How to Get traffic to Your Site

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"Increase Your 1000% site traffic"

Building a Traffic-Worthy Site

One of the most important (and often overlooked) subjects in SEO is building a site deserving of top rankings at the search engines. A site that ranks #1 for a set of terms in a competitive industry or market segment must be able to justify its value, or risk losing out to competitors who offer more. Search engines' goals are to rank the best, most usable, functional and informative sites first. By intertwining your site's content and performance with these goals, you can help to ensure its long term prospects in the search engine rankings.

Usability

Usability represents the ease-of-use inherent in your site's design, navigation, architecture and functionality. The idea behind the practice is to make your site intuitive so that visitors will have the best possible experience on the site. A whole host of features figure into usability, including:
  • Design
    The graphical elements and layout of website have a strong influence on how easily usable the site is. Standards like blue, underlined links, top and side menu bars, logos in the top, left-hand corner may seem like rules that can be bent, but adherence to these elements (with which web users are already familiar) will help to make a site usable. Design also encompasses important topics like visibility & contrast, affecting how easy it is for users to interest the text and image elements of the site. Separation of unique sections like navigation, advertising, content, search bars, etc. is also critical as users follow design cues to help them understand a page's content. A final consideration would also take into account the importance of ensuring that critical elements in a site's design (like menus, logos, colors and layout) were used consistently throughout the site.
  • Information Architecture
  • The organizational hierarchy of a site can also strongly affect usability. Topics and categorization impact the ease with which a user can find the information they need on your site. While an intuitive, intelligently designed structure will seamlessly guide the user to their goals, a complex, obfuscated hierarchy can make finding information on a site disturbingly frustrating.
  • Navigation
    A navigation system that guides users easily through both top-level and deep pages and makes a high percentage of the site easily accessible is critical to good usability. Since navigation is one of a website's primary functions, provide users with obvious navigation systems: breadcrumbs, alt tags for image links, and well written anchor text that clearly describes what the user will get if they click a link. Navigation standards like these can drastically improve usability performance.
  • Functionality
    To create compelling usability, ensure that tools, scripts, images, links, etc., all function as they are intended and don't provide errors to non-standard browsers, alternative operating systems or uninformed users (who often don't know what/where to click).
  • Accessibility
    Accessibility refers primarily to the technical ability of users to access and move through your site, as well as the ability of the site to serve disabled or impaired users. For SEO purposes, the most important aspects are limiting code errors to a minimum and fixing broken links, making sure that content is accessible and visible in all browsers and without special actions.
  • Content
    The usability of content itself is often overlooked, but its importance cannot be overstated. The descriptive nature of headlines, the accuracy of information and the quality of content all factor highly into a site's likelihood to retain visitors and gain links.
Overall, usability is about gearing a site towards the potential users. Success in this arena garners increased conversion rates, a higher chance that other sites will link to yours and a better relationship with your users (fewer complaints, lower instance of problems, etc.). For improving your knowledge of usability and the best practices, I recommend Steve Krug's exceptionally impressive book, "Don't Make Me Think"; possibly the best $30 you can spend to improve your website.

Professional Design

Elegant, high quality, high impact design is critical to gaining the trust of your users. If your site appears "low budget" or only marginally professional, it can hurt the chances of gaining a link and more importantly, the chances of engendering trust in your visitors. The first impression of a website by a user occurs in less than 7 seconds. That's all the time you have to convey the importance and authority of your company through the site's design. I've prepared two examples below:
Workplace Office UK's Website
  • Amateur Logo Styles
  • Discordant Colors
  • No Clear Navigation Element
  • Basic Stock Photography
  • Template-Like Layout
Haworth Furniture's Online Catalog
  • Well-Defined Navigation
  • Elegant Color Scheme
  • Attractive Lines & Shading
  • High-Quality Photography
  • Design Creates Intuitive Flow to Information
Although the above examples are not perfect (note that Haworth is missing a critical element - a search bar, while Workplace Office UK has one), it's easy to see why consumers visiting websites like these would be more inclined to trust and buy from Haworth rather than Workplace Office. The application of professional design to sites can induce greater numbers of links from visiting content creators, greater number of users who return to the site, higher conversion rates and a better overall perception of your site by visitors.

Although high quality, professional design is not one of the factors directly ranked by search engines, it indirectly influences many factors that do affect the rankings (i.e. link-building, trust, usability, etc).

Authoring High Quality Content

Why Should a Search Engine Rank Your Site Above all the Others in its Field?

If you cannot answer this question clearly and precisely, the task of ranking higher will be exponentially more difficult. Search engines attempt to rank the very best sites with the most relevant content first in their results, and until your site's content is the best in its field, you will always struggle against the engines rather than bringing them to your doorstep.

It is in content quality that a site's true potential shows through, and although search engines cannot measure the likelihood that users will enjoy a site, the vote via links system operates as a proxy for identifying the best content in a market. With great content, therefore, come great links and, ultimately, high rankings. Deliver the content that users need, and the search engines will reward your site.

Content quality, however, like professional design, is not always dictated by strict rules and guidelines. What passes for "best of class" in one sector may be below average in another market. The competitiveness and interests of your peers and competitors in a space often determine what kind of content is necessary to rank. Despite these variances, however, several guidelines can be almost universally applied to produce content that is worthy of attention:
  • Research Your Field
    Get out into the forums, blogs and communities where folks in your industry spend their online discussion time. Note the most frequently asked questions, the most up-to-date topics and the posts or headlines that generate the most interest. Apply this knowledge when you create high quality content and directly address your market's needs. If 10,000 people in the botany field are seeking articles that contain more illustrated diagrams instead of just photos, delivering that piece can set your content (and your site) apart from the competition.
  • Consult and Publish in Partnership with Industry Experts
    In any industry, there will be high-level, publically prominent experts as well as a second tier of "well-known in web circles" folks. Targeting either of these groups for collaborative efforts in publishing articles, reviewing your work or contributing (even via a few small quotes) can be immensely valuable. In this manner, you can be assured that your content is both link and visitor-worthy. In addition, when partnering with "experts", exposure methods are built-in, creating natural promotion angles.
  • Create Documents that Can Serve as One-Stop Resources
    If you can provide a single article or resource that provides every aspect of what a potential visitor or searcher might be seeking, your chances for success in SEO go up. An "all-in-one" resource can provide more opportunities than a single subject resource in many cases. Don't be too broad as you attempt to execute this kind of content creation - it's still important to keep a narrow focus when you create your piece. The best balance can be found by putting yourself in the potential users' shoes - if your piece fits their needs and covers every side of their possible interests, while remaining "on-message," you're ready to proceed.
  • Provide Unique Information
    Make sure that when you design your content outline, you include data and information that can be found nowhere else. While collecting and amalgamating information across the web can create good content, it is the unique elements in your work that will be noticed and recommended.
  • Serve Important Content in a Non-Commercial Format
    Creating a document format that is non-commercial is of exceptional importance for attracting links and attention. The communities of web and content builders is particularly attuned to the commercialization of the web and will consciously and sub-consciously link to and recommend resources that don't serve prominent or interfering advertising. If you must post ads, do so as subtlety and unobtrusively as possible.
  • One Great Page is Worth a Thousand Good Pages
    While hundreds or dozens of on-topic pages that cover sections of an industry are valuable to a website's growth, it is actually far better to invest a significant amount of time and energy producing a few articles/resources of truly exceptional quality. To create documents that become "industry standard" on the web and are pointed to time after time as the "source" for further investigations, claims, documents, etc. is to truly succeed in the rankings battle. The value of "owning" this traffic and link source far outweighs a myriad of      articles that are rarely read or linked to.

Link Bait

When attempting to create the most link-worthy content, thinking outside the box and creating a document, tool or service that's truly revolutionary can provide a necessary boost. Even on corporate image or branding sites for small companies, a single, exciting piece of content that gets picked up en masse by your web community is worth a small fortune in public relations and exposure. Better still, the links you earn with an exciting release stay with your site for a long time, providing search visibility long after the event itself has been forgotten.

With content that generates links becoming such a valuable commodity, creating solely for the purpose of gaining links has become a popular practice for talented SEOs. In order to capitalize on this phenomenon, it's necessary to brainstorm. Below are some initial ideas that can help you build the content you need to generate great links.
  • Free Tools
    Automated tools that query data sources, combine information or conduct useful calculations are eminently link worthy. Think along the lines of mortgage calculators and site-checking tools, then expand into your particular area of business/operation.
  • Web 2.0 Applications
    Although the term Web 2.0 is more of a buzzword than a technicality, applications that fit the feature set described by the O'Reilly document do get a fantastic number of links from the web community and followers of this trend. Think mashups, maps, communities, sharing, tagging, RSS and blogs.
  • Collaborative Work Documents
    Working in concert with others is a good way to produce content more quickly and with generally higher quality. If you can get high-profile insiders or several known persons in an industry to collaborate, your chances for developing "link-bait" substantially increase.
  • Exposes of Nefarious Deeds
    Writing a journalistic-style exposé detailing the misdeeds of others (be they organizations, websites, individuals or companies) can generate a lot of links and traffic if done in a professional manner (and before anyone else). Make sure you're very careful with these types of actions, however, as the backlash can be worse than the benefit if your actions provoke the wrong type of response.
  • Top 10 Lists
    Numbered lists (of tips, links, resources, etc.), particularly those that rank items, can be a great way to generate buzz. These lists often promote discussion and thus, referencing.
  • Industry-Related Humor
    Even the most serious of industries can use a bit of humor now and again. As with exposés, be cautious not to offend (although that too can merit mentions) - use your knowledge of stereotypes and history inside your market to get topical laughs and the links will be yours.
  • Reviews of Events
    Industry gatherings, from pubcrawls to conferences to speeches and seminars, can all garner great links with a well-done review. Write professionally, as a journalist, and attempt to use as many full names as possible. It's also wise to link out to all the folks you mention, as they will see the links in their referral logs and come check you out.
  • Interviews with Well-Known Insiders
    Anyone inside an industry whose name frequently appears in that industry's internal press is a great candidate for an interview. Even if it's a few short questions over email, a revealing interview can be a great source of links and esteemed professionals are likely to answer requests even from smaller sources as they can benefit from the attention, too.
  • Surveys or Collections of Data
    Offering large collections of industry data culled from polling individuals, an online survey or simply researching and aggregating data can provide a very link-worthy resource.
  • Film or Animation
    Particularly in industries where video clips or animations are rare (i.e. Geology, not Movie Reviews), a high quality, entertaining or informative video or animation can get more than a few folks interested.
  • Charts, Graphs or Spreadsheets
    These standard business graphics should certainly include analysis and dissection, but can provide a good source of links if promoted and built properly.
  • High Profile Criticism
    Similar to the exposé system, well-written critiques of popular products, companies, sites or individuals in a sector have the ability to pull in quite a few links from folks who agree and disagree.
  • Contests, Giveaways and Competitions
    Giving away prizes or public awards (even if they're just website graphics) can get a lot of online folks interested and linking.
  • Trend-Spotting
    Identifying a story ahead of the crowd is commonly called "scooping" in journalism. Do this online, and all (or many) blog posts on the subject will reference your site as the first to "call it."
  • Advice from Multiple Experts
    If you're creating an article that offers advice, pulling opinions from the well-known experts in the industry is a great way to make sure links flow your way. The experts themselves will often be inclined to link.
There are dozens of other great ways to get bloggers, writers and website editors in your field to add links to your site. Imagine yourself as an industry blogger, seeking to cover the most exciting, unique trends and pages in the sector. If this individual stumbled across your content, would they be likely to write about it? If the answer is yes, it qualifies as link-bait.

Growing a Site's Popularity

While developing a great website is half of the SEO equation, the other half is promotion. Search engines are very particular about growing their ability to detect artificial manipulation and link spam, so effective SEOs who want to promote sites to the fullest extent must use natural, organic link building processes in order to have success.

The techniques and approaches described below are all ultimately designed to improve search engine rankings by growing the number and quality of links that point to a website. However, each also offers natural growth of your user base and provides visitors that come through systems other than search engines. Strangely, although the goal of SEO is better search rankings, the best sites in each industry often receive 50% or fewer of their total visitors from search engine. Why? Because if thousands of visitors are anxiously visiting your site via bookmarks, links and direct type-ins at the address bar, you've achieved the content and status necessary to not only be ranked exceptionally well, but have visitors that know your site and want to visit, no matter what the search engines say. This methodology is particularly valuable because a site that doesn't rely entirely on search engines for traffic, ironically, has a far better chance of getting visitors through them.

Community Building

Creating a user base that develops into a full-scale community is no easy task, but it's one of the holy grails of online marketing and promotion. The idea is to develop frequently updated content in the form of a blog, forum, wiki or other muti-user input system that can become a central reference and gathering point for a significant number of individuals in an industry.

Once a community is established, the input of individual members and coverage of events in these systems are natural sources for incoming links from bloggers and writers in the field, be they members or simply browsers. In addition, many members who run sites of their own will point to the community as their gathering place, creating even greater link value. Community building requires finesse and good online relationship skills, but the rewards are tremendous.

Press Releases and Public Relations
Influencing mainstream or niche press outlets to cover your company or its actions can be a highly effective way to drive attention to your site, which, if link worthy, can earn a fantastic number of links in short order. Press release sites like PRNewsWire and PRWeb are good starting places for driving traffic and links, and as both feed the major online news search engines (Yahoo! & Google News) they can provide high visibility as well. Optimizing press releases is a unique practice in and of itself - placement of text in the title and in visible headlines, compelling story writing and proper content structure are all important elements. One of the most touted experts in this field (Greg Jarboe) runs a site with specific advice (SEO-PR) on the subject of optimizing press releases in particular.

Beyond releases, however, is influencing journalists to write editorial news stories about your subject and including a link or mention of your site. Some of the most highly touted PR (public relations) firms in the world charge a fortune for this service, but on a small scale, it can be performed in-house. The trick is to have content and information so compelling and interesting that journalists would love to cover it. If you have the makings of a great story with a near-perfect fit for your site, email a few journalists whose work you've found to be on similar topics. Don't start with the New York Times, though. Go local, independent and friendly to increase your chances of success. For a great example of how standard PR techniques operate, read Paul Graham's article on the effectiveness of PR firms on the web.

Link Building Based on Competitive Analysis


Looking at the links obtained by your top competitors and pursuing methods of your own to get listed on those sites/pages is an excellent way to stay competitive in the link building race. It's also a good way to get natural traffic, as these are the links and sites that send your competitors their traffic, they will also bring visitors to your site. The methodology for investigating a competitor's links is fairly straightforward, although more complex methods can be used by the advanced researcher.

The best source of linkage data is Yahoo!. Google purposely does not report accurate link data with their link: command and MSN's rankings of links can often show less valuable and effective links at the top. Yahoo!, however, currently shows the greatest accuracy in numbers of links, and also sorts well, typically placing more valuable links near the top of the results.























At Yahoo!, the following searches can be used to find pages that link to other sites/pages:
  1. Linkdomain:url.com
    This command will show you all the pages that link to any page hosted at the domain url.com.
  2. Link:http://www.url.com/page.html
    This command will show only those pages which link directly to the specified page.
  3. Linkdomain:url.com word 
    This search will show all pagess with the term "word" that link to pages hosted at the URL. You can use this to find topical linking pages that may be providing benefit for specific areas.
  4. Linkdomain:url.com -term
    Use the - sign to indicate that pages which include a particular term should be excluded from the search, for example, searching for all links that point to a site that don't contain your company name on the page (i.e. linkdomain:seobook.com -seomoz). Note that searches can contain multiple - signs and terms if you require very specific information (or wish to exclude lots of noisy data).
  5. Linkdomain:url.com -site:url.com
    In addition to the - sign as a term remover, you can remove sites from the results as well. This can be especially valuable if one large site links to the target site on every page, and you wish to see the links that don't include that site. It can also be valuable to remove the site itself, (i.e. linkdomain:seomoz.org -site:seomoz.org), so as not to see results from internal pages.
Competitive analysis also includes using the top search results themselves as sources for links. If a site or page ranks particularly well for many related searches, a link from that site can send a healthy number of interested surfers to you. Rankings in the SERPs is also an excellent way to determine the value of a link, so if a page ranks highly for the term or phrase you're targeting, a link from that page is sure to provide great assistance in your goal to achieve top placement.

Building Personality & Reputation

The cult of personality on the Internet provides excellent opportunities for charismatic, well-written individuals to make headlines, friends and links through online networking. A variety of social interaction sites operate across industries on the web, delivering ready-made sources for building a reputation and earning links. The keys to this methodology are to provide honest, intelligent contributions to existing discussions while maintaining a connection between yourself and the communities.

Online forums are great places to start, and can frequently lead to additional venues for the engagement of your colleagues. In building a successful reputation in an online forum, honesty, integrity and openness provide the best chances to be taken seriously and seen by others as an expert on your subject matter. Forums typically offer a built-in system for referring folks to your site - the signature link. Although debate exists on whether search engines count these links for ranking purposes, there can be little doubt about their effectiveness in driving forum visitors to your site. One last tip for forums is to use a single link to your site in your signature - ensuring that people identify you with one unique online property, rather than several. Combining these effective techniques of forum posting and signature links with blogging can also be very valuable.

In addition to forums, outlets like blog comments (which frequently use the "nofollow" attribute, and are thus valuable for live visitors but not search engines), ICQ Channels, chatrooms, Google groups and privately hosted boards or chatrooms can all serve a similar purpose. Stay consistent in each format - using the same voice, avatar (the accompanying photo on many forums) and username in order to build reputation and recognition.

Highly Competitive Terms & Phrases

For some terms and phrases, even the best websites with the most diligent promotional efforts will have a very difficult time penetrating the top 10-20 results. In these instances, it can be tempting to rely on efforts outside of the search engines' guidelines. However strong this temptation may be, be advised that search engines do not tolerate spam or manipulation via automated links, nor do they allow such results to flourish for long. Although these methods, commonly referred to as "black hat SEO", may have some effectiveness in the short term, they have little chance of long-term success in the SERPs and may become permanently banned from search results.

For highly competitive results (from "mortgage" to "car insurance" to "university degree"), targeting the above described "long tail" (the more niche related search terms for which a smaller degree of heavy competition exists) can be the best method. Search engines are also careful to consider the age of a site and its links, and give heavy weight to those sites with long-held, highly trusted links. Thus, while rankings may be sparse at first, over time, an enterprising site owner can achieve some measure of notice, even in the most competitive of searches.

Conclusion: Implementing an SEO Strategy

The process of SEO is not easy to tackle, largely because so many pieces of a site factor into the final results. Promoting a site that writers on the web are unlikely to link to is as deadly as creating a fantastic website no one will see. SEO is also a long-term process, both in application and results - those who expect quick rankings after completing a few suggestions in this guide will be deeply dissapointed. Search engines can often be frustratingly slow to respond to improvements that will eventually garner significant boosts in traffic.

Patience is not the only virtue that should be used for successful SEO. The strategy itself must have a strong foundation in order to succeed. The best site's adhere strictly to these guidelines:
  1. Unique Content - Something that has never before been offered on the web in terms of depth, quality or presentation (i.e. a unique value proposition)
  2. Access to an Adoptive Community - Connections or alliances with people/websites in an existing online community that is ready to accept, visit and promote your offering
  3. Link-Friendly Formatting - Even the best content may be unlikely to be linked to if it displays ads, particularly those that break up the page content or pop-up when a visitor comes to the site. Use discretion in presenting your material and remember that links are one of the most valuable commodities a site/page can get and they'll last far longer than a pop-up ad's revenue.
  4. Monetization Plan - Intelligent systems for monetizing powerful content must exist, or bandwidth, hosting and development costs will eventually overrun your budget.
  5. Market Awareness - If your site is targeting highly competitive terms you should make available, an online marketing budget, including funds for link buying, and hire or consult with someone experienced in bringing newer sites to the top of the SERPs.
If you take these steps and have a robust knowledge of the methods described in this guide, you are ready to begin an SEO campaign.

Quantity vs. Quality

In order to optimize a site to rank well in the search engines, diligent attention to the quality of your website and the effectiveness of your promotional tactics. While creating thousands of pages targeting every conceivable keyword may seem like a viable tactic, in fact, a single, phenomenal article or content source on a single term is far more likely to be profitable and less likely to be flagged for spam by the search engines.

This same rule applies to the sphere of promotion. While thousands of low quality, spammy pages or reciprocal free-for-all links pointing to you may provide some boost in the SERPs, a far greater effect can be achieved with just a few highly valuable, well-placed links from relevant sources that will drive both traffic and rankings. In the age of advanced link spam analysis, search engines will give greater credit to one link from CNN.com, Berkeley.edu or Usability.gov than from 50,000 guestbooks, forum signatures or reciprocal link directories.

Measuring Success: Website and Ranking Metrics to Watch

One of the most valuable sources for data, analysis and refinement in an SEO campaign is in the statistics available via website tracking and measuring programs. A good analytics program can provide an incredible amount of data that can be used to track your visitors and make decisions about who to target in the future and how to do it.

Below is a short list of the most valuable elements in visitor tracking:
  • Campaign Tracking - The ability to put specific URLs or referrer strings onto ads, emails or links and track their success.
  • Action Tracking - Adding the ability to track certain actions on a site like form submission, newsletter signups, add to cart buttons, checkout or transaction completions and tying them together with campaigns and keyword tracking so you know what ads, links, terms and campaigns are bringing you the best visitors.
  • Search Engine Referral Tracking - Seeing which search engines sent which visitors over time and tracking the terms and phrases they used to reach your site. Combined with action tracking, this can help you determine which terms are most valuable to target.
  • Referring URLs & Domain Tracking - This allows you to see what URLs and domains are responsible for sending you traffic. By tracking these individually, you can see where your most valuable links are coming from.
  • First-Time vs. Return Visitors - Find out what percentage of your visitors are coming back each day/week/month. This can help you to figure out how "sticky" and consistently interesting your site is.
  • Entry Pages - Which pages are attracting the most visitors and which are converting them. You can also see pages that have a very high rate of loss - those pages which don't do a good job pulling people into the site.
  • Visitor Demographics - Where are your visitors coming from, what browsers are they using, what time do they visit? All these questions and many more can be answered with demographics.
  • Click Path Analysis - What paths do your visitors follow when they get to your site? This data can help you make more logical streams of pages for visitors to use as they navigate your site, attempting to find information or complete a task.
  • Popular Pages - Which pages get the most visitors and which are neglected? Use this data to help improve low popularity pages and emulate highly trafficked ones.
  • Page Views per Session - This data can tell you how many pages each visitor to your site is viewing - another metric used to measure "stickiness."
Applying the information you learn from your visitor tracking is a science unto its own. Experience and common sense should help to discover which terms, visitors, referrers and demographics are most valuable to your site, enabling you to make the best possible decisions about how and where to target.

Working with a Pro vs. Do-It-Yourself SEO

As in many other areas of web development, a long-standing argument exists between those who feel that learning and practicing SEO should be done in-house, vs. those who feel it is best left to the professionals. There are advantages to either side, and it's best to weigh these against each other when making a final decision:
Advantages of Working with a Professional SEO
  • Diverse Experience - Professionals with several years of SEO experience under their belts can tell you what to expect from the search engines as you conduct the optimization process. They can also interpret and understand rankings data and "hiccups" in the results that may indicate certain trends or strategies that should be implemented or avoided.
  • Pre-Existing Relationships - Many SEOs have contacts inside the SEO industry to folks with experience in certain fields, expertise in unique areas (i.e. press releases, article distribution, directories, etc.) that can have a great impact on the success of your efforts. Several SEOs even have personal relationships with the folks at the search engines, although the use of these contacts is very rare and SE representatives pride themselves on not showing favoritism.
  • Link Building Knowledge - Professionals will have the ability to quickly identify topical communities and the most popular and relevant sites in them, saving time when link building. SEOs also have considerable experience with link acquisition, and will recognize the requirements of certain sites for paid links, link requests, etc.
  • Identifying Linkable Content - SEOs are often masters of crafting and launching content. Not only can they identify the content most likely to get links from the specific web community, they're also experienced in how to package and promote it.
  • Fixing Possible Problems - Professionals are competent at identifying and managing issues that can cause a lack of indexing, low rankings or penalties from the search engines. This is a skill that can be very hard to develop without years of practice and experience. If you have a ranking issue, an SEO can be of great value.
  • Time Savings - SEO can be an exceptionally time-consuming endeavor. An experienced SEO has the processes and systems of optimization down to a science, and can use that efficiency to provide better service in less time.
Advantages of Do-It-Yourself SEO
  • Complete Control - With personal responsibility comes complete control for each element of your site's progress. There can be no question as to who or what created a link or modified a document.
  • Learn from Your Actions - The ebb and flow of the SERPs will quickly teach an amateur SEO what what works and what doesn't. Certain links, timing and on-page changes will be fully visible and recordable, making it a learning process.
  • Personal Responsibility - Your success or failure will depend entirely on your own efforts, narrowing responsibility and preventing overlaps in work or issues of blame.
  • Cost Savings - Doing SEO yourself means you don't have to pay someone else. If you find that your time is less expensive than hiring an outsourced provider, do-it-yourself SEO can be a great way to save money.
With these pieces of information in mind, you're prepared to make an informed decision. Remember, too, that many SEOs offer consulting services, which provide you with a strategic plan that can be implemented and a helpful consultant to provide advice as needed on the project. This type of arrangement may offer a good balance if you're torn about which direction to choose. Look for costs between $100-$300 per hour depending on the experience and notoriety of the consultant.
If you choose to outsource to an SEO firm, be well aware of the many pitfalls that await the uninformed. SEO has classically been an industry that has attracted many untrustworthy and dishonorable firms, resulting in an unfortunate perception from many. Pay particular attention to the following:

·         Manipulation & Search Spam - Overly aggressive tactics can get you banned from search engines

·         Link Exchanges & Free-for-All Links – While the promise of easy link building through link exchanges or link farms is tempting, these tactics often achieve subpar results. Natural, organic inbound links from sites that your competitors can’t get links from are the best way to rank well in the long term

·         Optimizing Pages for Search Engines vs. Visitors – Professional SEOs should have specialist copywriters who can craft well-written pages that attract both users and search engines. Repetitive keyword use (as noted above) is largely useless, but compelling, intelligent dialogue is a great way to get both searchers and engines interested in your content.

·         Guaranteed Rankings – Guaranteeing rankings is often one of the first indications that you’re dealing with a less-than-reputable firm. No SEO can guarantee rankings, because the search engines are responsible for the results and are constantly changing. Be wary, too, of promised success at “thousands of engines” (remember that the top 4 account for 95%+ of all search traffic), daily submission (completely unnecessary) and other “tricks” or “secrets”. Great rankings come from having great sites with quality links – no tricks or secrets required.

·         Investigate – The firm you work with should be able to provide references, preferably from both customers and industry folks that will let you know their skill and ability. Use your best judgment here – if a review or response seems canned or fishy, it probably is.

Finally, if you opt for do-it-yourself-SEO, be aware that are many, many parts of the SEO process not covered by this guide. SEO is a practice that has even the most respected professionals learning and researching every day to keep with trends on the web and algorithmic shifts in the search engines. A business or site owner will certainly want to join several SEO web communities (see the list in the links section) and keep up-to-date with information and best practices from the industry experts.

Where to Get Questions Answered

Whether you're considering running an SEO campaign yourself, or hiring a professional, there are thousands of additional questions about the practice that I discover each day. Getting these questions answered quickly, with the best possible information, may require paying an SEO consultant, but the online SEO forums offer a second alternative.
Of particular value is the "Website Hospital" at Cre8asiteForums, where some of the world's best SEO professionals (including many of the folks who contributed to the creation of this guide) offer advice and input about posted websites. Other forums, like HighRankings & SearchEngineWatch can provide good advice in both general and specific areas of SEO. A full list of forums can be found in this guide's list of resources.
Finally, if after reading this guide, you have questions that need a quick, direct response, you're always welcome to email Rand (the author).

Links to More Information and Resources

Daily Blogs on SEO/M
  • Threadwatch - A popular community blog on all things search
  • SearchEngineWatch Blog - SEW, operated by Danny Sullivan, is one of the most respected sources for SEO and search news inside and outside the webdev community
  • SEO-Scoop - Donna Fontenot's personal and often introspective take on SEO
  • StuntDubl - Todd Malicoat's SEO tips and tricks journal
  • Cre8pc Blog - Kim Krause Berg presents on usability, marketing, webdev and the search      markets
  • Jim Boykin's SEO Thoughts - The owner of WeBuildPages, a reknowned development and SEO shop, Jim's blog is geared to industry insiders and those who want an expert view
  • Matt Cutts - One of Google's search engineers, Matt is Google's official representative to      the SEO world
  • SERoundtable - Barry Schwartz's roundup of all things search related
  • SEOBook - Aaron Wall's accompaniment to his excellent book on SEO
  • Link Building Blog - Patrick Gavin and Andy Hagans of Text Link Ads combine for great advice on the subject of where and how to get links to your site
  • Search Engine Journal - Loren Baker's collection of posts and guest writers about events and phenomenon in SEO/M
  • Marketing Pilgrim - Andy Beal's journal of the search engine space and SEO events
  • Google Blogoscoped - Philipp Lenssen's journal of Google events, with an SEO bend
SEO/M & Webdev Forums
  • Cre8asite Forums - Cre8asite is an open community of dedicated SEOs, usablity professionals, web developers and others who come together to provide some of the best advice related to online marketing and development on the net. It's also where you'll find myself (randfish) moderating and posting on a daily basis
  • SEW Forums - Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Watch website's online forums. A place where many high visibility folks in the SEO/M space come to post
  • HighRankings Forums - Jill Whalen, a very well-known and respected SEO runs HighRankings, a place where you'll also find experts like Scottie Claiborne, Dan Thies and Alan Perkins
  • DigitalPoint Forums - Shawn Hogan's incredibly popular (and somewhat noisy) forum on everything related to the web
  • WebProWorld Forums - A large, web development and SEO forum with a very diverse group of posters
Industry Conferences
  • Search Engine Strategies (SES) Conferences - Each year, SES runs 6-10 conferences worldwide, including several shows in North America that I'll typically speak at
  • WebMasterWorld (WMW) Conferences - 2-3 Times each year, Brett Tabke, the owner of WMW runs conferences that attract a large group of SEOs
  • Ad:Tech - An interactive marketing conference that has begun to address many of the issues of SEO and search marketing as well
  • SEO by the Sea - An industry insider event sponsored by Bill Slawski as well as a blog on SEO events and subjects
How Search Engines Operate
Link Analysis
  • Search Engine Ranking Factors - From SEOmoz, see section on "Factors Affecting the Value of a Link" for link analysis information
  • Block Level Link Analysis - From Microsoft Research on how search engines can segment pages into pieces of content to help devalue links from non editorial content
Keyword Research
Accessibility
Information Architecture
Duplicate Content Issues
Usability
Web Design
Content Writing for the Web
Link Bait
Community Building
Press Releases
Public Relations
Link Building
Search Spam
Website Analytics and Visitor Tracking
Selecting an SEO/M Firm
 (Sources: Seomoz.com)

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