Is Search Engine Optimization Dead?

Latest news buzz in webdesign world “Is Search Engine Optimization Dead?”.
Short answer:
NO.

Long Answer:
Still no but a few things have changed and a few things have been stopped. You now get penalized for using tactics like Google Sniper. Google bombing, keyword plugging, etc etc. Truth is, that never was Search engine optimization. that was ghetto style pyramid scheme junk.
The team at Google has removed most scams you can pull on Google and just left the actual optimization part in there.
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Well let’s look at a book store as an example. Imagine if you have a bunch of great books. An entire book store full of books. Now picture yourself opening this new book store. you came up with this cool idea of hiding all of the book in the ceiling tile, and the signs you purchased were inside out, upside down, and behind the building and just say “Dave’s” on them. What is Dave’s? Why is the sign not where everyone expects it to be? Why is it backward? why is it upside down? For that one guy who rolls his car in traffic trying to read the sign in his rear view mirror? It’s not great forethought. Now a person walks in.. Where the heck is everything? Why aren’t these people listed anywhere? they aren’t in a phone book, they aren’t in a news paper… What the heck is this place? When they figure out it’s a book store, where is everything? and why isn’t it in order? Everything is just chunked about in the ceiling area.
Search engine optimization is so you can fix those issues on the internet. Optimize your website for search engines. Pretty simply stated.
Google is leading the way to fixing it so scammers can’t just jump ahead of people with decent content, well organize easily navigated websites. sites with titles that match the content. Page titles that match that page’s content and a small “card catalog” type section built just for search engines so they know what the main items are that you want people to focus on when they hit hat page, the stuff that the page is about. This is called “Keywords”. Some people believe that keywords are dead. They are far from dead. The people that say that “Keywords are useless”, are people who use heavy searched words that are totally unrepresentative of their content. These people just want traffic to their page, they are of no help to society and are scammers.
Meta tags matter.
Meta tags are fairly simple to understand. These are the important ones.
Title: tells people the name of your page
Description : tells people what your page is about.
Keywords: words associated to your content that people will search for that is relative to your page.

Why would you use meta tags?
This is for search engines. Google needs to display the title of the page in the results. So title is important. Description, well all search engines put a small two or three sentence snippet in the search results, it’d be nice if the person doing the search knows what might be there before he/she clicks. Keywords, when they search for a specific item by one word, Search engines will search for sites with that word in it’s keywords and then highlight it in the search results. If it’s not in your keywords and in your actual content, then your site most likely will not show up in the results.
No you do not want to show up in every single search for every single item on the internet. You want to show up for items related to your content. You are most likely to please the reader that way, and your items will move faster.

What Google has done
Google has stopped people from plugging their meta tags with unrelated items and made Search Engine Optimization exactly what it is. Optimizing your website for better search results and they penalize anyone who is scamming the system. This could mean anything from  bumping them down in importance, all the way to kicking them out of search engines.
This will help you in all search engines, and help your content be better found by people who actually want your items. If you are set to bring anyone and everyone to your website, you are less likely to bring the people who actually want your items. If you focus on your items and products, then you will receive traffic from people who are looking for your products or services.

The better your SEO is done, and the better your content is, the higher a priority you will become for your items.

SEOmoz PRO Training Seminar

From and seomoz email I received today.

SEOmoz PRO Training Seminar (Almost SOLD OUT)
Tickets are selling fast for our Seattle SEOmoz PRO training seminar on August 30th and 31st. The finished schedule is now available and the content, speakers and venue are absolutely amazing. We’d love to have you join us, but the seminar has sold out every one of the past 4 years, so please book now to limit disappointment.

Sign up for the PRO Training Seminar

Hope you’re having a great summer,

Rand Fishkin
CEO | SEOmoz

p.s. Feel free to email me, rand@seomoz.org, or customerservice@seomoz.org if you’ve got any questions.

Don’t want to receive these email anymore? (sniff… sniff… OK, but we’ll miss you). Just click  Unsubscribe.
SEOmoz, Inc. 119 Pine St Suite 400 Seattle, WA 98101 UNITED STATES (206) 632-3171

Chrome version mozBar!

Email from SEOMOZ

Hey gang,

I’m sure you’re busy, so I’ll keep it brief.  I’m excited to tell you about two things:

Chrome version of the mozBar!
Many of you have been beating down our door (and tweeting like mad) in hopes of a Google Chrome version of the mozbar. Well, it’s finally here! Please give it a whirl and leave any feedback + check out features:

Download the mozBar for Chrome

The Seo Book We Should All Have

A good friend I know (I reference tons of stuff to her website) Alicia Crowder,  has a book out now called “SEO Standards for Beginners“.
If you are a web designer of new or professional status, this book is under $10 and a quick read. I assure you, there will be something in there that changes your knowledge about Search engine optimization.
Her description of the book is:

SEO Standards for Beginners is an informative book to help individuals and business owners better understand what SEO is and how to better compete in the online marketplace. Providing a general comprehension of the purpose of optimization, as well as practical methods for achieving better results online, this book will assist beginners in simplifying what is often otherwise bewildering.

I have had short encounters with her where we just sit and talk site building and SEO. Each sit in she says something that I have to study up on. Each time we have conversed she reminds me of stuff I have been neglecting to remember. Stuff I have been overlooking. This book is a must buy for anyone who needs crib notes, reminders, and new working ideas to build your website to comply to search engine needs.

She works for an SEO company. She has done so for as long as I have known her. She is great at what she does and has many large name clients ( I will not reveal or other seo companies may try and swoop em up). This book will be, for certain your best investment in web-design and site building as of yet. This book will help you in your quest to get to the front page of search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and the huge string of other search engines.

It would be foolish of a professional Search Engine Optimization person to pass up on a chance to find things they have been overlooking, to find things they never knew. Or to ever assume they know it all.

Go get Seo Standards for Beginners. It will be well worth your effort. Trust it is not just for beginners, I’m certain there is something for everyone in this book. I will be ordering mine Friday.

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SEO Standards for Beginners

The Official TruXtertech Toolbar

Official TruXtertech Toolbar

Got tired of Googling all of the tools I use on a regular basis and decided to put these all in one toolbar.  Since I am of the two I.T. guys at my job, This tool bar will come in super handy.

There are antivirus tools. Virus scanner tools and Search Engine optimization tools.

so now when building website, there is tons of media to listen to and SEo tools to ensure the website being designed is properly optimized and handily ready for Bing, Yahoo and Google to crawl about it.

Grab a copy of this toolbar and see for yourself it is very much useful for Most of your IT needs and wants.

Things to Consider When you Hire Someone to Design Your Website

Make sure that you have a place to store your material that composes your website. Make sure you have as much space as you possibly can, like powweb, they have unlimited storage at a very good price. Very good. So far I have registered for three different companies websites at powweb and all three were under $100 for two years.

Okay we all know that web-design, Some people can do it, some people can not do it. (wait, I am not selling you web design, simply because I am sick of it) I know it’s not actually an art . but you really have to think of it like you think of art. Try and not think of it as construction. You can not just lay out blueprints and say “hey this is how it goes, this is what i want and this is exactly what you will give me”. Ever try that crap with a guy that just draws cartoons or caricatures ? You can’t go and grab someone who draws realistic drawings with perfect angles shading lighting and life like appeal, to just draw you on a rocket ship with a rodeo clown shirt on. It’s just not his thing, and well, he has his certain fields he has focused on really well. It is best you let him utilize his abilities to his best interest.

You are not a web designer. So having a lay out or a design  that you want, well you are going to have to do it yourself. If you do not lay out your website yourself, be certain that what he will make for you, will not be to your liking on the first round. It’s just a fact.

A person that knows about web design is doing everything with full optimization in mind. This person has this thing laid out with full SEO integrated in their design. The more you toss ideas at them and the more you incorporate a third party web designer in this project, the more you throw this guy out of his field of operation. You will also start to make a complete professional web-designer look like a total amateur. Let him finish his project and you will see what he gave you will have tons of great cooperative segments of the site’s design.
Have an open mind, be prepared for creative differences and be prepared for someone more knowledgeable in this field to tell you that what you want will not work. Or be prepared for someone to just build you exactly what you want and leave to to fight the internet on your own.

1. If you have a specific idea that you want done and must have, then be clear about what you want from the start. Draw it on paper, show each page individually and fill in the exact text you want or need that explains that page. He can not read your mind. He is not in your business, or you would have more competition. Be prepared for the designer to re-word your text to handshake his SEO portion of the design.

2. Give all logos you need for the design.

3. Be ready for some of your ideas to get scratched. They may be obsolete or to complex for the average user to enjoy. Or they just may screw up the Search Engine Optimization portion of your design. Some of your idea may be unrealistic.

4. Be certain that your site’s topics cover what means the most interest in your company. If you sell airplane door hinges, don’t make your company website talk about what your company started as, what it is becoming and what it is now. Make your website about airplane door hinges. It would take a pretty submissive web-designer to not tell you that you are goofing  by using the wrong content.

Don’t ask the designer of your website to copy another website. Do not go to the nearest search engine and steal pictures off of the internet and ask your web designer to design your website around them. Do not under estimate the power of proper Search Engine optimization. Do not expect SEO work to happen over night. It takes most search engines two weeks to set your site in rank order. Heck it actually takes that long just for them to get around to noticing you are there. Do not look at a crowded Navigation bar/ menu and request more in there without a bit of a remodeling.

You can have the site you want. Just have your wants and needs laid out already. save a copy for yourself and give a copy to the web guy. If you already have a web guy then by all means, let him do the work. just be ready to hire someone else for SEO and make sure your web guy is ready to comply with the SEO person. It’s hard for one web guy to go back behind another web designer and figure out what they changed and how to make it work with the full plan. Improper communication ends in crazy results.

Here is an image I found on Facebook that seemed to fit perfect.

facts about website outsourcing

facts about website outsourcing

An SEO Person to Learn From

I thought I knew everything about search engine optimization, until I met Alicia Crowder. This lady schooled me in a flash.

Web search engine marketing that drives customers to your business website is delivered by the SEO Web Content Writing Solution. In the marketing and SEO writing business for more than 10 years, the owner of SEO Web Content Writing Solution understands just what it takes to get your business website to generate leads for your company. Call (832) 884-1330 to learn about the many ways that you will benefit from a diversified Internet marketing campaign……….

Kinda made me feel inadequate when I started reading her site for all of the tips she has on how to get seen in google for categories I want to fall under. I have been trying to pick her brain a bit over the last week or so, I mean come on this lady knows her stuff. She seems to be picking back from time to time, but I know I have been all over her sites. Her recent post on her seo tips site seems to nail out exactly what she does.

I follow her on twitter to get fresh updates. but I really try and not let her know of my sites to crawl and critique, it would slaughter my ego lol.

She does offer a service where she will do the  work for you, but she also has tons and tons of free information on her sites. I actually have no products to market so I just use her free advice and tips to get  an idea of what I need to tweak here and there to get my content read.

Running like 6 or seven sites I feel like I am a know it all. but really I do not. but hey, who does ?

I have been using her tips for about a week now and I have seen some real changes. a big hats off to Alicia and her SEO tips.