Climbing up the Search Ladder

j_heisenberg writes "Wired carries a story on SEOs or search engine optimizers. Among some bold claims: traffic is up 6 times and sales double, once you hit the first page of results on major engines. The catch: eventually everyone will use SEOs, and there is only one first page."

Comments

They do work

[BigDogCH]

My friend was once marketed by a company who was trying to sell car security systems. What they wanted to sell him was a website where he could market these systems himself. They claimed that all he had to do was purchase a premade website, for $12,000. After selling 15 systems, it would pay for itself. If the website didn't pay for itself, he would get his money back.
Anyway, as soon as he purchased, he noticed that his page was showing up on page 50+ on google. So, he wanted to fix this. He payed big bucks to a Search Engine Optomization company. In return, within a few months the company had him moved up to the 2nd page.
Did it work, yes! Was it worth it, no. Everything they had him do, I suggested to him (I found lists of techniques online). By the way, he got his $12,000 back (sounded like a scam to me, but I guess not).

Re:They do work

[BigDogCH]

Excellent point, and I don't know. I do know that they had me alter some of the html on his site. Meta-tags mostly, which I hadn't heard of until then. For those of you who haven't (I can't be the only one), they are quite simple. I also know that there were hundreds of sites created by this company to sell their own product. Not a bad idea though! Build a product, then make money selling sites which sell your product, but you don't have to maintain the sites or do any marketing at that point. Let everyone else do it.

Exclude web stores

[tepples]

I'd like to see google be google and froogle be froogle and that be that.

There are some keywords you can tell Google to exclude if you don't want web stores. Try adding -price or -shipping or -checkout to your query.

Re:SEO

[Manchot]

Ah yes, but they don't need to optimize their own page. Do the search again, and notice that OneUpWeb is the first sponsored link. And as we learned a few weeks ago, most Google users can't tell the difference between acutal results and sponsored ones.

It's a growing business

[saddino]

In most trades, when someone comments on SEO, it's almost always a quote from one of the founders of SearchEngineWatch, a subscription only forum and web site focused on "Search Engine Marketing." Reasearching the site, it really is amazing how many people and companies are involved in "optimization." This field is getting huge, and as the article says, just about every major business is doing it. FYI, most of the strategies involved aren't fraud (like farm linking) but rather how certain keywords and meta tags result in different search engine rankings.

Re:The question is...

[dilvie]

You think so? The truth of it is this: Most websites are not well thought out. Many websites don't even include important keywords anywhere in their page title, heading tags, or even the page content itself!

It's so easy to blow past 90% of your competition on most keywords, it's silly. Only a small fraction of the hottest search buzz keywords are difficult to optimize for, and even in areas with heavy competition, there is a long tail that's fairly easy to grab.

You want to optimize your site, here's the whitehat way, and it's a piece of cake:

• Know which keywords your potential customers are using, and include them in your page titles, headings, and content -- you don't have to do any spamming, just be sure that your landing page is exactly tuned to your customer's searches.
• Develop a site that is worth linking to! Hire a decent designer. Make sure the site works on more than one browser. Provide quality content. Offer a good value.
• Run a blog (update it frequently), provide an RSS feed, and send out pings. Be sure your blog is something that people will actually want to read. Obvious spam doesn't attract inbound links.
• Make sure your site is listed in all the obvious directories, including the local listings like superpages and Yahoo! Local.
• Make it easy for people to link to you. Provide a "link to us" page with (valid) sourcecode.
• Run an AdWords campaign, and be sure to target a wide variety of keyword variations.
• Link to your customers, and ask them to link back to you. Happy customers are an easy way to get hundreds of great inbound links -- more than enough to put your site at the top of most search results.

You don't have to be a blackhat or break the bank to get results.

Re:SEOs Overrated?

[moolb]

Its rather easy to get listed under those terms because not many people are listed under those phrases.
For example, Cinara Aphids only has 625 results in Google, and Aramark norovirus has 60 results with Google.

I think a SEO service can be a good idea if you have a product that has more competition, but in your case it wouldn't be needed.
Anyway, thats my thoughts on your experience.

Google's official statement

[jdavidb]

Google's official statement on search engine optimization gives a number of reasons to be wary of search engine optimizers. While not condemning them outright, they have almost nothing positive to say.

I would think anyone paying money to "guarantee a higher rank on Google" would want to first see what Google itself says about the subject.