Lead-Gen SEO

I just posted this over as a comment on the blog of a colleague…  He mentioned how many people consider SEO to be deceitful, and then went on to compare it to a deceitful piece of direct mail he recently received.  I think Black Hat SEO in many cases is “deceitful”, but white hat SEO for the most part isn’t.  I think its just more putting your best foot forward.  In that case, its once again more like traditional PR.

I don’t share the thought though of those who say SEM/SEO is deceitful.  I view it as simply understanding what the search engines want and giving it to them… Its sort of like wearing a nice outfit to a big interview.  Its not outright lying or intentionally deceiving, but rather just putting your best foot forward.  The interviewer knows you don’t wear suits everywhere you go

Nowadays I think everyone must consider the source in all things.  That’s a skill that is much needed in this age of multitudes of media outlets across different mediums.  All information is biased, in some way.

Deceiving is having a client who sells one product and optimizing for an unrelated or very loosely related keyword.  Who has time for that?  Way too inefficient.  Instead, most of the “SEO” that I see is instead simply elaborating a bit more than what might be appropriate or deserving if there weren’t search engines to consider.  Maybe without SEO I would write 3 paragraphs of text about an accounting firm’s year-end tax preparation services, whereas with search engines to consider I write 5 and include a more to-the-point TITLE tag and H1, and then work a little harder to make sure other sites know about it.  That’s not deceiving.  That’s just doing a better job, doing more than otherwise is “necessary”, and perhaps trying harder.

Thoughts in agreement?  Thoughts to the contrary?

A colleague referred me to this page offering some SEO Whitepapers.  I haven’t read any of them.  I’m sure they are very good though.

But once you are involved in the SEO industry for a while, the whitepapers - much like SEO conferences - begin to all say the same thing.  The truth is SEO itself is not rocket science.  Its simple.

1. Create really great, unique, valueable content about all the various aspects of your topic.
2. Code your site with a good understanding on on-page SEO, CSS, information architecture, conversion and usability.
3. Get a lot of other really great websites in your topical area to link to your site.

Note that I said SEO is simple, not easy.  It can be damn hard.

Content - The challenge here is creating “really great content” if you are an SEO person or agency.  You likely know nothing about the topic.  Thus, you must rely on a copywriter.  That copywriter likely knows nothing about SEO.  Now in a perfect world the copywriter understand the value of SEO, and you work together peacefully and harmoniously.  In reality, you are too damn busy and so are they - so it doesn’t work out as nicely as you’d each like, and someone often ends up compromising.  That aside, I’ve yet to find a copywriter than can provide me with the quantity and quality of copy I want, at a price I can afford.  Truth is there is no shot - I have a never-ending appetite for content.

Coding - This one ain’t too rough.  Brush up on HTML and CSS standards, on-page optimization fundamentals and conversion/usability topics and generally this is the one I find most firms can really rock.  That’s the problem though, rocking this is simply the admission fee - it won’t differentiate you or set your site apart from the crowd with respect to search rankings.  Everyone else is doing it too.

Great Links - Simple in concept.  And sure, if you have a cool tech site about Steve Jobs or something you’ll be in good shape.  All the techie kids at Digg love that stuff.  Sphinn too - funny stuff about SEO or the internet is great link bait.  As is anything fun, entertaining or controversial is easy.  Try getting links for something boring.  A nice boring accounting firm.  Give that a shot.  And no, you can’t change the firm’s entire offering or marketing strategy - nice thought in principal though, but good luck getting someone to buy into that on Day 1 of your campaign!

Admittedly I’m taking a negative tone here.  That’s really not me.  I’m just trying to illustrate the point though that anyone with more than a reasonable amount of experience with SEO will often agree that what to do is not their problem.  How to do it within the business confines that exist is the real challenge.

How do we make a regular, ordinary accounting firm interesting enough that other sites link to them?  How do we do so while still keeping with the scope of a realistic campaign (you can’t hire a guy from Enron to join the accounting firm!).  How do you apply the principles of SEO that are fairly simple, and implement those items in such a way that is better than your competition, thus setting you apart?  That is the real challenge.

That is SEO.

Anyone can write TITLE tags.

The web is great. Tons of information. Problem is its damn stale. Text, text and more text. Boring.

Forget reading SEO blogs, forums, articles, etc. If you want to learn SEO, watch some rap videos.

No I’m serious. m0serious in fact. If you do nothing else this week check out mOserious’s Youtube page. Listen to the lyrics. Good info there. From now on this will be part of my firm’s new employee training.

If you have animation please use in moderation! Word up homie. Word up.