• No one can guarantee number one spot on the search engines.
• No one can get you to the top of the search engines in 7 days (except Matt Cutts)
• SEO is a long term committment and by long term I mean a minimum of one year.
• The owner of the website will need to be involved in the SEO process by providing fresh and relevant content on a continual basis.

If your client is willing to make a long term committment then SEO goals that are set in the beginning are attainable. Let me rephrase that, “…realistic SEO goals that are set in the beginning are attainable.” As I have said before SEO begins with a paper and pencil and a large amount of patience.

Good call Chris. In this instant world “good” SEO is not ever going to be in the fast lane.

No magic tricks, no special software, just good basic site structure planning and common sense html coupled with a big dose of patience.

I find myself at that point. After spending the better part of 18 months studying and finding what works and doesn’t work I think I am ready to move into the realm of a paid SEO’er.  Then comes the question what do you charge for your services? One SEO firm that I contacted a year and half ago to do SEO work for me wanted $12,000 for the first six months. The fact that I just couldn’t make myself write that check is what drove me to learn as much about SEO as I could and continue to do.

I realize now that there is no magic to SEO - just good solid planning and steady work. No tricks or super secret special software. SEO is time intensive and it does require almost daily attention to the project. What is my time worth?  What is the knowledge I have gained worth?  I have been working on several different approaches on how to charge for this kind of service and have basically settled on one that gives half of my fee back at the end of a set period if I have not achieved the goals set at the beginning of the project.

My thought is to charge X amount of dollars of X amount of time and on receipt of each installment put half in savings or escow. When my contract is up if your website is not where I said it would be then I send you a check for that 50%.

Of course my goals will be realistic …….. there will be no promises of number 1 on Google. We will have to agree in writing what our goals are and you MUST UNDERSTAND that this is NOT AN OVERNIGHT PROCESS.

In some cases it may even require a complete re-design of your site from the ground up if the current site structure does not lend itself to good SEO principles.

What is your opinion? How do you handle this? Was your first paid SEO campaign a success? I have four SEO campaigns that have been successful and all have been done for free to build experience and to learn.

I look forward to hearing from you.

By following these few simple steps you will increase your websites availability to the search spiders as well as your human visitors.

• Build your website to be wide and shallow. Keep all pages no more than two clicks from your home page.
• If you use graphic links make sure you have text based links in your footer.
• Use breadcrumb navigation throughout your website. Not sure what breadcrumb navigation is? Here is an example:  index: inner page 1: inner page 2
• Be sure to include a site map one click away from the index page.

That’s it. Four simple site structure steps to help your SEO efforts that will benefit you and your website in the long run.

Do you have site navigation and site structure tips that have worked for you?

A few simple steps can help you increase your website’s exposure on Google as well as the other search engines.

Use keyword when naming your image - When you save your photo or newley designed graphic to your computer use your website’s keywords in the image name.

Example: stampcollecting_headergraphic.jpg</em><em><strong>Use keywords in your Alt Tags - When inserting your graphic or photo into your webpage use an Alt Tag with your website keywords.

Example: Stamp collecting news and information
How:  <img src=”stampcollecting_headergraphic.jpg” mce_src=”stampcollecting_headergraphic.jpg” alt=”Stamp collecting news and information”>

When linking to a larger image use keyword anchor text - If you link to an image file do not use “click here” or some other ambiguous phrase. Use a keyword in your anchor text that is descriptive of the photograph.

Example: 1918 Inverted Jenny Stamp
Set the image height and width - In the HTML coding use the height and width tags when inserting image into site.

Example: width=“900? height=“180?

Title your photo page properly - If your image is on a seperate page and you are linking to it from your main text page, ensure your page title and header info reflect the subject of the page and photo. This is primarily for photographs.

Example: <title>1918 Inverted Jenny Stamp</title> Put it all Together and use best HTML best practices when coding images - There are 5 major elements to an image code in HTML. They consist of src, height, width, alt and title. By using all five of these elements you will ensure your image or graphic is coded properly and will have a much better chance of being indexed, especially by Google.

How:  <img src=“http://astampcollectingwebsite.com/stampcollecting_headergraphic.jpg”
width=“900? height=“180? alt=“Stamp collecting news and information”
title=“Stamp Collecting Header Graphic” />

Follow these few simple steps and you will see more people coming to your website via your images as they begin to rank higher on the search engines. This is especially true of Google and Yahoo image search pages.

I have learned however that you need a plan and that plan should address at a minimum the following factors:

* Site Structure - How is your site layout structure. For a site to be scalable and remain optimized I believe your site should be wide and shallow. No link should be more than two clicks from the index page.
* Page Title and Description - As you plan your website ensure that you choose page titles and descriptions that are unique to that page and that page only. Don’t use the same title for each page of your site. Same goes for the page description.
* Keyword Selection - Ensure that your keyword selection is relevant to the page that y our keywords are on. That may sound a little odd but search engines don’t like pages stuffed with keywords, especially keywords that are not relevant to the page or overall site.
* Individual Page Layout - Remember back in high school when you had to outline a book? (well maybe some of you older folks do) Set your page up with proper H1 and H2 tags which will identify different sections of your page
* Site Links - Use text links in at least one place on each of your pages. If you have a graphical menu then use text links at the bottom of each page. I am a believer in functionality over looks. You can have both but if you want to be found on the search engines then text links rule.
* Image Names - Name your photos and graphics with relevant keywords then use keyword relevant “alt” tags

These are my top 6 pen and paper SEO planning tips. What is your opinion? Do you break out the pen and paper before you start coding?

Take the following example:

Normal Anchor Text Link: Truck Parts & Accessories

Anchor Text Sentence Link: Big rig and over the road truck parts, accessories and after market equipment.

The normal anchor text link is perfect for your menu or footer links, but when used in a paragraph describing your sites content it becomes a powerful search and retrieval tool. That one sentence can be picked up with several search queries such as:

• big rig truck parts
• over the road truck parts
• parts and accessories for otr trucks
• after market truck parts
• big rig truck accessories
• after market parts for big rig trucks
• truck parts
• truck accessories
• truck equipment

While I do not recommend using an Anchor Text Sentence Link everywhere on your site, I do believe they can be beneficial if used wisely and sparingly in the correct place. Overuse of a sentence link could raise a red flag and be looked upon as a blatant spam attempt.

For an example of this linking theory in use, visit www.truckerhub.com and look at the top white text box in the center section. The bottom sentence is an Anchor Text Sentence Link.

I don’t know how many times I have been approached with the following the statement: ” I want you to build a website for me and I want it to be number 1. I need this done in the next 30 days.”

Well. I can build your website for you…….. but getting to number 1 on Google???  I can’t guarantee you that you will ever get to number one, especially if your primary search term is the same as 55 million other sites.  I can offer to attempt to get your website on the top ten of Google but it is not a guarantee and you will need to work with me for about 6-12 months.

WHAT????  Are you out of your mind?? I saw an ad on the Internet that promised me top ten ranking in 3 days!!!!  My response……. go ahead then come see me in a week.

SEO is not magic. It is not the product of software manipulation. It is not a mathmatical formula (well not one that is easily understood by most of the world). It is not something that just happens….

SEO takes proper planning and a long term committment.  Can I get you to the front page of Google? The answer is 90 percent probable if you are willing to work with me.  Most people are not that patient. They want to go to the SEO Drive Through and get their order and be on their way………

Oh by the way…….once we do get you on the front page it doesn’t end there. You have to work to maintain that spot as your competitors are all trying to do the same.

Now are you ready to start an SEO campaign??  Here are my terms and if I fail in six months to show significant results you get 50 percent back……….

Welcome to the long term world of Search Engine Optimization

After a year my opinion is - get rid of your “links” (or resources or whatever you call them) pages and redistribute your outbound links throughout your website.

I moved the outbound links to pages that were relevant to the subject of that link.  For instance a link to a company that sold 18 wheelers was placed on a page dedicated to over the road truck sales.  As a result of this action and ongoing outbound links to trucking industry related sites, TruckerHub.com has evolved into a portal site for the trucking industry resulting in hundreds of links to industry sites.  In the beginning this site focused on truck driver recruitment but now covers all aspects of trucking.

Removing the links page did not seem to hurt the site at all. In fact by distributing the links throughout the site it gives the site more credibility  both to the search engine and the user. It is much easier to find links to site with the info they are looking for.

As of today TruckerHub.com is sitting at number 11 on Google for it’s primary search term “trucker jobs” and number 5 for “trucking information”.  Other key searches are in the top 20 on Google and ranking well on Yahoo and MSN as well.

On May 2, 2007 I started working on SEO for the website www.truckerhub.com. I call myself a NoviceSEO’er because it has only been in the past several months that I have devoted myself to the study of the techniques and tools involved in bringing a website near the top of the Google, Yahoo and MSN search engines.

I was just about to engage an SEO company for 6 months to work on my website; the cost $12,000.00. I had had some success with other websites getting to the top of the heap on Google but that was mostly due to the contstant tweeking and working the same site since 1999. TruckerHub.com was a new site. Less than 24 months old and in a highly competitive market.

I had been reading about 25 blogs for about a month prior to starting this project and realized there was an abundance of information out there from a lot people. As I started to sort through all the info certain themes started to run constant from several of the blogs. At this point I opted to delay engaging an SEO firm to do this and to try it myself.

Here are the steps I took to go from 600 to 14 on Google for my primary search term “trucker jobs” as well as movement from 600 plus to the top 50 for other search terms including “truck driver jobs” and “trucking jobs”

I rounded down my blog readings to the following as they appeared to be the ones that were not only “talking the talk” but “walking the walk” I read these five blogs every day. Often times more than once a day. I delved into the archives and gleaned as much info as I could (and still do)

These blogs were:

John Chow at JohnChow.com
Andy Hagans at TropicalSeo.com
DoshDosh.com
Aaron Wall as SEOBook.com
Chris Garrett at ChrisG.com
Darin at Darin.cc

Purchased and download Aaron Wall’s book called SEO Book. At $79.00 this seemed much more reasonable than $12,000.00.

Download Johh Chows “Make Money Online with John Chow”

Download Chris Garrett’s “Killer Flagship Content”

What did I learn and what steps did I take to start the movement upward on the search engines?

1. Submitted site to Yahoo, V7n, UncoverTheNet, SiteSift, BestofTheWeb and iServe directories
2. Started a blog to support the website with fresh content at least 3 times a week.
3. Added fresh textual content to the website in the form of product reviews at least once a week.
4. Made each page title unique to the the information on that particular page.
5. Deleted extra words from the title, description and keyword fields that were not relevant to the page.
6. Added alt tags to all images and graphics.
7. Added links to the main pages of the site at the bottom of each page using phrases rather than words
8 . Limited link exchange requests to very specific industry related websites
9. Sumbitted a press release highlighting one of the free features of TruckerHub.com
10.Became a student of patience.

I put patience last as I have learned much of the movement that has happened has not been overnight but is a result of a change then wait, a change then more waiting. There have been ups and downs. one week a keyword rises the next week it dives. It is much like the stock market…….. you need to be in SEO for the long term.

I am by no means and expert. I am by no means finsished with this SEO project work. I just wanted to share what I have learned for what it is worth. Now that the momentum upward has started, I need to continue to study and work atthe SEO process.