Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Overhyped or Overlooked?
Like with most information technology investments, allocating resources to an SEO initiative in your firm has both pros and cons.
Pros:
- Required financial resources are relatively small
- It can be done in-house or outsourced
- Cost-effective marketing tactic
- Higher search engine rankings have positive effects on branding
Cons:
- No guaranteed methodology or implementation plan
- Time consuming and slow to see results
- Difficult to measure outcomes in monetary terms
- Requires on-going maintenance to ensure website remains relevant
John C. Dvorak says it’s overhyped in his SEO Fiascos—that long URLs (an SEO trademark) do nothing to improve optimization. Apparently, comparing his own blog’s stats from before the implementation of long URLs to after, he actually had a noticeable decline. So why is everyone doing it?
Well, because it’s not just these human tricks that are driving search engine optimization, it’s a bit more complex. If you take some time to look under the hood of your own website, you’ll find that you or your trusted SEO consultant can make small changes that go a long way. Remember that SEO techniques should never get in the way. Users should only notice the ease at which they can find information.
- Know which keywords to optimize
- Be aware of linking (to and from your site)
- Spell correctly—or have a good reason not to
- Minimize flash and AJAX usage
- Avoid duplicate content
- Put quality first
So, how do you know if it’s working? And how do you measure if something has been effectively “optimized,” especially if it’s occurring with a technology that is advancing as rapidly as unemployment these days? Here are some tips on metrics:
- Traffic
- Keywords
- Conversion Rate
So grab a freeware web analytics tool and see where you’re ranking these days. Whether your website is 5 years old or brand new, managing it is a continuing process. Those who take the time to measure and make changes will likely see increasing results as we move toward a semantic web.
Comments
Grain of Salt
Heh, you can't take John C. Dvorak's blog post too seriously. He's a tech socialite who makes living by making scandalous statements and ranting on popular subjects. His blog post is mostly anecdotal and definitely non-scientific. In the same post, he's also bashing Semantic Web. Now it's a personal choice to side with John C. Dvorak or Tim Berners-Lee, who thinks Semantic Web is the future of the Internet :)
Back to the CEO subject: one important matter to consider when starting an SEO project is that not all CMS systems are SEO-optimizations enabled. An SEO expert can design set of rules for you, but URL format and structure is fundamental to a CMS platform and it's not always easy to adjust. Whilst modern CMS systems like Drupal and WordPress have built-in tools to change URL generation strategies, many other proprietary and ad-hoc systems do not and in some cases changing linking strategies in a CMS may be more expensive than migrating to, say, Drupal. Which could be a good thought, though :)
Good SEO Tips Here!
SEO OPTIMIZATION backlink is all about from related topic's. Thanks for your helpful tips.
Thanks for Ideas
Thanks for providing these useful tips on SEO. I and my friends at SEO NEPAL are working on them. We hope for some positive results. WE do also hope for some other ideas on SEO soon.
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