There always seems to be someone, somewhere trying to prove that SEO is unnecessary, or that they can do better without it. I told you the other day about all the newsletters I receive in the name of keeping myself well-informed. The newlsetter that inspired my post today is one written by someone called Jeff Walker who owns The Product Launch Formula. He was talking about a friend of his, John Reese and how he’d found a shortcut to having the #One-ranked site in any niche.

The big mystery is to buy it. Yep, that’s right. That’s what they say. Of course this sounds just too easy. But how much do you think a website owner would sell a site for if he’s spend precious time and money edging it into the @One spot? He’s not going to let it go easily right?

But even if he did that, the person who got the site into the #One spot in the first place–can’t he do it again with another site? And then what? Would all the money you just paid for your @One spot be just a big waste of time? And assuming you bought the site because you don’t know a thing about SEO, wouldn’t the field then be open for anyone who does know SEO to streak past you?

If you take a look at his site, Jeff has a Google PR of 5. Now that’s not easy to achieve, and whether  he calls it that or not, he must be using some form of SEO to achieve such good results in an extremely competitive niche. So isn’t he misleading his potential customers? I’ll say.

No matter how some ‘marketers’ try to paint the picture, there’s no getting away from the fact that if you want good online marketing results, you simply must learn about SEO or hire someone who does. Period.

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Have you noticed how many online groups are offering their members some kind of help with SEO lately? As part of ‘keeping my finger on the pulse’ I’m signed up to a number of online newsletters. Only a couple of them are actually for SEO. The rest are a variety of marketing, writing and other online business groups. All of them at some point have run articles about SEO.

The latest really surprised me: American Writers and Artists Inc. (AWAI) just ran an article called “7 Steps to a Winning SEO Strategy.” Alarmingly, in the middle of a fairly basic description of SEO strategy, they’re offering a Web copywriting intensive that will make you a “working web copy specialist after only three days of training.”

I’d be the first to admit that good writing skills are essential to good copy, but I really don’t think you can learn everything you need to know to be a good SEO writer in three days. Heck, after working in the field for two years it took me a couple of months to decide whether or not I knew enough to go out on my own as a fully-fledged SEO writer.

Companies that promote these kind of schemes in any niche are, in my opinion, doing a great disservice to their profession. There’s a lot to be said for experience and the kind of knowledge you can only get from immersion in a certain subject. I don’t think you can’t learn enough about anything to actually work in the field. And if you’re going to learn something, doesn’t it make a lot more sense to learn from someone who specializes in that particular niche?

What do you think?

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I really have the goods for you today! If you just read through this post and follow the links, you will be arming yourself with knowledge from true experts in their field. If you use it, the Internet community better watch out!

There is no better way to learn than to keep up with the best blogs in the business. With this in mind I’ve decided to pull together the best ever SEO blog post from a number of really cool blogs.

First up is Barry Welford with his Headlines are for Humans, Titles are for Robots. Barry’s right. The first thing you need with any web page or article is a really superb title. It has to grab the attention of the reader, who may be scanning a list, and it has to impress the search engines with relevant keywords too.

Donna Fontenot chose her Search Marketing and the Persuasion Principles where she discusses

Still on the subject of copywriting, which is a priority with good SEO, Chuck Masterson sent me his hottest post on the subject, which is The Discovery Library. There are gems in here so be sure to read it.

Yura has already made a great compilation about all aspects of a succesful site that he says is his most successful post: Learn How to Write Titles to Get Traffic and Links: The Ultimate Guide.

OK, we’ve had a lot about what we should be doing for good SEO: Now let’s look at a tongue-in-cheek account of what we shouldn’t be doing as SEOs. Judith ‘deCabbit’ Lewis from SEOchicks nominated The Seven Deadly Sins of SEO as her most successful SEO post.

Julie Joyce nominated another SEO Chicks post: Could a Chimp Do SEO? Heck Yes!

The Gypsy nominated this post by Aaron Wall: How much is a Page #1 Google Ranking Worth? It’s a very long article: amounts to a complete commercial appraisal of whether or not a coveted #1 ranking on Google is what you really need.

Link building specialist Debra Mastaler suggested I include a post from the Semmys.org. well, if you can choose between these then you have better powers of deduction than I do, so go see for yourself!

If you are not familiar with the name Todd Mintz, you should make a point of paying attention to him. He doesn’t blow his own trumpet, but he’s quietly very knowledgeable about SEO. Without further ado, I give you his post SEO, Surrealism and Salvador Dali!

Here’s my personal favorite from all the posts mentioned here: Why Do the (Good) SEOs Cost So %&*# Much?Nominated by Will Scott, this struck a chord with me for many reasons, and I’m sure it will with just about every other SEO too. The average client just can’t see what’s the big deal about SEO until he’s not ranking. And once we do our job and a site is doing much better, that same client tend to think their success is due to a lot of other factors too, thereby stealing our thunder. Sigh.

Let me bring up the rear with my favorite from my own posts, Top SEO Expert Aaron Wall Speaks Out. This was a hugely successful post for me, thanks to Aaron who gave such informative answers to my questions. Interestingly (well to me anyway) this only got about 70 percent of the traffic that came to my other most popular post, 17 Habits of Highly Popular Bloggers. That has 30 percent more traffic, but judging by how long people stayed on the page, that traffic was less highly targeted. I had far more interaction with the Aaron Wall post.

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There are a number of ‘hot topics’ that regularly perplex even the most knowledgeable SEOs. Either that, or discussion rages so hot that the restof us don’t know what to believe. Whenever possible I love to get bleeding-edge insights from someone at the top of his game. Aaron Wall is just such an SEO expert, and boy did he give me some straight answers to questions I put to him.

This is the second in my series of interviews with SEO scions, and it is considerably overdue. Anyway, better late than never, and I think you’ll agree it was definitely well worth waiting for. Aaron exceeded my expectations in true industry-leading style. Notice how stars in any field are always jaw-droppingly generous with their knowledge?

So, on with the good stuff!

Marketmou: OK, let’s start with the question that everyone always wants to know: How did you get into SEO and to what do you attribute your astounding success in this new industry at such an early age?

My first website was a rant website. I had no money and wanted exposure. From there organic search was a natural path to take.

As I am nearing 30, I don’t really feel so young anymore…after all 30 is the hill, until I am there…and then maybe the hill moves to 40. As far as why I did well I think it comes down to having a lot of great friends, working long and hard, learning a lot, and helping lots of people. No one thing makes or breaks you, but if you work hard and give for an extended period of time it eventually comes back to you many times over.

Marketmou: Aaron, you’re probably the most highly respected SEO of all time, and you’ve accomplished so much, so you have to be the best person to ask: Where do you see the SEO industry headed? It has refined and consolidated since the early days of the Web, do you think we’re going to see many more changes?

I think the best SEOs are generally not selling too much consulting these days (we don’t do much and we probably still do a bit too much). The field of SEO is largely becoming a game of brand building and relationship building. If you have to do all that marketing work it is not much more effort to create products and a company around it. In other words, I think many of the best SEOs are becoming publishers who lead their respective marketplaces. Many are in high paying areas like finance, while others are in many areas of high personal interest like photography.

Marketmou: Do you see any benefits in the introduction of industry standards and certification? And if so, what form do you think they should take? There are a few places online where you can get SEO certification and some of them are even ISO-backed, but are they any good?

Well…if you share REALLY effective highly profitable tips on your blog a Google engineer *may* burn your website in retribution. Given that sort of market activity and the constant evolution of search, any industry-wide certification would probably be promoting watered down techniques.

Many of the attempts at achieving industry standards in many industries represent attempted power grabs by greedy self promotional charlatans. When I read a 3 part series about how you *can’t* learn SEO from a book by a guy associated with SEMPO that only confirmed my earlier perceptions of that organization.

Marketmou: OK, here comes the big one: What’s your stance on paid links? Some of the big SEOs are going against the tide and still dealing in paid links, while others are leaving it well alone. What do you advise anyone wanting to get some good links fast?

Google clearly barters for links and so do many other people. Many of the best links come as a proxy of conversation or market participation. Those links tend to be of lower risk and higher ROI than most paid links because if someone recommends you that drives direct value as well as any search related value.

Having said all that, if you put in all the effort you feel like putting in, and are a few spots short of the top, sometimes buying a couple nice links is all it takes to put your site at the top. If you can afford the risk and think the ROI is there then go for it.

Marketmou: What about reciprocal links? Do you still think it’s worth pursuing reciprocal links, or is it safer to look for incoming one-way links?

If you do nothing but reciprocal then that is no good. A few select reciprocals makes sense. Also if you are doing natural cross promotion and in community linking that is good. No man is an island after all, and if you don’t promote others it is a lot harder to get others to help promote you. Ideally the best links represent relationships…person X trusts person Y.

Marketmou: Do you think that too much emphasis is placed on link-building when really people should be thinking about building a website that’s as SEO-compliant as they can get it and providing content that other webmasters will want to link to? Or do you think that links can make up for shortcomings in other areas of SEO?

I have seen PageRank 2 blogs with 500 blog posts. Clearly those people need to work on link building. I have seen PageRank 5 and PageRank 6 sites that had little content on them. Clearly those people need to work on content development. The balance can be off in either direction.

But if you think that you will win just by content quality it is simply untrue. You have to build a brand and/or social relationships in your marketplace such that people appreciate what you have to say. Perceived content quality (based on your status and relationships) is often far more important than actual content quality.

One of my favorite quotes on this front comes from Abraham Lincoln, “With public sentiment, nothing can fail.”

Marketmou: What’s your advice to someone starting a website from scratch? What’s the most important aspect of SEO to attend to for a new website?

I would say to spend a good bit of time doing market research before launching your site. Start using a good domain name if you can afford one…and honestly most people can because if they are limited on cash but passionate usually there is more than enough creativity to come up with a good name.

If you plan on selling consulting or advertising or some other model based largely on intellectual property and spreading ideas I like the idea of putting a blog on your homepage off the start, and blogging every day. Cultivate relationships and share real value with your site visitors. If enough people like your sites then eventually the search engines will too.

Marketmou: Google has refined its algorithms and continues to do so. Can you go out on a limb for us and predict any big changes coming soon? Or do you think that—in the near future at least—changes will be far less significant than say the Florida Update, or Big Daddy?

It is hard to say when big changes will occur. I think there has been an obvious shift toward branded websites over the past couple years. And I think the leaked Google review documents do a lot to show which direction Google desires to shift their results in and what they are looking for.

Google has a lot of usage data, and links are quite gamed because so many people know they have value. Eventually Google may move to integrate more usage data in their relevancy algorithms and lower their weighting on links a bit. As the web continues to age I would suspect that Google would stop counting domain age as a sign of quality as much as they have or they will create a stale web, where the only pages that rank are mainstream media stories, large corporate authority sites, blog posts on authoritative blogs, and dirt old websites.

Marketmou: What have been your most valuable sources for the amazing body of knowledge you’ve accumulated, and which now constitutes your SEO Book Training Program?

Our SEO Training Program was not built from any one source, but out of working on hundreds of websites, reading hundreds of books, and thousands of customer interactions.

Our site’s About page lists many of the inspirations, including Tim Berners-Lee, Seth Godin, Danny Sullivan, and NFFC.

Marketmou: For anyone wanting to get into SEO but who can’t afford your course yet, what books would you recommend they read? And what else can they do to make sure they learn the right stuff?

For books I suggest every web publisher read

- Don’t Make Me Think - Steve Krug on usability

- The Purple Cow - Seth Godin on how to be remarkable

- The Cluetrain Manifesto - numerous authors on how markets are conversations

- The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell on how ideas spread

Some other key articles worth reading to understand the fundamental structure and competitive nature of the web are the article about cumulative advantage by Duncan Watts and The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin.

The other tip I would have is to not spend a lot of money on automated SEO tools or packages that lock you into recurring fees with the provider. Buy a domain and host your site, but other than that do not get locked into someone else’s system unless you feel you can afford it and it adds value to you. Many of the best content management programs (like Wordpress and Drupal) are free and open source. Many of the best SEO tools are free.

Marketmou: Finally: Do you think that Black Hat SEO has a place in the industry? Or do you think it’s just unethical to try and fool the search engines? Would you agree with the concept that Black Hat operators are just making it all more difficult for everyone in the long run because they’re triggering more updates to the algorithms?

I still think some of the search engineers have a bit of a maniacal power trip doing their job…many of them are no better than the worst “spammers.” And as a company, they often fail to follow their own guidelines. At one point in time Google had their ads syndicated on Warez sites.

And they (and other search engines) fund a lot of copyright violations via their ad programs. If you read the 2007 Google remote quality rater documents they state that lyrics sites can not even be rated as spam - that shows Google’s blatant disrespect for copyright more fully than anything else I have read to date.

Their rule sets keep shifting. Nofollow was supposed to prevent blog comment spamming, and then suddenly at some point in time you are viewed as a spammer if you do not use it on any paid links. They changed how they viewed the web to fit their own business needs. Just look at how many scammy monthly search engine submission ads they still promote via AdWords. They know those ads rip people off and they do not care because they are getting the money.

The rules and guidelines keep changing. Ultimately if you want to create a real sustainable business your value add should be far beyond the lower threshold of whatever the engines aim to clean up. And if usage data becomes more important, then you really need to build a brand and solid relationships to compete.

Marketmou: I tried to ask questions that will make this interview as useful as possible to readers. Did I miss out anything important?

I think you did a good job. cheers

Thank you Aaron, I’m thrilled to have so much great information to pass on.

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I’m sure I speak for a lot of fellow-SEO people when I tell you that reading how some (far too many) regard SEO as a scam fairly makes me bristle.

Why? Because I adhere to a very strict personal code, and uphold my principles consistently. I know plenty of other SEOs who take their ethics seriously too. We would never entertain the thought of making a living at something regarded as a criminal activity, or even ’shady’ for that matter.

I acknowledge that there are people in our industry whose ethics leave a lot to be desired, and who definitely do not offer value for money. But hey, you’ll find that in any industry. When an accountant shows up in the news having fiddled thousands out of their life savings, do you get news flashes trashing the entire accounting industry? Of course not, so why single us out for this dubious honor?

It was actually gratifying for me to read over at Search Engine Watch that one particular SEO company that had been found to be scamming clients finally got its come-uppance.

For some time this question has been discussed again and again: Are SEOs capable of sustaining self-imposed standards that negate the necessity for formal and legal industry standards? Or should we go the formal route?

While I accept the majority opinion (example here) that it would be impossible, and even counter-productive to try and impose standards on the SEO industry, it was because I don’t want to be associated with scammers in any way that I broached the subject of standards in my interview with Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz back in August, 2007.

But my opinion was swayed just the other day by Michael Gray. I accept his argument that perhaps standards wouldn’t be good either for us or for the industry. He likens SEO standards to the notable failure of the No Child Left Behind plan.

As I’m writing this post, Search Engine World came out with some news that maybe the debate among SEOs on whether or not we need industry standards is about to be solved: It seems the FTC is considering imposing standards industry-wide whether we all like it or not.

Whatever happens, along with hundreds of other SEOs, I will continue my work, committed to the very highest standards that I can impose on myself:

My strategies for reassuring clients are as follows:

• I spend countless hours reading up on the industry to make sure that I’m using the best and latest techniques for optimization.
• I never make wild claims for my work or anyone else’s.
• I never, ever use any knowledge that may, even as a remote possibility, attach any hint of controversy to a client’s site.
• I don’t just avoid sites that are questionable and are associated with questionable practices–I avoid their owners too.
• I always work hard to get the best possible results for my clients, whether I’m optimizing their site, writing first-class content, or creating link-bait. It’s hard work and it requires a great deal of background knowledge.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I’ve left out something important here, so if you’re an SEO or you follow the industry closely and you can think of important strategies I’ve left out here, please add them in a comment.

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Are You Scared of Paying for SEO?

Increasingly I’m seeing companies who are new to the concept of having their website search engine-optimized, or SEOd, balking at the prices we charge. In most cases the problem is that they’re not convinced that SEO is a worthwhile expense for them. My advice to them invariably is, if you don’t want to pay for this service, then simply don’t. Wait it out and see what happens. Like so many others, you can wait and see if SEO is just going to ‘go away.’

In the meantime, all your most aggressive competitors will seek and find competent SEO people to do work for them. Maybe even me.

I no longer have the time to convince anyone that they need my help. They’ll find out for themselves when the time is right.

Don’t Let the SEO Boat Pass You By!

You know what that means? By the time they realize what’s going on, their competitors will have a huge head start on them. That doesn’t mean the situation will be hopeless: nothing in this life is ever hopeless. But it does mean that they are losing business to the competition unless and until they get some decent SEO work done. Yes, the competition is eating their lunch!

How Much Should SEOs Charge?

But still, exactly how much to charge is a matter of confusion for people buying SEO services, and a matter of significant dilemma for those like me who are selling it. We shouldn’t feel guilty for doing something that takes such an enormous amount of our time, and for which we’ve spent countless hours collecting the knowledge to be able to do well. But we are sometimes made to feel guilty, so it’s worth pointing out why we charge what we do.

Let me stress the point because it’s important: Good SEO is extremely time consuming. There are no short cuts. We might spend a couple of days analyzing a your website and your most successful competion before we’re ready to make changes that will count.

But naturally, that’s not to say that all SEO operatives are of equal ability.

Personally, I’ve sub-contracted for quite a few larger companies than my own, whose in-house staff are nowhere near as competent as I am. I frequently find myself explaining basic SEO concepts (while rolling my eyes). Usually they’re benefiting from my knowledge free of charge at this stage.

I’d like to draw some attention to what Rand Fishkin said on SEOmoz last summer regarding the vast discrepancy in the standards of services provided by SEO:

“Generally speaking, however, if it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is (as folks like Internet Advancement continue to prove). SEO is a challenging practice that requires both technical proficiency and a great understanding of marketing on the Internet. The fact that very smart people at very big brands make decisions to pay $500-$1,000 an hour to spend time talking to the best and brightest (and, yes, most notable) from the field of search marketing is one of many great pieces of evidence of the value of SEO.”

It is vital that you check out the SEO company you’re planning to hire. Let them refer you to people they’ve done work for. But once you’ve made your decision, don’t be surprised if they want to charge you up-front. It’s only fair: a website audit, competitive analysis and proposal take a lot of time and contain the author’s intellectual property. They deserve to know that they won’t get ripped off once you have this valuable knowledge in your hands.

In 2006 Rand Fishkin wrote a superb article about pricing an SEO campaign.

For a further point of reference, I’m going to reproduce Rand’s very interesting table:

Service	Low End	Mid Range	High End
Site Review + Consulting	$500	$2,500	$10,000
Hands-On Editing of Pages/Code	$2,000	$10,000	$50,000
Manual Link Building Campaign	$500	$5,000	$20,000
1-Day SEO Training Seminar	$750	$4,000	$12,000
Keyword Research Package	$100	$500	$2,000
Viral Content Development + Mktg	$1,000	$7,500	$20,000
Web Design, Development + Mktg	$5,000	$25,000	$100K+
Monthly Retainer for Ongoing SEO	$2,500	$7,500	$20,000+

Most of the SEOs I know charge in the mid-range, as do I. But people like Rand Fishkin, Michael Martinez, Andy Beal, and Bill Hartzer charge higher prices because they are leaders in the industry. They have a right to charge more for being the best. I picked these out of the thousands of successful and highly-respected SEOs in the industry because these are the ones I personally like best.

Of course it isn’t necessarily so that the most expensive SEO firm will be the best, just as cheap ones are not always awful, but you can depend on the names I’ve just mentioned.

As a parting shot, I’m anticipating some naysayers questioning my choice of Rand Fishkin as a resource for so much information on SEO campaign pricing. Quite simply it’s that no one else has put themselves on the line and come up with resources like he has. Rand can be counted on to tackle subjects related to SEO that everyone else shys away from. He has my utmost respect for that.

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If You’re Not Monitoring Traffic, You’re Falling Behind

Staying abreast of the growth of your blog or website online can be easier than you think, and it needn’t cost you anything. I’ve noticed that lately there has been a sharp rise in the number of companies offering free tracking so that you can keep an eye on what’s going on online.

But do be careful: there have been many calls for standards within the web tracking industry, and just because a company charges a great deal for their tracking software, doesn’t mean you’re going to get your money’s worth. It is definitely a case of Buyer Beware. What better way to find out which programs you should be using than seeing what professionals use?

The kind of tracking you’ll want to be doing for your blog or website depends on what you want to achieve. If you’re actively trying to sell something, then your tracking needs to be a great deal more precise than if you just want to increase your readership rates for example.

The basics of tracking are

· How much traffic?

· Where’s it coming from?

· What is it looking for?

· Was it satisfied on your pages?

· Can you identify trends that will allow you to increase a particular flow of traffic?

The more products or services you want to sell, the more complicated your tracking will become, particularly if you’re trying to attract a widely disparate demographic for each product.

I was going to create a separate list for the free and paid tracking applications, but some really good software is free, some not-so-good software is paid, and a lot of these applications offer a free and a paid version, so here goes:

A Rundown of What’s Out There

Google Analytics is a great free web tracking application. You just sign up and get the snippet of code to embed in your web page. You can even program goals for each page of your website with Google, and although there are paid programs with far more programmable options, this is a good start if you are totally new to tracking your stats. Just because it’s free, don’t underestimate Google Analytics: many professional search marketers use it (I admit often in conjunction with other programs). It’s basic, but it’s good and reliable. A common failing with many stats programs is that they go down, develop glitches and generally underperform so that you end up with huge holes in your stats records, which can be disastrous if you’re trying to make strategy decisions based on your stats.

IndexTools was recommended to me by Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, so it has to be good. This application is obviously capable of coping with the stats for a huge and extremely busy site like SEOmoz, so it would be more than fine for the rest of us.

FireClick Again, Rand was the source for this one, but he told me that there was a lot of positive buzz about it in the industry. Again, a good sign.

Mint is the program of choice for DoshDosh. She told me she has tried many different applications and always returns to this and Google Analytics.

Awstats is just one of the applications I use, because it comes with my hosting package. You can read all about its advantages and disadvantages on Wikipedia.

CrazyEgg has been around for a while. This application is one of a new generation of stats applications that will show you just where your visitor looked on the page with the aid of a ‘heat map.’ If you study the information carefully it will show you where on your web page you need to put your most important information and your click-thru mechanism. It can help you decide where to put ads and give you ideas for improving page layout. I’ve been using CrazyEgg since 2006.

GoingUp is another great application I’ve just discovered. It’s quite simple, but it’s also simple to use, which is good if you don’t have much experience. There’s a free and a paid version. I’ll let you know more about that once I’ve had a chance to try it out.

Another company, called OneStat, claims to have over 75,000 subscribers. An application with that many followers has to have something going for it, so it’s worth looking at.

Be aware that heat maps are the way to go for anyone who is serious about online success. Many of the biggest and most successful online companies, who incidentally are incredibly secretive about the tools they use for their success, make a point of utilizing heat maps to tweak their web pages for optimum effectiveness. This technology is quite possibly THE most significant advance in tracking technology. While CrazyEgg leads the field in heat map tracking software, ClickDensity is another one to consider, and their software does have some slightly different features.

This is by no means an exhaustive list: it’s meant to get you started, or perhaps to draw your attention to some programs you might not have heard of. I can do another piece about this if enough of you write in with information on the applications you use.

What to do With Your Results

Learning what your visitors are doing can be nothing short of a revelation. However, before you make any drastic changes to your website or blog, be sure that you’ve monitored enough visitors. A couple of thousand should do it. And when you do make changes, introduce them one at a time so that you can then monitor the results before you go on to the next change. ClickDensity in fact has a good article about making changes on your site according to your heat map findings.

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Perhaps more than any other industry, search engine optimization is an area that’s particularly susceptible to ‘myths’ that have grown up around basic guiding precepts even some professionals have latched on to when creating their SEO strategies.

One major reason for this is because SEO itself has undergone multiple profound transformations since it first became an entity.

Take search engines for example. As Wil Reynolds points out in this informative video, there was a time when professionals would actually create a web page for each of the different search engines. That obviously doesn’t hold true today (thank goodness).

Myth # One

The most prevalent SEO myth of all is that SEO consultants are all scammers, or use ‘Black Hat’ techniques, to use the industry term. Nothing could be further from the truth. The vast majority of us regard our integrity very highly, and go to an enormous amount of trouble not just to be seen to be doing the right thing, but to give an honest and valuable service with a value that often far exceeds the actual fee we charge.

Some SEO People to Trust (both for their integrity and their know-how):

Rand Fishkin

StuntDubl AKA Todd Malicoat

Sugarrae Hoffman

Graywolf AKA Michael Gray

And of course, me!:)

Myth # Two

You will hear that META tags are totally unnecessary. This is only partly true. You really need your META description tag to get noticed in a lineup of SERPS. Word it wrongly and you’ll go unnoticed. Word it skillfully and you’ll win a lot of clickthrus.

Myth # Three

Another myth that I hear quite a lot is that if you build a page around one specific keyphrase, you’ll create a winner. About the only thing you’ll be creating here is an exceedingly boring page that couldn’t possible convey useful information as web pages should. In addition, you could be seen to be spamming the engines which is a disaster.

In my experience, optimizing for three-or-so carefully-chosen phrases should do it. And here we come to choice of keywords. You simply can’t be too picky here. It’s worth going to a lot of trouble to make sure you’re targeting the right market and picking EXACTLY the right phrases. In the ballpark doesn’t do it, because you’ll be consigning yourself in with dozens of other websites, which may or may not be offering exactly what you do. If you are getting traffic that’s not exactly matched with what you sell, you’re wasting your time and you’ll suffer for it with less-than-lustrous rankings too.

There are two reasons for this.

First, as I’ve already stated, you need highly-targeted traffic so when a visitor lands on your site, he or she says ‘wow this is exactly what I was looking for.’ Second, if you haven’t done your homework and your visitors are not happy, then the search engines sure as heck won’t be happy. And if they’re not happy they’ll consign you to the bottom of a search. This concept is so central to good SEO that it can stand repeating again and again because there are obviously a lottt of people out there who just don’t ‘get it.’

Myth # Four

SEO is a ‘set it and forget it’ kind of operation. This is so not true. No matter how much work your SEO consultant does to begin with, you will need to keep an eye on things. SEO, when properly done, takes a great deal of time initially. But the rewards are great if you’re lucky enough to get someone who knows what they’re doing. It’s important to remember that the search engines are constantly moving the goal posts for us, so we have to adapt our SEO campaigns to reflect these changes. In addition, life online is and always has been fluid. What’s relevant today bears little or no resemblance to the eCommerce environment that prevailed in the 1990s.

Myth # Five

SEO is too expensive. You can look at it like that if you like. Or you can acknowledge that even the best PayPerClick campaign (which will likely cost you thousands or even tens of thousands, and is at best a temporary fix) will never match the results of organic ranking. Organic ranking will have a profound effect on your online image and effectiveness. So a professional SEO campaign will produce results that will go on and on, and to a certain extent gain their own momentum with time. It’s sort of like being a celebrity: once you’re famous everything you do is of interest. Once you have a good standing with the search engines you will continue to get traffic even if you don’t do a thing. However, to continue to be competitive, and to keep up with your increase in traffic, you need to tweak your site on a regular basis.

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Some years ago I first made the switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox. My main reason at the time was increasing frustration at IE for interrupting the flow of my work: It would keep hanging and I would have to close everything down.

Over time I started to realize that my SEO colleagues or people who work in web design were far more likely to be using Firefox than people who weren’t doing something connected with ‘the business.’

So it was with great interest this morning that I read Rand Fishkin’s post over at SEOmoz.com.

“I believe Firefox’s actual market share is still well under 15%, yet it’s almost 60% here at SEOmoz. This makes the 92% of search referrals from Google (and the 15%+ of 1920 wide screen resolutions) no surprise either. We attract a very different kind of Internet crowd than most websites.”

Interesting: from this we can more-or-less conclude that somewhere near 60 percent of SEO consultants use Firefox.

Let’s take a look at some of the reasons for changing to Firefox:

• Far fewer bugs–I’m ashamed to admit this because you’re not supposed to, but I only restart my laptop about twice a week, as opposed to about 10 times a day with IE!
• Tab browsing: this is huge for me. I know that IE has the feature with Vista, but I still prefer the way that Firefox does it.
• Integrated search engine toolbars: this is also very useful for me. I have the Google toolbar for Firefox, the Yahoo toolbar for Firefox, and even the Stumble toolbar for firefox. Really makes my work a lot easier.
• Total control over popups–they’re another huge waste of time when you have work to do.
• You can import your bookmarks so no need to worry about that.
• Firefox is fully customizable so you can put your own personal stamp on your browsing experience.
• Now this is huge; most of the viruses that you can get browsing only affect IE: Firefox is simply so much safer.

There are other reasons, but these are the most important for me. I’d be interested to hear what other SEOs think about it: what are your favorite reasons for switching to Firefox?

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Link Building for SEO

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