On SEO, good content and quality design
October 14, 2009 | 12:05 am
Yesterday, Derek Powazek, a designer and writer who I have always admired, posted an article about SEO called Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists. As expected, the SEO pundits came out swinging.
Interestingly, I agree with both sides on this one. Yes, content is king. Yes, doing something well, having people talk about it and doing that again really is the single best way of gaining credibility in the marketplace. This is what @pirie and @joelkelly are always talking about and exactly what we've done with one of our latest co-projects.
The fact is, if you create great content, wrap it in a compelling design that communicates and provides well-developed tools for sharing, there's a good chance you'll do just fine. You'll gain mindshare, break into new markets and get a bit of credibility in the bargain. As some of the best minds in the business say: half the battle is getting someone to talk about you.
But, what if you're a small B&B or cottage owner, with a niche offering and a need to fill rooms quickly to get money back on an investment? We've built a handful of sites for small vacation properties over the years. All of our sites are built properly, using standards compliant markup wherever possible. We get how Google crawls the web, and know how to create code it and screen readers will happily devour.
As an example, one of our sites for a group of architecturally-designed and constructed ocean-front cottages was launched and the client needed to fill rooms as quickly as possible in the shoulder season. This client had the budget, and so we engaged the services of a partner SEO agency who put together a handful of linked pages and designed a PPC campaign. The result? Much more traffic than they would have gained otherwise, a low bounce rate and increased bookings.
Alternatively, we also recently built a really great little site for an ocean-side cottage in PEI. It's a beautiful site, miles beyond what they had before and gives a nice glimpse into what is on offer. However, PEI cottage rentals are hotly contested in Google and because this client wasn't prepared to invest in SEO this year, I think they could have had more traffic, and potentially more customers.
The fact is, even though some SEO purveyors game the system, there are a defined set of rules that everyone has to play within. As such, if everyone else is playing at the party, and you're not, you're going to lose. Unless you're in a business that no one else can get into (eg: ALC's Going to the Max promotion), you need to play on the same pitch as the rest of the crowd, or offer something so different that your customers have no choice but to talk about you.
There's no question that our clients have benefitted from SEO over the years. It's also the case that some of our customers haven't needed SEO to gain marketshare, as the the campaign was so good, it passed virally through the fingers of everyone who viewed it. I believe this to really be the secret ingredient of any good marketing campaign. But, this often requires more budget than many small businesses have. And so, good quality web design and development and a side order of SEO can help propel a business to the top of their niche listings.
I think good content is
I think good content is important, but if there is no quality design, there isn't enought trust.
Content is King!!
I can understand, the real truth and the main point of SEO is "Content Is King".When you go to the SEO than the first comes the content management system. If the content does not show up good than it does not matter how much you build links for the website. On site optimization is more important than that of off-site optimization. We can also go on with some Landing Page Optimization in order to boost up the traffic to the site rather than increasing search ranking.
Well this issue is always
Well this issue is always very touchy. SEO and spamming are like being together since their birth. I can agree with you on some points.
interesting that you're doing everything derek talks about
...and using this blog to pump up your traffic. i change blatant spam links to prevent you from getting the benefit...
If you have any involvement
If you have any involvement with public-facing websites, you need to know about search engine optimization (SEO) -- the practice and process of affecting search engine results. SEO can be disgustingly deceptive, or even criminally spammy. But it also can be simple, straightforward, helpful to customers, and utterly ethical. Above all, it can have a huge effect on your business success.
Precisely
This issue, like so many others, is one of those ones that, if you're able to be completely for or against it, you're not thinking hard enough.
And thanks for the shout out :)
Too True
Yeah, I saw that post by Powazek yesterday and thought along the same lines as you did Jeff. It's interesting because Gina Trapani (ginatrapani.org) who is a huge Google pundit proclaimed it "the best SEO advise anyone could ever get" and I thought that was kinda odd because like yourself I figured SEO done right has good value for a client.
But after thinking about it for a while I realized we don't actually vend a whole heck of a lot of SEO services these days for our clients (less than 4% of our annual revenues over the last year) and instead, like yourself, prefer to stick to the basics by building web standard compliant sites and teach our clients how to "do SEO" for themselves. I think that's where folks like Powazek and Trapani see things being "right", what I mean is I would be really surprised if they were talking about the vast majority of competent experienced web designers / developers in their blog post.
I figure like many people, they are just sick and tired of all the SEO consultants out there that don't offer real value for their clients. I got to say I'm sure it's still a lucrative business model in this day and age but I predict the days of the SEO consultant are numbered. They will all become "Social Media" guru's or "Internet strategy experts", or maybe one day: "Online Media Architectural Engineering Fellows in the 4th degree"
I agree that the "one step over the line" guys out there that are using the bad techniques that pollute the environment for everyone else will get their clients sites a page rank of zero in short order. That being said, don't forget the owners of those black hat sites with ads on them only get 50% of the take on all that ad revenue and the ad brokers gets the other half ;)
The biggest problem is ignorance
But not on the part of the development community. Mostly, on the part of the buyers of web services. People need to become informed about what they are buying. Most people wouldn't buy a car without researching how it compares in crash tests, reliability and performance. Why aren't they doing the same kind of research before buying web design, SEO or development? What we do is rarely cheap.
Well...the buyers...
Don't forget that websites are still a "new" industry that is still growing, few years ago if you offered a mechanic to have a website he would probably say something like - I'm on the yellow pages and that's enough.
Today he still won't understand too much about it but he will build one for sure :)
So we will probably need to wait few more years until most of the people will do research (because today just the minority does it).
same with SEO, people hear that it is good to do it but don't understand about it.
I had a customer few weeks ago that asked me if I can set is site that each time that people will search for boobs they will see his website on the first page of google... and his business has nothing to do with boobs of course.
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