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They don't know CRAP about SEO!!!

by Mac the Knife
27 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I am wondering what percentage of SEO service providers actually know what SEO really is??!!

A few months back, I put up a website about auto insurance. Wrote an ebook (I am a licensed insurance agent) made it look pretty, wrote articles, you get the idea, I was readying the campaign. Now, I was talking with someone else, a supposed SEO expert and we decided to partner. I would provide content, he would push us up the Google "Stairway to Heaven." Sounds great...

Lo and behold, I get a call about 30 days later "You are not going to believe this, we are NUMBER ONE on Google!" At first, I'll admit, I peed a little. This was my first time, and I was a Girgin (Google virgin) and had never had a number 1 ranking...I quickly ran to the bank to make sure that my account would hold the millions of dollars (*cough*) that would surely be flying into it...but...alas, nothing happened.

No sales, no Ferrari, no supermodel on my arm...what the hell happened? Well, those of you who have heard or experienced this tale before probably know...we got ranked for a keyword that smelled of poo from a recently deceased feline! No one was searching for the keywords he was hitting Google with so while we had rankings of 1,3,7 and 9 consistently, they were for keywords that attracted so little traffic that I befriended a Peruvian sheep herder online just to keep from being lonely! (he was nice...he said I could pet his sheep one day...)

Anyways, this person is a great guy, but here's the thing. He gets clients...they pay him a good deal of cash. I think maybe HE thinks he is good. Just tonight I got a proposal from someone else who put their clients in a powerpoint featuring the keywords they ranked for. They highlighted the total results as if that alone means something...he wants $500/month just to start (I am not looking to hire him, but I verify the quality of people for referral purposes on my business networking site)

Are there any folks out there who DO offer SEO services, know what they are talking about, know how to speak English, and get results? If you have referrals, send them my way. I will do what I can to put work into their hands...thanks to all the Warriors out there

Mac the Knife
#crap #seo
  • Profile picture of the author Corwinnx
    Attachment 1545 baaaaaaa

    -Marcus
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  • Profile picture of the author Mac the Knife
    OMG...that's him!
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  • Profile picture of the author TheRichJerksNet
    Hi Mac,
    Well one major problem is many sites do not even do basic SEO, you do not need any so called expert that charges thousands of dollars to get you listed and you certainly should not rely 100% upon search engines to make you millions.

    Here I will provide a chapter of one of my ebooks....

    Before we get started on this section I would like for you to understand the full truth about SEO what others will not tell you. SEO should be one of the top things you want to implement into your website but you do not want to rely 100% on search engine's to bring you traffic. There are a great deal of companies online that want to try and make you think that 80% of a website's traffic comes from search engines and these same companies want to charge you hundreds if not thousands to make your website SEO ready. This is not only a rip-off but its 100% false and misleading, most sites online will get about 8% - 15% of their traffic from regular searches on a search engine.

    Search Engines are the last thing you want to rely upon when it comes to getting quality traffic to your website but it is still very important to implement basic SEO on your website based upon the keywords you want to target. These keywords should be based upon your wealth plan that you setup at the beginning of this ebook. You will need to either have some basic html knowledge or a website that allows you to add meta tags from the admin panel. The Affiliate-Shop and the PicHost websites as discussed in section B allow you to enter meta tags from the admin area.

    Using the example of the blog about recipes you will want to implement meta tags in the "body header" of your html right below the "title" tag

    HTML Code:
    <meta name="keywords" content="recipes, cooking, nutritional, recipe blog, healthy eating"/>
<meta name="description" content="Our recipes blog has great nutritional and healthy cooking tips for everybody's eating enjoyment."/>
<meta name="revisit" content="5 days"/>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>
    Keywords : The keywords should be separated with , and a space. The keywords should be the strongest words you want to use to help people find you in the search engines. Normally this would be popular words and should be limited to no more then 8 - 10 keywords.

    Description : The description of what your site does and what your site is about. The description should contain the keywords you used and form a proper sentence about your site. Description should be limited to about 65 characters. Be sure to use natural, easy-to-understand language that conveys the message of your Web site, and includes keywords you'd like your site to rank high for.

    Revisit : This meta tag is telling the search-bot when to revisit your website to index it again. It is safe to use anything from 5 days to 30 days, I recommend using 5 days for revisit.

    In the title tag of the html I would title my blog recipes website something like this "Recipes blog about healthy cooking and nutritional eating". If you was paying attention here you should see a pattern of certain words being repeated. These main words are the ones that I want to use to be found on the search engines when someone does a search.

    We want to further use the same words on the website to make sure the search-bot is going to index our blog recipes website using these keywords. We accomplish this by adding a welcome message to the main front page of our website which will be the first text the visitor also views. The welcome message should be something like this example below:

    Welcome to MyDomain.com, Our recipes blog has some great nutritional information for healthy eating. You can browse our section of cooking tips that have been posted by other members or join now and send us some of your own recipe cooking tips.

    If you notice the example welcome message repeats the main words (keywords) that we put in our title and in our meta tags, by doing this our website should be indexed by the search-bot using these keywords. Your welcome message should be longer then the example above and designed to let the visitor know what you have to offer and include these keywords at the same time. Keep in mind not to repeat your keywords too many times as the search-bot will see this as spamming and actually give you a bad listing or not even index your site at all.

    As you can see SEO is not as complex as many self proclaimed experts say it is, and you do not have to hire any experts to do the above basic SEO. I will repeat what I said at the start of this section because it is very important that you understand the truth about SEO. SEO should be one of the top things you want to implement into your website but you do not want to rely 100% on search engine's to bring you traffic. There are a great deal of companies online that want to try and make you think that 80% of a website's traffic comes from search engines and these same companies want to charge you hundreds if not thousands to make your website SEO ready. This is not only a rip-off but its 100% false and misleading, most sites online will get about 8% - 15% of their traffic from regular searches on a search engine.

    Keep in mind that it is far more effective spending many hours on your website adding content to it then it is spending days, weeks, or even months on playing the SEO game. Again it is important that you have basic SEO but one thing that SEO will never beat is content. Adding basic SEO and high quality content that pertains to your website is by far the best thing you can do when it comes to getting targeted traffic from search engines.

    Using your wealth plan that you created combined with the above basic SEO should get you decent listings in the search engines without too much trouble. One thing that you need to keep in mind is that most never even heard of SEO and therefore they do not have any SEO implemented in their websites. Why should this matter to you ? It's simple really, let's take google for instance, when their searchbot comes to index websites for a particular keyword it must index atleast 10 sites for the search page to be complete. If it finds only 3 sites that have SEO then that means it must place 7 other sites in those spots and those 7 other sites remember will have no SEO at all but still get a first page listing. This is why it is important for you to have basic SEO vs having nothing, because the fact is if you had basic SEO you would have been one of the 7 listed in those spots.

    James

    P.S. You think I over did the keyword "seo" just a bit in that chapter ....lol
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  • Profile picture of the author Mac the Knife
    Thanks for that James!

    What book is that info from? Very detailed...that is what I need to sink my teeth into. I am still into outsourcing for projects, but I am getting a better idea of what areas I am still lagging behind the rest of the class...

    Mac the Knife
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    • Profile picture of the author TheRichJerksNet
      Originally Posted by Macurdy View Post

      Thanks for that James!

      What book is that info from? Very detailed...that is what I need to sink my teeth into. I am still into outsourcing for projects, but I am getting a better idea of what areas I am still lagging behind the rest of the class...

      Mac the Knife
      It's from my Wealth Manual which could probably use a little updating but as you can see it is very informative ..lol

      You would really be shocked to know how many people really do not even use basic SEO. Start going around to many of the sites you see posted just on signatures and view the source code of those sites. You will see many with wrong meta tags, no meta tags, and even with incorrect Charset.

      James
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  • Profile picture of the author Mac the Knife
    James, post or PM where I can check out the wealth manual

    Marty, believe me, Insurance is NOT a passion...but how's this:

    "Two insurance agents walk into a bar...everyone shoots them."

    Mac the Knife
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  • Profile picture of the author Ron Killian
    Like you see people claiming to be SEO guru's or experts asking simple SEO questions.

    I've only hired one SEO guy some time back and got lucky, I learned a few things.

    I agree, it's something you can do on your own, it's not that difficult. Just takes time and work.

    Though not every one gets little SE traffic, some do pretty good.
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    • Profile picture of the author iplusgold
      Seriously...how funny is that story!!!!

      Yeah the truth is that alot of these SEO gurus dont know jack about the process and still charge clients huge sums of money for services. Having said that, there are some good ones out there that know there stuff but you really pay accordingly and finding them isnt easy. Linkedin has some good listings where the seo's have actually received lots of references from happy clients.

      Hope that helps
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  • Profile picture of the author Michael D
    Mac,

    No, you probably don't need to spend a ton of money on an "SEO expert". That term is thrown around a lot by many people who have no business calling themselves that. It does seem like you are targeting a pretty competitive market being in insurance, however. If you have no idea what you are doing it is going to be tough to rank for any competitive terms. You really have to do an analysis on your cost vs. perceived revenue before you go blowing money on some guy who is going to get you ranked for terms that get no search traffic. At least you were able to see that these terms weren't going to bring you in any money.

    Now, with that being said. SEO can be split up into 2 main categories. Onsite and Offsite. Onsite SEO is very simple. James did cover the very basics of it, but a few things he mentioned are wrong. Although META keywords are important they aren't really used by Google. I always include them for MSN though because their engine is behind on the times and still place a huge weight on META tags. He is dead on with his META description.

    The META revisit tag is completely unnecessary, however. I even had to look that one up because I have never seen it used. Leave that out! You want the spiders to come back on "their time" and this META is simply ignored by all the search engines and is a waste of time.

    The title tag is probably the most important thing you want to worry about with onpage SEO.

    I am so sick of the "content is king" argument. Sure, content is important and Google and other search engines want you to think it is the most important thing.

    Why wouldn't they?

    They want to have the highest quality content showing up in their SERPS. But, for the time being backlinks are what gets you ranked. If you argue this you simple don't know what you are talking about. The best way for search engines to know how to rank a site is by its "popularity". They still determine this with quality, relevant backlinks. The argument for quality content is people will naturally link to you can come back to your site. Which is great, but you could have the best content out there and never be found and starve. Don't leave it up to chance.

    Now, is it possible to get a bunch of traffic by not having your main site in the search engines? Off course it is from social sites, articles, forums, other sites linking to you, etc. But, if you want targeted traffic that is going to convert that you can control nothing beats search engine traffic. Many article marketers, like James, will argue this point but think about it...

    If I get all my traffic form article directories and social sites I have no control over how those visitors find me. Sure, I can target an article with certain keywords and hope to funnel the traffic to my site, but they first have to get through the article sites Adsense and other ads. Social sites will get you traffic, but it is very hard to target and many of them are tech savvy and don't click ads. You will notice a huge drop off with this type of traffic. Much of it will be wasted bandwidth.

    Now, one tactic for getting backlinks is article marketing. But, you should concentrate your efforts on getting your own sites ranked and not the article directories. You want your visitors to find your site straight away, not someone elses.

    What do I recommend for you? Well, I would simplify your SEO with a nice Wordpress install with the All in One or Platinum SEO plugin and sitemap generator plugin. If you use these they will take care of a lot of the onsite SEO for you. Target long tails starting out. Instead of 2 word insurance keywords go after 4 to 5 word longtail buying keywords. With Wordpress you can target these with different posts and pages.

    Anyone who says SEO is easy is wrong as well. The offpage SEO, like getting links, is very time consuming. Here are some other things you have to worry about as well (some mentioned already):

    * Title Tag
    * Link Popularity
    * Links Anchor Text
    * Age of Site
    * Internal Linking
    * Content of site linking
    * Back link Authority for KW
    * On site content - KW usage
    * Authority Back
    * Header Tags
    * Domain Name
    * Outbound Links
    * Growth Rate in Links
    * Duplicate Content

    If you want to hire someone make sure to check references and what they have done. The biggest thing I would look for is how their site is ranking. Are they in the top 3 for their main keywords. If they aren't this could be a red flag.

    Good luck with everything.
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    • Profile picture of the author TheRichJerksNet
      Originally Posted by Michael D View Post


      Now, with that being said. SEO can be split up into 2 main categories. Onsite and Offsite. Onsite SEO is very simple. James did cover the very basics of it, but a few things he mentioned are wrong. Although META keywords are important they aren't really used by Google. I always include them for MSN though because their engine is behind on the times and still place a huge weight on META tags. He is dead on with his META description.

      The META revisit tag is completely unnecessary, however. I even had to look that one up because I have never seen it used. Leave that out! You want the spiders to come back on "their time" and this META is simply ignored by all the search engines and is a waste of time.

      The title tag is probably the most important thing you want to worry about with onpage SEO.

      I am so sick of the "content is king" argument. Sure, content is important and Google and other search engines want you to think it is the most important thing.

      Now, is it possible to get a bunch of traffic by not having your main site in the search engines? Off course it is from social sites, articles, forums, other sites linking to you, etc. But, if you want targeted traffic that is going to convert that you can control nothing beats search engine traffic. Many article marketers, like James, will argue this point but think about it...
      Ok, first to start off with nothing on my post is wrong and I have 30+ sites that can prove that... The meta tags I posted are the basic and best ones to use, please consider there is more than just google and msn. Yes a revisit tag is needed although you can control google through your own google account. You can also make very good use of your robots.txt file.

      There are many ways to get targeted traffic that has nothing to do with search engines. Fact is only a small part of your traffic will come directly from the search engines unless you are working on getting traffic from search engines only through PPC and etc... some do this and do very well with just that search traffic.

      Quality content matters a great deal .. Has nothing to do with article marketing and the fact is I am not an article marketer, I am first and foremost a website developer with over 15 years of building websites.

      James
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      • Profile picture of the author Michael D
        Originally Posted by TheRichJerksNet View Post

        Ok, first to start off with nothing on my post is wrong and I have 30+ sites that can prove that... The meta tags I posted are the basic and best ones to use, please consider there is more than just google and msn. Yes a revisit tag is needed although you can control google through your own google account. You can also make very good use of your robots.txt file.

        There are many ways to get targeted traffic that has nothing to do with search engines. Fact is only a small part of your traffic will come directly from the search engines unless you are working on getting traffic from search engines only through PPC and etc... some do this and do very well with just that search traffic.

        Quality content matters a great deal .. Has nothing to do with article marketing and the fact is I am not an article marketer, I am first and foremost a website developer with over 15 years of building websites.

        James
        Yes, sorry some of it is wrong. Just because you have been a web developer for 15 years doesn't mean you know anything about SEO. I know a lot of web guys who never bothered learning it. I also have a lot more then 30 sites, so that doesn't impress me one bit.

        You always tout your 15 years of experience to justify any of your answers. This definitely explains your hangup on META Tags. It looks like this guide was written 15 years ago. Sorry, but I am trying to save Mac from getting some bunk information. You say that all you need is quality content and those few basic META tags, a title and description and some keyword density and that is all.

        You do realize he is trying to target insurance related keywords?

        These generally have a lot of competition already and that just isn't going to get it done. The other things I listed are going to be very important. Or, you could write "quality content" and follow your guide and hope to rank for very competitive terms.

        As far as you being 100 percent correct with everything...

        Well, most of it was correct, like I said before. The problem is what you leave out and you mentioned a couple things that simply are bad advice.

        First, your <meta name="revisit" content="5 days"/> tag is stupid. The reason your sites haven't had any adverse effects using it is because none of the search engines pay any attention to it except the one it was developed for SearchBC. That is search British Columbia. Wow, I better make sure to optimize my sites for that giant of a search engine.

        Just to be technical it is actually "revisit after" not just "revisit". Sure, it isn't probably going to hurt you to use it, but why waste time?

        I realize there are other search engines, thank you. The big 3 make up about 83% of the searches. AOL about ASK about 9%. The rest, or "other" make up about 8%. Anyone who knows anything about SEO will tell you to optimize your sites for Google and the rest will slowly follow.

        I never said not to use the rest of the META tags you provided. I simply stated one of them is ridiculous. I always use the others, but telling someone that that is enough to rank is irresponsible. Sure, you may be able to rank for some terms no one is searching for or that aren't competitive at all, but you aren't going to be ranking any insurance related terms.

        Sorry, I assumed you were an article marketer considering how often you come up in those threads offering advice on the subject and pimping your products related to article marketing.
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        • Profile picture of the author TheRichJerksNet
          Originally Posted by Michael D View Post

          Yes, sorry some of it is wrong. Just because you have been a web developer for 15 years doesn't mean you know anything about SEO. I know a lot of web guys who never bothered learning it. I also have a lot more then 30 sites, so that doesn't impress me one bit.

          You always tout your 15 years of experience to justify any of your answers. This definitely explains your hangup on META Tags. It looks like this guide was written 15 years ago. Sorry, but I am trying to save Mac from getting some bunk information. You say that all you need is quality content and those few basic META tags, a title and description and some keyword density and that is all.

          You do realize he is trying to target insurance related keywords?

          These generally have a lot of competition already and that just isn't going to get it done. The other things I listed are going to be very important. Or, you could write "quality content" and follow your guide and hope to rank for very competitive terms.

          As far as you being 100 percent correct with everything...

          Well, most of it was correct, like I said before. The problem is what you leave out and you mentioned a couple things that simply are bad advice.

          First, your <meta name="revisit" content="5 days"/> tag is stupid. The reason your sites haven't had any adverse effects using it is because none of the search engines pay any attention to it except the one it was developed for SearchBC. That is search British Columbia. Wow, I better make sure to optimize my sites for that giant of a search engine.

          Just to be technical it is actually "revisit after" not just "revisit". Sure, it isn't probably going to hurt you to use it, but why waste time?

          I realize there are other search engines, thank you. The big 3 make up about 83% of the searches. AOL about ASK about 9%. The rest, or "other" make up about 8%. Anyone who knows anything about SEO will tell you to optimize your sites for Google and the rest will slowly follow.

          I never said not to use the rest of the META tags you provided. I simply stated one of them is ridiculous. I always use the others, but telling someone that that is enough to rank is irresponsible. Sure, you may be able to rank for some terms no one is searching for or that aren't competitive at all, but you aren't going to be ranking any insurance related terms.

          Sorry, I assumed you were an article marketer considering how often you come up in those threads offering advice on the subject and pimping your products related to article marketing.
          I think you need to re-read my post, not once did I ever say that is all you need to do to rank .. Matter fact I said do not reply upon search engines and I said it twice just to be sure it was read..

          What I posted was about basic SEO, not that I am giving advice of this is all you need to do.. Read the words "Basic SEO" and Read the "Do Not Reply Upon Search Engines" ... I think you have grossly misunderstood my post, which I guess can be expected from some people since it is only one chapter of my ebook..

          I pointed out my 15 years as a web developer because you called me an article marketer.. I have never claimed any title of being an article marketer or a internet marketer for that matter ...

          My ebook was written about 2 years ago ...

          James
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  • Profile picture of the author kkchoon
    This forum has many "SEO expert" who don't call themselves Expert, but IM

    To make money online, you need traffic, that's why you do SEO on your site. However, even your site with tons of traffic, you still need "targeted traffic" to make good sales.

    And to make good sales, you need "hungry market" to sell your product, so the process would be researching hungry market before you even start to write an ebook...!

    There is much to learn, keep up the spirit!
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  • Profile picture of the author Mac the Knife
    Thanks everyone...this is good stuff, I appreciate the advice and words of wisdom.

    Mac the Knife
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  • Profile picture of the author refernshare
    Need to know some SEO too.
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  • Profile picture of the author jtrag
    This thread is kinda funny but it's definitely a good topic and makes a lot of good points. Let's keep it going...
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    • Profile picture of the author jeremymgp
      I'm one of the few who really do get results. I have top 5-10 rankings for
      - multiple keyphrases between 4,000,000 to 108,000,000 results in Google
      - my best result is 0-220,000 uniques/month, most of which was achieved over an 18 month period.
      - I am solely responsible for the SERP increases I claim, and results are for competitive keywords that drive significant targeted traffic. I do what most SEOs don't, I get results.

      And I'm still moderately poor . It's enormously frustrating because I come from the UK but live out in Asia so can't do face to face much. I've tried taking projects at places like Elance and RentaCoder, but 99% of clients want "100 quality PR2+ links" or a similar approach which by the very phrasing of their project defines work in terms of, with respect, offshore solutions. I don't get PR2 links or 1000 low-quality directory submissions. The only thing I do get is targeted traffic and significant results in the SERPS for really competitive keywords, and it can be tough seeing client after client engage in SEO projects which may be fulfilled in description but will most likely not deliver a sustainable increase in their business.

      Macurdy, if you are looking for a serious SEO who gets results I sure would love to hear from you. If you are looking to pay offshore rates I simply can't afford to help, believe me I'm sorry. If you can pay a monthly rate so I can eat and a results-based bonus so I can eat some more, that would be really cool.

      Hope this reaches someone, take care folks,

      Jeremy
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  • Profile picture of the author irving
    I am not an seo expert, but a beginner. But i know a couple of people who are really good. PM me if you are interested. Thank you!!
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  • Profile picture of the author Mac the Knife
    Man...I think I just got hit in the head with a flying meta tag...

    Thanks for clarifying some of that for us MichaelD Good info abounds...I am learning and appreciating the feedback immensely!

    Mac the Knife
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  • Profile picture of the author geyser
    Ok lets start it like this, first if you were hiring an "SEO guru", would you let them take care of your website? most clients don't allow someone to handle their website for it was their task to do it, so the task that's left for the SEO was just to build backlinks from all methods that they know, even if they knew that the website they were optimizing were not SE friendly, another factor was all clients focus on raising their PR, but what matters most for us is how to convert traffic into sales or leads, PR doesn't affect sales its all about marketing minds and strategy to make other websites successful..
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  • Profile picture of the author Black Hat Cat
    Banned
    Yes a revisit tag is needed although you can control google through your own google account.
    No, it isn't needed. You can use it if you want, but Google(and Yahoo, and MSN) ignores it, and is going to revisit on its timetable, not yours.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mickm
    I saw the revisit tag on a site I worked on last night. First thing I did was remove it.. even worst the site hadn't been updated since it was made, it's just asking for trouble.
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    SEO Since '97
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