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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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.

Google's Matt Cutts

Google’s Matt Cutts on the Google Webmaster Tools Help YouTube channel says that regardless of how you construct your site, either in a CSS-based layout or a Table-based layout, Google will be able to find and index your content.

Please keep this in mind that Cutts says in the video that regardless of which way your site is built Google will “try” and index it. Now with CSS-based layouts your code is cleaner and less cluttered. It’s been proven that the more cluttered your site is with extraneous code the hard it is for your Website to be indexed.

So when Cutts says it doesn’t matter and Google will “try,” don’t you think the more adventagous thing to do would be code in such a way that makes it easier for search engine robots to spider your site? I think so. What do you think? Watch the video and post your comments!

There was a very interesting article in Search Engine Land blog yesterday. The author points out some very interesting points:

But what about those that have a more basic Flash site that does indeed provide information? For them, I would ask, why Flash? If you don’t need to allow your visitors to interact with your website, then why not just use HTML with Flash accents? Because even if the search engines are indexing the information contained in Flash (more on this in a bit), there are other reasons not to use it. First and foremost, not every browser has Flash installed. In fact, currently on an iPhone, Flash shows up as a little blue cube. Second, many Flash-based sites use only one URL for the entire site. Besides the search engine implications of that, it is also a nightmare for bookmarking, as well as for most web analytics programs.

via Are The Search Engines Really Indexing Flash?.

So I leave you with this, if your site does not need the wow power and interactive feel of Flash, but you want to capitalize on the search results, leave Flash for another day or another project.