Unfortunately, many of our clients, let alone non-clients who think they can’t afford SEO advice, don’t have the well-honed sense of smell. Nor should they be expected to — one of the advantages for a [...]]]> I think any reasonably competent SEO has the good sense on how to tell if a directory is ‘good’ or ‘eh.’

Unfortunately, many of our clients, let alone non-clients who think they can’t afford SEO advice, don’t have the well-honed sense of smell. Nor should they be expected to — one of the advantages for a business owner in working with a full-time search engine marketer is that the SEO spends their professional life being a search geek. Most ‘normal’ business owners need to spend their time knowing the ins and outs of their business.

Here are a few warning signs about if that ‘directory’ is crap:

• Are they indexed? I had someone ask me about submitting to a ‘directory’ that I was quickly able to determine wasn’t even indexed in Yahoo or Google. This is not the sign of hot traffic referral waiting to happen! The site: command is a good one for people wanting to get involved with their web site to learn.
• Age of domain. Now, I know that a lot of normal people don’t know how to use whois, but it’s really quite simple. If the domain is fairly new and the directory isn’t associated with someone you’ve heard of, caveat emptor.
• Request for reciprocal link. I recommend all suspicion of any reciprocal link request, but if this directory is prominent enough to drive traffic to you, why do they need you to link to them? In general, they’re going to have hundreds of outbound links, you probably have fewer. This means your link to them is likely more valuable than their link to you. So why bother?
• Have you heard of them? If you haven’t heard of them, will your clients have heard of them? It won’t be a good source of traffic if no one uses them.

I think keyword research is important. A lot of it is verifying the obvious, [...]]]> Like it or not, search engine optimization still starts at the page level. Without belittling the importance of quality site architecture and design, the first thing most people will think of when you say ‘SEO’ will be keyword research and content optimization.

I think keyword research is important. A lot of it is verifying the obvious, but sometimes you can find some hidden gems to target if you take some effort and get creative.

However, creativity and effectiveness is limited by your source choice. Different tools offer different advantages. Without going into a recommendation of ‘pick THIS one,’ here are factors I tend to consider when choosing a tool:

1. What’s the data source? — some tools pull from meta search engines, some from ISP data, some from just their own source. Some have many data streams.
2. Does that data source have the potential to represent your target audience? — you can have a ton of data, but, say I’m targeting US Hispanics. A data pull from Yahoo Spain isn’t going to be representative for me, as it’ll use Castillian Spanish and represent the interests of Spaniards, not Spanish speakers from Latin America living in the US!
3. What’s it cost? — Hey, we’ve all had gigs where the budget for pretty much anything, including our own salaries and benefits, was equal to bupka. Sure, the Google and Overture tools have intense limitations, but the price is right.

I think a lot of elementary level SEOs don’t look at where the database for any given tool is sourced from, which means they’re missing an important decision factor in keyword selection. Looking at sources, and not just numbers and proportions, is one of the things an SEO can do to truly consult on content optimization. Anyone can parrot terms from a tool — a monkey who didn’t take its Ritalin can do that.

Content converts. Putting enough effort and creativity in at the front end gets you the data you need in analytics to make continued informed judgements in the long-term, and actually build traffic from a solid base.

Question #2 prompted a snort of derision from [...]]]> While traveling to Sea-Tac Airport today with the wonderful Ms. Christy Arneson-Jones, I started reading my free copy of Website Magazine. In their feature, “Five Steps to Outsourcing Search Marketing,” they recommend educating oneself. They included a handy quick quiz to determine what one might know right now.

Question #2 prompted a snort of derision from yours truly. Here it is:

2) Describe the word canonical.

Now, that ought to be easy. Google’s Webmaster Help Center describes it as a ‘preferred domain.’ Matt Cutts did a blog post where he defines it.

Apparently, not easy enough for Website Magazine. Their answer?

2) Refers to the non-www version of a domain (website) indexed as a duplicate of the www version.

Well, no. No it doesn’t. If you haven’t set your preferred domain through your sitemap or via a webmaster toolset, that can in fact happen. But that’s not a description of the word canonical. That’s a symptom of a failure to understand the concept of canonical.

Some webmasters prefer using their non-www as the canonical domain. And that’s just fine with a search engine.

It’s a good thing I got the magazine free. If I’d paid, I’d want a refund for just this one item. I haven’t been able to bring myself to read any more.

SEOing is hard. Good thing he’s a professional.

This is a really brief list, relative to what’s in my head: