How do you approach SEO?

[jackson]

How do you go about really good SEO?
Do you hire a SEO company?
And proceed with social networks? I’m clueless but have a
stellar product.

I couldn’t find any other thread discussions on
SEO so have started this, sorry I know it’s a broad topic

[seth121]

It depends on what you are trying to do with your site. SEO is used primarily because it's cheaper and "can" be more cost effective than PPC. PPC is getting more complex and getting more expensive so thats why SEO is so beneficial. You can drop $10,000 on great links and content and a site design and have it bring in more traffic in the long term than the rising and competing cost of PPC.

But honestly I would learn some of it myself and then hire a company and monitor what they're doing so you don't get ripped off.

Many people think SEO is just a mechanical formula that you apply to your site but it's a lot more complicated than that.

You want to build high quality links. Not all links have the same value. Some links are counted by Google, bing, and Yahoo! and some aren't. Also there is a component of link anchor text diversity targeting the keywords that you are going for. Second there needs to be diversity among links. Having all your links and anchor text from "one" place can hurt your SEO.

Then theres code structure and deep linking architecture. Deep linking your pages and build interlinks between your pages that pass pagerank and then dropping links on your pages that aren't giving you any benefits and balancing our your sites PR flow. And then the code structure has to be clean and with a minimal use of java script or flash as possible.

There can be a whole discussion on links and off page optimization.

Then theres the different type of social bookmarking sites and article directories. Some are horrible and some are ok.

Theres so much let me know which part of SEO you are interested in and I can give you more information.

[rimam1]

Seth obviously knows what he's talking about... I'm a professional SEO as well and I'll second what he says. Remember, content is king, but linking is queen. And like most households, the queen runs the show!

If you can't learn SEO yourself, make sure the SEO provider you choose helps build high quality links. Directory submissions and social bookmarking packages are pretty low quality links any fool can get.

A good SEO will help you build links via guest posts on other relevant blogs, widgets/apps that could go viral, informative YouTube videos, contests and giveaways, and blogging. Yes, article directory submissions, social media profiles, blog commenting, etc. do help, but you need to do some real marketing on top of that.

Simply put, if you build a site with a lot of pages of content, and build lots of links back to your site, you'll do fine in Google. A good SEO will help you manage this process.

[seth121]

Oh yeah and link bait can be a one hit KO if you manage to do it right.

and great post rimam1

[Sven]

For most people, as is the case for me, you have to trust that what you do or have done about SEO is actually right. The results are generally not in plain view. They may prove to be better if you keep track of statistics but it will always take time to prove the point.

In my case I beleived that if you write for humans (Leanr how to write a good sales letter, I took a course and it was the single best investment I ever made) the text will be search engine friendly.

Then for the technical part I chose to believe that Drupal is search engine friendly and installed a module that actually check if you have installed enough components to optimise it even further.

It may be worth while to make some spelling mistakes and use different ways of writing certain key words.

EDIT: I must be doing something right, today I found that I am in 1st to 3rd position on bing, yahoo and google for the most important keywords...

[AlexMoen]

One of my past sales jobs did SEO (among other things) for professionals, so I had to get a basic knowledge of it. Aside from that, I have my web developers do all the SEO. I got them from Elance and they happened to have tested solidly on SEO also (Elance administers tests and rates companies' competence).

So, my advice, since you're a beginner is to just do some basic research and get a feel for SEO, but hire it out to the pros. Make sure what they're doing make sense, but don't just take their word blindly for it. You've essentially got the CEO's dilemma- you have to oversee a giant company that requires expertise in many fields, but obviously your personal expertise isn't capable of surpassing that of all your workers in all of their fields. So, make sure they know what they're doing and let them work.

[jackson]

Thanks for all the advice here it is extremely helpful.

I am looking to hire out SEO. Does anyone recommend any SEO companies or freelancers with a proven track record? I am on elance also. There are so many SEO companies out there, any referals first hand would be great.

I found someone who has experience with several social networks who charges $35 to $45 an hour, seems expensive. What do you think social network marketing goes for?

[seth121]

The best thing is to learn SEO first yourself. I have used seobook.com and they had a great forum and tutorials but it cost $300.00 a month but it's well worth the cost. You can learn a lot in a short time so thats why I would say pay the $300.00 for a month and print everything you find interesting so you have a reference later. Oh and they have some killer tools.

Another good one is SEOmoz which has a bunch of tools and information that you can use as well. The price varies but again it's well worth the investment.

The problem with SEO is that there is so much noise out there and misinformation that can lead you down the wrong path.

If you need more info just let me know.

[rimam1]

I agree with Seth. At least understand the mechanics of it. If you don't want to do the grunt work, that's fine, you can hire someone to do it.

Here's the thing, most low quality SEO's will do the same things:

1). put keywords in your title tags
2). build internal links
3). tell you to create a blog because Google likes larger sites with more content
4). build links to your site in the following ways:
-article submissions
-directory submissions
-blog/forum comments
-social media profile links
-free press releases

You start to separate the wheat from the chaff when you find an SEO firm that understands you need to do some real marketing on top of the afore-mentioned things like:
*Do a free monthly teleseminar for your niche
*Write a by-lined article (guest post) in popular websites/blogs in your niche
*Cultivate relationships with influential people in your niche
*Create an informative video series like SEOMoz's "White Board Friday" or "Will It Blend?" by that weirdo from BlendTec
*Launch some sort of contest or giveaway
*create a funny widget or app that spreads virally

That is what's going to get you noticed online. PM me if you want some recommendations.

Raza

[FrozenCanuck]

Make sure you learn the basics yourself. Learn about both on-page and off-page seo.

Then decide how to proceed. I highly recommend you begin with doing article marketing. Do basic keyword research first to look for ranking opportunities. You need to know what you want to rank for before you do anything.