Do It Yourself SEO Tips
Do-it-yourself SEO is becoming a popular activity for SEM’s and IM’ers alike.
Gone are the days where you blindly pay an Indian SEO firm $500 to optimize your site for 10 keywords (never really knowing what the heck they are doing).
Since you would be foolish to pay a offshore SEO firm blind money for SEO, I thought I would help guide you on a few often overlooked elements in the do it yourself SEO process.
First lets dive into a list of things you DO NOT want to do for SEO. They are either a sheer waste of time (based on a value to time spent comparison) or they just don’t work.
DO NOT’s
1) Image Tags are a FAIL . . . Do not bother tagging all your images with keyword stuffing. This has proven over time to provide little to no benefit.
2) Keywords in Meta Tags . . . While I admit I still do this out of sheer habit, I also admit that it’s pretty much worthless. The Google bot is not as dumb as it use to be and finally caught on to you filthy keyword stuffing SEO spammers.
3) Keyword Density . . . Here is a idea, write a good article that people can read while not giving any attention to the keyword density. (Now, this does still work) but for larger projects that have a long term viability we do not produce content based on a particular keyword density, say between 1% – 3%.
4) Optimizing for 1 word . . . Bone Head!, Go for the long tail! I wish I could scream this, DO NOT start off by optimizing for that 1 keyword that will net you 800,000 searches / month based on the #1 position. The time and money you will spend to get there will create a point of critical mass when you could have been enjoying the long tail.
5) Directory Submission . . . Wasn’t that popular back in the 80′s? Actually you can submit to web directories, what I am talking more about is worthless spammed directories. I think there is only about 500 total web directories with any kind of PR status on the internet. So if someone tells you they are going to submit you to 5,000 web directories or you plan to do it yourself . . . just slap yourself.
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So now that we know what NOT to DO . . . Let’s talk about some things that are really worthwhile and add great value.
DO’s
1) Write a Press Release . . . by writing a solid press release about your product you can get backlinks from authority news sources that you will not be able to obtain otherwise. Get Yahoo Business or The Wall Street Journal to link back to you and see what that does to your SERP’s.
2) Link Silo (Link Wheel) . . . Link Silo’s have been in use for a long time, only recently did we dub them as a linkwheel. Now, understand that when I say “Link Wheel” or “Link Silo” I am actually talking about Web 2.0 property development. The idea is to create tons of relevant articles that will link back to your domain, and then kick the search engine spider in the pants.
3) Meta Descriptions . . . I said this like 3 years ago and no one would listen, but write your descriptions the same way you would write a PPC advertisement. Use words like “Over 1,000 clients served” or “Free Shipping” or “Come Check It Out For Yourself”. Meta Descriptions (the way they are written) can increase your overall CTR and thus produce more traffic.
4) Do-Follow / No-Follow (myth) . . . Again in a similar fashion to the above statement, try to use your head for 3 seconds. If every single link you have going to your site is a Do-Follow, what do you think you look like in the eyes of Google . . . that’s right a filthy link spammer. Do yourself a HUGE favor and build no-follow links to your site. If the link is relevant from an authority site I PROMISE YOU it will count.
5) Link Value . . . Here are the inner tips, quality, relevant, high PR, not on spammed pages with a bazillion out bound links, etc. The idea is that when you do get backlinks focus on getting targeted ones.
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Conclusion
This will not be the way we do SEO in 5 years. The above tips only work today. Hitting SEO is like hitting a moving target. I can conceive of a day when Google completely changes their algorithm, however when they do rest assured smart people will study and find the methods that can be used to manipulate the system. Then filthy link spammers (like yourself) will turn into some other kind of filthy SEO manipulator, of you will just build a robot to do the work for you.
Nice one… but I don’t agree with what you said About India, I know that this comment will be deleted, Just tell me any Largest company in your country in Which an Indian Never Worked.!! please reply that… we just provide services for what you can afford. thanks.
Hey Srikanth . . . . I mean no disrespect to anyone in India, we love our Indian partners. I was merely drawing a comparison that in recent time India SEO firms (a great number of them) would sell what I call blind SEO services. This means that you would pay them $400 – $600 / month to optimize for 5 – 10 keywords. The firms I speak of, would never tell you exactly what they were doing and if you pressed them you received an answer similar to “It’s complicated” or “We are doing onsite optimization”.
We do a great deal of business in India, but these days its based on real measurable products and services.
We want to know “How many links did you build for me”, or “Show me the relevant articles or Press release you submitted”, etc.