Hating on SEO

June 16, 2010 · 0 comments

Today I’m hating on SEO. For those of you that are not aware, SEO stands for ’search engine optimization’.

In short it’s the practice of optimizing your website so that it ranks high in search engine results. There are normally two main focuses – the actual content itself and technical optimization.

Let’s face it; search engine traffic is a BIG DEAL. Just one quick look at the web stats for one of my sites shows that Google is responsible for 68% of my visits in the last 30 days. Mind blowing really…

So it’s easy to see how we’ve become obsessed with SEO. Get it wrong and your site could just be one of a billion floating around in internet ghost town. Get it right and it can blow up your site and translate into significant revenue (depending on what type of site you run).

So why am I hating on SEO you ask?

Firstly, because people just seem to have become utterly obsessed with it. They sit there hammering out key word rich content and building incoming links on a daily basis and seem to launch a new website or blog every week. If only they spared a thought for the poor souls that have to read this nonsense?

And of course, most are too lazy to do it themselves, so they just farm it out to an SEO company promising top page results.

The sad thing is that because there are so many SEO cowboys out there, there’s a good chance that they will do something silly (duplicate content, dodgy code or using suspect software to short cut work) and this will actually result in one of the important search engines penalizing/blacklisting your site.

The end result? Uninteresting, inaccurate content, poor quality incoming links, a website which normally looks a bit odd to the reader (because it has been optimized for the search engines over the reader) and a good chance you may get blacklisted.

EPIC fail.

Now to be fair, those obsessed with SEO normally do build higher levels of visits to their site. So, it’s all good right?

Maybe not….

What’s the point in just having more visits if it’s just numbers in your web stats? Surely you want people to actually find your website content useful and maybe even enjoy it? Surely you want to be able trigger some type of call to action or to be able monetize your audience in some way?

This is what people forget. Purely building more visits is useless if when people go to your site, they quickly leave when they realize it’s a bit…. eh…

The other factor in all of this is when people get so obsessed with SEO, they normally put more time and energy into it and then neglect the actual content, service or product they want to offer and if you don’t have this, you’re dead anyway.

Ok, so I’ve hated/ranted enough, so in my bid to give you some good, useful content – here are my top tips for what counts in SEO land. This stuff can get fairly in depth, so I am keeping it pretty short on purpose (I have a day job too!), if you have any questions about it, just ask in the comments.

1. Title Tags and Descriptions

First of all, get your titles and descriptions in good shape (these actually reside in the code of the page). The reason these are important is because when you do a Google search this is what is displayed to the user and ultimately plays a big part in their decision to click through to your site or not.

Here is an example:

Don’t get all bent out of shape trying to craft the most perfect titles and descriptions, just keep them meaningful (they should be an accurate representation to the content), key word rich and concise.

I normally go for the following format for the title tag:

Page Title | Site name

So using the picture above as the example, an article on my Wannabebig site called ‘Eating Optimally for Massive Size and Strength’ would be:

Eating Optimally for Massive Size and Strength | Wannabebig

And my description is normally a short sentence which helps sell the article and summarizes what the content is about. So, for the ‘ Eating Optimally for Massive Size and Strength’ article it looks like this:

If you can control daily insulin releases by eating the right foods at the right time, you can start to unlock your true growth potential!

And that’s it. Leave alone and resist the temptation to keep fiddling about with them.

2. Search Engine Friendly urls

Keep your urls key word rich and a sensible structure and leave it at that. So for example the url for my article referenced above is http://www.wannabebig.com/diet-and-nutrition/eating-optimally-for-massive-size-and-strength/

3. Frequent, good quality content

Search engines like frequently updated, key word rich content. The trick is making sure that first and foremost your content is something that your reader base will enjoy and find useful and/or effectively sells your product or service.  In fact, I would urge you to write it for your reader first before evening thinking about SEO.

Once you are happy with it, give it a key word rich title (not the same as the above title we talked about, think chapter in a book title) and then go back through the content and see if there is an opportunity to make the body of the content a little more key word rich (without sacrificing the quality/flow).

Lastly, aim to update your site with new content a couple of times a week. Search engines like sites who update frequently and on a simpler level the more content you have, the more content that can be indexed.

If you run a reasonably static site, consider adding a blog as this will give you an excellent way to create short pieces of content on a frequent basis.

Bottom line – frequent, good quality content builds high quality traffic – that’s the plain truth.

4. Quality incoming links

Incoming links are very important and there are two factors here – quantity and quality.

There are normally two ways to build good quality incoming links. Strangely enough, high quality content organically builds incoming links because you will find people will read your content and then WANT to reference and link to it form their site.

You could also go out and ask for them for a link back or trade links with other sites (just bear in mind external links on your own site can affect your search engine rankings). The bigger and better ranked the sites linking to you, the better your search engine benefit.

And that’s it.

Just focus on those 4 things and again don’t get all obsessive about it, it should only be a small part of what you concern yourself with. Producing a good looking, usable site with frequently updated, high quality content is 98% of the battle. So why spend huge amounts of time on the other 2%?

And don’t always worry about the pure numbers. HIGH quality traffic means more than just pure traffic. Care about things like the length of site visit, what content people are reading more often, the most exited piece of content and the level of interaction from your readers (comments etc). It’s better to have a small, loyal and interested reader base, than just big numbers of people landing on your site, but leaving after 5 seconds.

A Great Example

I want to leave you with a good example of a guy who I think is getting it spot on.

Nate Green runs a lifestyle blog called The Nate Green Experience, and to be frank I’m in awe (but not surprised) of how he has built a really high quality online following. I doubt his overall site numbers are massive, but you can tell from the comments on his blog that his reader base really enjoy and appreciate his content.

His blog posts often get 50+ genuine comments and his site is one of a handful that sit in my Google Reader.

Nate is nailing it, check this out:

- Good looking, usable site – check
- Sensible title and description tags – check
- Frequent, good quality content – check
- Incoming links – to be fair, I haven’t checked but my guess is that he has some decent people linking to his content and I know he writes exclusively for a very popular online magazine which links back to his site – bingo!

And I bet if you asked Nate what he does from a search engine perspective, he would probably just tell you he doesn’t focus on it too much, he just focuses on good content.

If there is one thing you take away from this post it should be that everything has a habit of falling into place when you just create a good looking, usable site with frequently updated, high quality content :)

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Don’t Just Sell to Your Customers – Educate Them!

June 8, 2010 · 2 comments

This is why I love reading books. In each book I read there are a couple of take home messages that really hit home. And it doesn’t have to be an outstanding book, sometimes even an overall average book can have just one very relevant take home message that makes a massive difference to you.

They can be obvious and jump out right away and at other times it can take a while for things to sink in and then you may get a bit of an ‘aha moment’ at a later date (often an external factor triggers the memory).

This happened to me recently when I read Rework by 37 Signals (which is an outstanding book by the way). There was a topic about the importance of not just selling to your customers, actually educating them. And over the next couple of days my mind started to race about just how important this is and it inspired me to write this blog post!

So many companies either miss this point entirely or try and do it and fail miserably and end up missing a huge opportunity.

So what does educating your customers mean?

Well, most products or services fall within a particular area of interest right? If you are selling a product or a service, your customer base obviously has a passion or at least some interest related to your product or service right?

So rather than simply sell them your products/services, if you can help educate them in your particular area of interest you’ll build stronger, more loyal relationships with your customers, which will ultimately mean they will buy more and more often from you and they will refer more customers to you.

Why?

Because you’ll show them that you actually CARE about them. You’ll show them that you’re not simply a faceless business without a personality in it purely for the transaction, but you actually have a passion for doing what you’re doing and you care that your customers have a rich experience.

And trust me, this will set you apart from 95% of your competitors and your customers will notice and reward you for it. This is also a great way for a smaller business with larger, more established competitors to stand out amongst the crowd.

Ok, I’ve been a bit vague, so let’s take an example.

Your name is Betty and you run a cake shop (I just picked Betty because Betty’s Cake shop has a nice ring to it lol). You are one of three cake shops in the area. You tend to have a pretty varied customer base, making cakes for occasions but also offering lots of little treats for people to grab on the go etc. People in town love your cakes and you’ve got a pretty good reputation for having tasty cakes, but then so do your competitors. You’re pretty equally matched if we’re going to be honest about it.

Now, you could simply just sell cakes to your customers. You do it well and people like them so it’s all good right?

Well sure, but you could go a step further and really show your customers just how passionate you are about cake making and also educate them on the art of cake making (they at least have an interest in eating cakes and probably for making them).

Just a few ideas off the top of my head…

  • You could actually tell and show your customers how you make cakes
  • You could have a kitchen open day where your customers can see you in action making your cakes
  • You could run classes where you show your customers how to make great cakes
  • You could share your recipes and hand them out to your customers for free, making it easy for them to have a go themselves
  • You could hold a competition for the best made customer cake (free cakes for a week for the best one!)
  • You could sell your customers cake making books and magazines or even just have them available in the shop to browse
  • You could have a blog on your website where you share your cake making wisdom with your customers

And the list could go on.

The key thing here is that you are actually showing just how passionate you are about making cakes and you’re making a genuine effort to help enrich your customer’s lives in cake making.

And genuinely is the key word here. You have to go about this with passion and a real thirst for sharing the joys of cake making with the world. If you fake it, your customers will notice that too and it’ll be worse than not doing it at all.

And don’t worry that you’ll be giving out your secrets. Do you honestly think if you give out your recipes your customers will be able to make cakes just as good as you? If they could, well you’re probably not just that good at making cakes ;) Most likely though you have a real gift for making great cakes and that cannot easily be copied.

Now, imagine if you did this and your competitors just sold cakes?

You would definitely stand out from your competitors and be more popular. Your customers would visit you more often and buy more from you. They would tell their friends about you and most importantly they would be your fan rather than just being your customer which in turn makes referrals so much more powerful.

Think about other companies that do this well. Big supermarkets like Sainsbury’s and Waitrose don’t just sell good food, but they help their customers have the best food experience. Just selling them good food is not good enough.

Take a look at www.waitrose.com for a good example. You can find recipes from Delia and Heston, great picnic recipes and spots in the UK and they have a free weekly magazine which contains product reviews, lifestyle articles, events, recipes etc. And this stuff seems to stand out more than their online store!

I do this with my own business too. Sure, we sell products on AtLarge Nutrition (and they are great products). However, in addition to that we run Wannabebig where we are insanely passionate about helping our customers achieve their fitness goals more quickly. Whether you want to get big and strong or lean and mean you’ll find really useful and inspiring articles and a large, helpful community that will help you get there more quickly. We literally spend thousands of dollars every month paying the best writers in the field to write content for us so that our customers can be as well informed as possible.

So whether you own your own business or work for someone else, I encourage you to think about how you can share your passion and educate your customers rather than simply sell to them – you’ll be pleasantly surprised just how much it can grow your business and help set you apart from your competitors!

I’d love to hear from you if you already do this or perhaps have ideas for doing this in the future!

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Using Your Time Efficiently

March 26, 2010

What’s the most common excuse you hear from people when they fail to see something through?
‘I just didn’t have enough time…..’
I’ve used it, you’ve used it and you’ll know others that used it. However 95% of the time, this is just a lame excuse for not having enough determination to get something done.
Now I fully [...]

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Goal Setting made simple

February 21, 2010

Over the last 10 years or so I have either listened to or read at least 30 different systems of setting life goals. I’m glad I did because over the years I have ended up taking bits from each one and narrowed it down into something that works for me.
Strangely enough (being slightly sarcastic here) [...]

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