Working at one of Utah's oldest web design firms, I've learned a few common mistakes companies make during the web design process. One of the mistakes I often see is the timing of hiring an SEO specialist.

Every month we have companies fresh off a new web design approach us about SEO services. Sometimes it's a site we've designed, and sometimes it's a site designed by someone else. Either way, the mistake is the same. Companies will get all excited to launch a new web site. They'll invest tons of resources in designers, developers, and old school marketing professionals, but they will put off SEO.

Some of the typical reasons I've seen for not hiring an SEO specialist in the beginning stages of a web project:

• The company doesn't understand SEO
• The VP thinks it's a threat to their dealers or resellers. Meanwhile their competitors are cashing in on direct leads from the web and from resellers.
• They consider themselves a b2b, and they don't need to target people searching. That's fine, then just don't expect to be found.
• They are already paying for an in-house old school "marketing" professional, and they assume they are all set. Yeah I'm calling out the in-house marketing guy, or girl, with the degree from 1998 that tries to play SEO. There is nothing wrong with degrees, I have one in Psychology (University of Utah, 2003), but in most cases I've seen, they don't know web. They often don't know html, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, or even how to write a simple "a" tag or "title" tag. Not a likely SEO hero.
• Simple procrastination. They are going to sign-up for SEO, just not until the site is completed

Jumping ahead to the latter stages of the project. The web design and development have been completed, the site launched, and the business cards are getting printed. The site is awesome, and it looks amazing. But the phone doesn't ring. They pull up a traffic report after the first month, and bam only 25 hits from Google! And 20 were searches for their own company name.

Now they are ready for SEO. Too bad the site is done: content organized without significant thought, important text is locked away in images not readable by search engines, and typically no keyword research has gone into creating navigation titles, page names, image names, or copywriting. Now all this can be fixed, but it can take a lot of time and resources to do so.

Obviously you can still perform a lot of SEO tasks away from the actual site and as an after-thought, but hopefully this post finds you before you start your new web design project.

Ryan

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 In summary:

 When you are providing SEO and Web Design Services, you need to pay attention to the type of industry that you are targeting.   You’ll want to make sure that visitors to the site have a good experience, regardless of what browser they are using.  It will do you no good to bring in a lot of traffic from people using Ie6 and the site is non-functional.  If you don’t have a way to test for cross-browser compatibility, check out Adobe’s new “BrowserLab” service.

 Data provided by Utah SEO via @ RedOlive.

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1.       Must be using current FireFox. (Note I've recently found a much easier and more accurate way to track rankings.  I would advise doing research and watching Youtube reviews of various keyword tracking services).

2.       Set Google search results to top 100 and then save.

3.       Search Term

4.       Hit “Ctrl” “F”

5.       Enter site URL

6.       Select and highlight from your site up. (Stop before PPC at the top.  (Sometimes the first 3)).

7.       Paste into notepad. (Should be a “#” before each site - Excel counts the position based on the number of #s).

8.       Copy notepad contents and paste into supplied excel doc (Paste into A1 or the top left cell).      Excel Doc (right click "Save Target As")

9.       ** In the top right of the excel doc you’ll see a field with a dotted background.  This is used to subtract the sites that get more than one listing (when sorted by 100).  These are the secondary “indented” results, typically to a website’s interior pages.

Post if you have any questions.  As far as I understand, this is a non-automated Google friendly way to count keyword rankings.  Please let me know if it’s not the case. Please Visit and Link to www.redolivedesign.com. Also, you may or may not want to turn off the google settings for "Enable customizations based on search activity."  I suspect you'll probably want this disabled.  To do so, search something in google, then click "Web History" in the top right corner. Then simply disable or able customized search results.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Here is a short list of things you want to see in an SEO company.

• Experience
• A medium to large portfolio of websites - for trend monitoring. When you make regular changes and perform site maintenance on a large portfolio of websites, you learn things.
• Knowledge of html. You don't want to hand over FTP access to someone who doesn't know html.
• How strong is the overall team?... Do they have a strong technical side to help with execution of SEO creative concepts? Do they have have a strong creative team?
• Do they offer copywriting to help with blog posts and pr related material?
• Do they have experience with off-site link building? Ask for a few ideas / suggestions to ensure it's white hat.

For more information about web design or SEO, visit our site

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As an SEO, I am always trying to find quality links. I've taken over SEO for companies that have been involved in link-farms.  I have taken over SEO for companies that have been involved in forum spamming, on unrelated forums to boot. I refuse to go down either of those roads.

How about this?

Run a promotion on Twitter, a good promotion.  Twitter is free, so you can splurge on the giveaway.  Create a good landing page for the links from Twitter.  Advertise the promotion on your website.  Run some pay per click before the promotion launches, so people can see the advertisement on your homepage.  Perhaps they might spread the word.  Perhaps they might even link to you.

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A few of the top items that Google Webmaster Tools tracks that you should be aware of:
1. Duplicate Title Tags
2. Percentage of keywords (a literal count of how many times a keyword appears).
3. Top pages linked to from within the site. (ie which page is getting the most links from within your site).
4. Top pages linked to from out on the web.

With these few data points, a search engine could determine what pages are most important to the site owner, what pages are most important to the web community, and what pages have the most relevant content for a keyword match.

One strategy might be to make sure that all of these categories are congruent for each keyword. For example, the page that everybody else links to the most = the page you link to the most = the page that has the highest number of keyword appearances.

For more SEO stuff, visit redolivedesign.com

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I recently posted about the aviva directory and how long it took from sumbission to Google returning my actual aviva directory listing in search results. I also recently submitted a few websites to the botw.org directory. And amazingly it also took about 18 days.

So it looks like these directories are being crawled and indexed by some search engines. And you are looking at about 18 days for the submission, review, crawled, and indexed process. So for tracking purposes I would say check your stats on the day you submit, 7 days out, 18 days out, and 30 days out.

The next question is will these somewhat expensive listings make any difference in rankings?

I'll let you know if I see anything significant.

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There are many ways to evaluate a directory. One quick way that I will share with you, is to determine if Google is crawling the snippets that the directory has been creating for listings. How may you ask? Simple - search the snippet in Google and see if the directory listing shows up.

You will probably find that some directories show up and some don't. Also, I wouldn't stop at this, you'll want to do additional research on the directory before you go ahead and submit your site.

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Matt covers a lot of topics over the 26 minutes.  For the possible future of site speed and rankings in 2010, jump to 8:40 to 10:00.

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Top SEO related people that I follow on twitter:

• http://twitter.com/problogger
• http://twitter.com/mattcutts
• http://twitter.com/googlewmc
• http://twitter.com/leeodden
• http://twitter.com/garyvee
• http://twitter.com/chrisbrogan

I am sure there are tons more, but I like these for social media ideas, blogging tips, SEO, and overall web knowledge.

Please comment and leave any that you feel should be added.

Red Olive SEO
Utah SEO
Utah Web Design

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I submitted a website to the Aviva Directory recently and I wanted to share the experience. It was fast and easy. And they were very responsive over email.

One of our SEO clients is a large equipment manufacturing company. They have a really good new web design, more content than their competition, some decent history, and some quality links from national retailers. However, they are still lagging for a few keywords, so I will be submitting their site to a select few reputable general directories.... and I will report the results right here.

Red Olive SEO

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Navigation and Footer links:
Why are they so important?... For starters they are typically links on every page. So how you name these will determine what keywords have the most links on your site. Also, they are typically the first and last thing on every page. So there is potential for the primacy and recency effect.

I've seen websites that rank for national highly competitive terms that put 1 keyword in the first paragraph on each page and link it back to the homepage (the same keyword). Interesting strategy. I must note that this website was temporarily blocked by a major search engine, but they were later reinstated.  The exact reason is unknown.  Another popular strategy is to put the main keyword in a small link at the very tip top of each page and link it back to the home page.

Lastly, make sure links to important pages can be found on the homepage in a static link. I believe the safe bet is to make sure the links can be found with javascript off/css off and vice versa.

Red Olive SEO

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I found this really great list of directories (so I thought I would share... that's how I roll):
http://www.avivadirectory.com/strongest-directories/

I really like this list, but I wonder just how many directories do we need? If only 9% of search engine traffic comes from bing (based on our latest numbers for our sites) how much legitimate user traffic is going to and coming from these directories?? Consider the amount of marketing effort that has been put into bing and all the places you can find the name... I can only imagine how truly irrelevant 75% of these directories truly are.

So who is relevant? I say Social Network Sites. This is where I suspect most people are going these days to talk about things and link to things on the web. Three issues immediately arise with giving more authority to social sites. 1. Privacy 2. Site Cooperation 3. Spammers

1. Privacy. In a perfect world these social sites would have a "Only Share Links" button. So users could protect their personal information but still share and give power to the links they post.

2. Site Cooperation. The search engines can't control how the social network site is setup. If company xyz puts "nofollow" links on the posts, the search engines should respect that. So the job is to convince the social network sites to start developing privacy options that allow for greater control and flexibility.

3. Spammers. What would stop people from creating 500 accounts to just spam links? And is this any more relevant than directories that nobody visits? I suspect this is the biggest challenge and possibly the reason some places use "nofollow" on links. To avoid spammers. The directories are less prone to spam because you typically have to pay for each instance. And there are fewer to crawl compared to crawling all the users on Twitter for example. Are the social networking sites more relevant?... I say yes. Regardless of the spammer hurdle, this is still where I think most average people are going to talk about things and to link to things. And if they aren't now, they will be.

Red Olive SEO

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1. Negotiate a monthly SEO budget you can maintain for at least 6 months.
2. Make sure you have some of your "Search Engine" budget dedicated to PPC for research and for trial and error.
3. Try to avoid long term contracts. There are no guarantees in search - so don't get locked into one approach or SEO style. If the SEO firm's approach isn't producing results and you are locked in for 12 months for 1,500/month that is a tough pill to swallow. Ask for a 3 month contract or go with a no monthly contract SEO firm - like us..

Utah SEO

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..."PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms"

http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html

I am unsure as to the exact date these numbers were posted at Google, but the point is they clearly reserve the right to examine just about everything imaginable to get the best results for their users.

Luckily for us, most of these 500 million+ secrets are highly transparent. 1. Find some competitors, do some keyword research, find out what keywords are bringing them the most traffic. 2. Check out their code, nav links, footers links, page names, title tags, link organization, blog links, blog titles, div structure, h1, h2's, picture file names, alt tags, meta descriptions. Next, see where they are getting links via searching yahoo for link:www.theirsite.com. Yes for some reason I prefer using yahoo for this, but by all means use Google's link checking as well.

Next formulate a plan and develop a site or revamp the site geared toward your new found SEO "SECRETS." Create a blog and use some of the fundamentals learned from the other top companies and your keyword list. Join the social networking world (typically free) and start a conversation with people that need your services. Be congruent.... don't create page names that dont match the title tags or content. Watch your footers and nav links, are they arbitrary? Organize links to your content around keywords and not entirely item number based - BizChair does a great job at this (not affiliated with them in any way shape or form.)

Remember to "Favorite This"...
And please feel free to post some of your "SECRETS."
Thanks...

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If you are looking for a career in SEO I would suggest you start with learning html. Second, learn Photoshop. I am not talking expert here (at least at first), but at least some working knowledge. And then build upon that with knowledge of links / offsite strategies / blogging / social networking / and simple content organization.

Here are some more random help links for people just starting out with SEO:
http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/googleseo/
http://www.semrush.com/

That's all I have for today

Utah SEO

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I am sure we will be seeing some reports coming forward from big name organizations tracking search engine data. But I would like to see some numbers from the SEOs of the world.

How is Bing doing in your campaigns?

Are you seeing an increase in traffic from Bing compared to the other search engines? or is it the more Bing changed the more it stayed the same?

As of our last report on Dec 15th, our numbers were showing about 9.2% of search engine traffic is coming from Bing - for our sites. What are you seeing?

Utah SEO

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Got SEO writer's block? Try doing some offsite SEO. And by offsite SEO, I am talking about thinking strategy and ideas outside the office. Which most SEOs already do, but if you aren't give it a try. You might be amazed.

Utah SEO

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1. Google Analytics
2. SEM Rush
3. Google Web Master Tools
4. Yahoo Search "link:www.competitorsite.com"
5. Google Keyword Tool

Utah SEO

Bonus Tool!
Google. Yup, search for things and see what sites come up. See what they are doing. Look at their footer, nav links, blog, and code (html).

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1. Avoid arbitrary Navigation - Home Products Services About Contact - (Where would you file that?) Try to be a little more creative.
2. Use images instead of text. Yeah, that’s right. This would be for situations where a client wants a small amount of specific text in a prime location and it IS NOT congruent with the main theme on the page (it happens). Be careful with this strategy as images increase load times.
3. Be careful with images. – If you are trying to rank for a term, make sure it appears on your website in text. Yes this is obvious SEO, but so many clients show up trying to rank for terms that only exist as images on their website.

Utah SEO

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