So I was listening to Leo Laporte’s show This Week in Google, for which I’m a huge fan (of all of his shows actually). I was rather disturbed by his blatant accusation that there is no need for SEO, Search Engine Optimization. He was citing Derek Powazek’s bashing of SEO and Danny Sullivan’s response in defense of SEO.

Leo, really doesn’t have to worry about SEO, like us non-tech celebrities do. He has such a loyal and large following (myself included) that he is making millions in advertising dollars. But Leo, those small mom & pop shops who have tons of competition do need SEO. They need to be competitive in their space both online and in life in general. Take it from someone who is in a very saturated marketing. I’m a Web designer in Philadelphia and I rank really well for some topics and not so well for other topics. The latter are improving because of my efforts in SEO.

Many of my clients ask me to explain what SEO is. I tell them that it isn’t some type of voodoo or anything dishonest (though some tactics if used the wrong way can get you in trouble. SEO is, when you boil right down to it, simply helping the search engines, whether it be Google, Yahoo, Bing or any others, index and rank your site better.

Leo mentioned that all most people need to do is a few things and they will rank well. It’s not that easy. And what bothers me most is that Leo, who had a big following is spreading this wrong information.

When you learn SEO, however long it takes (after all it’s constantly evolving), you’ll learn it’s more about marketing than spamming the system. And in marketing you sometimes have to take creative approaches to find a solution and this is a big part of SEO. It’s not just changing meta tags and file names. Heck, I wish it were that easy, but it’s not.

Yes there are bad people in the industry that take advantage of the less knowledgeable, but the majority of SEOs are honest hard working people.

I wouldn’t blindly take sides in this debate especially when you carry so much clout.

Danny Sullivan says this in response to Derek’s attack:

Let me be clear. I totally agree with your core advice. Build a site for visitors. Have great content. These are the keys to success, not just with SEO but with anything you want to do. In fact, we just had an article on our site here reinforcing this.

Still, sometimes people have problems. And the stuff that you think isn’t rocket science — that anyone knows — is indeed a mystery to others. They want help, and sometimes they can’t find that web developer who also understands SEO issues. In the same way, you sometimes don’t find web developers who are also designers. Or designers who understand conversion issues. Or conversion experts who understand web development.

With my company, Goldstein Media, I am lucky to work with some really intelligent people in the SEO space and in the Design space and I can tell you right now, that they aren’t dishonest, snake-oil salesmen that you and Derek have made them out to be.

Now I’m sure Leo’s gotten a fair amount of response to what you said. And like I said before  I’m a huge fan of his and will continue to be, but he really shouldn’t belittle a whole industry just because you don’t need it or one person makes a damning case against it.

Rand Fishkin over at SEOMoz, posted the latest Whiteboard Friday today and made a very great point about Long Tail keywords. He states that many SEO experts and companies ignore the long tail keywords in favor of the more competitive and broader keywords. Rand says that this isn’t the right approach and that targeting the Long Tail keywords in the long run will actually benefit your site and business much more in the search engine rankings than going after the more competitive terms. Now you shouldn’t stop targeting the broader keywords, just look beyond them and look at the whole picture.

You do all kinds of keyword research trying to find the highest-volume terms around your niche. You work and work to move one place at a time up the rankings for those competitive terms, and you still don’t see the traffic increase you’re hoping for. Why?

You’re ignoring the long tail! All of those strange and unique searches people do when looking for your specific products or content! While each of these terms may only have 1-10 searches per month, add them all together and they could represent up to 75% of your search traffic. Watch this video and learn why the long tail deserves your attention and can make a huge impact in your traffic.

Newly, bald (he lost a bet with his team), Matt Cutts, Google’s search front man talked with WebProNew’s Mike Mcdonald about the Caffine Update. Caffeine is the code name for Google’s newest update to the seach giant’s search platform. Cutts says that they are doing their best to improve search without disrupting the existing rankings in Google. He does say that there is always a chance of things changing though.

I’d love to hear what your thoughts are on the news hyper update to Google. Post your thoughts below in the comments.

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Rand Fishkin over SEOMoz posted 4 great info graphs on Search Engine Optimization. One struck a chord:

This pie chart shows where SEOs spend most of their time. I wasn’t surprised to see the results.

A big part of any interactive venture falls into what I like to call “The Pitch.” Convincing people to part with their money is hard to do even if what they’ll spend it on will actually make them more money.

Many people who I talk to think SEO is a dark art and they don’t understand it. I always spend a good length of time explaining to them what goes into optimizing a site and why it costs what it does.

It’s really sad when people look at the price quoted and immediately shut down. It’s obvious they weren’t expecting the price tag to be so high, but SEO isn’t something that just anyone can do. Many people claim to know how to SEO a site and many will have some success at it, but when it’s your bottom line at risk do you want to risk it with a fly-by-night operation or do you want to quality.

Beware of the “Snake Oil Salesmen”

There are plenty of companies claiming to know how to get you to the top of Google. Many even say they can get you there in a short amount of time and you’ll stay there. Like in all industries there are the “snake oil salesmen.” These “experts” will tell you anything to get your money.

If one of these “SEO” gurus says that they can get you to the top of Google in a competitive keyword slot in less than 2 or 3 months (or even more) they aren’t legit. Also if they claim that SEO is a one time deal, walk away or hang up the phone, because If the keywords you’re after are in a competitive market there will always be another company in that space vying for your spot. If you’re not constantly tweaking your site and monitoring its position on the search results then you’re going to drop. Often times hard and fast.

Finding the right search engine optimization company is like finding the perfect contractor. There are tons out there but only a few gems. Do the proper leg-work and research the firm prior to doing business with them.

• Read their blog(s)
• Google them and see where they come up in the standings
• Check Twitter and see if anything is being said about them
• Ask other business owners at events who they use
• Search review engines like Local Pages and RateitAll

If you follow these steps (and come up with your own as well) and you’ll be less likely to fall prey.

Outsourcing to save money and why not to fall for the trap

One of the biggest arguments  I hear when I pitch SEO to a client is, “I can go abroad and get this for three-quarters of what you’re charging.” This really gets my blood boiling. Yes you can go to India or some other place in Asia and get it done, but you are dealing with a number of factors that are going against your project. Here are just two big ones:

• The language barrier
  You might not think that this is a big issue, but it really is. It’s not so much the language as the customs and the idiosyncrasies of a different culture. When you deal state-side there is always a chance for miscommunication but it’s significantly lowe
• You might not be legally protected while dealing with a company abroad
  Now I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve heard horror stories from people who thought they’d save a buck and get their Website designed or optimized abroad. They would sign an agreement that looked okay, but in the end for whatever reason, the foreign company didn’t follow through with what they said they’d do and there was little  recourse for the American business owner. This can happen in America, but the legal structure that is in places gives you much more recourse than you would if you dealt internationally.

Now, I understand that money doesn’t grow on trees, but “you have to spend money to make money.” I know, I know it’s a cliche, but it really is true. Dealing with a company in the same country that you’re in makes communication easier and makes resolving disputes less painful. In the end isn’t it worth it to spend a little bit more but have the piece of mind that you’re going to get what you want? I think so.

If the SEOs spent less time having to justify their existence, maybe they’d be able to get their job done more effectively and the price might just go down a bit.

Post your thoughts below in the comments. I’d like to hear what you have to say about this.

Rand over at SEOMoz has another great Whiteboard Friday. This week he’s talking about how to organize your tactics to get your company competitive in the market place. Often times it’s not just Organic SEO but also PPC and Social Media Marketing. Check out the video below and post your thoughts in the comments.

SEOMoz had a great video on how to Search Engines crawl and index sites. Very informative and worth a watch.

We all want to rank high in the search engine rankings. But often we just don’t know how. Wordpress, the premier open source blogging software, is pretty good for SEO out of the box, but like all things it can be better.

Enter SEO Ultimate, from SEO Design Solutions. This plugin is the key ingredient to get your site properly SEOed in Wordpress. Below is a video the developer produced showing off his product:

• Title Rewriter – Lets you format the <title> tags of posts, pages, categories, tags, archives, search results, the blog homepage, and more.
• Noindex Manager – Lets you add the noindex meta robots instruction to archives, comment feeds, the login page, and more.
• Meta Editor – Lets you edit the meta descriptions/keywords for your posts, pages, and homepage. Also lets you enter verification meta codes and give code instructions to search engine spiders.
• Canonicalizer – Inserts tags for your homepage and each of your posts, Pages, categories, tags, date archives, and author archives.
• 404 Monitor – Logs 404 errors generated on your blog.

Try it out. I like it so far. If you are still stumped and need some help please give us a call to setup a one-on-one consultation.

Google’s Matt Cutts did a video for the Webmaster Central YouTube channel yesterday answering a question on over-optimization of a Website. In essence he said no, the you can’t over use the NOFOLLOW tag, but often times in the search for better placement on the search engines people tend to spam a bit. They over use their keywords and make their site not user friendly. So in the end there are ways to hurt yourself in the search engines but only if you take a more black-hat approach to optimization.

What are your thoughts? Post them below.

WebPro News’ Mike McDonald talked with Rebecca Lieb of Econsultancy on the future of Search and how it will evolve in the future. She thinks that there will be a lot more optimization with “digital assets,” video, images etc., as well as an increased synergy with social media.

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Wil Reynolds from Seer Interactive have an interesting view point on the NOFOLLOW attribute on blogs and sites. He says that if the site has large readership you should still try to guest post on that site regardless if there is link-juice-love going to your site or not.

He explains:

Here’s Matt Cutts’ view on NOFOLLOW back in February on the Webmaster Tools YouTube channel:

And finally here is a video done at SMX Advanced in Seattle with Matt Cutts’ on the devaluing of the NOFOLLOW attribute:

What are you thoughts on the NOFOLLOW attribute and its impact? Post your comments below.