Human Touch of SEO

As online marketers become more aggressive with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaigns, there can become a point at which businesses begin to over-optimize. When focusing purely on SEO, many companies lose sight of the end goal, which is to provide information to users. 


Even when you are following all of the more recognized SEO rules, when is optimization overdone and how can you prevent this from happening on your website? Are there Tsunami warning indicators to get out of the game before Google’s next Panda or Farmer update? And how do you find the ideal balance for your site, not overdoing SEO but also not leaving organic search traffic to your competitors?

High Tech Meets High Touch

In the last few years, savvy marketers have learned that sometimes less really is more when it comes to website optimization. It has become too overblown for its own good. There are clear indicators that it is time to get back to basics, be true to your brand and serve as that expert source, while not adding to the clutter.

As the SEO market has matured over the last 15 years, many advances have enabled online marketers to make smart decisions based on usable data. Many SEO enhancements have revolutionized the way we think about online marketing, and how we help educate consumers while personalizing their online experience.

But at what point does this cross the line and get too tangled up in itself? How you use tools to ensure that your website is found by the right audience at the right time and in the right place is part science, part art and part human nature — a blending of high tech and high touch.

To help you drive a balanced SEO campaign, we offer a few observations as well as tips to tuck into your hip pocket. We will help you recognize the signs that indicate you are about to jump the SEO shark. Search engines continue to release updates, and each one of them will have an impact on your website’s success.

What Rules?

In the beginning, there were keywords — and they were good. Along came spiders, ’bots and other Web crawlers and indexes. Then page ranking. Algorithms and meta-tags. And they, too, were good.

Companies aimed to use the right keyword mix, building them into a campaign’s design, even modifying HTML code to get their websites to appear at the top of searches. An entire SEO/SEM industry has grown up in a remarkably short period of time to help companies navigate this strange new world. Specialists would offer their services to companies, and the rallying cry became “optimize everything”: websites, news releases, advertising, articles, videos and shopping carts.

People became quite giddy with each new optimization discovery. There was no end to the madness.

Spamdexing, or black hat SEO, was inevitable because there were no specific rules at that time. As search engines recognized the false rankings were often caused by data manipulation, they developed more sophisticated algorithms and approaches to rank content and to out those dabbling in what became known as black hat SEO practices.

Stuffing, Cloaking and Link Building

Companies started using so many keywords, also known as keyword stuffing, that it became impossible to read. Some tried cloaking, which is attempting to make keywords invisible to the reader. Through the phases of SEO, it reached a critical point where a majority started to abuse it, losing sight of how much is too much.

Most recently, search engines said the more links the better, that they provided an authority to a site. So build links is what the marketers did. With link juice as the currency of SEO, marketers paid for, posted and exchanged links like mortgage-backed securities until the search engines noticed. Search engines realized that a big link budget could really impact results, and a new set of rules was born. JC Penney, being one of the most infamous recent cases of questionable link building/buying practices, was made an example of to deter others from contributing to the proliferation of spammy links.

Content for Content’s Sake

Noticing a pattern yet? The search engines went on to say that content-rich sites are good, and more keywords are good. So, create is what the content marketers did; some using automation, some just hiring writers — not experts — to pump out loads of content around keywords.

As a result, “content farms” such as About.com sprang up, featuring a page on just about every topic under the sun. These sites became mammoth, providing hundreds of pages of keyword-rich but often shallow and, even in some cases, inaccurate content. This has made it difficult for smaller, more authoritative sites to be found. Also, marketers forgot the most important thing — users want quality content.

Google introduced its Panda update earlier this year to combat low-quality content and those that produce it. If weak content is discovered on your site, Google will now pull down rankings of the entire site. Next, Google is going after content scrapers or scraper sites that copy content for use on their own websites without linking, attributing or acknowledging the original sources.

The New SEO World — The Way Forward

You can’t blame marketers for being confused, but it’s clear that companies forgot that they first are made up of humans working for humans. Marketers would do well to reduce search optimization fat to help users actually find the information they want them to find.

The truth is that it is really competitive out there, so the best thing that you can do is to be strategic and use your resources wisely. Set reasonable goals and understand that SEO is a long-term investment that will continue to evolve. We recommend the following strategies:

Diversity of approach: Use different tactics without focusing on one thing, even if it appears to be working well. Search engines “appreciate” diversity in link building, along with quality content written for human beings, not ’bots. SEO changes all the time, so what works today may not work tomorrow.

Write for people — optimize later: It is possible to overoptimize. When you lose sight of your intended audience: your customers, your readers -— and what is important to them -- because you want to please Google, you hurt yourself. Think about the person who will read and be motivated by your information.

Test, and test again: Don’t be afraid to test new methods and discover new techniques because search engines are changing every day. Just don’t throw everything that has been working for you out of the window and similarly evaluate old tactics to ensure that they are still effective.

International search requires special consideration: This will depend on the dominant search engines in a given country or market and how they work, including culture and language. Research and understand those parameters.

Use the right tools: SEO tools are advancing every day to help marketers be strategic and make informed decisions. Take advantage of tools that help save time, provide insight and keep up with the ever-changing search engines.

Finally, remember when you were in school you were told to write about what you know and write from the heart? The same rule applies when successfully writing — and optimizing — for the Web. 

Ten SEO Techniques All Web Sites Should Use

SEO is such a hot topic these days. How do you get your web site within the first page or two of the search engines? How do you increase your Google page rank?

There are companies who dedicate themselves full time to doing SEO at a pretty penny. Something a lot of people can’t necessarily afford to pay for or spend the time on. However, there are some simple things you can do when building your site that will help increase your chances of having good results. In no particular order, below are 10 of these items…

1. Title Tag

Near the very top of a web site’s source code you’ll find various meta tags — the standard ones being the Title, Description and Keyword tags. The title tag is technically not a meta tag, though it is commonly associated with them. The title tag plays such a large role in the indexing of your web site, that it is considered the most important of the three.

A page title is the first thing a search engine will look at when determining just what the particular page is about. It is also the first thing potential visitors will see when looking at your search engine listing.

It’s important to include a keyword or two in the title tag — but don’t go overboard – you don’t want to do what’s known as “keyword stuffing” which does nothing but make your web site look like spam. Most people will include either the company name, or title of the particular page here, as well.

2. Meta Tags

There are two primary meta tags in terms of SEO — the description and the keyword tag. It’s debatable whether the search engines use the description tag as far as ranking your results. However it is one of the more important tags because it is listed in your search result — it is what users read when your link comes up and what makes them decide whether or not to click on your link.

Be sure to include a few relevant keywords in this tag, but don’t stuff it with keywords either. The description tag should read like a sentence — not a keyword list.

Due to “keyword stuffing” many search engines now completely disregard the keyword tag. It is no longer nearly as important as it was years ago, however it doesn’t hurt to include them in your source code.

When creating your keyword list, you’ll want to think of the specific terms people will type in when searching for a site like yours. Just don’t go overboard — too many duplicates are not a good thing (as in “web designer” “web designers” “custom web designer” “html web designer” “your state here web designer” – you get the idea). Those are all basically the same, so pick one or two variations at the most and move onto the next keyword.

3. Proper Use of Heading Tags

This is a very important element to consider when writing out your site copy. Use of heading tags helps users, web browsers and search engines alike know where the major key points of your copy are.

Your main page title should use the <h1> tag — this shows what your page is about. Use of additional tags, such as <h2> and <h3> are equally important by helping to break down your copy. For one, you’ll see a visual break in the text. But as far as the search engines are concerned, it will automatically know what your topics are on a page. The various heading tags give a priority to the content and help index your site properly.

4. Alt Attributes on Images

Putting alt attributes on your images actually serves two purposes. In terms of SEO, putting a brief yet descriptive alt attribute along with your image, places additional relevant text to your source code that the search engines can see when indexing your site. The more relevant text on your page the better chance you have of achieving higher search engine rankings.

In addition, including image alt attributes help the visually impaired who access web sites using a screen reader. They can’t see the image, but with a descriptive alt attribute, they will be able to know what your image is.

5. Title Attributes on Links

Including title attributes on links is another important step that any good web site will have. That’s the little “tool tip” that pops up when you place your mouse over a link. These are especially important for image links, but equally useful for text links.

As a note, you should use descriptive text for your links. “Click here” doesn’t really tell a person – or more importantly, the search engines — what the link is. At the very least put a title tag that will explain that “Click Here” really means “Web Design Portfolio” for example. Better yet – make the main link text something like “View my web design portfolio” — this will give some value to the link showing that the resulting page is relevant to searches for portfolio’s.

6. XML Sitemap

My last post referenced the sitemaps used by web visitors to help them navigate through your site themselves. However, there’s another version — XML sitemaps — that are used by the search engines in order to index through your site, as well.

This list of ALL pages / posts / etc. of your site also includes information such as the date the page was last modified, as well as a priority number of what you feel the most important pages of your sites are. All elements that help the search engines properly find and link to all content of your site.

7. Relevant Content

Having content relevant to your main page or site topic is perhaps the most important SEO aspect of a page. You can put all the keywords you want in the meta tags and alt image tags, etc — but if the actual readable text on the page is not relevant to the target keywords, it ends up basically being a futile attempt.

While it is important to include as many keywords in your page copy as possible, it is equally as important for it to read well and make sense. I’m sure we’ve all seen keyword stuffed pages written by SEO companies that honestly don’t make much sense from the reader’s point of view.

When creating your site copy, just write naturally, explaining whatever information you’re discussing. The key is to make it relevant, and to have it make sense to the reader. Even if you trick the search engines into thinking your page is great — when a potential customer arrives at the site and can’t make heads or tails of your information and it just feels spammy to them — you can bet they’ll be clicking on the next web site within a matter of seconds.

8. Link Building

We’ve probably all heard of Google Page Rank — it seems to be every web site owner’s dream to have as high a page rank as possible. While the algorithm for determining page rank encompasses many elements, and is constantly changing, one item is the number of links pointing to your web site.

Now, you’ll want to steer clear of link farms and other spammy attempts at getting links to your site. However there are many reputable and niche directory sites that you can use to submit your web site, or specific blog articles to.

With genuine content — especially if you have a blog — you’ll be able to generate links with other web sites and blogs, as well. It’s somewhat of a give and take, in that if you link out to other sites, you’ll find sites linking back to you  — and hopefully see your page rank going up, as well!

9. Social Media

Although technically not SEO, Social Media is such a growing factor in getting your web site noticed, that it’s an important element to include in your plan.

Social media ranges from social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn — to social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon and many more. There is a lot of relationship building involved, but as you build your own networks and build quality content on your web site or blog, you’ll see traffic to your web site increasing, as well.

As with any relationship, it is a give and take. Don’t just expect to join a site like Twitter for the pure sake of pushing your content. That just won’t fly — your true intentions will stick out like a sore thumb and do nothing but turn people off.

Even if you are on the site purely for networking reasons, the key is to make friends. Help out members of your network if they ask for a “retweet” or Digg, give helpful advice if asked, etc. You’ll see the same in return.

If you write a great post and have built meaningful relationships with peers in your  niche, you’ll often find that friends will submit your posts and give you votes on the social bookmarking sites. The more votes you receive, the more likely your post is to be noticed by others and shared around, often resulting in additional link backs from other blogs, etc.

10. A Few SEO Don’ts — Flash and Splash

Along with any list of Do’s come the Don’ts. As far as SEO is concerned, two of these items are splash pages (often consisting of a flash animation) and all flash web sites.

Yes, flash is pretty! Full flash web sites can actually be amazing to look at — their own bit of interactive artwork. But unfortunately the search engines don’t get along well with Flash. Although there is talk of possible advancement in this area, for the most part the search engines cannot read Flash.

All that great content that you wrote for your site will not be seen by the search engines if it’s embedded into a Flash web site. As far as the search engines are concerned, your all flash web site might as well be invisible. And if the search engines can’t see your site content, a good chunk of potential customers will miss out on what you have to offer, too.

Equally as “pointless” are splash pages. Once very popular, the splash page should no longer be an important feature of any site. While splash pages used to serve as an introduction into a web site (often with a flash animation), it is no longer seen as helpful, and often times might actually annoy visitors.

For one — it’s an extra click to get into your content. Worse is when you don’t give a “skip intro” option or set of links into your main site content — because you’re essentially forcing your visitors to sit through the full animation. If you’re lucky, this will only annoy them… if not — they’ll just leave without giving your main web site a shot. And without an html link pointing into your site, the search engines have no way to continue either (unless you made use of a sitemap.xml file — but still…)

A good alternative to both issues is to make use of a flash header. There’s no problem to include a flash animation at the top of your main site, or as a feature within the content area, etc. Because this is an addition to your web site, as opposed to a full separate element.