Simple 'Secrets' for Affordable SEO

The post isn't a must-read. You and your business may succeed if you never follow the link to "5 Content Marketing Goals for Your Website & Blog - and One Big Challenge, Patsi Krakoff, Writing on the Web.

By devoting a few minutes to signing up for the next get-rich scheme, instead of reading Patsi Krakoff's post, you may even make your in-home business into a multi-trillion-dollar global megacorp. But I doubt it. Very much.

I read the thing and - confound it - now I'll have to think about something besides creating content for my blogs and websites. I really need a marketing team. And a technical department. And an executive secretary. And a seaside office complex. No, I don't "need" all that.

What I really need is a break - which I'll take, as soon as I finish this post.

Getting to the Point: 5 Content Marketing Goals

Here's what got this post started:

• "5 Content Marketing Goals for Your Website & Blog - and One Big Challenge"
  Patsi Krakoff, Writing on the Web (May 9, 2010)

The five content marketing goals are the sort of thing that are 'obvious' after you've read them, maybe not so much before. Here's what P. K. says you should want your blog and/or website to do:

1. Impress visitors and showcase your business expertise
2. Engage, educate, entertain & persuade visitors to short-list you
3. Capture interest and convert visitors into leads
4. Generate new business from current clients
5. Attract visitors from search engines

Sounds good. And, more importantly, practical. In my view, unless you're just out for the thrill of having something online: you'll need to have a goal in mind, to justify the time and expense you're sinking in the thing.

Point 2 - and particularly 3 - tell me that Patsi Krakoff has a fairly traditional business in mind: one that started with a brick-and-mortar presence and has a presence on the Web as a sort of add-on. No problems with that, but it's not what I'm doing. I'll get back to that.

SEO: Search Engines and Being Smart

Then there's #5, about SEO. I'm not entirely on the same page with the author, but she made pretty good points. And, for someone who apparently thinks that what I'll call 'artificial SEO' is a good idea, she's remarkably candid:

"...There are those who say 'forget SEO, just write a lot of content for the people who's problems you can solve.' The search engines will catalog your keywords and you'll rank high based on 'organic search.'

"This can be true to a certain extent. I am living proof of that. This blog has been blessed with quality traffic and ranking and search results based on a long history of publishing plenty of content using a few keywords...."
(Writing on the Web)

Or, in my case, writing plenty of content using a whole lot of keywords. Not all in the same blog, of course.

A bit after that excerpt, there's this:

"...Search Engines Are Stupid, You're Smart

"I don't want to be a nag, but I'm going to repeat myself from here until Wednesday: search engines are stupid, so if you're a smart professional, you can learn how to attract search traffic to your blog and web pages. Forget throwing money at the problem. This is something you can and should be doing yourself...."(Writing on the Web)

And then, promotional copy for an upcoming online/phone seminar. It might be worthwhile: but do your "due diligence" before signing up.

Search Engines, Artificial Intelligence, C3PO and Street Smarts

Okay, let's start with that heading: "Search Engines Are Stupid, You're Smart." It's true, as far as it goes. Search engines are AI developed by some of the better programmers on the planet, but their intelligence is artificial. We're still quite a long way from a convincing equivalent of HAL 9000, Skynet, and C3PO. So, yes: search engines are "stupid." At least in the 'street smart' sense of the word.

And, by comparison, just about anybody is, in the 'street smart' sense, smarter than a search engine. Honestly, it doesn't take much.

On the other hand, I think it's debatable whether your typical entrepreneurial wannabe is smarter than the search engines' programmers.

Being Clever isn't Being Smart

Part of my position, or attitude, comes from my memories of the 'good old days' of SEO, when experts (just ask them: They knew everything) told folks that the smart thing to do was load your keywords tag with every naughty word you knew; cloak parts of your website; and - a favorite - put lots of those naughty words right on the page, in a font that's the same color as the page background.

I still run into that advice, from time to time. It strikes me as being 'clever,' rather than smart. It takes a certain amount of technical know-how to figure out how to scam the early search engines. Whether it's smart to be that clever - I don't think so.

I know: today there are people who have spent a great deal of time establishing the image of someone who knows the 'secrets' of SEO. They've probably got some useful skills, since they keep getting contracts from big companies. That implies that there are measurable advantages to using 'professional SEO.' On the other hand, big companies can do stupid things. Remember the Big 3 Automakers meltdown?

I'm No "Expert:" But I've Learned a Little

I'm no "expert." I'm just some guy in central Minnesota who spent two decades in a small publishing company's marketing department: one as an advertising copywriter/graphic designer the other as the list manager. And, when the company (finally) got a website, I was the website's designer.

It's not all that impressive, since the company downsized - drastically - a few years ago; and I got an opportunity to explore other career goals. Best thing that's happened to me in a long time, in terms of 'career,' by the way.

So, I'm no expert - but I do have 20 years' experience in marketing (it was a small company, and I had opportunities to share and present ideas) - and have been spending part of my time, since then, learning how to promote myself on a shoestring budget.

And I think I am smarter than a search engine.

Which is why I won't try to be 'clever' with SEO. I've got reason to believe that search engine programmers are interested in connecting their users with pages that the users may be interested in - not in funneling traffic to some hotshot expert's page.

SEO: It's Brains, Not Bucks

So, SEO is useless?

Not at all. But I think that, at least for sole proprietorships like what I have, smart SEO is what I can do on my own, following a few principles. I didn't come up with these: they're a sort of distillation of what I've learned by testing - and by reading articles by people who seem to know what they're doing.

This probably won't seem very 'smart,' and almost certainly isn't 'clever,' but I think it works:

• Write tight
  • Tell the reader what you're writing about
    • In the title
    • In the first paragraph
  • Eschew obfuscation
    • Use simple words
      • Unless your subject demands complex, technical terms
    • Keep sentences short
      • And simple
  • Stay on topic
    • This is a hard one for me
      • I tend to wander when writing
      • On the up side, I've gotten separate posts written that way
      • I'm being tested for ADD this fall
        • See what I mean?
        • Back on-topic
  • Use keywords as you write
    • If you're writing about cars, say 'cars' when appropriate
    • Don't struggle with synonyms
      • Unless you think your readers would be bothered by the 'car - car - car' repetition
    • Use keywords in your headings
• Code smart
  • Keep your code simple
    • It's easier to debug
    • Short code loads faster
      • Your visitors like that
      • Scuttlebutt is that search engines are biased for fast-loading pages
  • Use the "Keywords" tag
    • Scuttlebutt is that search engines aren't using it anymore
      • There was too much abuse by 'clever' SEO 'experts'
      • Scuttlebutt can be wrong
        • And adding the keywords tag takes - what? five minutes tops?
  • Put your verbal content in text format
    • Scanning in that brochure and using the graphic
      • May look nice
      • Could be faster than creating a text/graphics page
      • Can't be 'read' by search engines
        • Remember: search engines really are stupid
        • They only read text
        • So far

I don't subscribe to the 'build it and they will come' philosophy of website SEO. On the other hand, I don't see the wisdom of spending thousands of dollars - which I can't afford - on 'SEO professionals,' when I've very good reason to believe that a combination of remember-your-readers writing techniques and no-nonsense website design can have a similar outcome. Without the expense.

Getting intelligently 'chatty' on social networking sites like Twitter helps, too.

But that's another topic.

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A tip of the hat to Steveology, on Twitter, for the heads-up on this post.

A Pretty Good Article on Twitter Misuse - and SEO My Way

I'm borrowing the format from my Apathetic Lemming of the North blog for this post: excerpts from an article, then my take on it.

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"Why Your 4,243,564 Twitter Followers Don't Mean Jack
aimClear Blog (January 15, 2010)

"When Twitter launched four years ago, it (perchance inadvertently) gave businesses the most precious gift imaginable: an intimate glimpse into consumers' daily lives. It gave them the power to monitor brand reputation in a clean, accessible interface. Corporate brands like @Zappos, @Starbucks, @Dell, @JetBlue, and @TheHomeDepot, as well as personal 'brands' like @StephenFry and @AlyssaMilano have been wildly successful with social media because they're structured, devoted, attentive, engaging and personable.

"Tragically, there are also bandwagon-jumping companies and celebrity glory-whores who go at Twitter like a portly dude at a buffet. They use it as self-centered bullhorn and nothing more...."

Two examples, without the accompanying screen grabs:

"...6) You dove into Twitter because it seemed cool. And then you just, like… stopped. Then you started using an API for your PRs. And we all hated you a little bit more. | @tgifridayscorp

"Companies who thrust themselves into Twitter without a clear set of goals are setting themselves up for humiliation. Just because Twitter is free doesn't mean the marketing campaign should be half-assed. This pitiful stream of tweets will haunt TGI Friday SERPs for all eternity. (Hat-tip @PureDriven for this example.)

7) You don't encourage, you expect. (And you @mention yourself. Seriously?) | @coldstonecream

"Coldstone makes some wicked tasty ice cream. But what kind of success can they hope to achieve with social media when they talk at people rather than with them? The last @mention they exchanged with another real live human being was in April of 2009. (Hat-tip to @MerryMorud for this laughable gem.)..."

There's more, like: the fellow who has upwards of three quarters of a million followers, follows two people, and hasn't tweeted in almost three months; the ball team that tweets status updates, and nothing but status updates.

This Sort of Thing Gave SEO a Tacky Reputation

Not the article: the "lobotomytastic" (coined by the article's author, as far as I know) examples of self-destructive public relations listed.

I enjoyed reading the article - apart from the occasional vulgarities - and think that it's a pretty good resource for anybody who's trying to get the right sort of attention on Twitter.

Or any other sort of social media, for that matter.

A bottom line, I think, is to remember that social media is social. Anybody trying to use something like Twitter would be well advised - again, I think - to remember that people who Twitter aren't a demographic; they're not the masses; they are people.

Only a few of the folks I communicate with on Twitter and elsewhere use their faces (or, like me, parts of their faces) as avatars, so I don't know what they look like. But as I communicate with each of them, I get to know them. And they get to know me.

Which is the whole idea of the exercise.

About SEO having a tacky reputation? I may have overstated that. On the other hand, I use Search Engine Optimization techniques myself - and still tend to cringe when I see "SEO" in a title or summary.

For me, that's because so much were (and, astoundingly, still are) suicidally clever ideas floating around: like putting lots of naughty words in your HTML tags - and in text that's the same color as your page background.

Bad idea. In my opinion.

The SEO I use isn't my invention: it's a set of ideas culled from what people who had a reputation to lose wrote on the subject.

The basic idea is to remember that you're trying, eventually, to communicate with people. People who don't have infinite patience and aren't necessarily die-hard fans of yours.

Since this is my take on SEO, I'll call it "Brian H. Gill's SEO Tips" - even though it's cribbed from what 'real' experts had to say.

• Decide what you want to say
  • If you change your mind, half-way through
    • Go back and revise the first half
• Pick a half-dozen or so words that connect with what you want to say
  • If you're writing about browsers, that might be
    • Browser
    • Web
    • Explorer
    • Firefox
    • Safari
  • You get the idea
• Put as many of those words as will make sense to a reader in
  • The title
  • The first paragraph
• Let the reader know what you're writing about
  • In the title
  • In the first paragraph
• Stay on-topic
• Don't write fluff
  • Even if you have to write a set number of words
  • Anecdotes and reminiscences are okay
    • If they relate to what you want to say

I've read that search engines are getting better at reading data that's not straight text - but in general I keep my pages and posts simple, anyway: with as much information in text as possible.

If that doesn't sound clever and innovative: it's not supposed to. It's supposed to make it possible for search engines to mine my posts and articles for keywords, index them, and ultimately for someone interested in SEO, aardvarks, cosmology, interior design, or whatever, to find my pages.

Who Knew "Coconut Crab" Would be so Hot?

It's enough to drive a blogger to distraction.

About a month ago, I posted a micro-review about AbsoluteAstronomy.com's writeup on coconut crabs. ("The Coconut Crab: No, It's Not From a Science Fiction Movie" (September 25, 2009))

Then, I moved on to the next task of the day.

I enjoyed putting that post together more than most: the monster land arthropod looks like something out of a better-than-average science fiction movie, and it's quite real.

But I didn't expect that post to be particularly popular. I'm fascinated by arthropods with branchiostegal lungs that allow them to scuttle on land - and up trees: but I've long since learned that my interests and those of about 999 out of a thousand people don't have all that much in common, when you get beyond basics like grilled steaks and the opposite sex.

So, I was surprised when that coconut crab post kept showing up near the top in my daily logs.

Then today, so far, it's accounted for over 75% of my traffic. Total. All eleven blogs and three websites. (Shameless self-promotion: A Small World of Websites™)

The 'extra' hits are all, or nearly all, from Google. Why? I have no idea, although there seems to have been a serious spike in the last hour or so. My blog post is in the top 10 (9th place), so there must be something that's driving interest in coconut crabs today. This afternoon.

My guess is that there's some television program that mentioned the things.

Traffic Spikes, Research, and Common Sense

Whatever's driving this spike, I'm glad it's happening: and won't spend more time wondering about why it happened.

My business is a sole proprietorship, with me as owner, manager, writer, research department, janitor, and anything else that needs to get done. Knowing what drove this spike would be nice - but beyond filing what I've found away with the rest of what I've noticed about traffic, I don't have the resources to find an answer to that question.

Besides, the answer probably wouldn't help me. Aside from concentrating more on 'cool' subjects than I might otherwise, I plan to keep writing posts for that blog, Apathetic Lemming of the North, the way I have for the last couple of years. In that blog, I focus excursively on topics I'd be following anyway, like:

• Martian speleology
• Interior design
• City planning
• Visions of the future
• Cute and funny animals
• Artificial intelligence
• The weirder end of high fashion
• Cosmology
• Architecture
• Anything else that looks interesting

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I've used this quote fairly often:

"There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person."
G. K. Chesterton, Heretics (1905), The Quotations Page

And, from Tennyson's Ulysses:

"...this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge, like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought....."

Marketing Your Blog: Linkbaiting Advice

I did a micro-review of a short (165 word) piece of SEO advice on Apathetic Lemming of the North: "Linkbait SEO Insider Secrets! " (January 1, 2008).

The piece itself is "Linkbait Your Blog" (Wired (December 22, 2008).

The author left out 'good content,' but it's a useful, short, read.

Misspelling for Success?

I've seen alternative domain names chosen with common misspellings of the main domain name in mind. It's a good idea: allowing for visitor errors, redirecting them to the main site when the make a typing mistake.

"Do you optimize for misspellings?" is a new idea for me: misspelling as an SEO technique.

I wouldn't do it myself, because I'd rather have a page that seems to be written by someone who knows how to spell. But then, that's the sort of visitor I expect.

For bloggers and webmasters who are trying to attract a more literacy-challenged demographic, this might be a good idea.

Search Engine Optimization: a Discussion

At this moment, there's a pretty good discussion of Search Engine Optimization going on at BlogCatalog: Question for SEO gurus...?

Also, you might check out

• URL Canonicalization - How To Avoid The Duplicate Content Penalty On Google
• 5 Steps On How to Increase Blog Traffic
• Search Engine Optimization: Tip #1
• Search Engine Optimization: Tip #2

Referenced in the same discussion, SEO for FireFox, a FireFox tool. (According to seobook.com, "SEO for Firefox pulls in many useful marketing data points"). I haven't researched or tested it myself.

I understand that there's a Search Engine Optimization: Tip #3 coming.

Here's another site: BloggingMix - "A blog dedicated to helping bloggers improve in their blogging!"