So the second i truely believe that all these search engines that are still for some reason popping up all over are such a waste of time, “That’s all we need is another search engine”, here comes one that I might start using. The search engine searches only SEM related pages, discussions, and blogs. Now I can really narrow down my research when I know just what i want.
Brought to you by Allister Cameron…
Give it a shot!
“The way to create growth is to utilize SEO services for purposes of demand generation, not just a mechanism to capture those prospects already looking for you.” – John Tawadros for searchenginewatch.com
When extending your SEO beyond tidying up and optimizing your site, creativity and clever marketing tactics can place you above the rest and drive more traffic to your site. These are some good words to live by and got me really thinking when I read his article.
The answer to this is a firm NO WAY! This happens way to often in our forever expanding industry.
So you’ve busted your tail getting your site together with good clean semantic markup, a bangin’ sitemap that the crawlers are eating up, and relevant content that blows away all your competition. All of this has painstakingly taken half a lifetime, and once again, it still feels vulnerable cause who knows what the spiders are really thinking as they crawl your site. So now… we sit back and wait, because we have convinced ourselves finally that SEO results take time, sometimes a lot of time to hit home. WRONG!
This is a major problem, because once you do see results, and note that your swiffering up of your site code has resulted in the search engines loving your content and ranking you high on your most important search terms, that your not re-inventing new ways of driving consumers and would/be’s to your site. By the time this happens, and you know you need more SEO to furthur expand your visibility, you’ve missed out. So now you launch Phase II of your SEO campain. There are a variety of tactics you can emplore at this point (which i won’t get into with this post, but Landing Pages, Affiliate programs, backlink marketing, social media are just a few), but yet again, to get results from these pages will put you into yet another holding pattern to see results and increase your visibility.
So here’s a thought… why don’t we launch phase II while we’re waiting for initial SEO efforts to materialize. Seems like a simple explanation, but most companies will put the brakes on SEO the second their site is optimized, thinking that’s enough. Once a few months pass, and they see the type of revenue organic search can bring in (especially since you a not paying per-click) they then want to see more, and look into other ways to drive organic (free!) traffic. By this time, they’ve wasted valuable time by not realizing the potential of SEO and failing to continue their program because they are not seeing immediate traffic.
Patience is a virtue. And living in New York City, in this lifestyle, it’s hard to come by. The same goes for business. What can you do for me now? If you’ve come to the conclusion that you CAN wait for and SEO program to take hold, and can launch a Pay-Per click program to satisfy your immediate needs, please stay on the offensive with your program, and don’t wait for the results of the start to seek alternative methods to drive (free!) orgainic traffic. In the long run you will benefit greatly.
Numbers don’t lie. Online shopping is being done by the masses. The industry just seems to grow without bounds contrary to popular belief a few years ago.
Source:
I recently purchased another in the 6000 different kinds of swiffer’s out there, the swiffer wet jet. I know it’s very unrockstar of me to be talking about this, but that thing rules! No more smelly mop and mop bucket.
Alright, so why the hell am i talking about this? The swiffer wet jet was an upgrade for me from your conventional mop. It’s a much more efficient way of cleaning my floor. It dries in seconds, it has a button that you push that sprays exactly the amount of cleaning solution that you need to clean your floor and when you’re done, you just throw away the pad. Clean, efficient and easy.
This concept can be much like putting together your code for a website. I’m finding that a good chunk of what’s good for SEO lies in the code of your site. Being a coder myself, this is all very clear to me anyway. I’ve learned as a coder that creating clean semantic markup makes updating, changing your site cake. If you really want to read a great book on creating clean, cross browser compatible code, check out Jeffrey Zeldman’s book “Designing with Web Standards“. That book was like the bible to me and got me going creating good, clean code. Little did I know at the time that i started coding, that I was at the same time practicing standards that are perfect for SEO.
If you want to see what a crawler see’s that is scowering your site looking for relevant content that is going to eventually deem you most worthy of a search term, do a “view –> source” in your browser. Now start scrolling through the code, and see how hard it is to find content that really hits home… If this code now looks like the matrix and you are already frustrated, the same thing is happening to the crawler. Crawlers hate code that looks like a rats nest. I will get into good practices in coding your site at a later time, it’s not the discussion i want to get into now.
What I do want to get into is getting a developer into the line of thinking of cleaning the site up like a swiffer mop as opposed to cleaning the old fashioned way, like a mop and bucket. There are great new ways to make code on a site clean and beautiful, even with a lot of content (CSS, external javascript, ajax), and as a developer, you need to be just as proactive with cleaning your code as I am proactive at keeping up with the search engine algorythm. Tabular messy design still works, and you can still make a good looking site with it, but that site that looks good to a user does not look good to a crawler. A mop and bucket will clean a floor, but the time and effort it takes, and the stench that builds up is overall not as effective as the new swiffer.
All in all, writing clean code will not only make for a better webmaster sitebuilding and editing experience, but will also give you a great clean start to launching your SEO campain. A good chunk of SEO is spent fixing problems in underlying code to then be able to be proactive in your campain. Writing clean, efficient, swiffer wet-jet like code will allow you to instantly focus SEO time to driving traffic to your site, instead of trying to find ways to make the crawlers happy in order to just get your site indexed properly.
Hello, and welcome to a new exiciting adventure for me. I recently have started a new adventure in my life by enlisting my full time career dedicated to the life of SEO for a great full service media agency known as Morpheus Media. This is an extremely exciting time in my life, and I am really looking forward to my new career direction.
Lately i’ve been really looking deep into social media, and the brilliant effects of blogging and discussion boards on SEO. I can credit a lot of my enthusiasm to Adam Broitman of morpheus media who has “showed me the way” and inspired me to push further into this industry. Please check out Adam’s blog, “A Media Circus“.
So, now I start a new chapter in my life, and thus launch my new blog, Rock n’ Roll SEO, and hope that anyone reading this can utilize my ramblings and really make their site “Rock”. I intend on taking a very unique and different perspective towards this forever changing and challenging industry, and will try hard to put my creativity to work. Enjoy, and happy 2007!
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