The SEO Girl

If you’re lucky enough to be part of a thriving SEO company, you’re likely going to be working long hours. If you don’t love the industry and the work you’re doing, you’re going to resent it, just like you would with any industry, even if you worked at it just 4 hours a day. I work an easy 50 hours a week at my not-so-easy SEO job, and usually log another 4 hours throughout the weekend. Yet, I’m happy as a clam (okay, not every second, but overall I’m a pretty happy SEO girl).

What sets us apart is that we love our SEO jobs. We’re part of an industry that’s always changing and questioning preconceived ideas, along with being lucky to have some great people in our industry. The days are long and results are never immediate, but loving the work you’re doing goes a long way towards maintaining your happiness level. There’s always going to be those difficult days and even more difficult clients, but have faith that you’re in an industry that’s going places and evolving.

I’ve been told I work too much and that I’m a workaholic more times than I can count, but I still have that smile on my face and excitement to keep going, even after almost 4 years of being in this industry. It hasn’t been easy and clients try my patience all the time, but there’s a big difference from working just for a paycheck and working because you love what you do. I’m lucky to have the latter.

If you’ve met me in real life, you’ve probably seen me whip out a tube of berry Yes To Carrots lip balm (several hundred times) or heard me talk about their sister brand, Yes To Tomatoes, and how much I love it. I’ve been to the Yes To Carrots website, Twitter, and Facebook, many many times, and like any SEO worth her salt, there’s some things we notice a bit differently about a website. Yes To Carrots has an exceptional social marketing campaign and overall brand personality, and they’re definitely a brand to keep an eye on! (Fellow SEO girls – you must check out their body butter, so wonderful.)

Homepage Image: The first thing you’ll notice about the site is the very attractive homepage. The second thing: it’s all an image, oh no! A search engine is basically glossing over this page as they can’t read images. Ideally, the page should be balanced with an adequate amount of SEO-friendly text and images. Plus, visitors utilizing screen-readers to access the page will be able to identify what’s actually on the Yes To Carrots page.

The homepage does include image alt tags, which is great, but be sure they’re in a consistent format. Some read “Body Butter”, while others read “hand_and_elbow_cream”. A very small point, but great for consistency and having a clean website.

Page Title: Check out my previous post, “Ask The SEO Girl: Should My Page Title Include My Website’s Name?”, about adding your brand name to each page title on your website, along with a keyword phrase you’d like to rank for. Their homepage page title includes the Yes To Carrots brand name, but their interior pages lack it. Go for consistency and branding and add that brand name in!

Twitter.com/YesToCarrots: This is an example of a company Twitter page done so right. They’ve identified a brand personality of embracing a refreshing, healthy lifestyle, with an optimistic outlook. From their own tweets to the posts they decide to retweet, their Twitter posts reflect this personality. They don’t just tweet to tweet – they do it with a purpose, and they do it well.

Facebook.com/YesToCarrots: They convey that same vibrant personality on Facebook. We’d like to see them have different posts on Twitter and Facebook, but we applaud them for keeping their page updated, posting new status messages, adding photos, and posting new discussion topics. Their loyal fan base has responded back by embracing how active they are on social platforms and interacting with them.

Yes To Carrots is an exciting brand with products that meet and way exceed what’s said in their marketing messages. They can benefit from some SEO improvements, but their social media campaign sets the bar, and sets it high, for what a successful social campaign should be. Now time to re-apply my berry lip balm and get started on more SEO copy!

Yes, yes, and a thousand more yes’s to this question! The page title, or meta title, are the words in the blue bar at the top of your Internet browser, or the words engulfed by <title> in the source code for a website. Including one or two keyword phrases that are relevant for your site in your page title is a common SEO best practice, and as long as it’s not abused, actually does contribute quite well to a website being ranked for those keyword phrases, particularly the keywords in the homepage page title.

I recently heard an SEO say that they prefer not to put the site’s name in the page title. I strongly disagree – creating a page title similar in structure to: Keyword Phrase 1 and Keyword Phrase 2: Site.com, is a must for the following reasons:

• Reinforce Branding – In an age where searchers want to find the lowest price product, and want to find it fast, you need to do everything possible to instill your brand name in their minds. Adding it to your page title keeps it right in front of their eyes as they flip through your website.

• Search Result Listings – A search engine will typically pull your site’s page title as the title of a search engine results page listing. Imagine seeing a slew of search results, all with relatively generic, keyword-rich titles. Then, you spot one that includes keyword phrases, but also has the site’s brand name. Wouldn’t you be more inclined to click on the one with the brand name?

• Bookmarking – Whether it’s social bookmarking or simply bookmarking a site to your Internet browser, the bookmarked listing for a site usually is pulled from the site’s page title. Once again, branding is everything, and when the person who just bookmarked 10 relatively similar sites goes back to look at their list, their eye, and mouse, is going to be attracted to the one that has a brand name listed.

Including your website’s brand name in your site’s page title is a practice that only makes sense. When you’re at the mall, do the stores have “Clothing Store”, “Clothing Store 2″, “Bath Store”, “Bath Store 2″, and “Shoe Store” on their marquees? Nope. They distinguish themselves from each other by highlighting their brand names wherever they can, and that’s what sticks in our minds and has us stepping into their stores again and again.

So say you check out a blog or website and are asked to describe that website in 20 random words. Most likely, your word choices will be a little all over the place, but they’ll probably tie together enough to form a picture on what the blog is mostly about. This is the same concept as a “tag cloud” – a tag cloud is simply a collection of main themes on a blog or website – often seem a bit disjointed, but actually do go together to form an idea of what you mainly talk about on your blog.

There’s tons of tag cloud generators out there, and I recently used Wordle to generate a tag cloud for The SEO Girl blog, only the very best blog out there, of course (just nod along). The larger the font in a tag cloud, the more often you talk about that topic or theme. For The SEO Girl, I’m big on “SEO” of course, another was “industry” which makes sense, “blog”, “search”, and “PageRank”. Nearly all the words in my tag cloud related to the search industry, so it looks like despite my rambling posts, I’m on track! I encourage you to do the same with your blog or website – it’ll allow you to get a quick snapshot on the theme of your blog posts to be sure the big topics on your blog are actually what you want them to be, and if the keyword phrases you’d like to rank for on your website show up in a larger font in your tag cloud, chances are you’re on target with your SEO keyword targeting. Happy tag clouding!

Check out The SEO Girl blog’s tag cloud, courtesy of Wordle. Note how “love” is inside the “S” in SEO – how true for me!

Before adding the Akismet spam filter to my blog, which is lovely, I was receiving tons of spammy comments with random links in them. Since the comments contained little relevant text, it appears they left the link solely for SEO value. A tactic which, of course, has little value. I stress the value of personally contacting site owners for link building and giving them a reason to add your link, rather than trying to “game” search engines in this way. Plus, you’re basically wasting your time and your money – links in blog and forum comments aren’t going to boost your rankings.

Thoughtful blog and forum comments can boost your industry cred, though. Take for example the recent post of mine, “I Think I Can, I Think I Can: SEO, The Little Engine That Could”, where I highlighted a person who commented on one of my prior posts and his insightful comments. Spend five minutes giving your opinion on a blog post in your area of expertise, and those thoughtful comments could be worth much more in the long run. You’ll be able to make contacts in your industry and network, show you know what you’re talking about, and perhaps even get the word out about your own website and encourage other blogs/sites to link to you, all without engaging in obtrusive comment spam!

Remember: Keep SEO pure. Show the value of your knowledge and your website, and real people and search engines will notice in time.

I was doing some research today on what SEO companies out there are charging for their services. I found a great article in SEOmoz called “How to Price an SEO Campaign” – excellent job highlighting what a good SEO company will do for your site, and the SEO services you actually need for your site. Of course, it’s SEOmoz, so they can charge quite a bit more than a regular old jane who’s plain fantastic at SEO.

But! I did a Google search for “SEO services”, just for a quick pricing glimpse, and was oh-so-discouraged at what I saw. I did see a few reputable companies in the first few pages, and hats off to them, but then there were the companies who promised “search engine submissions”, “blog and forum comments”, “free directory submissions”, and “meta-tag rewrites”. There was even one company who charged $1K for little more than a simple Website Grader SEO evaluation! The horror, and it’s not even Halloween yet!

Rather than choosing a company that says they’ll get you SEO results fast and cheap, look for companies that not only will advise you on on-page and off-page SEO best practices, but will actually implement those practices. You’re a busy website owner, and you need a professional who will do the work and do it right, even if it’s going to cost you a bit more. Invest the time and money into doing it right the first time. If you don’t see results until month 3 or 4 into your campaign – that’s a good thing! That shows they’re implementing ethical SEO techniques and getting search engine attention over time, rather than buying 100 paid links and washing their hands of your website.

Remember, quantity does not equal quality. Going with a company who presents you with an impressive looking report filled with all the blog and forums they spammed with your link, the free directory submissions they submitted your site to, and a few links they bought for you on spammy sites has relatively little value. Go with a reputable company who spends time crafting creative SEO content, manually contacting only a handful of sites each month for link building with a personalized email or phone call, maintains a blog and writes interesting posts, ensures your site is optimized correctly, and maybe even does a bit of social media is the way to go. Their time is likely worth more money, in the $1-2K per month range, but it’s money spent wisely.

Over the last few weeks there’s been a bit of debate in the corporate side of the company I dwell at over the importance of establishing PageRank as a measure of SEO success. PageRank certainly has its place in our industry, but I’m more of the “establish a desired increase in non-paid search engine traffic/keyword traffic” as a success metric. Here’s my reasoning, in a nutshell:

• PageRank is great when determining the quality of a site to connect with for link building or checking out how your competitors are fairing, but a high/low PageRank doesn’t necessarily translate into increased traffic/revenue. A website thrives or dies by the amount of traffic coming to it, and focusing on PageRank, a metric that doesn’t have an exact correlation, just doesn’t make sense to me.
• I’ve had instances where I’ve checked a client’s PageRank only to see it giving me a “0″ PageRank when a day ago it was a “4″. The next day, back to a “4″. With a metric ultimately controlled by Google and so accustomed to variances, it’s just not reliable.
• A high PageRank can be the reward of a great SEO campaign, but not the “end result” a site owner wants to see. As a site owner, you want more people coming to your site as a result of the fruits of your SEO labor, not just an uptick on a tiny green bar.
• You’ve spent time creating a user-friendly and search engine-friendly website, with valuable resources and interesting information on the site. You’ve also spent considerable time in drumming up the site’s grand opening by syndicating press releases, buying ad space, and using social media effectively. You get thousands of visitors the first month the site is up, yet your PageRank continues to be “0″. Other sites in your industry have much more antiquated, difficult to navigate websites, yet have a higher PageRank, and their Compete.com data shows you’re in the traffic lead by a long shot. Now, how much do you care about PageRank?

I’m not discounting the validity of PageRank, I just feel its place is not as a success metric. What about you? How do you feel about using PageRank to determine the overall success of an SEO campaign – yay or no? I promise I won’t bite

Heading up a successful SEO team is no easy feat, especially in these times where clients are hesitant to spend money and tend to want to see results overnight. I’ve held a management role at the digital marketing firm I work at for the last few years, and by sticking to our motto of “Change or die”, we’ve weathered the changes in the SEO industry and the economy. We’re always a work in progress, but I’ve learned some fundamental strategies for managing an SEO team over the years.

1. “Change is the only constant” – Heraclitus: All members of your SEO team must embrace this mantra. Sure, the foundations of SEO have stuck around, but this is an industry that is constantly changing. Sticking to the old ways is going to have you losing customers and gaining a bad rep in no time.

2. Skilled Writers: It’s beneficial to have a savvy SEO programmer on your time, but the bulk of your team should be made up of proficient writers. Whether it’s scripting personalized emails to send to potential link partners or writing SEO copy for a client’s site, they need to be able to write cleanly and professionally. Never underestimate the value of a good writer.

3. Divide and Conquer: Each member of your team has their own strengths and weaknesses. Create sub-departments within your team to solely handle account management, SEO copy, social media monitoring, link building, blogging, press releases, etc. You’ll be building up your team’s confidence in their skills by giving them responsibility for their own mini-departments, and they’ll be able to focus on making their realm of SEO that much more successful.

4. Account Meetings – We hold monthly account meetings, where each client’s account team meets for a half hour, evaluates the stats for that month and develops an outline of the next month’s strategy. This ensures the team is in continual communication about how the account is doing, and we have a forum for ideas and innovation in place.

5. Client Check-in’s - You’re not going to be able to please every client, but it’s always best to take the bad with the good and welcome criticism. We check-in with each client mid-way through their contract term and send them a short survey regarding their perception of their SEO campaign’s performance, interaction with the team, and ways we can improve our relationship together. It may bring some issues to light, but knowing what you can do better with greatly strengthen your team.

These are just a few tips – feel free to share more about your experience managing an SEO team, what has worked for managing your team and ideas we can all benefit from!

I had an SEO discussion with a friend this week over a site that featured 4 “nofollow” links, and then listed those same 4 links a bit below them, “followed” this time and with relevant anchor text, instead of simply “Site.com”. My friend, who definitely knows his stuff when it comes to SEO, explained they chose this tactic so the full amount of “link juice” would only flow to the followed set of 4 links, rather than having to be split between the two sets of links. I replied that yes, the theory behind this is valid, but on a site with a grand total of 8 outgoing links, it’s a bit of a mute point, and may actually raise a spider’s suspicion, as the site is basically shouting out that they’re gaming search engines.

His perspective was that of a technical SEO specialist, mine was more of a natural, visitor-centric SEO specialist. His point is 100% correct, but in this instance, there’s no need to “nofollow” those links. If the site had 25 outgoing links and only wanted PageRank to flow through 4 of them, then the other 21 links should certainly be “nofollowed”. But not for a site with a total of 8 links.

This brings up a good point – if an SEO specialist knows the Google Webmaster Guidelines in and out and applies those principles to their client’s sites, does that make them experienced in SEO? Personally, I feel that knowing when to implement those guidelines is what really shows you know SEO. I’m always learning, but I feel it’s best to learn the technical SEO techniques, and then, and only through experience, learn why they’re beneficial to some sites and how to apply them to best benefit that individual site.

My friend has a wealth of SEO knowledge, and I do look to him for technical SEO questions. SEO duals are nothing new between us and keep us both on top of our game. The art of SEO is about gaining experience on knowing when to apply those SEO best practices, not necessarily in memorizing them.

I’ve been eating out a lot recently, and have wanted to curb my restaurant expenses a bit and more importantly, eat healthier! I’m definitely not one able to just whip up something that tastes great, and needed a little (lots of) guidance. I found Hungry Girl, Lisa Lillien’s very fun healthy eating website and two cookbooks. I’ve heard a lot of buzz about Hungry Girl, and after taking a look at and buying both cookbooks, the recipes are actually healthy and pretty easy to make. I’m excited

Their site could be a bit more SEO-friendly by primarily cutting down the number of images used – it’s pretty image heavy. However, the popularity of  Hungry Girl is a lesson for other food bloggers out there, and the marketing tips encompass much more than SEO, but as we know, having a site or blog people actually want to come to, read, and tell others about and link to, can go a long way in having a very successful SEO campaign.

Timely Topics: Eating healthier is a hot topic right now, and sure, people are still hitting their local fast food joints, but healthy eating is getting more and more of the spotlight. Whether they actually cook the recipes is one thing, but searchers are looking for nutritious recipes, and posting about them is likely to get you a wider audience over time. Be sure to also post a photo and nutritional information for each recipe.

Share Your Recipes: Food blogging is much different than publishing a cookbook. Expect your recipes to be all over the Internet, and encourage your readers to share them. Have “Share This” or “Add To Any” buttons on each post to propel your readers to post your recipes on social sites or their own blog.

Give and You Shall Receive: Rather than allow your readers only a glimpse of your recipes, forcing them to blindly buy your cookbook, have a collection of full recipes available on your site or blog. There’s so many cookbooks out there, and potential buyers want to first do their homework and make sure your recipes are actually good. Post every few days with a new recipe separate from the ones in your book. This will encourage readers to buy your book for an extensive collection, and keep them coming back to your site, as well.

E-mail Marketing: The Hungry Girl has a “Subscribe” button on her site, where you can subscribe to her mailing list and receive even more great-tasting recipes! This again helps keep your blog fresh in people’s minds.

Contests: Want to increase the number of links to your food blog and increase buzz? Sure you do. E-mail your blog readers and post about a contest, such as who can create the best variation of your recipe on their own blog (linking to your blog in the post, as well), who can prepare a recipe of yours in the most entertaining way in a YouTube video, etc. Be sure to have an award for the contest, and more than likely you’ll get some exposure for having the contest.

Know Your Audience – The Hungry Girl’s audience is likely not 50-year old retirees. They know they’re targeting twenty and thirty somethings who want to eat healthy without toiling away at the stove. Select your target demographic, and make sure your cooking style and overall theme of your blog match that demographic.

Feel free to comment away with more food blogger marketing tips. Hmm, I seem a bit hungry all of a sudden, time to break out my Hungry Girl cookbook!

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