{"id":411,"date":"2012-10-04T14:00:13","date_gmt":"2012-10-04T12:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wprealm.com\/?p=411"},"modified":"2012-10-04T14:00:13","modified_gmt":"2012-10-04T12:00:13","slug":"100-guaranteed-seo-bullshit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wprealm.local\/100-guaranteed-seo-bullshit\/","title":{"rendered":"100% Guaranteed SEO Bullshit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week I woke up to find not one, but two spam emails in my inbox offering “100% Guaranteed Seo Results”. I’m not sure why gmail decided that all of a sudden I needed to see these, but I just marked them as spam and proceeded to read the rest of my emails. However, a few hours later, a random email landed in my inbox: <\/p>\n

Hi Christine,<\/p>\n

Just found your site through google… Great SEO! \ud83d\ude09<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The funny thing is, I haven’t really done any SEO. In fact, I think SEO is bullshit and I’m not alone<\/a>. I believe in great content and being good as what you do, but paying someone for SEO? Not at all. I thought I would share my “secrets” with you. I can’t guarantee 100% satisfaction, but other than a bit of time, it won’t cost you a dime.<\/p>\n

Before I begin though, it’s important to emphasize that I’m a Web developer and work by myself. These tips may not be appropriate for big corporations, hotels, resorts or industries that need lots an lots of traffic. Being a one woman show, even if I had amazing SEO and got thousands of visitors, I wouldn’t be able to take on all the projects and requests that could come my way.<\/p>\n

Content is King<\/h2>\n

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of content. When web crawlers visit your site, they look at content. On any website that you visit, there’s a way to view the HTML source, this HTML is what the crawlers read. Back in the old days when flash was popular, this was the problem. Take a look at the source code of any flash site and you won’t see any content.<\/p>\n

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Web crawlers or spiders, read this content and then using their algorithms, place your site accordingly. This is why updating your content and keeping it fresh is important, but be very careful how you write your content. Your content should be written for your visitors<\/strong>, not web crawlers. Yes web crawlers are looking for content and finding keywords, but if your visitors find the content dry, boring and unhelpful, they will immediately go elsewhere and they’re your potential clients, not Google.<\/p>\n

Over the years, my company has changed and evolved and I’ve updated the content, deleted pages and added new ones. I never once stopped to think of what Google wanted, but rather tried to explain clearly what it is that I do and what I don’t. For me, this is more important. I would prefer to get good prospects contacting me, than random strangers asking me to design business cards or build them a flash e-commerce site, which is not what I do at all.<\/p>\n

Meta Keywords are Pointless<\/h2>\n

New clients often worry about keywords. Keywords are important, but adding keywords in the meta tags, or, worse, writing them in white and putting them on a white background will do no good. In fact, search engines may penalize you.<\/p>\n

Keywords are only important as part of your page or article content and shouldn’t be added as an afterthought. They need to be used sparingly. Two or three keywords max per page. Remember, your audience is human, not web spiders. If your articles have too many keywords in them and read poorly, your readers won’t be impressed and will simply go somewhere else.<\/p>\n

Writing good headings and title tags, in my opinion, is where the most attention needs to be paid. Just like newspaper headlines, good headings will draw readers in and make them curious to find out more.Titles on the other hand, give your visitors and search engines and indication of what your page is about.<\/p>\n

The best way to understand the Title tag is by using the WordPress SEO plugin<\/a>. Plugin developer, Joost de Valk included a great visual element that allows you to see how Google will display the title and meta information. I love this feature. It makes it so easy to use and explain to clients.<\/p>\n

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Joost has a lot to say about Search Engine Optimization and his plugin is very sophisticated. To find out more about all the nitty gritty details, you may be interested to have a look at his definitive guide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Organize your Content<\/h2>\n

If you’re a blogger, you’ll be familiar with Categories and Tags. Once again, these tools were put in place for humans, not search engines. Categories and Tags are very similar and both allow you to organize your content helping your visitors find related information. Lorelle wrote a great blog post in 2005<\/a>\u00a0which is still very relevant today. To explain the difference between categories and tags, I like to use the restaurant menu analogy.<\/p>\n

Categories<\/strong> are your Breakfast<\/em>, Lunch<\/em> and Dinner<\/em> sections
\nTags<\/strong>\u00a0are your\u00a0Soups<\/em>, Sandwiches<\/em>, Pasta<\/em>, Fish<\/em> and Meat<\/em> sections<\/p>\n

You probably wouldn’t be impressed with a restaurant menu that has the following sections:<\/p>\n