It’s only worth paying for an SEO expert if they are:

• Writing and rewriting content & articles for your site to make them more keyword focused.
• Engaging in online discussions on relevant forums and industry/consumer focused websites where they link and promote your website, or help to position your company/website as an “industry expert”.
• Submitting your website address & business details to a range of relevant online directories, creating links back to your website.

Which, for the most part, is a “writer” you’re engaging, albeit one who knows the online space, rather than some mysterious SEO “wizard”.

SEO really is just a good site build + lots of constantly updating content containing relevant keywords and information. There are no secrets. And indeed, social media engagement has taken over the focus for many small business websites as being far more effective. More people now find sites via Facebook (from friends’ recommendations) than Google. In many cases, if it comes down to a choice of spending money on a writer to write or improve your content, or a social media professional to implement a social media plan, for many businesses I would recommend going the social media route.

Page titles page description, keywords

With regards to the adding of the page title, keywords and description, the “meta data” of a web page, that’s something that any professional web designer/developer should do as part of their standard service. If they don’t, then you need to question them about it. Preferably make sure they have included this in their proposal to you before approving the project. If they seem a little hesitant or confused about what you’re asking, then take that as a big RED FLAG and look for another web developer!

You will of course need to provide your web developer with the relevant keywords and descriptions for the site, after all who knows your business better than you do? Following are some tips on writing good page titles and descriptions.

Page titles

Most best practice SEO guides recommend the following:

• It should include the brand/company name (though apart from the Homepage, AFTER each inner page’s unique page title – see below).
• It shouldn’t be just a list of keywords, in fact many SEO experts believe Google may regard that negatively.
• Page title should be unique for each page, hence easiest way is to include the actual page content title along with the site title. Don’t forget that page titles are also for people bookmarking your site, and “Liking” and “Sharing” via Facebook too, so if they’re all the same then it will look like they’ve bookmarked the same page multiple times.

Some advice from Google themselves:

Whenever possible, ensure each page has a unique title that describes the page well. For instance, if your site is for your store “Buffy’s House of Sofas”, a visitor may want to bookmark your home page and the order page for your red, fluffy sofa. If all of your pages have the same title: “Wecome to my site!”, then a visitor will have trouble finding your site again in the bookmarks. However, if your home page has the title “Buffy’s House of Sofas” and your red sofa page has the title “Buffy’s red fluffy sofa”, then visitors can glance at the title to see what it’s about and can easily find it in the bookmarks later. And if your visitors are anything like me, they may have several browser tabs open and appreciate descriptive titles for easier navigation.

“This simple tip for visitors helps search engines too. Search engines index pages based on the words contained in them, and including descriptive titles helps search engines know what the pages are about. And search engines often use a page’s title in the search results. “Welcome to my site” may not entice searchers to click on your site in the results quite so much as “Buffy’s House of Sofas”.

There is also a “shorter is better” mantra followed by many, but while Google may use only a certain number of words from your page description (the exact number is debatable) users also need to be able to understand what’s on the actual page itself when they read Google’s search results.

So a recommended page title format would include the following:

• A short phrase that describes the page, including main keywords
• Page name, unique for each page so users knows what’s on that page specifically
• Brand/company name

Page description

This should definitely be where more keywords are used in a smart, user friendly (readable) way. The following site gives a much better summary of the page description best practices than I ever could: www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/meta-description (SEOmoz is regarded by most in the industry as one of the authorities for Search Engine Optimisation knowledge and advice).

Search engine ranking overview

And for a high level overview from the same site that may assist with understanding what’s most important overall with regards to SEO: www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors. As you will read, CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT is the mantra, along with the importance that users place on the site through social media engagement plus their links to the site. These are by far and away the biggest factors for a website’s popularity and visitor numbers. And yes, the SEOmoz report shown is “predictions & opinions” because Google never reveals their actual algorithm or methods for ranking sites.

So as I wrote at the start of this post, having writers with online expertise writing or editing your website and blog/news content is where any $$$ should be invested, along with engaging with social media users. Well, that’s assuming your website designer/developer is building the site optimally for SEO, which should be done as part of their basic service by any half decent developer… but obviously not all developers are created equal.

Got any questions about the above? Feel free to email me regarding anything about this article or SEO in general.

I’ve spent the last couple of months researching online passive income methods, and while I try to put some of what I learn into action I am also looking at the possibility of buying mature sites that may already have some of the Google ranking benefits that can take a while to gain when starting from scratch. I’ve purchased three sites so far, only small sites with low to mid range traffic, but it’s a nice learning curve to be able to manage sites with a little maturity in terms of their Google ranking along with starting some other sites from scratch.

But back to the site “flipping” world… boy, there are some dodgy dealings going on here! Sure, there are obviously many legitimate sellers who are only after a fair price for their site (think of it like a small business, a “fair” sales price would be a combination of monthly income multiplied by x number of months), but boy oh boy there are a lot who are quite obviously trying to get a price that is far higher than what the site is actually worth from some naive buyer. Of which there are obviously a lot of those out there too. And try to shine a light on some of their bahaviour and you watch how you get attacked!

For those who might be looking to purchase a site themselves, or maybe just want a glimpse into this shady world, here are some of the common behaviours that should send anyone’s alarm bells ringing:

1. Not providing the site URL: Yep, believe it or not it happens. Some sales sites (such as flippa.com) force the seller to provide and display the URL (along with a other essential data), however other sites do not. It’s a little like a car sales website where the listings display the car registration number, as soon as a listing doesn’t display the site URL, I start wondering why.

2. Google Analytics data: Google Analytics is THE industry standard website statistics tool, it’s painstakingly simple to add to a site, and it provides a verifiable range of stats on site visitor numbers, traffic sources, and a range of other valuable information for judging the value of a site. As soon as someone says they don’t have GA installed on a site they’re selling, your first thought should be to walk away. Many will show you some data from software installed on their own server called “Awstats”. Let me repeat part of that: “on their own server”. Umm, yeah, hello? So you’re trying to tell me that data coming from software installed on your own server cannot be altered in any way?? Umm, right. I view this a little like fiddling with the odometer reading on a car: it happens, we all know it happens, so why cry foul when I question you on it. Oh, “you” don’t behave this way? I don’t know you from a piece of wood, why should I believe/trust you? You’re the one selling the site, YOU provide me with the information in order to be able to trust what you’re claiming. It’s not that hard to understand.

3. Organic search engine figures: One of the essential factors of a website’s value is the number and overall percentage of website visitors are “organic” search engine visitors. These are visitors who have done a search on Google, Bing or similar, and have then clicked through to the site as a result of it appearing in the search results. The two other types of visitors are “direct” and “referred”. “Direct” means visitors who have typed the URL directly into their web browser. “Referred” are visitors who have clicked on a link on another website. Both these latter two types of visitors are very easily “gamed” for a website. They can be either paid traffic, where the amount paid could be far more than the claimed earnings of the site, or they could even be a bunch of friends of the seller visiting the site over a sustained period in order to raise visitor number stats to help drive up the price. Again, one of those things that Google Analytics will clarify… again, it happens, we all know it happens, so once again, stop crying foul when I call you on it, and instead provide us with verifiable statistics.

4. Responding aggressively to legitimate due diligence questions: Asking for the above information from sellers has brought out some less than friendly responses from some. Alarm bells a’ringing! This is of course not just a site selling warning signal, but is true of any type of sales. As soon as someone starts to act offended, or responds aggressively, to legitimate due diligence questions, time to move on from that potential sale.

Seems to be a bit of a trend with online sales… previously I talked about SEO and snake oil salespeople, and now it’s site “flipping” and dodgy used car sales people. Do you see a trend?

I must admit, while I am highly versed in most aspects of Search Engine Optimization (one would hope so!), I am still a little in the dark when it comes to EMDs. Which doesn’t really matter for the majority of my clients, as their domain names are brand related more than keyword related. However, with an objective to provide as much information as possible on the subject, following are a few informative articles with subsequent comments/discussions on the matter:

• www.seobythesea.com/2011/10/googles-exact-match-domain-name-patent-detecting-commercial-queries/
• www.seroundtable.com/google-exact-match-domain-keywords-14218.html
• www.seomoz.org/ugc/the-problems-with-exact-match-domains-11543

As you will gather if you’ve taken the time to read the above articles and following discussions, for even the most experienced SEO professionals the jury is still out on the importance of EMDs. So what do you think?

If you do have any questions on anything to do with websites, SEO or social media for small and medium sized businesses please feel free to ask a question in the comments below, or else get in touch via our contact form. As most of our clients would verify, I’m more than happy to have a chat with anyone about their business and what improvements or opportunities might be out there, with no obligation to use Zava Design as your service provider. I’m a big believe in what goes around comes around, so a little help and advice here and there I believe will reward me in other ways down the road.

Anyway, thanks for dropping by, and look forward to conversing with you on the odd occasion about all things digital.

Cheers,
Dave
zavadesign.com