My SEO QandA/Interview

Tess · #1 (**permalink**) 12-23-2009

Following is the text from an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Q & A "interview" I agreed to do for another VA's newsletter and thought I'd share here too

Q: Is it true that blog sites are liked more than html sites? There is so much online stating that blogs work better than html now and that html are sort of becoming outdated due to that fact that blogs are considered consistent fresh content and html are pretty much static. Do search engines crawl sites that have updated content more than static content?

A: What the search engines like, and what brings them back more often to a particular site, is fresh content – regardless of being a blog or regular website, regardless of being coded in PHP or HTML, etc. Search engines crawl the sites they can get to, and come back for more to sites that are updated frequently.

Q: Wouldn’t writing lots of great content and/or promoting website/blog through social media be enough to get lots of visitors?

A: Not necessarily – although certainly great content is a cornerstone of good SEO. But if the very foundation of your website [the code] is not written with current standards in mind it’s possible that it can actually prevent the search engines from indexing some or all of your content to begin with. Poorly coded websites can also present the search engines with a confused hierarchy of what on a particular page is most important. This is one reason sites created with the ‘free and easy’ website builders have such a hard time getting indexed properly – the text editors these builders use complicate the code by adding all manner of unnecessary tags, each time you add a bit of formatting, or a new text style to one of the pages on your website, the editor is mucking up the base code of the site and ultimately, the way the search spiders interact with your content. Free and easy has a price. Good code [like good content] comes at a premium but is well worth the investment when you consider that without it you’re fighting an uphill battle for decent, long-term search rank. When you start out with a good foundation from which to present your content, you help anchor your site’s relationship with the search engines.

Q: What are the cases when SEO is not an appropriate strategy for bringing more visitors to the site?

A: I don’t believe that SEO is ever a liability, regardless of the type of site you’re running, unless of course you DON’T want organic search traffic, for some reason. SEO is multi-faceted though, so some methods may or may not be the best or most effective option for a particular site. Though I’d have a hard time finding a website that wouldn’t benefit from a well-rounded, multi-faceted approach to SEO.

Q: Is there a difference between SEO for traditional websites and for blogsites?

A: Well, a blog is still possibly written in HTML – so I think what you mean is would there be different approaches to SEO for a blog vs. a regular website/business site. As I mentioned, SEO isn’t a one-size-fits-all service – part of what a good service provider does is looks at the site in question and determines the best approach, based on the individual site. With that in mind, it’s really a site-by-site determination. Some sites need more work, others may need a particular focus – it just depends.

Q: What are the biggest mistakes businesses make when it comes to SEO?

A: The assumption that building inbound links is the key to SEO is so profoundly wrong – an SEO campaign could touch on up to 100 different aspects, depending on the website – and it’s not a one-size-fits-all service. Inbound links are only a small piece of the process and even that isn’t as simple as creating links at a bunch of free directories; there are strategies to analyze, keywords to consider, and some directories that should be avoided entirely.

The other major mistake so many business owners make is hiring a professional but not following through on the advice they’ve paid for.

Q: There seems to be a lot of confusion about the importance of meta tags – title, description and keywords - to search engine rankings. Which ones matter and which ones don’t?

A: They all matter. Although not all of them matter to Google and this is where the confusion comes in. In an effort to please Google, people sometimes forget that there are other search engines out there; and some of those search engines do take meta tags and keywords into account. It certainly doesn’t hurt to work out these elements with SEO in mind and in any case, Google is a fickle audience, what they may have discounted this season could become important again later. If there’s an aspect to SEO that you are aware of and have the ability to implement or add to your website, do it and do it right.

Q: Is it considered duplicate content if I publish the same article on my website and also send it to one of the article directories?

A: Yes, when you publish the same content in more than one place online it’s considered duplicate content and as a result won’t hold the same weight in terms of SEO. However, if you weigh overall exposure to your target market, if the site you’re re-posting content to has a higher rank/better traffic than your own site, it can be a good marketing move to post articles in multiple places online, regardless of the SEO factor.

Q: Do I need to re-write the article to avoid duplicate content penalty?

A: Not necessarily, but the method I suggest [if SEO is your main objective] is to provide a synopsis of the article with a link back to the original.

Q: Is it true that you should add your article to your site first before distributing on the web so that the search engines claim the article as yours?

A: Duplicate content is duplicate content, no matter where it originates.

Q; Why are blogs so vulnerable to the duplicate content issues? What’s the best way to deal with it?

A: When you feed your blog content out into the blog directories, RSS directories, article sites, etc. via RSS it’s diluting the potency of your original post. Let’s say the search engines see the same content on two different sites: your original blog and an article directory that’s well established and ranks high for numerous keywords. When someone searches for those keywords that are relative to your blog post which site do you think the search engines will return as more important?

Again this is where you have to weigh the value of exposure – because your article being included in the search returns might be worth quite a bit to you, and if your blog isn’t particularly ‘important’ to the search spiders, your post may not have turned up at all, had it not been available at the big, well-ranked article directory.

Another issue is these websites that are like garbage cans. They harvest RSS feeds using bots so that they can republish the content on pages populated with ads, for the sole purpose of grabbing search returns and making money from ad clicks. These sites have zero value and totally diminish the potency of your original post. To avoid this issue, set your RSS feed to provide and publish partial posts, rather than the full-text of each post.

Q: Could you explain cross linking between pages on the same website? Is it a good idea? Does it work?

A: It’s always a good idea to provide useful and immediately obvious navigation options for both your human visitors and the search spiders. A few well-placed, keyword-optimized links in your content will only enhance the user experience and help the search spiders understand your site better. Keep in mind that the search spiders ‘see’ your website from the code level, so they only know what you tell them about a link, or an image, etc.

Q: What’s the difference between a keyword-optimized content and keyword-stuffed content?

A: Stuffed content is virtually unreadable for human users – working too hard to build up your keyword density in a paragraph can leave that paragraph a mess that simply doesn’t make sense. Ultimately, you have to write for people, not search engines. If you write with your audience in mind and keep the keyword use natural, your site will do better for it. After all, the search engines will never contract you as a client, buy your product, join your membership site, or comment on you blog.

Q: Can you suggest 3 often-overlooked things business owners can do today to improve their search engine ranking?

A: Move your site OFF of the free sitebuilder that is crippling your SEO potential and onto a proper medium. – Move your blog ONTO your own domain and integrate it with your website [of course, then you have to create original content for that blog in order for it to be useful to your SEO goals] – Install and learn to read the stats in Google Analytics; this is one of the best free tools you can use to understand what it is that brings people to your website, how long they stay, which pages they exit from , etc. and then use that information to your advantage.

About Tess Strand Alipour
Tess Strand Alipour is a partner at Codehead, LLP with her husband, Hamid where they provide custom SEO and web and software development solutions to select clients in various industries. She contributes considerable expertise in Search Engine Optimization, user experience, internet marketing, and content development to the growth and management of numerous web properties for both Codehead, LLP and its clients. Tess is also the founder and administrator of Virtual Assistant Forums, the premier online community for Virtual Assistants where the only 'membership fee' is participation.