In light of my articles on Why You Need SEO and Beware of Seo Firms last month, I thought I’d post some do-it-yourself SEO tips and tricks for small businesses or individuals who want to improve their search engine results without hiring a large firm. You can do a lot to improve your SEO on your own. If you don’t have the time, or don’t want to mess with the more technical aspects of do-it-yourself SEO, you can always outsource these functions – but know what they entail so you can decide if you’re getting what you pay for.

Content Optimization.

Content optimization is one of the keys of overall SEO, and it’s a service that I regularly provide for my clients. To optimize your content, you should break your content down into digestible chunks that pertain to a specific topic. Make sure the content relates to the title. If you’re not sure what to write about, or what title to use, try a free keyword search tool, such as Google’s Ad Words Keyword Tool, Google’s Search-based Keyword Tool, or other keyword search tools. These tools can give you an idea of what people are searching for so you can optimize your content for popular keywords in your field.

Use headers in your formatting to improve SEO.

One of the most important things you can do to improve your SEO yourself is to use headers in your Web page formatting. Many people simply use a “<strong>” tag to bold important subheadings in Web page designs. This totally misses out on the optimization available by using targeted headings. If you use a “<h1>”, “<h2>”, or “<h3>” tag for your headings, search engines place more weight on those headings, and give you a higher page rank if your headings relate to your title and your Web page content. By using the <strong> tool instead, search engines read your webpage as having no subheadings at all, and you’ll miss out on the opportunity to take advantage of those headings to boost your SEO and page rank.

Pay close attention to Title tags in DIY SEO applications.

Title tags are perhaps the single most important part of providing good SEO for your Web pages. Search engines look at title tags for keywords, and compare the title tags to your page to see if the content supports the title. If you don’t get your keywords in the title tag, you might not get ranked at all for that content – in spite of optimizing your content. The closer the keyword to the front of the title tag, the more it can influence your page rank. You should also make sure that the important title keywords appear at least once in your copy – bonus if you can work it into your subheadings and use the appropriate heading tags.

Leave the styling for CSS.

We’ve already looked at what opportunities you miss when you bold your headers instead of using header tags. Similarly, you should try to forgo styling in HTML as much as possible and leave the styling to the CSS. When you use CSS to style your page, you can specify how headings should look, how links should look and what visual styles you want to apply to your website. That means less code in your Web pages themselves, since the code is in the style sheet – and a better code-to-content ratio, which improves SEO.

Additionally, by keeping your styling in the CSS style sheets, you can implement standard HTML tags and code and capitalize on SEO functionality. You can also easily change styles via CSS to alter colors and other display properties, and test how these font and style changes affect conversion. This gives you an easy way to improve your conversion rates without having to spend hours changing every page’s HTML.

Deciding when to outsource SEO.

SEO isn’t something that everyone wants to do. Even though much of SEO is simple enough for anyone to implement themselves, it does still take time and requires you to tinker with the website. If you simply don’t want to deal with managing your website, or making the little tweaks that improve your SEO, it might be worthwhile to outsource your SEO.

Beware of expensive firms that charge you thousands of dollars for relatively minor SEO tweaks. Find out exactly what a firm’s SEO services entail, and decide whether it’s worth the cost for you. Much of what SEO companies do breaks down into these SEO categories: optimizing content, optimizing title tags and adjusting formatting. The technical aspects, such as title tags and formatting, are relatively easy tweaks and shouldn’t cost you an arm and a leg.

For more info on things to look out for when you’re outsourcing your SEO, check out my article “Beware of SEO Firms.”

SEO is your key to getting visitors. The better your page rank, the more visitors you’ll have – and that’s largely a function of SEO. For this reason, many small businesses (and even large businesses) are devoting precious marketing dollars to good SEO. I recently consulted with one of my Web design clients, and found that he’s thinking of hiring an SEO firm to optimize his page.

BEWARE OF HIRING SEO FIRMS TO OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE!

Why you don’t need SEO firms.

I study SEO all the time as part of my business. I can’t deliver SEO content without understanding current SEO practices, and a large part of my business involves writing SEO content. Since I’m already knowledgeable about SEO as a content producer and an occasional Web designer, I had no idea that SEO firms even existed. That is, until I was consulting with a Web client a couple of weeks ago and he told me that he was considering hiring an SEO firm. An SEO firm that wanted to charge him $80,000.

I was floored when he told me how much the firm wanted to charge. I charged pennies compared to that for his website design, and I provide ongoing maintenance for even less. I advised him, in my initial design, of certain SEO practices and content he should include – but he didn’t like the context or the way it looked, so I removed it. Upon hearing he was considering paying someone $80k to ‘optimize’ his website, I asked to see the proposal to find out what exactly they were doing for $80k.

It turns out – 90% of what they were doing was stuff that I’d already told him to do, or things that we’d already implemented on his website. The proposal broke out things into line items that aren’t really separate things at all – but part of the same thing – they just write it like that to make it look like additional items. In fact, let me excerpt some areas of the proposal so you have an idea of what I mean:

• Optimized Content: $800 per page – for 4 pages of content – a total of $3,200 for 4 pages. (Many professionals – myself included – charge between $50-150 for optimized content, depending on the length of the page and the content included.)
• Design/Code. They broke this section out into 5 different line items – all of which I had already provided to this Web design client myself – for $4,000. (I charged a fraction of that price for my design, with unlimited edits – they only allow 2 rounds of edits.)
• Video. $3,000-$6,000. (The client has the capacity to produce this video himself, and many people do – video editing software is inexpensive and even included for free in some operating systems, and professional-quality video equipment is extremely affordable in this digital world.)
• Reports/Books intended to be used for a conversion tool – $400. This is the first thing remotely resembling a reasonable price on the proposal. (I’ve written reports and books for Web clients to use as conversion tools at anywhere from $75 to $500, so depending on the length and the content, $400 might be appropriate.)
• Publish – $800. This was broken out into two line items: publish to search engines and setup Google Analytics. What they don’t tell you is that it costs NOTHING to publish websites to search engines (and is automated in most cases) and Google Analytics is free, too – just requires inserting a little code into websites. (I’ve already done this for the client for free.)
• A license for the client to access his own website – $2,000. Under this proposal, the SEO firm would maintain the website, and the client had to pay a LICENSING FEE to access his own website! This client currently has unlimited access to his website at no cost.
• Web hosting – $800 per year. The client is already hosting his website with a reputable provider for less than $100 per year, and has more features, space and functionality than the proposed hosting under this SEO firm for $800 annually.
• Content Management Program – $5,000 PER MONTH. (You can hire a reputable writer or SEO expert to create content for you for a fraction of the price – I currently offer CMPs for some clients for as little as $500 for a substantial range of services – services only available on this $5k per month plan.)

What to look out for when you’re considering an SEO firm.

In light of reading the ridiculous proposal that they sent to my client, I’m tempted to say you should never, under any circumstances, contract with an SEO firm. The line items in the proposal were misleading, at best, and the prices they charged were inflated beyond all reason. The company was a reputable SEO firm with a number of large clients, and they clearly trade on their name to gain new clients. However, the services offered were in many cases already extant, or easily implemented at a fraction of the cost.

Unfortunately, many clients who are in need of SEO have no way of knowing that this firm’s proposal is completely outrageous and highly overpriced. Without knowing what the line items actually are, or how they relate to what you might already have, it’s impossible to know that SEO firms are ripping you off. Instead, consider these factors:

• Check with an individual or small business for comparable services. In many cases, individuals or small businesses can give you significantly better rates than you’ll find at large SEO firms. Simply look for quality providers with verifiable references and a portfolio you can review in order to make sure you’re working with a legitimate professional.
• Place an ad on Elance or Guru to solicit bids. Elance and Guru are two popular online marketplaces where you can hire qualified individuals and businesses to perform SEO services. You’ll find a broad range of prices and quality levels on these marketplaces, but they’re great places to source potential providers. Users can leave feedback and information about their experiences so you have a way of verifying how satisfied people were with providers.
• Request bids from multiple SEO firms. Make sure you shop around if you’re considering spending cash on SEO. SEO dollars can be money well-spent, from a ROI and marketing perspective, but not if you’re spending 3-5 times what the service is actually worth. Make sure you solicit multiple bids and avoid a company that seems drastically overpriced. Also, make sure you’re comparing apples to apples – which may include a breakdown line-item by line-item to make sure you’re comparing the same functionality in a bid.
• Check for word of mouth in your business community. Check with other businesses in your area and find out if they used a quality SEO firm they’d recommend. You might have trouble getting recommendations from your competitors, but non-competing businesses might be willing to share their providers. Beware of firms that churn out pages that look exactly alike, though, as form pages don’t provide the quality you want from an SEO provider.
• Beware of SEO firms that own your content! Upon doing further research on SEO firms, I discovered some clients complaining that SEO firms retained their content when the clients eventually discontinued using the firms. Even content that the clients had created themselves. Beware of SEO firms that own your content! Examine the fine print closely, and make sure that you retain all of your own content, your domain name and the right to access and edit your account and website at any time.

The difference between SEO firms and SEO content.

SEO firms provide a broad range of features, depending on the firm. Some firms provide SEO for your page layout and design, but don’t provide content management packages, or CMP. This means that you’ll get a one-time SEO makeover, but you won’t get support on an ongoing basis. Even if you do get ongoing SEO, you might not be getting new content – you may just be getting people evaluating your page, stats and keywords to make sure your SEO is still working.

SEO content is both an SEO tool and a stand-alone feature. Many SEO firms don’t provide SEO content at all, or the SEO content that they do provide is static content designed to provide good SEO to your website pages themselves, but not provide ongoing support. SEO firms are largely unnecessary. You can do many of the same things that SEO firms do on your site on your own, without paying someone thousands of dollars.

SEO content, on the other hand, is a necessary and vital part of improving the ROI on your website. SEO content makes sure your website comes up high in relevant search rankings, and dynamic SEO content can expand your search rankings and further improve your page rank. Generating SEO content yourself *is* something that you can do, but your time is typically better spent elsewhere. It makes sense to hire a professional to generate SEO content for your website – especially dynamic content on an ongoing basis – because the SEO content professional is well-versed in current SEO trends and ways to improve your page ranking. SEO firms may include SEO content as a part of their packages, but they typically charge far more than an individual provider would charge – and you have less control over what you’re getting.

In short, beware of SEO firms.

In summary: SEO FIRMS ARE BAD! Not all SEO firms are out to rip you off, but the proposals I’ve seen from large, reputable firms charge FAR TOO MUCH for services that shouldn’t cost that much. Hire a small business or individual SEO professional for far better rates and the individual attention that your website deserves, and save your marketing dollars for other important marketing tools and campaigns.

Web traffic is largely a product of search engine queries and results. It’s a fact. Viral marketing can spawn amazing results, but the normal avenue through which most people reach a business website is through search engine queries and results. If you want to get in front of readers, you need to have page results high in a search listing for a particular keyword or series of keywords. If you’re on the third page of results, most readers will never get to your page. How can you achieve a high page rank? Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a big part of this process.

Keywords and Page Rank – the background details.

Before you can understand search engine optimization, you need to understand the basics of how search engines work. When you type words into a search engine and hit the button, the search engine ignores some common words (like the, and, to) and searches its indexes for references to the important words in your query: keywords. Web pages that reference all of your keywords get priority, followed by websites that reference fewer of your keywords. Search engines also weigh other factors to determine the order in which it displays results. (It’s also important to note that search engines can only reference pages that they’ve indexed, but I’ll save that for another article.)

For example, if five Web pages all reference all of your keywords, but one page has thirty inbound links, the search engine recognizes those inbound links as value and that page would come up at the top of your search. This is the page rank. Many factors come into play when a search engine is determining your page rank, but this is a very simplified explanation of how search engines work.

What is SEO?

What is this SEO stuff anyway? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Search engine optimization is the process of analyzing current search engine criteria and making sure your website scores high in all categories. The purpose of this exercise is to get you a higher page rank; the better you score on a search engine, the higher up in the search results your page displays. Some people pay for the top results by becoming sponsors or paying for expensive marketing campaigns, but you can achieve high page ranks even without paying for advertising if you utilize effective SEO practices.

Why you need SEO.

Your page rank for a particular keyword depends on several important factors, but one generality is true: the higher your page rank, the better. If yours is the first website that comes up in a search, you’ll get exponentially more clicks than the second page, and the second gets more clicks than the third, and so on. Average people don’t click on more than a few pages unless they don’t find the information they seek, in which case they may continue looking. If you’re on the second page of results, many people who do a relevant search will never even see your site.

That means its vital that you get your website as high as possible in the list of page ranks, in order to ensure that as many people as possible see your site.

The basics of good SEO.

SEO varies somewhat from search engine to search engine, as different search engines have different criteria for ranking pages. However, many SEO best practices apply to multiple search engines, so it’s easy to capitalize on good SEO. SEO depends on a variety of factors: the keywords in your page, the page title, your headers and the content in your page, and your overall Web presence.

Content alone is a huge driving force in SEO. You want your keywords to appear enough times so that the search engine recognizes them, but not so many times that they overwhelm your readers; the best keyword SEO is organic, so it reads nicely to human readers but search engines still like the text. This is largely a function of where you place the keywords and how you use them. If you use the keywords too many times, search engines will actually assign your content a lower value, as they’re designed to penalize pages that attempt to manipulate the search engine results. Organic ranking is always the best.

Beyond content, though, other factors influence your page’s SEO. Inbound linking is a huge factor in SEO. The more places that link to your website, the better search engines like your page. Search engines equate links with value, and the more links you have, the more valuable your content must be. Therefore, building inbound linking is key to differentiating your content from your competitors’ pages.

Why you should hire an expert for good SEO.

SEO is a constantly-changing target. Search engines update their algorithms and criteria as people find ways to try to manipulate them. Search engines provide value by linking to high-quality, high-value content. Search engines don’t want to link to low-quality, poor content – people won’t be satisfied with the results, and may have to go to another search engine to find better results.

What this means for you is that you’re better served by hiring an expert to provide you with content that has high SEO value than trying to learn all the intricacies of SEO yourself. To learn good SEO practices, you’d need to constantly be researching the industry, and you’d need to be a near-expert in many aspects of Web design, marketing and content creation. If you hire an expert, on the other hand, all you have to do is describe your goal, and the expert can create SEO content to help your website achieve the best possible pagerank.

Beware of hiring the wrong SEO firm.

However, you should beware of hiring large SEO firms that charge you an arm and a leg for services you don’t need or already have. I recently consulted with one of my Web clients about his site, and he told me he was considering hiring an SEO firm to improve his page rank. I told him to send me his proposal and I’d evaluate it for him – decide whether or not it was worth what the company was charging – and was appalled at what he sent.

The company was charging outrageous prices for many services that he either already had or didn’t need, and he had no idea, because they couched the proposal in technical language. I’m currently working on an article about the dangers of SEO firms and how to select an SEO provider: look for that article on Monday, January 18th.

I regularly write SEO content for a wide range of clients – everything from articles to web page content. If you want SEO content, feel free to contact me using the Contact page above and I’d be happy to discuss your project.