. Watching your SEO efforts work, as a sought after key phrase bears fruit, only to lose the searcher within 5 seconds because the page isn’t good enough really focusses the mind!

But watching your prized phrases isn’t all the voyeuristic SEO can glean from some real-time guerilla work. If you create lot’s of content your site will be attracting plenty of long tail traffic. Sometimes the traffic is landing on a long forgotten deep linked page you last looked at a year ago. Seeing it attracting traffic refocuses the mind on that missing call to action or sloppy layout.

I spent about an hour on some real time SEO analysis this week. The end result was some significant improvements to some neglected pages of our site. I’ll keep you posted on the fruits of these efforts in a future post.

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It struck a chord with me.

For example, there are many link building services offering x thousand links for y pounds (dollars, whatever). This is a very simple transaction to understand. You pay me some money, in return you receive some links. That’s SEO as a product. What may not be understood is the effect, if any, these links will have and if they do have an impact how long will it last. But that aside, people ‘get’ a transaction like this.

What people struggle with is the, SEO as a service model. You pay me x pounds and I will try to improve your rankings. People often ask us, how much will it cost to get me to the top of Google for some keyword or other. They simply can’t come to terms with the fact that organic SEO isn’t an exact science.

What an SEO can do is provide examples of sites they have worked on that are ranking well, but these don’t guarantee success in another domain. An ethical SEO still can’t say, x pounds will have the desired result.

It would be fair to say we are feeling pretty hacked off just now having been trounced on the dance floor in every competition we have entered. I should say it’s been a tough year for us and our dancing has taken a back seat so we shouldn’t feel quite so bad that the results are not forthcoming.

In a nutshell we are being beaten by dancers who we believe are not as good as us. However, instead of spitting the dummy we have flashed the cash and taken some lessons. Guess what, our routines and technique suck. We have been doing all the wrong things. The routines – which I hashed together from memory to allow us to compete – are poor and because we haven’t had any lessons from a professional our basic technique is shoddy. It’s no wonder we are being trounced on the dance floor.

The things is, we now know what’s wrong and we are paying people to help us fix it. In a few months we will once again be making the final six (dancers will understand this) and in time we will be picking up the winners trophy, we will be number 1.

Dancing, like many things in life, often benefits from taking some time, stepping back, getting the advice and support of a professional and focusing your efforts in the right direction.

Sound familiar?

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1. Do your own design!

   Whatever design agencies tell you about web designers being highly skilled individuals who have studied design, user interfaces, the latest CSS based coding techniques etc don’t believe them. Simply buy some software, or better still use a pirated copy, and have a go. Make sure you ask your closest friends what they think of the website, especially those who know absolutely nothing about design. If anyone suggests the site looks ‘home spun’ ignore them. The term home spun is a technical term used by design agencies who are annoyed about you not using their services.

   I’d also strongly advise using as much clip art as possible. This will make your site stand out from the crowd and look classy. Remember, if you don’t follow this advice and choose instead to employ a professional you run the risk of succeeding.

2. Buy the cheapest hosting you can find
   Whatever you do make sure you pay no more than about £20 ($40) per year for hosting. Paying any more than that is simply stupid. Although your website may from time to time be offline it doesn’t matter because anyone who really wants to get in touch will keep trying until they succeed. Again, if you fail to follow this crucial advice your chances of succeeding increase further!
3. Don’t waste time creating great content
   This is really important. If you create something unique, something useful, something people really need you run the risk of experiencing online success. Instead, simply write about why your services are unique, how wonderful you are and how you really care about your clients. Think of it as tough love, tell them you love them but absolutely DO NOT give them anything useful.
4. Ignore the basics of search engine optimisation – whatever that is…..
   You’ve probably heard all the buzz about search engine optimisation, ignore it. It’s a complete waste of time. You’ve got better things to do than waste time on trivia such as ensuring your web pages are correctly setup so the search engines can read and understand them. If the search engines want to read your site they can figure it out for themselves! DO NOT help them. If you follow only one of these rules make sure you follow this one. This rule above all others will absolutely guarantee online failure.
5. Assume you have a right to be number 1 in Google
   Say after me “I deserve to be number 1 in Google”. Repeat this mantra daily. Let’s face it, who do Google think they are by not putting your website on page one! The really important thing is to check your rankings every hour or so and whatever you do, do not be tempted to spend time improving your site, this is very very important. Any improvements you make may result in a measure of on line success and you need to avoid this at all costs.

I hope this helps you speed up your road to online failure. If you have any questions please don’t email me, I probably won’t bother replying because that might improve my chances of building trust. You might come back to my site, you might even buy something from me and I can’t take that risk.

Happy Failing!!

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Well actually it’s not wrong. In my view it’s fantastic. The gargantuan efforts of the communities that create free software allowing everyone and anyone to publish a website is a wondrous thing to be applauded. With these software systems everybody who wants a website is only a few mouse clicks away from being the proud owner of an impressive looking on-line presence.

The problem is, by making getting to Base Camp so easy most people fall flat on their face when the march for Camp I and beyond kicks in. They fail to recognise the simple fact that the tools mentioned above are just that, tools, not solutions.

In fact, using free software tools often means creating a great looking website takes ZERO EFFORT and I think the web is awash with ZERO EFFORT websites.

But the real problem is caused by the zero effort mindset these superb tools create. People perhaps think because they have a great looking site that was easy to achieve, on-line success will come just as easily. Several times this week I’ve had conversations with people who feel conned or cheated because their sites are not delivering. In almost every case the sites have been what I would class as zero effort. The hard truth is:

F + Z = G

and

G + Z = 0

Where F = FREE SOFTWARE, Z = ZERO EFFORT, G = GREAT LOOKING SITE

Interestingly, by making what used to be the hard bit, the technology, easier, the effect should be an increase in the quality of the really hard bit, the content. But what seems to have happened is the opposite. Companies and individuals have concentrated on patting themselves on the back for creating a great looking website when in fact they didn’t really do anything. To make matters worse they then simply sit back and wait for search engine traffic to come and wonder at their creation.

When DTP software became mainstream many predicted the end of the graphic design industry. It didn’t happen. Now powerful website software is free, and easy to install, perhaps web developers should be worried. Again, it’s not going to happen so long as the zero effort mindset persists.

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Thing is nobody is searching for glaggleshindips other than people checking out what I’m saying in this post. The market for glaggleshindips has gone right off, people are just not interested anymore, it’s a real shame.

SEO isn’t the black art people think it is. Sure enough there are SEO practitioners who tend towards the dark side but most are just helping people figure out what people in their markets are searching for and then optimising based on this info.

Before you start fretting about SEO make sure you understand your market. Make sure you are not optimising for glaggleshindips when people simply don’t search for them.

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Instead of concentrating their efforts on creating a great site, something genuinely useful, something different, something that solves a problem or takes a sideways look at an old favourite they just go round and round in ever decreasing circles looking for the elusive SEO trick that will put then on the map.

The problem is, if that trick exists they are still going to be disappointed, possibly more so. Imagine having that eureka moment, imagine seeing traffic flock to your site, then imagine looking at that 100% bounce rate in your analytics.

You see, web users are not stupid, ok some are, but most aren’t. If people spend just a few of their valuable seconds clicking on your site, waiting for your cheap web service to serve up a rubbish website they are going to hit the back button before your beautiful background music hits the end of the first bar.

Of course getting your SEO right is really REALLY important. Of course keyword research is critical, of course securing quality links is going to shoot your site up the SERPs, but if all that is at the expense of actually offering something worth while you’re wasting your time.

There is a school of thought that suggests creating great websites is a killer SEO tactic. Great websites tick the SEO basics boxes by default and bolt onto that something worth looking at. By all means become a scholar of SEO, it’s a never ending quest that makes The Lord of the Rings seem like a short story, but not at the expense of your website, you’re better than that……

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The end result is a whole industry has been created offering to take care of website’s link building needs. There’s scarcely a day goes by when I don’t receive an email from a company offering to be my link building partner. Nine times out of ten I bin the emails but sometimes I investigate further to see what’s being offered. To date I’ve been very disappointed by what I’ve found.

In simple terms when I ask the companies to provide some case study information the links I find are utter rubbish. In almost all cases they have bought some space on a web page and simply listed their clients under the guise of being a useful link, business partner, friend or some other spuriously connected website. So far not one of them has provided a link that is on a credible website, hasn’t been bought and, more importantly, is contextual. Maybe I’ve just been unlucky but I’ve got a sneaky suspicion this isn’t the case.

But here’s what really gets me, these rubbish links can be seen, at least by me, to actually help the sites they’re linking to. These rubbish links – “roll up roll up, 1000 links for $49 “- are actually working and slewing the SERPs. Not just here and there but on a whole raft of search terms.

The dilemma for the SEO using ethical techniques is, how can they explain to their client who is paying them good money to create a great website, including great correctly organised and tagged content, that they are being beaten by rubbish sites who are buying spammy links.

I know these sites are playing with fire and may well disappear off the face of the SERPs in a heart beat but meantime they are owning them and it’s frustrating. As a confirmed fan of Google all I’m saying is, come on guys, meet us halfway on this, kill the spammy link merchants, pretty please…..

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However, describing these activities as Search Engine Optimisation suggests some amount of search engine gaming when in fact all the SEO is doing is website quality control. To make the point lets look at some common so called SEO activities and how the W3C suggests these page elements are used correctly.

First the TITLE element. The W3C describes the TITLE element thus:
‘Authors should use the TITLE element to identify the contents of a document. Since users often consult documents out of context, authors should provide context-rich titles. Thus, instead of a title such as “Introduction”, which doesn’t provide much contextual background, authors should supply a title such as “Introduction to Medieval Bee-Keeping” instead.‘

So, by writing TITLE elements that use keywords from the content and describe the content all the web page author is doing is using the TITLE element in the way it was designed to be used. Nothing more, nothing less. Sorting the TITLE elements isn’t an SEO activity, it’s just quality control.

Next the URL. The W3C suggests the following for a URL structure.

‘URLs typically consist of three pieces:

1. The name of the protocol used to transfer the resource over the Web.
2. The name of the machine hosting the resource.
3. The name of the resource itself, given as a path.‘

So, HTTP – the name of the protocol. www.yourdomain.com – the name of the machine hosting the resource and /widgets – the name of the resource itself. Not so much SEO as simply quality control.

Now the META DESCRIPTION. The W3C describes META data thus:
‘HTML lets authors specify meta data — information about a document rather than document content — in a variety of ways.‘

So in a nutshell the META DESCRIPTION element should be used to describe the contents of the page. Not really SEO, just quality control.

Finally the on page tagging. The W3C describes headings thus:
‘A heading element briefly describes the topic of the section it introduces. Heading information may be used by user agents, for example, to construct a table of contents for a document automatically.‘

So using H1, H2 tags etc is simply creating a logical breakdown of a page and its contents, not really SEO, just quality control.

Websites often ignore these basic elements in favour of bells and whistles. In short they have no quality control intrinsically built in during the build phase leaving the SEO, I mean quality control inspector, to pick up the pieces.

You can stretch this point further. Links, the much abused life blood of a page’s performance, exist to let other people know about useful resources and if page A links to page B it implies trust and effectively a vote of confidence. Of course, links are abused and must be on Google’s radar for algorithm updates. That aside securing links ethically is simply part and parcel of owning and running a website, it’s not specifically an SEO activity as every website owner should surely be looking to establish their site as a trusted source of information and links supply that trust.

Anyway, that’s enough for now. It’s just a point of view but when you think about it you wouldn’t call a mechanic a car engine optimiser just because be puts oil and water in the respective orifices. Putting oil and water in is a given just as constructing a web page correctly should be.

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