The Backlash of Hosted Site Solutions

Several kinds of sites fall into this category, including many kinds of site builders, shopping carts, and some other specialty niche business sites. Niche business sites include Real Estate, Insurance, Kitchen Designer, and other business sites hosted by a company that “specializes” in “easy” sites for that kind of business.

Not only are such sites deadly to a business because they lack personality, they also are deadly to SEO, for a number of reasons.

1. They are likely to use Flash and heavy JavaScript in the site template. They do this to look impressive, but in fact, it is usually NOT the most efficient way to achieve the impact needed, and so much is used that the code is bloated and cumbersome for people and search engines to utilize. Search engines may time out before they even get to the content.
2. The templates are identical, from one site to another. Usually, the only thing that changes is the individual page content, and the images in the template (still shared by many sites). Search engines do pay attention to that, but ONLY if they get through the code to the actual content.
3. You cannot control the code of the page at all, or any template elements. If it is inefficient, too bad.
4. Once you build in one, you cannot move it. If you wish to move it into something more SEO friendly, you will have to rebuild it – and your individual page URLs will likely change in the process. Regaining ground lost from that can take some time.
5. Most have a way to put in metatags, or control alt-tags. But those are not the most important parts of page coding.
6. Many times, people will pay a monthly fee for this kind of site, taken in by the illusion that “it is so easy anyone can do it”, and will end up with an ineffective site, and never know why. For the same money, they could have got a much better site, that actually worked to help build their business.

The silly thing is, typically a good quality site costs the same, or only a very little more. And the difference in performance pays for the difference in price, many times over.

I wish there were a simple solution. But every one that we have seen has been a disappointment, and as new clients come to us, asking for help in getting their site functioning, this impression has been reinforced over and over, and it is clear that when a site that is built in this kind of system does not work, half of the blame falls squarely on the system itself.

No Follows and Google

Another “dictated by Google” topic. Nofollow was originally designed to keep search engines from indexing links that you did not want them to index.

It seems though, that search engines pay attention to it when they want, and ignore it otherwise. So as a protection, which it was originally intended as, it is practically useless. Google has thought of another use though.

They say you should use it on all links going off your site that are irrelevant (though they can’t tell you just what that means), or which were paid for (even though they don’t know what THAT means either), or which they feel are not otherwise suitable (good luck getting them to define what that is).

Now, the problem here, in my judgement, is that Google has dictated that people must DO something that is not intuitive, in order to not be punished for not having done it. The average person has no clue what a “nofollow” tag is, or how to use it. And there are a lot of average people out there building websites.

Google didn’t used to punish people for not knowing the rules. They just rewarded them if they DID know them. A person of integrity, with no intent to deceive, would not be caught in a trap of SEO rules they knew nothing about and accidentally violated. That has flipped though. Now, everything is fair game in the world of Google roulette.

Nofollow tags are just another in a long line of fussy, inconsistent, and illogical recommendations that Google has released. It has become worse and worse in the last year. Not only do you have to act against human nature, according to a set of very fussy rules, it appears that Google expects people to be gamblers or mind readers. There are those who will disagree with me, but some of those who would have disagreed last year have found themselves on the receiving end of the Google stick, and no longer think that it only takes intelligence and integrity to succeed in the SEO world.

There are still things we do to pages to make them better. And we still keep the people first rule in mind. But I can no longer say with any confidence that if you just try to see that your pages are accurately indexed that you won’t be caught out. Google has left logic behind, and has crossed the line into unreasonable dictation and autocracy. Their rules, which once made sense, no longer do.

Building Backlinks – More Confusing than Ever

Apparently, backlinks are bad. Except when they are good. And nobody seems to know just what that means anymore, including Google. The rules for backlinks are so convoluted now, that not even Google knows just what is, and is not, an acceptable link.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. I have never been in favor of manipulative tactics, and never will. But I am in favor of smart strategies where people can learn to do things in a way that helps their business grow on a budget – and I’m in favor of rules that do not reward people on the basis of money, instead of on the basis of merit.

So recently, with some of the things Google is saying, one has to wonder just what their goal is. And just what sort of intellectual schizophrenia is causing them to talk themselves in circles trying to explain and justify their policies! It is clear that they really have no idea of what “good” linking really is, or how to define it as opposed to “bad” linking.

Too many links is bad. How many is too many? Maybe more than 100 a month. Maybe more than that, maybe less.

Paid links are bad. Only what is a paid link? Paid directories, paid links on private sites, any link you gave something of value for, including template links, and any other kind of viral links, presumably, because, after all, where is the difference between a template link and an article byline link? Someone liked your work – they picked it up, and helped you promote your site in return. Fair, and certainly a recommendation since they’d not republish bad work. Only Google doesn’t think so.

Irrelevant links are bad. But what is irrelevant? Who is to judge that? Computers are notoriously bad at language use, and even worse when it comes to human nature. Is a homeschool link on a work at home site irrelevant? The topics do not match! But ask any homeschooling work at home mom and she’ll tell you they are very relevant!

Cross linking is bad – though I cannot see why it should be. It is natural that anyone who owns more than one site would want to leverage the marketing of one to benefit the other. To NOT do so is bad business. So Google is punishing people for being wise business owners? Sure, it can be abused – when you have 50 trashy sites with no content interlinked, that’s bad cross linking. But when you have 20 sites, each filled with high quality, custom written content, with topics that overlap, where is the abuse?

Reciprocal links are devalued. If the sites are high quality, and the links coming off them are similarly high quality, they should not be. Links are supposed to be a recommendation – a trade is a fair recommendation for a quality site. Good sites don’t link to bad ones. That means the link passed inspection and was worth recommending. And that is bad, why?

Good quality links still count. Though I don’t know what that could be… After you eliminate viral linking, link trades, directory links, cross links, anything Google’s computers think is not an exact match, and put a cap on how many you can build each month, then throw in all of the fussy and picky rules about how pages can be optimized now, and what it means is this:

A new site has no tools with which to promote itself other than paying a high price for traffic. Little sites cannot begin to catch up with the competition unless they have a high budget – which means, effectively, that they cannot hope to compete, because most have limited funds.

Google gave the impression that they were about accurate indexing of the web. That what they cared most about in a site was whether it added to the substance of the web. We now know, they only said that as long as saying it added to the substance of their bank accounts. In a shakier economy, when the easy ad dollars are gone, Google has changed from the “Equalizer” to the “Terminator”.

The web was the one place where someone could get ahead by sheer hard work and by a good idea and good ethics. If you did it right, and worked it smart, you could compete against anyone because your idea was good and your execution of it was intelligent.

No more. Google has decided that the dollar should rule. If you have a good idea, and a low budget, linkbuilding is now such a minefield of inconsistencies that you’ll need a pro to optimize your site just to have a fighting chance and getting found.

Article Marketing and SEO

A month or so ago I wrote a scathing post about bad article marketing. So I guess it is only fair that we say something about GOOD article marketing – which isn’t that different from blogging, in fact.

The most important aspect is value. The article must have value to the reader first of all. Value can be instruction, enlightenment, entertainment, facts, etc.  In order to have value, it must also have a touch of uniqueness – either you say something new, or you say it in a way that is new. Something they can’t find just anywhere.

It should draw the reader back to the website it is promoting. That means choosing the topics carefully. But it also means leaving the advertising for the author resource box, and not putting it in the article.

An article should use keywords wisely. Keyword usage here follows the same “people first” rule that every other SEO tactic does. Keep them logical and natural, in both titles and article bodies. Keywords in the article and title will help the article garner more traffic in its own right – but never sacrifice article quality to any arbitrary rule for keyword density!

The resource box is your prime option for backlink power. A well worded author bio, with some anchor text to help the website that it points to is useful – unless the article might be posted where hyperlinks are stripped out. In that case, you’ll want to put the URL in bare, with keywords near it.

SEO for article marketing really isn’t any different than for a website. Be smart about it, make it natural and logical. Make the writing appealing to people, and it gains viral power. Fail at that, and you’ve just created more internet detritus.

Branching Out with SEO and a Second Website

So your website is functioning, optimized to the teeth, and you are still having a hard time competing. The logical temptation is to build another website as a traffic funnel. It is often recommended by SEO gurus – but how they recommend it varies widely! Just for the record, to get it out of the way early, a blog is just a variation on the second website theme.

The concept is sound – but often the execution of it is not. If you are going to build a second website, there are some things you need to realize:

• You just doubled your maintenance and upkeep. This can be worth it if it is still the most effective use of advertising dollars.
• You just doubled your marketing requirements. You now have TWO sites to promote. Again, done right, it can be a reasonable effort, done wrong, it will drain you without significant return.
• You should not build a second product site, unless you have a separate category of products which does not go with the first.
• If you build an informational site, then it should target a topic which is easy to get traffic for, while approaching the promotion of your product site in a careful and polite manner. This is the kind of site people most often do wrong, by being sloppy about it, providing no new information, or by advertising blatantly.

Creating a second website is done by many companies, and can be a successful way to have the opportunity to optimize more successfully for long tail keywords. This can allow you to compete in crowded niches more successfully, especially when you are the little guy and the others can all outgun you.

But it only works well if it is done intelligently. Just any old site won’t do – it has to be a POPULAR site. This is absolutely achievable, but not in the way that will generally come to mind first for the average business owner. Because often the best topics are not the most obvious.

Using this strategy, a small business can top a big one in the search engines. But only if the concept is executed well.

Limitations of PPC

I’ve written many other times about PPC, but it bears writing about here as well. You should know at the outset, that I have no use for it – but that is primarily because it has never been something that would have worked for one of my clients! I’ll explain why:

1. They all had very low marketing budgets. PPC requires that you invest a certain amount just to figure out what will work, then fine tune, then, IF you can find a successful combination, you can profit from it.
2. Most have had low “profit per order” averages. With average profit per order of less than $10, PPC will never work (some quick math shows why). It is hard to make it work unless you have a fairly healthy profit per order.
3. They could get far more bang for the buck, with long term momentum, from other forms of marketing.

PPC is easy to do the math for. By doing some quick math ahead of time, you can figure out pretty fast whether it is going to be even a possibility:

First, calculate your average profit per order. If someone comes into your jewelry store and orders a necklace and two bracelets, which cost a total of $75, and you make a 10% profit from that (remember to calculate actual profit, not just retail minus wholesale), then you made $7.50. If that order amount is average, you are out of the running with PPC, you don’t even need to go further because it is less than $10.

If the average is more than $10, then go to step two – calculate your average profit per VISITOR. That is, divide the amount of profit for a specific period by the total number of site visitors over the same period. If that is less than $.5, you are dead in the water – if it is less than $.50, then it is going to be VERY hard to make PPC work – and may still be impossible for YOUR particular industry.

Next, find out what the average keywords are going for in your market. Some are priced higher than others, so if you are in a highly competitive field, you may have to spend a LOT to get traffic. If you are in a less competitive field, you may get away with less. NOTHING goes for less than $.05 per click, but many go for MUCH higher. Base your math on a low average.

If the low average cost per click is higher than your average profit per VISITOR, then you won’t be able to make it work. At all.

You must compare it with average profit per visitor, because only a small percentage of those clicks are going to even result in sales.

There is another factor also – and that is Quality. For many small businesses, the quality of visitors from PPC is lower than from organic traffic. Some of this has to do with the quality of the ad, some of it has to do with the fact that the psychology of people who click ads is different than the psychology of people who click on organic links. But I’ve seen a PPC campaign where traffic came, but no one bought, in spite of tweaking, and that is not uncommon.

Think about it for your particular business and industry. Do the math first, and you are less likely to get burned by a neat sounding idea that wasn’t ever going to work.

SEO, and SEM

Do you need SEO, or do you need SEM?

The line between the two can be somewhat blurry, but the terms mean:

Search Engine Optimization

and

Search Engine Marketing

The best definition I’ve heard was that Search Engine Optimization are tactics you use to optimize the search engine indexing of your site – that means tags, content optimization, clean code, etc. Search Engine Marketing is marketing strategies that enhance the amount of traffic that comes in from search engines.

One source seemed to think the difference was whether you pay for it or not. But that is less accurate, because you may pay or not for SEO, you may pay or not for SEM.

SEM, then, would include backlinks, PPC, directory listings (paid or not), optimized anchor text in off-site links, and anything else you do off of your site to enhance the amount of traffic from the search engines.

For many small businesses, these two forms of encouraging traffic, if done by someone who knows their stuff (and who knows how to get the most bang for your limited bucks), are highly effective ad dollars. They can also be a huge sucking hole in your budget if the wrong methods are chosen, or if they are done badly.

To Dash, or Not to Dash – The Unspeakable Truth About Domain Names

“Internet Marketing” books often recommend using dashes in your domain names to break up words for higher search engine impact. Consequently, I have clients all the time who have been sucked in by this advice, who cannot understand why I tell them to forget it.

Those internet marketers don’t know diddly about running a real business. They only know how to scam people online, so they don’t give a rip about average domain name issues. And what they miss is absolutely critical!

For a real business, you need a name that is speakable. If you are going to tell people the name of your website, either over the phone, in person, or on the radio, you need a name that they can hear, and remember.

That means no dashes.

A fairly sizable ISP in our area has a URL with a dash. So not only do their telephone personnel complain about people not getting it over the phone, but every single client of theirs with an email address through them has the dash problem – they know it is twice as hard to convey that email address over the phone or other times when they have to share it verbally.

Dashes are dashed awkward to say and have them be comprehensible. Not only that, but search engines really don’t care whether dashes are there or not! They are capable of recognizing words even with no dashes. That isn’t theory, no matter what you hear elsewhere, we’ve proven it.

A domain name that has a keyword or two in it is a plus – not enough of a plus to go through convoluted efforts to get it, but worth getting if you can create a graceful one that contains a keyword. But more than that, make it speakable, and memorable.

That will make more of a difference to your business success than dashed keywords ever could.

Unstuff Those URLs!

Keyword stuffing is often visible in URLs for the tackier websites. There is a fine line between keyword stuffing, and legit keyword use in URLs, but it’s pretty obvious when someone crosses it!

You often see long strings of words with dashes between them for filenames. This happens primarily with blog or CMS type software where the filename is auto-generated from the page name. So we aren’t talking about that – we’re talking about deliberate keyword stuffing in a website.

First, there is content layering. Also a legit tactic, but one that is often abused as well. This refers to setting up folders on the site to hold categories, where the folders have a keyword for the name of the folder. One or two words is fine – three is borderline – four is pretty much over the limit.

If you have a CMS where you set up categories or sections in a site structure, the system often creates an artificial folder name from the categories. Be careful with this, because it is easy to end up with URLs that look like they have been keyword stuffed. Stick to one word names when you can – or enter a single name if they have a place where it is used for the URL (in Joomla, this is the Title Alias in J1.5 and later). Otherwise, be really careful about giving your categories names that are very long.

Keywords in URLs are a nudge factor, not a power play. So make sure you don’t go overboard on them – if your site looks like someone is trying to manipulate, a penalty from the search engines can make it difficult to compete. Keep them logical, human readable, and as simple as possible for maximum power.

More is not better. SMART is better.

Bottom of the Page Considerations

The bottom of the page contains some valuable SEO real estate, but not, perhaps, in the manner that you think. Extremes about bottom text run the gamut from ignoring it, to abusing it. Proper use is again, in the middle.

The bottom of the page is the standard location for design credits, disclaimers, and copyright notices. Those things DO all belong there. Nothing should replace them.

Your business name and location may also go at the bottom of the page – this is one option if you need to reach a local market. If you have emphasized location elsewhere though, you do not need to include it here.

Bottom of the page is also the proper location for certain types of standard notices, such as, “Please contact us at 123-456-7890 if you do not find the (product category) you need.” That kind of notice can contain CONSERVATIVE keywords – again, natural use.

What you do NOT want to do on the bottom of the page, is use a keyword string, a hidden link string, or other tactics which are considered to be unethical by search engines.

There are things that naturally BELONG on the bottom of the page. Stick to those, and don’t try to stuff it with anything else. Leave off the stuff that does NOT belong there.

Wise use of the space helps keep your site stable with search engines, without getting it flagged for being spammy.

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