SEO - Nope, still not Dead

[Patrick Singson]

Reports about the early demise of SEO are incorrect. If you think SEO is dead, well then your website is probably dead. Google got it right – relevancy. Get people directly to the page they need to get to. The home page is a barrier to entry in most cases. It's like a magazine cover – expresses the main theme, eye-catching headlines, but is sort of a page about everything. And as far as SEO is concerned, a page about everything = a page about nothing.

The importance of landing pages – where SEO and usability meet
Since Google acts as a teleport device that transports people to relevant webpages (homepage or not), then every page on your site must be thought of as a landing page. Some criteria:

· Do you have good content?

· Does it orient the user via title tag, header on the page, Meta description (which shows in search results)?

· Is the navigation intuitive?

· Are the exits (links) well-marked?

With Google, you should not have the expectation that everyone starts at your homepage with the context it provides. You must determine context for each page. Imagine teleporting into an alien environment – how would you orient yourself? How does your brain make sense of the environment? If you are not using the typical cues of banner at the top, left hand navigation, central content area, then you are creating another barrier to understanding your webpage. The one constant on every site is the “Back” button, which you do not want the user to use.

The order of SEO in website development is as follows:

1. SEO

2. Usability

3. Design

Most agencies get this backwards, or only do #3. What you are left with is a MySpace-like maze of animations, gray text on white pages with usability and SEO as an afterthought. If they do anything right, possibly the interior pages are about single subjects that search engines can understand and rank accordingly. Search engines are machines, but machines built to supply humans with the most relevant answer to their question. And what is the question? Whatever they put in the address bar of their favorite search engine. Let’s round up and call all Search Engines Google, shall we? (from MSN Live and Yahoo is heard a gnashing of teeth). At this point, Google's dominance within search is so thorough that you could build a successful search model catering solely to Google. The reason SEO is #1 is because if you do not show up in Search engines, your site effectively does not exist. 80% of sites are discovered by search engines (Okay, Twitter, Video and social media are weighing in, but thus far the dominance of discovery is owned by Google).

Matthew Bailey described it well in his presentation at Search Engine Strategies conference in NYC when he described Search Engines like Pinocchio: they are machines trying to think like a human being. Why else for directives like ranking sites higher when they use URLs that use actual words, and not the jumble of variables that are database driven (“domain.com/umbrellas” vs “domain.com/?keyword=*#&$fsdf*&/”)? The machines don’t need it – they understand variables, but it provides another layer of human-readable context for the person using the page. Ergo, it ranks higher. Easier for humans = rank higher.

SEO is the first stop for online marketing
I just received a response from a prospective freelance client: ‘We are still interested in your (SEO) services, but in these economic times, we cannot afford your services at the moment.’ My response: you cannot afford not to. Google is a premier research/search platform, not yellow pages, not billboards, not newspaper classified ads, not your neighbor, and not your mom. A dollar spent on a Yellow Page ad is a dollar better spent on Google adwords and SEO.

Reality check: when was the last time you used Yellow Pages in order to find a plumber/electrician/dentist? (I had them stop delivering them). Give me a computer and online access and I’m golden. I can find the address, I can research companies and read reviews – faster and with more “actionable intelligence” than I can with any Yellow Page/DEX brick. And if you do SEO well, it is essentially free marketing – costing only your time and effort (or the SEO person you hire).

What is the value of SEO? Well, if you sell a service, what is the value of one client? When my furnace was conking out I researched "Furnace repair Wheat Ridge, Colorado" in Google and got the Google results. I called the company ranked number 1, and they informed me I had to replace my furnace to the tune of $5,000 dollars. To them, SEO matters. Figure out your metrics, if every 100 searches leads to 10 calls, and the 10 calls lead to one service call for a furnace replacement every month, then when the SEO guy quotes his price take that into account and see if it is still worth it (for those keeping score, I used my dad's advice of calling at least three companies for estimates - the #3 rank had great online reviews, and fixed my furnace for under $300 - and that, my friends, is power for the consumer).

This sort of ROI is invisible to the casual user. This kind of success only happens when the SEO professional knows what they are doing and can deliver. And for most users, unless they get a firm referral, they don't really know what the SEO guy can do for them. So maybe they try to do it themselves. Well, as an SEO professional, I can tell you I've forgotten more than I've learned about SEO. The field changes with every algorithm change by Google. With a little research an SEO Professional should be able to determine what they can and can't do for a client. They should also be able to show you a track record of number one rankings. The point is that you can do SEO yourself, and I encourage it, but an SEO professional can simply do it faster. See if the SEO guy can toot their own horn, and back it up with case histories and charts. And - I paraphrase John Glenn: 'it's not bragging if you can do the damn thing.'

A change in ranking from #6 to #1 can result in 10 times the traffic. We just made one change to our website which resulted in 550% increase in traffic to that section. And if you go from nonexistent to Google, to first page ranking, any result you get is infinite. Think about that.

I look forward to your comments! You can also follow me on Twitter: @patricksingson