About two months ago I built a new website for a wedding planner in Houston. This client also happens to be a friend of mine from high school. Knowing what I did for a living, she reached out for some help improving their website and building a more professional & consistent online brand. Of course, I was happy to help. When I began the project their existing website didn’t rank in any search engine for any keyword term other than their exact brand name.
As is the case with many small business websites these days, there were many opportunities for improvement. From titles to text content to the development of a strong site architecture and internal link structure, the site was in need of a head-to-toe overhaul and a facelift. The old site was pretty basic, didn’t incorporate much text content and only had a handful of pages. Not only did the site not perform well in a keyword search at that point, the original design also had some usability and branding challenges to overcome.
I couldn’t let that continue and not long thereafter my friend and her business partner had a shiny new website that, if I do say so myself, is something they can proudly rely on to represent their brand online. I know what you’re thinking, “But, Alysson…it doesn’t matter if it’s pretty if no one can find it.” You’re absolutely right. I couldn’t have said it better myself. As I mentioned before, prior to the redesign/relaunch the site had no rankings for any targeted keyword terms. None. Zippo. Zilch. Nada.
Gleaning Information From Competitors
I’ve obviously been offering my friend a great deal of advice along the way regarding what needs to be done moving forward. Knowing how bright she is and how likely she is to actually pursue the avenues I advise her to pursue to further improve the site’s rankings now that they have a strong foundation, I knew she’d be doing a lot of investigation and poking around on her own.
She recently sent me an e-mail containing a links to two blog posts that really stuck in my craw. While the focus of the posts obviously seems to be relative to the advantages of blogging – though that doesn’t really come through as the main topic of the articles at all, there were some statements made in those posts that really got under my skin.
“I am a firm believer that all you need is a website, a properly hosted blog, and a bit of patience in order to build up a business…”
Wow. I bet the 80+% of small businesses that fail would have appreciated knowing that. A website, a blog and some patience…that’s all there is to it? Damn. According to the marketing bible of a former DJ turned SEO who describes himself as someone for whom, “…reading and writing have always been the hardest things for me to do ever!“, EVERYTHING ELSE that successful start-ups do is a waste of time, effort and resources. Someone should really tell them that concentrating on small business website design, usability, online reputation management, branding, etc. is just unnecessary fluff. Pfft! Comprehensive SEO strategy? I don’t need no stinkin’ strategy. I’m not sure I even know what “comprehensive” means…
Look, that’s one of the most ignorant oversimplifications I’ve ever come across. It’s like saying all you need to win a Superbowl is an offense, a defense and a properly inflated football.
“With some minor tweaking to her site, a few off-site optimization techniques, and some Search Engine Optimization to her website, only a month later, on April 24th, 2009 to be exact, was already indexed by Yahoo, MSN Live and Google.com…”
<sarcasm>HOORAY!</sarcasm> I’d like to know what this “minor tweaking”, “a few off-site optimization techniques” and “some Search Engine Optimization” entailed. First of all…these “minor tweaks” are often not minor at all and are part of an overall strategy. You can’t refer to “minor tweaking” and “some Search Engine Optimization to her website” as separate things. Well, I guess you can…but you wouldn’t, if you know what the hell you were talking about.
The “tweaking” to which he refers is actually called “on-site SEO” and it includes making improvements to titles, descriptions, text content, headings, site architecture, text navigation, internal link structure, ALT attributes, image optimization, improvement of page load time, etc. Dumbing down on-site SEO to nothing more than “minor tweaking” is a ridiculous and dangerous oversimplification of on-site SEO that will lead to problems down the road for anyone who accepts such ignorance as fact.
SHENANIGANS!
Here’s where it really gets to be fun. It you were to take a look at the tables included in each of those posts, you’d see that all but a couple of search terms are not disclosed. Really? You’re trying to prove how awesome you are and how easy SEO is by reporting how crappy a site’s rankings were before your “minor tweaking” vs. how the rankings improved a month later. I call shenanigans. And by “shenanigans”, I mean BULLSHIT. For all we know you’ve improved the site’s ranking for terms that no actual human being would ever use in a keyword search. Kudos on your transparency.
While I’m sure anyone who publishes a supposed case study without actually publishing the terms being targeted would say it had something to do with confidentiality, again…bullshit. If you can’t publish the terms, don’t publish the post as a supposed case study. Not doing so makes the individual rankings and ranking improvements utterly meaningless because there is no way to compare the ranking improvement on a term by term basis. What appears as “Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword” in row 3 of the first table may not be the same target term that appears as “Wedding Marketing Keyword” in row 3 of the table in the follow-up post.
For example, if you compare the original ranking report (before any optimization was done) to the “month after” ranking report, the “Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword” that appears in row 12 ranks in position 83 on the original report, yet the “Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword” in row 12 of the follow-up report shows the site is “Not Ranked”. So a month after the “minor tweaking” was done the site actually went from being ranked in the 83rd position for an unknown keyword to not ranked at all. Hmm…curious.
Since the Redesign/Relaunch of My Client’s Wedding Planner Website
Her new site launched on July 7th, 2010. Initially I focused my attention on creating optimized, keyword targeted text content for a handful of the target terms within her niche that generate the greatest search volume. While there are 25-30 terms we want the site to rank well for moving forward, my main concern at the outset was to improve the site’s ranking for the following terms:
- [wedding planners houston] – about 320 searches per month
- [wedding planner houston] – about 320 searches per month
- [houston wedding planners] – about 260 searches per month
- [houston wedding planner] – about 260 searches per month
- [wedding planners in houston] – about 210 searches per month
- [wedding coordinator houston] – about 170 searches per month
- [wedding planning houston] – about 110 searches per month
And let’s not forget that the site wasn’t ranked AT ALL for any search term aside from the actual business name. In the spirit of transparency, here are the ranking results for the site just 9 days after the relaunch (July 16):
[table “1” not found /]
About 6 weeks after the relaunch (August 15), the site was ranked as follows:
[table “3” not found /]
Keep in mind I changed everything from the platform the site was built on to where it was hosted to the URL structure of the pages. Literally everything that could be changed was changed. And those results are based on absolutely no off-site effort on my part whatsoever – these results are based solely on the proper implementation of a comprehensive on-site SEO strategy.
A Half-assed Approach vs. A Complete Strategy
The ranking results being reported for the phantom keywords in parts 1 & 2 of the aforementioned case study were comparisons over a 6 month period…6 MONTHS – from March to August.
Basically what was accomplished with “minor tweaking”, “a few off-site optimization techniques” and “some Search Engine Optimization” in that case study over a period of 6 months, I accomplished with on-site SEO alone in 6 weeks. THAT is the difference between the results from a “see…it’s SO easy” novice and an experienced SEO who actually understands the big picture. SEO is much more than a laundry list of tasks that can be carried out by any trained monkey with a keyboard. It is a little bit of art combined with a touch of science. It takes experience. It involves understanding not only the individual ranking factors, but how those factors work together and how their cumulative impact affects a site’s ranking.
This statement is particularly nonsensical and misleading:
I started to believe what other people were saying. I was believing Ignorant people that stated that the only way to rank high for Google was to pay someone to do it for you… Can you believe that? That’s the most absurd thing I had ever heard… first thing is how would you pay someone and second is why would Google do that? It made no sense to me at the time and it makes no sense to me now.
Why it DOES make sense: the ability to achieve better results based on the on-site SEO efforts alone in 6 weeks. While hiring a professional may not make sense to him, it does make sense to real small business owners. Measurable results in 6 weeks. Not 6 months.
A comprehensive strategy is essential to the long term success of any small business website. Ranking well is only part of the equation. Conversions are really where the rubber meets the road. In a niche with little competition it may be possible to rank well for some target terms without incorporating every aspect of on-site SEO, but why wouldn’t you do it anyway?
The ranking factors are not created by search engines without rhyme or reason. Well-written text content serves to inform site visitors. Proper site architecture makes the site easy to navigate. ALT attributes make it easier for the visually impaired to browse a site thanks to the use of software like JAWS. Internal links help visitors find the information they need more easily. Optimized images help pages load faster. Faster load times get users where they want to go faster.
Virtually everything the search engines incorporate into their algorithms as a ranking factor is specifically intended to improve the user experience. Search engines want to lead people to the websites that offer the best user experience. And you should want your website to offer the best user experience. Whether a site ranks in the #1 position or the #300 position, if it isn’t user friendly, doesn’t convey the right message and isn’t visually appealing people will go elsewhere. A complete SEO strategy takes into consideration how A will impact B, how B will impact C and how A+B+C will cumulatively impact both ranking and user experience.
This is why the SEO industry suffers from such massive reputation problems. A little bit of information in the wrong hands can be a dangerous thing. Ignorance has its own unique opportunity cost. Egregious oversimplifications hurt everyone.
Dr. Pete says
They left one thing out of that quote – All you need is a website, a blog, a bit of patience, and a giant bag of cash. Patience may be a virtue, but it’s also expensive.
Alysson says
Exactly! You hit the nail on the head with that one. :)
Simply Frank says
It’s interesting that you quote my website, misinterpret my quote, then go and do the exact same thing I did… Yet… your client/friend’s website still ranks well below my client’s / friend’s website… Thanks for reading my blog.. I can’t say I read yours, except for the part where my links were…
Alysson says
Yes, more than a year and a half after you “optimized” the website, it ranks better than the site I implemented an on-site only SEO strategy on 6 weeks ago. Quite a feather in your cap and definitely something to brag about. Let’s review the facts, shall we…
A YEAR AND A HALF after you “optimized” that website, it ranks in the #11 position for ‘wedding planner houston’. 6 WEEKS after the on-site only optimization of my client’s site it went from not being ranked AT ALL to being ranked 18th (as of today) for ‘wedding planner houston’.
{sarcasm}Yes, Frank…you are obviously 100% right and I am 100% wrong. I know nothing. You know everything. I bow to your superior intellect and search engine optimization skills.{/sarcasm}
According to you, “SEO is simple… Simple, Simple…”. That statement illustrates your ignorance and proves my point. Yes, the links are nofollow (not no follow). I have no intention of contributing to the link popularity of a post or posts that provide such egregiously misleading information. And since you seem to take issue with my use of nofollow, I’ll just remove the links to your posts entirely. Better?
Simply Frank says
I take that back, I read a little more… and by what I read you know absolutely nothing about the tools out there… there is a tool that all you have to do is insert the keywords, it saves the keywords as a list… so all you have to do is run the tool from time to time and it exports an excel file (CSV) so the keywords are always in the same location.. unlike your keywords… they are extremely hard to follow… The keywords you call bushit on are the exact same ones… if they went down in the rankings, it’s because I decided not to target them.. any intellectual person can come to that conclusion… ;)
So yes, a few keywords ranked less… I am at least consistent with my keyword placement…
If I were to run this again, it would show different results…. Any person that knows anything about SEO knows that the SERP’s change consistently… you can be ranked #1 for a keyword one minute, and ranked #2 or #3 the next… Not all keywords do that, but most do…
“I am a firm believer that all you need is a website, a properly hosted blog, and a bit of patience in order to build up a business…”
I stand by my quote, (BUILD UP…. not create)
I have done it over and over again, and all I do is install a blog and teach the proper posting methods that I’ve learned from other clever, professional blogger out in the internet…
SEO Is simple… Simple, Simple… all you are trying to do is make people have an initial fear of SEO… For.. I don’t know what reason… Everything I did to my friend/client’s blog was a one time deal.. I created her blog… did a little more than what you explain on your post… (you should really do a little more research about what options are out there) and viola… she’s ranked on the first page for HER (not mine) targeted keywords…
I enjoy reading good criticism, but this post isn’t even that… Because in the end, you try to do exactly the same thing, except yours is a lot harder to follow, and not really putting anything of positive value to anyone…
BTW thanks for the no follow links!
Alan Bleiweiss says
Frank,
You’re an idiot, and a fool. You have no clue what real SEO involves. It may be “simple” because there are only about 200 factors (and growing) that matter, so in that regard, it’s not rocket science. Yet with so many factors, it’s not EASY under some circumstances.
If the services you provide are always around tiny sites,then it’s probably a lot easier than sites I work on, involving regional or national highly competitive phrases. Yet your all-inclusive “it’s simple simple simple” claim is so myopic as to be dangerous.
Simply Frank says
I will leave this alone… when you get to name calling.. mmm… that’s where I draw the line.. I am up for criticism… argumentation… but not name calling… that’s just not professional..
Alysson says
I like to point out that using […] every 5-6 words is also not professional. And further indication that you are in no position to offer advice to small business owners looking to improve their Internet marketing efforts through blogging, SEO, etc.
Alan Bleiweiss says
Of course you’ll leave it alone. Because its indefensible. Your thin skin is an excuse, couched in polite societal Bullcrap. Because your very comment to Alysson was an attack comment. SO you can dish it out but you can’t take it huh?
Alysson says
Easy, Alan. My whole post was, in essence, calling shenanigans on virtually everything poor Frank is pretending to have expertise in. Not everyone can take that kind of criticism as constructively. I’d be surprised if he hadn’t lashed out with an ad hominem argument against me.
Matt Webb says
Frank my man, let’s get some shit straight. The SEO that you do, is probably simple. It’s the kind of SEO that works on the niche that you clearly have embedded yourself into. So unfortunately, no, broad generalizations that SEO is simple isn’t even applicable to the reality of the situation.
For example, I would love to try your simple approach to a truly hyper-competetive market. A good one would be promotional products. Go research that. Hit as many different terms as you think of and note how competitive this market is. Do you notice a site called promopeddler in that mix? That was my doing. Over 400 individual product descriptions were written, new url restructuring, new internal linking model, over 3000 quality inbound links were built. That was done in 2006. It still stands today because I didn’t do anything “simple”.
I did everything WELL PLANNED, documented and extremely measured. When you deal with a fortune 500 company, you have to do that. They took what I had created and built on it. Had they not, that site would have been buried within a few short months after I exited the project.
Now, allow me to turn the dial down and I’ll go into your neighborhood; a niche industry. certifiedairsafety.com is an industrial safety website I work on regularly. Go on, do a view source. I built this thing from the ground up. A relatively small number of quality inbound links, extremely clean copy, and a ton of content. And waddya know, I beat out some of the manufacturers they carry. Why? Because this is a mildly competetive market with a large majority of the competitions websites not getting any real SEO.
So what’s my point? I think you know what my point is; SEO is simple if your client sits in a low competition zone and/or if you figured out an angle that’s almost guaranteed to work for a niche industry.
When’s the last time you had to create an attribution model that followed a PPC campaign into your on-page SEO efforts? Did you enjoy the math on that project? Can you actually identify link value based off of conversions? How do you track phone calls that lead to conversions, and can prove that it came from the website originally? Do your sites require regular A/B testing? If so, what tools do you use, why do you use them, and what kind of quantifiable improvements have you seen from these tests? How long did these tests run for?
Do you see what I’m getting at Mr. Simple? It’s not fucking simple. So you can take your assumption for a whole god damned industry and the scores of hard working people that are in it… and roll it up nice and tight and stick it back up where ya got it from.
Alysson says
I <3 you, Matt. :)
Simply Frank says
LOL… SEO is simple… sorry to say… All I’m trying to do is help people… what you are trying to do, is create a dependency in people’s mind…. :)
Simply Frank says
BTW your reply link does not work on my Mozilla Firefox..
Alysson says
Thanks for the head’s up, but the “Reply” link works just fine for me in FF. I will look into it though.
Alan Bleiweiss says
Frank, I just replied to your “reply link doesn’t work in Firefox” using the “reply” link in uh, FIREFOX.
Rafael Montilla says
Excellent Job, That is why we follow you!
SEO Latino
Alysson says
Thanks, Rafael. I’m glad you enjoyed the post and thanks for the compliment. :)
Nate Schubert says
I haven’t optimized any sites in the wedding niche but I have worked in a variety of fields over the past 6 years in terms of Ecommerce, web design and Internet Marketing. Every single customer who has ever paid me for a service has done so AFTER failing to do it on their own. They all tell me they thought it was going to be much easier. They create a website, make some pages and wait for traffic that never comes.
If Internet Marketing was so easy, Frank, then I would be out of a job. The fact is that there may have been a time when all you had to do was throw up some pages and find some patience, but those days are over. The level of competition is generally so thick now that you MUST get smart about the way you do things. Most business owners don’t have the time to optimize their own websites and if they do, they do a terrible job. Why? Because they’re not marketers and they don’t know how it works. Just like I don’t know how being a Plastic Surgeon works. I’ll pay him to give my wife a butt lift (or whatever) and he can pay me to make sure he ranks #1 for Butt Lift Tampa!
I do think Internet Marketing is pretty cut and dry. But it consists of a great many different components that come together to form a successful strategy. Anyone who says it’s easy is just trying to market themselves. If it’s second nature to you, well then I should definitely pay YOU for the service, right?
Alysson says
“…But it consists of a great many different components that come together to form a successful strategy…” – ding, ding, ding! Nate wins today’s prize of 64 silver dollars! :)
Josh says
Pfft. It’s super easy. Title tag. H1. Done. That’s it.
Alysson says
Oh, Josh…I’ve missed you so! :)
Julie Joyce says
Regarding this comment made by Frank:
“All I’m trying to do is help people… what you are trying to do, is create a dependency in people’s mind”
Saying SEO is simple is no different a marketing strategy than saying it’s tricky as hell and can only be done by a professional. If you’re going to insult Aly, at least do it in a way that doesn’t scream of hypocrisy.
Alysson says
Thanks, Julie. I honestly believe that Frank means well and truly believes he’s helping people. Unfortunately he doesn’t realize that offering advice without a true understanding of SEO does more harm than good in many circumstances.
As you know, I’ve never been one to try to make people believe all SEO must be done by a professional. In fact, SEOAly started out as solely an informational blog to help small business owners better understand SEO so they can decide for themselves what tasks they might want to handle on their own vs. what aspects of the strategy to leave to a professional. My SEO Audits help people do just that and provide actionable information about what’s wrong with a site, what needs to be changed and – more importantly – WHY it needs to be changed.
Like a medical student trying to perform an appendectomy endangers the life of his patient, someone like Frank – who has only a rudimentary knowledge of SEO – offering advice to small business owners who will likely assume that advice to be accurate and the information to be factual is incredibly irresponsible. What he doesn’t know – like the danger of linking to and building links from sites Google has flagged as suspicious or malicious, for example – can really do damage to a small business website. And that damage is not something he’d have any idea how to un-do…or even identify.
SEO isn’t just about figuring out how to get a site to the top of the SERPs. There are $49 scamtastic solutions that will propel a site to the top of the results in no time, but that doesn’t mean they actually know or care anything about developing a successful long term SEO strategy. When small businesses fall for such scams and find their sites banned from Google’s index a few months later, the advice from good old Frank and those like him who believe they’ve cracked some sort of secret search engine success code will have small business owners wasting time and spinning their wheels right into bankruptcy.
Help? I don’t think so…
Billy J says
Hey Aly, it’s been a very long time :)
As I do agree that, depending on the market segment and amount of competition involved, the levels of work required to achieve the desired results can vary from near “easy” to over a year of ass busting research / testing / research / testing etc… I am not against calling Internet Marketing “Simple” depending on what one considers “complicated”. I find Internet Marketing time consuming, sometimes tedious, and has even, on one than more occasion pissed me off. I do not, however, agree with “all you need is a website, a properly hosted blog, and patience..” that is lazy and is NOT Internet Marketing. That is doing nothing at all. That is having a website and not really caring if you receive any business from it.
My clients do care about receiving business, so as innocent as this philosophy is and although I am a firm believer in keeping every strategy as simple as possible – that is just not something I can believe an alleged peer of mine would say.
Hit me up some time Alysson, I have decided to enter the freelance arena (finally) and will be around far more often. :)
Alysson says
Hi, BIlly! Long time indeed! :)
You’re absolutely right – the niche certainly determines the level of work required to achieve the desired results. In my opinion, this is really about much more than just the SERPs though. Perhaps a site can achieve a top 10, top 5 or even a #1 ranking in a non-competitive niche market, but if the website is crap what would that top spot really accomplish for the business?
What those like Frank fail to realize is that most of the ranking factors that are emphasized by search engines help to improve user experience…like text navigation, keyword focused text content, ALT attributes, image optimization, quick page load time, etc. Those aren’t just nonsensical obligatorily chosen factors the search engines choose to piss off webmasters & SEOs. Making improvements in those areas tends to make a website more accessible and more user friendly.
What makes a site search engine friendly is often what makes a site user friendly, as well. It’s the correlation between what works for search engines and what works for human beings that Frank & other novice SEOs don’t understand. And that’s where their advice becomes negligent and borderline malicious, whether they’re willing to admit it or not.
I’m THRILLED you’re finally entering the freelance arena. It’s about goddamn time! :)
Billy J says
I haven’t met a client in years that measured their success via the SERPS. Therefore, rankings are nothing more than a metric to me – as this is dictated by my clients. I have no doubt it is the same for you. My clients want conversions. They may consider that a form being filled out or money being spent – but it comes down, always, to a bottom line that has little to do, in the client’s mind, with where one ranks for some arrangement of words.
Wow… this is the first time I have blogged as me :) hahahahahaha
Alysson says
Most small business owners don’t measure success based on rankings alone because they understand that ranking well is just the first of many steps toward successfully marketing their businesses online. Conversions are where the rubber meets the road and that’s where the advice from a novice pretending to have found some super secret key to the castle falls well short of the mark.
Isn’t it nice to just be able to blog and comment as Billy these days? Though I think you should really brand yourself as “George Jefferson – Eastside Dry Cleaner Turned Kickass SEO. Movin’ On Up…in the SERPs!” Maybe that’s just me. ;)
Dana Davis says
Anyone who thinks SEO is evil or easy doesn’t understand the challenges businesses have online. Aly, we have KeywordLuv, CommentLuv and DoFollow comments so you might want to teach your wedding planning friend how to use them to create backlinks.
The GrowMap blog has posts about how CommentLuv and KeywordLuv work if you’d like to know more.
Alysson says
Hi, Dana. Thanks for stopping by. I’m familiar with CommentLuv and have been using it on a variety of sites for some time now. I plan to share the wonders of blogs using CommentLuv with and comments that don’t use nofollow as we move forward, but we’re focusing on other link building techniques at this point. Thank again for taking the time to read the post and comment. :)
Joan Arizona says
Great…Now I have to read your other posts. That means my afternoon productivity is shot…Thanks a lot. Nice post.