Before I continue with the other blunders that Tad Chef shared in his article titled “7 Weirdest SEO Mistakes Big Companies Make Abroad,” let me acknowledge some readers who left comments in the previous post. gMoney asked for the link to the original article – sorry for my oversight, it has been fixed. Data Entry Service said something about not doing business overseas and it struck me that even if we do not engage in business overseas, perhaps we could gain some insights from the article – we should NOT make these blunders. So here goes some more of these blunders – here’s to NOT making them!

Big foreign clients spend ridiculously limited budgets on SEO, sometimes I work for small ecommerce sites as well as for big brands at the same time and the big brands just spend twice the amount as the tiny online shops with niche audiences.

I think that this can happen – it is probably happening – in domestic soil as well. If the people behind big brands do not know much about SEO, they would probably just leave the responsibility to someone, never mind the cost. This is never a smart move, especially when there are always ways by which you can cut on the cost without sacrificing quality, right?

They insist on outdated SEO practices like directory submission and meta keywords tags. Instead of using methods that work quickly or over time such clients just want me to write meta keyword tags and submit to directories.

I have no problems with directory submission and keywords. My beef arises when they become the sole activities for SEO. That, in my mind, is a surefire way of failing in the long run.

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If you are based in the United States and you focus all your SEO efforts locally, you might not be able to relate to this post. For those of you who are expanding or thinking of expanding to other countries, however, you might find this information useful. I was reading up on SEO trends when I ran across an article titled “7 Weirdest SEO Mistakes Big Companies Make Abroad.” Let us take a look at some of them.

They have more lawyers than marketers it seems as I always get the NDAs first and am not allowed to even tell my mother who I work for. Imagine a web designer etc. not able to brag about the brands he works for. They (both) lose so much publicity!

This is really weird although I have encountered a lot of situations like these. On the one hand, there is some rationale in NDAs. However, on the other hand, wouldn’t it be better for everyone involved to at least acknowledge each other’s existence? Can anyone shed light on this matter?

I am not allowed to use the simplest and most effective SEO techniques. The corporate structure is sometimes so monolithic, the CI so rigid, the technical limitations so many that basically everything a SEO does usually is not possible or permitted. How do you build links when no press releases, no blog posts, no link baits, no nothing is allowed?

I guess that business practices in other countries limit SEO efforts and if this item is to be believed, they limit SEO effectiveness a LOT. If you cannot create online press releases, you can create blogs, and so on, how are you supposed to be as active as you can in the SEO perspective?

(to be continued)

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Search engine optimization has reached new heights in the past year. Suddenly, everybody and their mom are interested in engaging in SEO in order to make their web sites more visible. Not everyone knows even the basic SEO practices and not everyone wants to spend some time on them. That is why there are many SEO companies making a killing in this niche. However, you should know that not everyone who claims to be an SEO expert is for real. In fact, I just read the results of a research conducted by an SEO firm, Increase Visibility, which shed light on some of the common SEO scams being run today.

I am hoping that you have not been victimized by any of these but to be on the safe side, here are some of the major warning signs that they have pinpointed:

• Emails guaranteeing number #1 Google rankings.
• Offering guaranteed rankings for a very small fee.
• Achieving a #1 ranking for a unique, very long search term. The very long search term has no search volume. This practice is a scam.
• Guaranteeing a #1 search engine ranking by purchasing it with Google Adwords or pay per click advertising. The Adwords might show up on the top of the search page or in the sponsored link section in the right column. However, the majority of searchers use the organic search results located in the left column.
• Offering to submit a website to a vast number of search engines for a small payment (this strategy simply fails).
• Not having a legitimate website or they own an amateurish site.
• Offering to submit a website to over a thousand important directories, however there are only a small number of directories that bring traffic to websites.

My suggestion is for you to start learning about the basics of SEO yourself. You can build on this in the future and actually be your own SEO person OR you can use your basic knowledge to hire legitimate and knowledgeable SEO professionals.

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Who is not wary of bad PR? Everyone is! After all, if the hype gets bad enough, the effects on any company can be disastrous. That is why many companies spend a lot of time and effort on PR activities. But what if, despite your best efforts, you get bad PR? I am sure that your PR firm probably has contingency plans for such events but have you thought about using SEO to counter bad PR? (By the way, if you have not caught on by now, I am talking about Public Relations and not PageRank.)

According to Richard Gregory, you can make the most out of SEO in order to counter bad PR. Direct News has this report:

An effective search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy can aid firms when they are faced with a negative public relations (PR) situation, according to an expert.

In order for this to work in the most effective manner possible, the site notes, it is “crucial” for the firm not to wait for the crisis to break.

This is a brand new way of looking at things – at least for me. Did you know about this before? What do you think of using SEO for good PR?

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Every now and then, we receive news of a new social tool online. While some tools never make it past the “hype stage,” there are some which actually do stand the test of time. I am not sure if Twitter can be considered to fall under the latter category but it sure has been around for quite some time and its popularity doesn’t seem to be waning. If you are not familiar with Twitter, then I just might be wrong! However, there are big personalities in the blogging world, the SEO-verse, and all sorts of other sub-cultures online who are Twittering their way around cyberspace.

Just a brief description for those who are lost. I think Wikipedia’s description sums it up pretty well:

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS, email or through an application such as Twitterrific or Facebook. For SMS, four gateway numbers are currently available: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, as well as a United Kingdom-based number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email.

As of July 2008, over 2,200,000 accounts were registered.

Think about your MSN or other IM status line. Transport that to a social platform that is more widespread. That is what you get when you Twitter.

I read a blog post about whether or not Twittering is a good thing with regard to SEO. Come to think of it, you can actually get information to your readers faster and there is interaction as well. I am not so sure as to SEO implications, however. What do you think?

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We have already taken a look at two questions that you can ask your potential SEO consultant, courtesy of Terence Chang. I have found another resource article that provides more questions that you can use to determine if the SEO consultant is right for you. This is written by Jon Rognerud. Let’s take a look at them.

What ranking guarantees do you provide?
If the answer is anything but “none,” look elsewhere. You might tell them you heard a page one ranking can’t be guaranteed, since nobody owns the search engines, except search companies. A superior search firm may add that while ranking is important, keyword research, relevant traffic and a steady increase in traffic that turns into sales are more important.

This one is a very important question. Although we love to hear guarantees, when it comes to SEO and rankings, there are really no guarantees. And if a potential SEO consultant will guarantee you a specific number with regard to ranking, you should see that as a red flag. Remember, SEO is not simply all about numbers and rankings – it is all about the overall performance of your web site AND the conversions.

Are you going to make changes to my website?
Changes are crucial for SEO, especially changes to content and structure within your site. If you have a lot of graphics, flash and complex navigation with pull-down menus and hierarchical trees that spiders can’t follow, you have a serious problem. Visit some of the sites they have optimized and see what SEO tactics they have applied.

You have to know at the outset how much work it will entail on your part. If you need to re-write a lot of content (or come up with a lot of new content), then you should know at the beginning so that you can come up with a strategy that is feasible for you.

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The first question that we talked about in the previous post is whether or not your potential SEO consultant makes use of social bookmarking web sites in his SEO program.  More than this, though, we also talked about how the use of these web sites should NOT be the main focus of the program.  In this post, let’s take a look at some other questions that Terence Chang suggests we ask potential SEO consultants.

How quickly can you adjust your SEO strategies to the search engine market changes?
Search Engine companies as big as Google constantly change their search engine program and algorithm. Changing SEO strategies become important. Without knowing the trends on the search engine market, you might just miss the big opportunities. For example, if AOL changes their search engine partners from Google.com to Yahoo.com or Ask.com, can you expect how many potential visitors you will miss or gain? Knowing what region your visitor came from is important. Knowing where your potential visitors came from are important as well.

Indeed, we all know about the saying – the only constant thing in life is change. Search engine strategies and protocols are not exempt from this. I suggest really delving deep using this question and make sure that the SEO professional’s answer convinces you. Otherwise, you might end up paying him (spending YOUR money) without being on top of ever changing things. Now, you wouldn’t want that, would you?

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Why not? If you do not have the time, knowledge, and patience to continue SEO work, you can always outsource this. Although I still believe that anyone can practice SEO techniques, I also understand that some people would be more comfortable with the idea of having someone else work on SEO. If you really have to outsource your SEO, do make sure that you get someone who will give you your money’s worth.

I found an article full of useful questions that you can pose to your potential SEO consultant, courtesy of Terence Chang. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Are you using social bookmarking, social network and web site rating system as your SEO tools? There are many social bookmarking and social network such as digg.com, stumbleupon.com, facebook.com and myspace.com are used for link building. It might not be the ideal ways to build the backlinks, but does work well for a lot of small business.

Personally, I would not mind these social networks being used for SEO purposes. I have seen them used and the results were favorable enough. However, I would emphasize the fact that I do not want the SEO efforts to be focused too much on social networks such as those mentioned above. To do so would be too limiting, when there are so many other things that can be worked on.

The bottom line, I think, is that your potential SEO consultant should be aware of these alternative venues but he should not be closed to other venues. Let us look at the other questions in the next post.

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So you already understand that internal linking is just as important as external linking. But do you have an idea of how to create a systematic internal linking system? It is not that hard. Read on to find out more about how to link internally to your benefit.

The Site Map
This is the most commonly suggested route to take. The site map is normally present in many web sites. Basically the site map is a page where visitors to your site can find a bird’s eye view of what your site contains. From the home page to other specific pages, they can find everything here. Even better, there are links to every single page in your site. This is the epitome of an organized internal structure. When you construct your site map, do make sure that you cover every single page and that your links are all working. Also, present your links in a visually appealing way and an intuitive structure as well.

Create a blog
If you are maintaining a web site that does not really have much need for changing content, then this would be a very good idea. You can create the blog for regular new content AND create links from your blog to your web site as well. This also works the other way around – you can create links from your main pages to the individual blog posts. Just make sure that the anchor texts that you use are very relevant.

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When people talk about links, what they normally mean are external links.  We have already established the importance of external links – both inbound and outbound – but we have not really placed that much importance on internal links.  Are they important anyway?  I believe they are.  But before we continue, let us define what internal links are clearly.  Basically, internal links are those links that point to another page within your web site.

So how are internal links important?  For one, they help people find other pages within your web site. This means that more of your web pages can be visited by your readers.  Compare this to a web site without internal links.  You rely on chance and the persistence of your readers.  If they do not feel like manually searching for related information within your site, then your other pages may not be visited.  If, however, you liberally sprinkle relevant internal links within your pages, the chances of readers actually clicking on those links and discovering other pages within your site are higher.

Going one step further, if human readers can find internal links useful, then so can the search engine spiders! And you should know by now that the more pages that the search engine spiders can index in your site, the better for your SERPs.  Think of those links as arrows and road signs within your web site, pointing the way to both your human readers and the spiders.

In the next post, let us look at some ways you can practice internal linking methodically.

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