We’re probably not the only SEO company who has had to dispel SEO myths. In the past, it was easier to bat away doubts potential clients had – SEO is not about stuffing keywords into title tags, SEO is not about submitting to crap directories, SEO is not fast, etc.

These days, however, people are looking at SEO from a return on investment (ROI) perspective. Most clients are already up to speed about the basics of SEO, and what we’ve found is that the relevant myths are most tied into expectations of ROI. Here are two myths that you’ll want to dispel right away to save you a lot of explaining later on.

SEO Myth #1: Higher Rankings Guarantee More Sales

Look at it from the client’s perspective. “Here are three keywords that describe my company. This SEO company is telling me how important search engine optimization is for business. That means if I’m on Page 1, my sales are guaranteed to increase.”

This kind of logic is perfectly understandable. What’s missing from it are other major factors  necessary for increased sales.

• Conversion Rate: Yes, Page 1 rankings will increase traffic, but if the client has a website that doesn’t convert traffic, sales won’t increase at all.
• Customer Service: It’s not ideal to drive a lot of new traffic if a company isn’t ready to handle the extra volume. Poor customer service is the fastest way to lose customers and one of the major factors to driving and sustaining sales increases.
• Brand Awareness: SEO does increase brand awareness, but it doesn’t do much as much to build brand equity and interaction (Google doesn’t let you post your logo in the SERPs…not yet, anyway).

In case some readers are taking this the wrong way, here are a few reminders about the benefits of SEO:

• SEO does drive qualified, relevant traffic.
• SEO does increase visibility on the Web and provide an opportunity to obtain new customers.
• SEO does provide an opportunity to market your company as an authority in your industry.

SEO Myths

SEO Myth #2: SEO Replaces Marketing

This is a tough one, especially with the popularity of SEO. This myth suggests SEO has no limitations when there are actually quite a few. For example, SEO can’t create the same buzz as a traditional marketing campaign. A mistake that many companies make – especially the smaller ones – is to rely on SEO too much. Yes, SEO is a traffic driver, but it certainly isn’t the only one. E-blasts, print advertising campaigns, radio and television still perform remarkably well. We recommend companies take a holistic marketing approach, not just focus on a single promotion channel, no matter what the medium.

If the budget isn’t there, a company needs to decide what approach to take in regards to marketing. Do you want quick results and immediate traffic increases? Run a traditional advertising campaign and blast potential customers with your message. Do you want long-term results that bring in sustained, qualified traffic? Go with SEO.

There are obviously more, but we’ll leave that to another day. Any other SEO myths you want to dispel out there?

If you’re still not familiar with Google Buzz, check out their video to get the basics.

Just the Good Stuff
Buzz’s recommendation feature is likely going to have the biggest impact on SEO. According to Google, “Buzz recommends interesting posts and weeds out ones you’re likely to skip.” It is essentially Page Rank within Buzz, and it will be interesting to see if Google funnels everything through social search. My bet is that they are likely to do this. Google’s overarching mission is to organize the Web’s content based on relevancy. There’s no reason why they wouldn’t push highly rated content within Buzz into social search.

What Does This Mean?
This means that Google Buzz is another gateway for something to go viral — with bigger implications. Buzz is already hooked into Gmail and its millions of users, plus Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, etc., and because it’s all centralized, a great relevant post is going to get a lot more airtime. If social search enters the mix, it basically means there’s another form of SEO, except it’s not based on backlinks or optimization techniques. Rather, it’s strictly focused on how many people like and share the content (a.k.a. Digg).

This means that strong, quality content is going to be the best way to drive rankings. Really, this is the way it should be. The better and more relevant the content is, the more it gets shared, the higher it rises in Buzz’s “Page Rank.” Buzz gets implemented into social search, and your piece of content gets ranked right up there on Page 1.

What do you think? Any other predictions out there?

1. Organize your keywords into themes: This is exactly what Google recommends with PPC campaigns, but the same principles of organization hold true. It’s much easier to handle three or four SEO campaigns versus 100 scattered keywords.

2. Sort by search volume: Let’s say you have four themes or campaigns, divided up neatly into 25 keywords each. Now you’ll want to sort them by search volume. From experience, it’s typically safe to assume that the higher the search volume, the more difficult a keyword is to get to Page 1.

3. Identify your core keywords: For each campaign, you’ll want to pick your core keywords. These are the big kahunas, the ones that will drive the most traffic to the site. We normally pick about two to three primary keywords to focus our efforts for content creation and linkbuilding. You want them to have enough search volume to warrant targeting them throughout the length of your campaign.

4. Identify your longtail keywords: You can do this by establishing a cutoff point for each campaign We typically use 1,000 searches per month and below as our criteria for longtail keywords, but this number will vary depending on your definitions and the search volume for your keywords.

5. Create content strategy: You’ll have to figure out how you’re going to target all four campaigns. Content is always a major player in this, but creating content targeting all these keywords will be tough. You’ll want to create an SEO editorial calendar and create categories that correspond to the four campaigns. For example, if your campaigns are targeting themes such as “birds,” “cats,” dogs,” and “horses,” you’ll want to create categories that match those. All the content that you create would fall in these categories and help target corresponding keywords.

6. Create linkbuilding strategy: Some linkbuilders are haphazard in pursuing links. It’s better to take a more organized approach in order to effectively handle potentially thousands of links for your site. You’ll want to take the industry research you’ve done, along with the keyword research, to figure out how to attack linkbuilding, whether it’s analyzing competitor links, conducting blogger outreach or submitting to directories. Read up on how to use editorial content as linkbait.

7. Monitor, monitor, monitor: This is probably one of the hardest things to do, especially if you have multiple campaigns. But now that you are organized and have an organized SEO strategy in place, it’ll be easier to keep track of progress. You can establish milestones and conduct assessments quarterly or biannually to restrategize if necessary.

Those are the basic steps to creating a good SEO strategy. Any other suggestions? I’ll be working on more detailed guides to each of these steps in the coming months. Feel free to add tips and review!

It’s a basic rule: the more you give, the more you get. Here are a three major reasons why you should be using editorial content as linkbait.

1. The days of easy links are over

Once upon a time, all you had to do was ask for a link back to your site and you’d get it. These days, with higher demand the price goes up. You have to provide some sort of incentive, and with Google saying “tsk, tsk” to paid links, it’s safer from an SEO perspective to use editorial linkbait. Plus, the better the article, the more leverage you get, i.e. better link position, anchor text options, etc.

2. Building relationships is more important

From the blogger perspective, it’s cool for someone to approach you for a guest post, especially if the content is genuine and insightful. As a linkbuilder, you HAVE to add value. It’s really not an optional thing anymore. The relationship is key here, and with editorial content, you’re building a solid foundation for future relationships. If linkbuilding is a popularity contest, you’d better start making friends with people online.

3. Authority rules

We tell our clients that they are the authority on their business and industry. They live, eat and breathe it just like we live, eat and breathe search engine optimization. And guess what? People like linking to authoritative, resourceful articles. Solid content positions you as an authority, especially if it’s well-written. It’s also the content that’s going to make your links shareable . Even if you did manage to get a link to a crappy article, nobody is going to care. But a highly researched, polished article will get more mileage.

4. Editorial linkbait withstands the test of time

I believe Google has integrity, despite however many billions of dollars it’s making this second. Google built its empire by creating awesome tools for users and putting them first (most of the time). They’ll continue to do this, which means anything not relevant for the search will eventually fall by the wayside. If linkbuilders put all their eggs into the backlink basket, it’s going to be a sad day when Google tosses it out the window. Editorial content, however, always stays. Being helpful always stays. Maybe it’s naive, but somebody’s got to do it.

Have some more ideas? Send them my way.

I remember the day I went to buy a new PC. Vista just came out and I heard some bad things about it. Bugs, bugs, bugs and you guessed it…bugs. So like any shopper I tried to play it safe by buying a PC with Windows XP on it. After several trips to several stores I quickly found out that Microsoft took every machine with XP off the market and/or upgraded them all to Vista. I was trapped. I recall asking a sales associate where I could find a computer with Windows XP still on it.

Our conversation went something like this…

Me - “Can I still buy a PC with Windows XP on it?”
Sales Guy - “Uhh, not gonna happen.”
Me - “You mean to tell me Microsoft is forcing you to buy Vista.”
Sales Guy - “Whoa, whoa, whoa buddy, Microsoft isn’t forcing you to buy anything.”
Me - (Pause….) “You’re an idiot.”

Ok, I didn’t say, “you’re an idiot.” But that’s what I was thinking. After all, I built my life and career around a PC. Much like a cell phone, if you take it away, will I survive? Yes. But society, work, and life in general are built around these things and I’ve adapted to them. Long story short, I needed a new PC so yes, I bought Vista.

With in 2 months the first bug hit. It seemed as if Internet explorer vanished of my PC. I’m serious it was gone. So, like any PC user I tried using the Help feature. Whoops “Help” is built directly into IE and my IE went MIA. So I called support. Their answer was to package it up and send it in. One problem. I use my PC. Oh, and I use it everyday. So, I never sent it in. 3 months later as miraculous as it disappearing it just reappeared. But it was too late. The non-stop spyware, pop-ups, viruses, virus protectors and everything else turned me off for good.

Someone once said to me, “Mac’s makes Windows look like a cheap knock off.” Nothing could be more true. That’s exactly how I felt with in hours of using my new Mac.

But if you still want to try Windows 7 here’s the system requirements and the best video review I saw on Youtube.  Comment on what you think?

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

If you, your web design company or your SEO company are having a tough time deciding what directories to submit your website to then keep reading. I’m sure you don’t want to waist money and I know you don’t want to get penalized or banned from Google. To begin…yes, buying links are a direct violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and a violation could cause your website to be dropped in the search results. So, I have compiled a list of the top 9 free and paid directories that are Google approved.

Before scrolling down to all the directories, play the video of Matt Cutts, (Head of Google’s web spam team) talking about what to look for when submitting to directories. (This is what I mean by “Google approved”)

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1. Open Directory Project (DMOZ)

Cost: Free

DMOZ is maintained by volunteer editors and has strict guidelines and criteria all websites must meet before being accepted. Also, the listings in Google’s directory (http://www.google.com/dirhp) are pulled directly from DMOZ.  Need I say more.

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2. Yahoo Directory

Cost: $299.00 per year

The Yahoo Directory is a human edited directory comparable in size to DMOZ.  The reason this directory is so highly regarded is because they have very strict submission guidelines.  In fact, the $299.00 is just to get their editors to review and respond to you.  It DOES NOT guarantee your submission. So, if you are not accepted you do not get your money back.  If you’re worried, don’t be. Just follow the Yahoo Guidelines before submitting.

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3. Best of the Web (BOTW)

Cost: $99 per year or $299.00 one time fee

Best of the Web has been around since 1994. Upon submission your website will be reviewed in 3 days but does not guarantee your website will be accepted, just a review and response. NO REFUNDS. Criteria for Submission

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4. Business.com

Cost: $299.00 per year

Business.com has 40 million websites and 8+ million unique visitors per month.  Business.com is not only a good backward link but also a good source of traffic. They are very strict and don’t accept Gambling sites, adult sites, multi-level marketing sites and retail tobacco sites.  Here are their submission guidelines.  Read them before you submit.  There are no refunds.

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5. Joeant.com

Cost: $39.00 one time fee

JoeAnt is edited by humans and has strict guidelines and criteria all websites must meet before being accepted.  http://www.joeant.com/guidelines.html

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6. Jayde.com

Cost: Free

Jayde.com is edited by humans and has strict guidelines and criteria all websites must meet before being accepted.

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7. Librarian’s Internet Index

Cost: Free

This site is very hard to get into. They do not accept sites that are strictly commercial with no freely-accessible information. This site is edited by humans.

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8. GoGuides.org

Cost: $69.99

This directory is edited by humans and has strict guidelines.  But if you’re rejected you get your money back.  Try it. It only takes about 24 hours to get your response.

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9. Starting Point

Cost: $99 one time fee

This directory is edited by humans and has strict guidelines.  All rejections are NON Refundable.

1. While this is usually considered SEO 101, we see it time and time again - a site will be beautifully optimized except for the fact that the images either lack alt tags or have something generic.  It is such a simple step but apparently it is easy to overlook.  For more on optimizing your alt tags, check out our post - How Important Are Alt Tags?

2.  Wikipedia pages are highly coveted by the SEO community and marketing types alike, and for good reason.  However, not every brand or individual deserves a page, and creating a Wikipedia page that sticks is easier said than done.  That said, if the site/brand you are working is worthy, creating/editing and keeping their Wikipedia page accurate and up-to-date with relevant links is a must.

3.  Use your or your client’s address book.  Think about how many people you know that have their own websites, especially other business owners.  By networking offline within your industry and community, you can get free quality links simply by taking advantage of your social graph.

4.  Targeting just the home page can work for some SEO projects, but for larger sites with fifty plus keywords, it can be a mistake to only focus on the home page as the only doorway through which visitors arrive.

5.  Never linking out to interesting, useful, or entertaining sites.  Don’t be afraid that your users are going to disappear forever once they leave your site (they found you once, they’ll know how to get back - especially if you are on page #1 of the search results).  Give link love, Get link love. Don’t be stingy with linking out. That will encourage others to link to you.

6.   Links from .edu domains are given extra weight by the search engines.  Search for possible non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors - you could support a local school’s charity event.  Also consider posting internships or entry level jobs with university career services, since most of them have job sites specifically for students and alumni.

7.  Neglecting the basics like adding your listing in the Google Local Business Center or setting up Yelp and Citysearch profiles when applicable.  LinkedIn is another big one that companies often don’t take advantage of - you and your employees should be linking to your company’s website and social media presence.

8.  Microsites purely for their own sake.  Sometimes microsites are the right call for a particular marketing campaign, but much of the time they are unnecessary - keep all the valuable content and links coming to the original domain instead of spreading it out.

9.  NoFollow fails- either there is no use of the nofollow attribute at all, especially on larger sites with hundreds of pages that probably need it in order to direct the search engine crawlers where you want them to go.

Happy 9/9/09 everyone, and hope the day was lucky for you!

Like a good lawyer, a good SEO consultants understands how to structure an argument/website in order to get the ideal verdict/ranking.  By building the right components into the website, choosing the keywords that make sense for your objectives, and establishing a content and link-building strategy that presents your site in the best possible light to the search engines so they rule in your favor/rank you highly.

Fellow SEOs, what do you think about this analogy?  Do you sometimes feel like the lawyers of the internet?

On the other hand, bigger companies (we’re talking at least a couple hundred employees) have different issues to deal with.  There may be trade secrets, legal issues, and other questions to answer about what employees are putting out there online, so creating a document that details the “rules of engagement” can be the ounce of prevention that prevents future disasters.  There are few key questions to ask before creating these rules of engagement:

• Language - is your industry conservative or not?  This affects the type of language you and your employees use when representing the company online.  For instance, I can say “That’s a damn good website, no SEO fails there.” while perhaps a financial consulting firm would not want their employees using the same language while representing them.
• Legal - any copyrights, trade secrets, patents, etc. should be addressed and your employees should know what they can and cannot disclose.
• Learning - is there any training your employees will need before they get started representing your company on the social web?
• Launch time - do employees know what will be expected of their participation in social media?  Do they know what they have to do daily/weekly/monthly?  Providing some kind of checklist or ideas and examples for them can be very helpful.

Check out the article for a great list of social media guidelines from some of the world’s biggest brands - and if you are currently creating a social media guideline for your company, email us (or Twitter - @SEOGroup) and see how we can help!

Therefore, the entire team at The Ocean Agency is going to liveblog Mad Men as a group this year, starting with the opening episode that is less than a week away (personally, I don’t know how I’ve made it this long without a weekly fix of Sterling Cooper style).  Of course, we are far from the only people live blogging Mad Men, but I think we are putting a unique twist in that we are a creative agency ourselves - and we like to think that if Sterling Cooper existed in the present times, they would be a small, agile firm that worked with major brands as well as entrepreneurs who want to change the world.

Check back this week for a post on how we think Sterling Cooper would react to the way that technology in general and search engines in particular have changed the way advertising companies do things.