I've had the chance to talk to lots of folks who are just starting out building new web businesses, many of them for the first time and a few with some experience under their belt. What worries me is that a lot of these new businesses are reversing the SEO order of operations; making it 100X more difficult to succeed than need be.
How Do You Bake Chocolate Chip Cookies?
Seriously. I don't mean a recipe; I mean close your eyes and think about the standard methodology and order of operations you follow. If you're like me, it looks something like this:
- Determine what kind of cookies you're making - crispy, chewy, big, small - and what quantity.
- Line up your ingredients - flour, eggs, sugar, baking soda/powder, butter, salt, vanilla extract, chocolate chips
- Mix together ingredients in some relevant order
- Form dough balls
- Bake for appropriate time period
- Remove from oven; eat
Now let's imagine SEO as a part of your recipe - you're trying to bake a great web business, and SEO is an essential ingredient. Let's say for the purposes of our analogy it's the chocolate chips.
Here's how many websites bake their SEO-chocolate chip cookies:
- Mix together some of the ingredients (maybe the butter, sugar, eggs and flour)
- Form dough balls
- Bake for appropriate time period*
- Remove from oven
- Realize there's a few missing ingredients - vanilla extract (social media strategy), salt (viral content) and, oh yeah, the chocolate chips (SEO)
- Sprinkle these on the cookies
Now instead of this:
Courtesy of SavorySweetLife's excellent post
You've got this:
Not quite as appealing.
A website that's pre-built its content, pre-conceived of its information architecture, pre-envisioned its marketing & communications strategy and already created its underlying code, CMS and functionality without considering SEO impact will always be at a severe disadvantage. And when it comes to links, that disadvantage is even stronger.
We all worry about a poorly built site and whether it will be accessible to spiders, but I see so many SEOs who approach a business or a site that's got many of the basics right and think, "OK, I just need to get some links." If instead, we flipped this thinking on its head and said "wait, this website hasn't established a strategy for link acquisition? Then we need to go back to the drawing board," the results might be dramatically better.
For every aspect of search engine optimization, there's a critical need to make it part of the business strategy, particularly as the field gets more competitive. If you've put together a remarkable company, solving a tough problem with a great website, you could still lose in search (and social) to the relatively amateurish competitor who asked and answered these critical SEO strategy questions before building their business/site:
- What does my site do for web content creators (Linkerati) that rewards them in such a way that they'll naturally share my brand and link to my site?
- What content is in demand (or soon will be) that aren't sites aren't addressing well (and how do I effectively keyword target that demand)?
- What functionality/organization will make my site more attractive to search engines?
- How do I build ongoing SEO refinement and growth into my business processes?
The site that answered those questions during the brainstorming phase is the one who can overtake the existing market leaders and win the rankings. Those who keep trying to sprinkle chocolate chips onto already-baked cookies will have a painful time trying to keep up.
* Notice my conspicuous lack of a pun about "half-baked" sites. I plan to use this karma on some horrifyingly bad joke in the future.
p.s. Credit for the analogy goes to the same person who bakes me most of my chocolate chip cookies. She's pretty awesome.
This is the fault of SEOs. Please don't hate, I still like you all! Before I start, let me say I have a propensity to write a novel when I need to write a sonnet, but I will try and be brief.
There are two factors causing these problems, and Rand, if this is your way of educating the future small business/website owner about the value of incorporating SEO into their startup strategy...
Is SEOMOZ the best place to publish it?
Anyways, here are the two factors:
1) I firmly believe the average person thinks that a higher rank in search engines means better match to their query. No big jump there. But they also believe that the search engines determine it on there own- there's no "cottage" industry that shapes their SERPs.
2) SEOs really like to talk to other SEOs about how important SEO is. SEOs don't typically do a very good job of communicating the importance of SEO to people who think SERPs are put together through Google magic.
Typically a website/online business learns what SEO is when they say "Hey! My website looks awesome! It has exactly what this search is for! And I'm on the 17th page... what gives?" And then they search for "how to get higher in google search" and end up at https://www.web-inspect.com/google-tips-for-higher-rankings.php
Well, at least Google magic worked fairly well this time :)
I think, eventually, some SEO/agency is going to be brilliant and write an article for the NY Times Small Business Blog.* They are going to approach Inc.com's blog about an article about SEO for small businesses. They will stop writing for other SEOs, and start writing for small business owners.
That person, I think, will be very successful in educating the world about SEO. They'll also make boat loads of cash (maybe.) But I really think it would be better for everyone if SEOs branched out a bit and stopped preaching to the choir :)
*There was recently an article on there about an online store selling women's plus-size fashion/trendy clothes. The woman talked about how her PPC failed miserably, so she decided PPC was worthless and a waste of money. She then realized she could get a lot of traffic and jump in search engine rankings by commenting on blogs. She would comment on any blog having to do with plus-size women (and) fashion/clothes and make sure to link to her store. She talked about how great it was and how she recommends others try the same thing.
I do think her intentions were good, but I think we can generally agree that comment 'spamming' is not a great SEO strategy. This is the education the target audience for this post is receiving from THEIR sources of information.
EDIT: I do realize the value of a post like this providing an analogy that SEOs that visit this site can use when explaining the value of SEO to a prospective client. However, in that situation it is in a "selling" atmosphere, which inspires a bit of distrust, and the SBO has most likely already started their website and now realized they need help to not be result #476 for their top keyphrase.
@SandroM,
There are two types of SEO:
SEO starts at example.com just like Rand says in this post and there is no way around that.
"It is not the job of Search Engine Optimization to make a pig fly. It is the job of the SEO to genetically re-engineer the web site so that it becomes an eagle." Bruce Clay
Now going back to some of your comments. SEO isn't a Rocket Science but if not used properly "you" can easily make things even worse, meaning not only that example.com will not rank higher but it could potentially rank lower.
PPC isn't really worthless, one should first do a research prior to getting into PPC and it doesn't matter who is doing it as long as the person knows what to look for while choosing the right keywords.
I've seen in past where people bid on high-competitive (way to expensive keywords) with low budget and get very little or no ROI, why? simple if you are in "car insurance industry" and don't have the budget you need, don't "kill" your PPC campaign and bid on "car insurance", instead go after low-competitive keywords and/or local audience and that will make huge difference and most of all successful PPC campaign.
Commenting a/k/a spamming to heck out of "blogs that dofollow" isn't just bad SEO recommendation it is also negative for a long-haul SEO process. Sites that do this (SEOs as well) if you can call them an SEO will last very short and once the big "G" realizes their tactics the site will get "penalized" and soon after deranked.
I do an SEO since 2003, currently managing dozen of websites and still learning new things every day and still coming to blogs like SEOmoz to continue my education, learn not only from their authors but also from people that contribute and comment on posts like this, regardless of their background.
One of the biggest things that I learn from my experience is to be patient, get as much as information possible and start slowly. SEO is a process and it does take time to achieve your goals.
PS The easiest way to learn how SEO works is to create a separate site with similar content as your main website and start testing the tuts/articles from this or any other blog out there. We all make an experiments and you know what? if they are good you can use them on your main site, if not of well too bad, let's move on :)
Thanks,
Emil
I completely agree with you 100%. I know PPC is a lot more than set a budget, set a bid, and go. There are match types, negatives, landing pages to customize, geo-targeting, split tests to run... the average person sees it as set a bid, set a budget... wait, where are my sales?
As far as certain SEO tactics, I read this site fairly religiously, and others. My SEO knowledge journey only started a few months ago, but I generally understand what works, what doesn't work, and what can you get your in trouble.
My point was that the NY Time Small Business Blog ran an article interviewing a small business owner who basically said:
"PPC is worthless, we lost tons of money. I commented on lots of (relevant) blogs with links to my store, that's called SEO. It's much better than PPC."
https://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/trial-and-error-with-adwords-and-s-e-o/
Now, I'm exaggerating a little bit. There were things she was doing well- on-site optimization, she understood the coding aspect of SEO, she has a blog... but her link acquisition strategy is "comment on blogs."
SEO Pros/Agencies need to get out there the chamber meetups/local business conferences, write guest articles for these blogs, etc. showing the world that "Hey, SEO needs to be there at step 1, right with where are we going to work from and how will we pay the bills."
That's just my opinion :)
On Marketing Pilgrim today:
https://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2010/08/why-does-google-hate-you-so-much.html
Instead we pretend that Google really is free and fair. Of course it’s really not. The chances of ranking in on the first page for a super-competitive term are 10,000 to 1, or worse. Yet because it’s still possible technically, we still believe it can be done. The reality is that to get on page one (organically) for something like “debt consolidation” will mean you’re competing with businesses that are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on seo firms. Probably even more.
Discouraging.
...
“You know why you dislike search Jim? It’s because you play by the rules.”
It's an excellent, short article, well worth a read. What would your response be?
SandroM,
Don't let anyone anything discourage you! With all do respect to NY Time and all others not really SEO sites is nothing but mambo, don't read that it will not help you in any way.
Read sites with positive vibe and sites where people share their success not their failure while trying to rank better on search engines.
SEOmoz, I find it very useful try going back year or two and collect more info. Do you know what I do when there is a problem? The answer is very simple! Back to basics and before that always back-trace your steps and in most of the situations you will surely find it and correct it.
Get a WordPress man, write daily posts about you and your online business, people love to read good stuff and Google will "like" you better if they see fresh content all the time.
Get in Google Blogs and make sure that you stay there. Write Press Releases, i.e. onlineprnews.com will let you do this for free and they will also give you a backlink as well. My "secret" in any new site that I work on is to publish one press release every week. You don't need to have anything major to say, "Example.com just announced new and easier way to buy online" will do just great.
Can't get on page one for "debt consolidation" an example post below? No problem, start adding and combining keywords https://www.google.com/sktool/#keywords?q=debt%20consolidation and start with the easiest one to work with and go up towards the main keyword. When you combine all* the keywords with smaller value you will gain much more than you think.
Oh man I never write this long on SEOmoz oh well got to earn the points somehow, LOL just kidding.
It should read:
Don't let anyone or anything discourage you!
Sorry :-)
LOL. If this is a sonnet, I can't even imagine what your novel looks like! ;-p
I'm not sure if you said this exactly or I just extrapolated it, but think you hit the nail on the head in this respect: The SEO/Agency that learns how to get the ear of the clients HIPPO (highest paid persons opinion) and educate them in the facts of web marketing will bring home a lion's share of business.
What's funny is that when I HAVE to write a blog post, I struggle for 300 words :)
First of all, thanks for pointing me to the Small Business blog. Pretty interesting stuff. In terms of the woman running La Grande Dame, it sounds like she's a bit more savvy than the NYT article implies. She isn't actually comment spamming per se as far as I can tell - she's seeking out blogs in her niche and potentially building relationships. That's not a terrible tactic. I see plenty of small businesses climb to the top on much spammier tactics, like link farms and directory submission. And hey, she's in the New York Times!
Yeah, talk about a sweet link :)
I would like to add one more question to your critical seo strategy question list:
How do i engage with my target audience and potential linking partners and build long lasting relationships?
IMO engagement drives links and traffic. Otherwise majority of time link worthy contents get twitted, re-twitted, bookmarked and forgotten.
Throughout my career i have always come back to the fact that if you can relate to someone then you have your foot in the door.
Whether your emailing back and forth with a potential linking partner or creating content for your target audience, try to let them relate to you. No one wants to be getting a mass email that is going to thousands of people (hence why junk mail folders were created) You have to make them feel that there is an actual person sitting on the other side of there computer screen that is speaking directly to them. If you let this over flow in your mission to engage your target audience then you will start making content, Marketing campaigns, etc... that is geared toward "relating" to the people your pursuing. Which in most cases helps conversion rate and traffic etc...
I hope this helps!
The concept Rand is explaining is something somehow (and with other metaphores) we all who are making of SEO our profession know... especially us who are on the consulting side (also the in house, but they probably have less wide experience).
As FFdesdesign wrote, the cookie issue is especially present in the small businesses web arena (the medium to big businesses - thanks god - usually have an in house person or team). And I agree also with SandroM, when he says that these kind of educational posts should have to find the opportunity to be published on mainstream media in order to be read and without objections believed and welcome in their working practice by the small businesses.
But when it comes "to educating the mass of not expert entrepeneurs" (and I'm dealing actually with some and their psichology would be worth a post), I think it is possible to find a way. A way that we all know as it suggested by so many SEO like Rand from the night of the SEO-times: to organize local conferences about SEO and/or Marketing Online on a local base, trying to have the support of the local Chamber of Commerce (that would give the "trust" factor to the conferences).
In that kind of situation, and with Cookie or Spaghetti or Paella metaphores (us SEO are surely great creating metaphores) we can help creatig with time an educated class of entrepeneurs who will know how to not miss the internet marketing train.
organize local conferences about SEO and/or Marketing Online on a local base, trying to have the support of the local Chamber of Commerce
Really great Marketing idea Gianluca. Pursued properly (which I define as really giving away excellent information to the businesses that come) I'll warrant it would be a tremendous source of leads.
I'm loving all of the food-related photographs here. Is it baby season in Seattle or something? If it is, congrats.
Your analogy here is perfect, I'd say that between 50 - 95% of websites built are not built with SEO in mind, whether it's because it's relatively new or whether they're unaware of it I'm not entirely sure.
Either way, it's a huge mistake. SEO should be part of the strategy from step one, not only should the site be built with SEO in mind, there should be an entire marketing strategy or it's very likely that the company will fail - I'm not saying they'll definitely fail I'm just saying that it's very likely.
Your final three bullet points sum it up for me completely.
Unfortunately, we do live in a World where people just whack a site online with no strategy in mind. It's unfortunate for both us and them.
Sometimes, I find one of the most appropriate things to do is sit down with them and offer them the opportunity to head back to square one and for me to sit down with pen and paper to let them know what can be improved. Usually involving a re-think of the design and a complete re-code of the entire site at a one-off cost. For me, if their site is poorly structured then this is a must. This is always a one-off cost.
Often I find, especially with small businesses, that there is no marketing plan at all, let alone an SEO strategy. Businesses feel they need to have a website simply because their competitors do. To them, it's a necessary evil and once it's built and live, they can just forget about it.
"Often I find, especially with small businesses, that there is no marketing plan at all, let alone an SEO strategy."
I couldn't agree with you more here. I'm working on a site at the moment for a small company and they say they want "web optimisation" but they can't really tell me what they want and I highly doubt they'd be willing to pay for any sort of ongoing SEO.
Just a note, it goes without saying that I take my SEO very seriously and, although I'm a website designer and front-end developer, every site I code is coded well and with SEO in mind. Call it a freebie.
"Businesses feel they need to have a website simply because their competitors do. To them, it's a necessary evil and once it's built and live, they can just forget about it."
You've hit the nail on the head again. So many companies believe that having a website is the same as having an "online presence" but they're fantastically wrong.
I like to use this analogy: "If you were owned a shop that could earn you a lot of money, or were paying for a billboard to market your product... Would you put it down a dark alleyway that people rarely visit?"
To me, that sums up the mentality completely, and when you put it like that most people wouldn't think about it that way.
Hah! I had to go look up what "one-off cost" meant trax! I was thinking it meant "cost-plus", but apparently, the translation for those of us that don't speak the Queen's English is "one time cost"
Apologies! I forgot that not everyone speaks the Queen's English!!!
Yeah, I meant one-time cost. :-)
I'm slowly making cultural changes at work, but SEO still gets stuffed under "support" in client presentations sometimes. At other times I get asked to look at the IA and other semantic website structures when the site is past dev and sitting on staging. I love the resulting look in their collective eyes as 3 managers want to punch me in the face. To which I reply, "I don't make this stuff up. Let's get me in sooner."
Since, I already steal so much form this site, I will definitely be pulling together insights from this posts (and there's a number of related ones too) in order to re introduce how this all should work to my business comrades.
You know what?
This out of order scenario is 100% our fault. It's our fault when it continues. That's the ultimate point I want to make here. We can sit as all knowing Web Marketing Masters, but our expertise is questionable if we only report with 100% hindsight accuracy and I "told you so's".
Maturing corporate culture by getting people to follow us is as much of our job as our ability to point the way. Most of us yell from the sidelines but until we step forward with the plan to help and guide our businesses and clients, then how good are we, really? This post offers a good conversation starter. Thank you.
Well said Mike, but it's easier said than done when dealing with clients and existing sites. I totally agree with your point for the in-house SEO.
But when you're introduced to a new clients site for the first time, and all you see is a train wreck, there's no opportunity for guidance. At that point you just kinda have to get your fire gear on and start extinguishing the blaze.
Yup. In-house SEO was definitely where I was coming from. The train wrecks are always out there and they are a part of our business.
BUT ... if said client continues down this track of doom on future projects after we have spewed out our wisdom, well then, that is our fault. In that latter case we have failed to imprint the critical message to the right people.
I'm not saying we will be successful as corporate culture is nigh impossible to change in short notice. Yet we gots ta try all the same. Eventually we'll learn how to be better business partners to each client and effect real, positive change.
That's my goal anyway. I would love to raise clients to such a degree that my services are no longer needed.
Should have gone with the half baked joke :)
This raises a good question. If you meet a client with a 3/4 year old site which has a few already half decent links but horrendous basic SEO (bad URLs etc) then is it best to rescue the recipe or simply start again.
It's a very difficult thing to suggest to a company that they need to wipe their slate clean and start again despite the longer term benefits that may exist for doing so.
I often run into this problem myself here in Hungary and I always go with the start again option. Usually sites like these need a redesign anyway in order to appeal a bit more to customers and to convey a little bit more trust.
On top of that it gives your client something newsworthy to talk about to its past customers and if you/they do it right they can even make a few more sales in the process even before SEO really kicks in - it's an easy quick win and your client will love you for it!
I second the start-over approach. Usually, SEO is not the only issue with an old site. When you add all of the benefits of propper SEO, conversion rate optimization, and improved architecture / content, then a new site becomes a no brainer and may not even be that much more effort than trying to put a square peg in a round hole by wrestling with the old site.
Nice analogy, although essentially you could still eat the cookies without the chocolate chips. In my experience, its sometimes that people do remember the fancy, sweet, attractive add ons but forget the fundamental ingredients.... like the overall business strategy.
If we're working through this analogy it could be that they knew roughly what they throught should go in to the cookies but set out without a recipe or any idea of how exactly they wanted the cookies to turn out, throwing in ingredients randomly along the way....
or maybe I've just had a bad day!
No doubt, for any website to come up well for the visitors as well as the search engine bots this anology of baking a cookie or for that matter preparing any other dish would be applicable as for acheiving the best result in both the cases the right ingredient has to be added in the right quantity at the right time.
The anology of grooming also can be aptly applied to websites which come to us for optimization after being there on ther invisible web for quite sometime. That is the time when the SEO has to decide whether the website needs just an SEO facial or a complete fitness programme.
I came across a website having only a flash presentation on the index page without any link to the other pages and the website was on the web for 8 years without any search engine presence. The link to the other about us page was embedded in the movie only and from there the visitor could navigate to the other pages.
The on page SEO for the other pages was excellent but due to the absence of links on the home page the site suffered this fate.
We kept the flash presentation as it is and added text links for the other pages and submitted the XML siltmap and the site started getting the search engine presence that it deserved.
I love cookies almost as much as I love SEO :)
If you guys have seen any of my comments, you might know that I like to do my own coding and site development, but as in the case of any growing business, we are reaching the point where that is no longer feasible. We are hiring on another developer, and the first thing we are doing together is going over our best practices for optimized code, using clean CSS for layouts, and getting the right site architecture. I am still a little uneasy letting go of the development, but I intend to oversee the development closely until I get comfortable with their growing SEO knowledge. This post was timely for me as I have been working this out over the last few days - and one that I will let my new developer read!
Thanks Rand.
Congrats on your growth Matt. Best wishes for a uber smooth transition for you.
I have talked to the people, watched the videos and consulted the mystical texts.
Cookies are better than SEO.
If given a choice between getting a cookie or hearing about SEO, cookies win. Try it.
This is why I will have cookies in my business plan. LOTS of cookies. Just watch.
Mmm Killer content num num num... (cookie monster impression). Nice analogy but for existing sites a lot of times the cookies are already half-baked and there is no chocolate chips (they had no idea chocolate chips make for a really tasty cookie).
However, I will try this analogy for clients with new sites: You see SEO is like making cookies...
It really helps to have some analogies that everyone can relate to. It helps to break down the process into (edible?) pieces for people who don't understand the technical aspects (which is why they need my help).
Sesame Street isn't letting Cookie Monster eat any cookies anymore!
They say it's because he's promoting unhealthy eating habits to kids. How lame! Every time I look at my Cookie Monster Cookie Jar, I get sad. A Cookie Monster eating carrot sticks or celery sticks just doesn't cut it for me. Boooo!!!!
That is just plain wrong Summer. They'll have to rename him then. The carrot stick monster... nah that's lame. The celery monster...equally bad...The broccoli and cauliflower monster...Nope. Nothing else fits. I say we start a petition.
Great analogy Rand! I think you did an excellent job of explaining what companies do (or don't do) when it comes to SEO.
I just recently started doing SEO, so I am always looking for new ways to understand certain aspects and to compare them as well. I actually wrote a blog of how SEO is like a play. I figured that if I found a way I could relate SEO to something I am more familiar with, than I would understand the concept better. You did exactly the same thing and I now have a better understanding of the SEO process. Thanks!
Loved the visuals in your blog post Courtney. The analogies were perfect! Now you need to do a YOUmoz post titled Romeo and Juliet, where the SEO's are the Montagues, and maybe Matt Cutts will be the head of the Capulet family.
And Romeo would be the white hat SEO, and ... nah , forget it. The analogy is starting to go South in a hurry.
goodnewscowboy,
Thanks so much! Yea, I think i'll stick to safe side. Thanks for the suggestion though!
This is EXACTLY my predicament; I got handed a six year-old website (and accompanying editor) and was asked to do modern SEO with it as it was. To add to the analogy, sometimes the right amount of ingredients aren't in the half-baked part... too much butter and not enough flour!
Now I'm on a mission to convince my boss to let me build a new website from scratch and hopefully do it more according to the recipe.
I would rather work on "six year-old website" instead of creating a brand new one. There are many things you could get much faster with older/established website -vs new. Convince your boss to make changes on old site, you will be doing yourself a huge favor ;-)
Be careful what you wish for Emil. I'm working on a 10 year old site right now that I'd really like to just push off a cliff and start from the ground up.
I know been there, done that :-) Sometimes it isn't easy, especially if you have 500+ (WordPress) posts that needed to be edited, well not an easy task, just time consuming that's all.
Ditto here with a similar case... the shame is that the client added "I want to give a modern image with my marketing..."... I felt as I was in a Monthy Pithon gag.
That's when you should have reported him and his website to The Ministry of Silly Walks. That'd fix his wagon but good!
Gfiorelli1: I wish to register a complaint about this web site.
Owner: What's wrong with it?
Gfiorelli1:This web site you gave me is dead.
Owner: It's not dead, it's just resting. Why, it's probably pining for a modern image...
Gfiorelli1:Pining for a modern image?! This is an ex-website...
I can understand the advantage of having an established website, but I think it's hurting more than helping at this point. The internal structure is a mess with horse sale pages I've tried to remove but still have clients contacting me asking about horses that are no longer available. The aesthetic quality is horrid and the layout of pictures and text don't line up, the image producing scripts are broken and the URLS are a complete mess (and cleaning them up breaks the site itself)... it's all stuff I know should be fixed, but I don't know enough HTML and PHP to do so. I can't get support on the editor anymore too.
The whole site image needs to be re-done, and completely echo goodnewscowboy's desire to boot it down a very steep and sharp crevasse. We get the majority of clients through it, and sometimes it's a bit of an embarrassment for me since that's how we're being presented. I definitely do need to know what advantages I'd be losing in doing a new site, but i think it's time for a simpler and cleaner site that can be easily maintained and adjusted.
Great post! Something for people to consider, before and after they have created their sites. It just becomes tough for those people who may enter a company that has skipped that first step: What kind of cookies do we want?
It's tough to get chips into a cookie thats been in the oven already.
You're right. I'm trying to not eat a cookie now and its affecting my day.
Dead on. My single biggest take-away from BlueGlass LA was this: what is your strategy for community, a.k.a., social media? I'm back in the kitchen making a new batch.
New SEO reality show: Rand's Kitchen Nightmares?
I hope that Rand would nicer than Gordon :)
I would love that show...
An SEO reality show? What's the cut line? Instead of "You're fired" or "Take off your jacket" or "Please pack your knives and go"...
"You've been penalized."
"Your PR is now 0."
LOL "Your PR is now 0" thats perfect.
or "Please step into the sandbox"
Thanks buddy, I love cookies & also seo
Being a professional SEO means you are probably aware SEO is the acronym for Secretly Eating Oeros, right? but don't anybody how many links this gets.
Awesome recipe..I like it all the way.
Great post. Love the analogy. I should show it to few people but I am afraid that their ego won't handle it.
I think that sometimes companies don't think at all about SEO,marketing and strategy. It seems having a website is enough. After a while they might find out that the website is not working and they start thinking what is the problem?
So they go and try to fix the problem by adding some stuff on the top of what they got.
Tell someone who just spend few thousand dollars on that flashy looking website that it is shit. They probably think you have no idea about latest cutting edge technology.
How could you Rand. How could you be so cruel as to stick a big 'ol picture of the perfect batch of chocolate chip cookies up for me to stare at all day at work today. Unable to satisfy the cravings that you created I suffered in silent agony. I could smell their warm sweet aroma. I could taste how they would have melted in my mouth.
When did you become such a meany?
PS - All will be forgiven if you can talk Mystery Guest into mailing me some of her next batch.
Good stuff randfish, you seem very confident that this is the secret, what if big corporations somehow influence this in the future? What if Google decides otherwise?
Search engine optimization should be an essential part of business strategy. Couldn't agree more. But most of the times ( this is what i have experienced ) the design team and the SEO team have no coordination. This is a grave mistake.
Last year, while working on a site, I told the client that the site is not even prepared for search engines.To which he replied "why didn't you tell me earlier when the site was being designed". Later i came to know that it was designed by our design team.
To which he replied "why didn't you tell me earlier when the site was being designed". Later i came to know that it was designed by our design team.
Ouch! Now that would be an uncomfortable conversation.
Hi Rand
Awesome post.
I really like the way you explain things. You make it look so easy. I would hope you will soon post the next part of this post answering the questions that put up by you only like
Waiting badly for your next post.
I think the cookie analagy works well, sometimes when you get a client who would like to improve on the basic SEO on there site, instead of being straight and saying you need to wipe the slate clean it's easier to work on top of previous work, but it ends up being more work and less effective.
I do agree that when building and writting the content for a site with SEO you need to focus your campaign on your keyword selection as this will help with the quality of the content, instead of adding it in as an after thought.
Great post, I love the posts with food analogies; seems good SEO is a lot like following good recipes.
Understanding how to make SEO part of a site's design and business model is key in helping make it a success, but, as many above have commented, we often end up working with sites that were created before our time. So we have to work trying to sprinkle on some choclate chips or other decorations on a baked cookie (often stale).
The issue we face is, how do we reverse-cook the site to make it work in a far more SEO friendly manner? In some cases there is a paralysing fear of changing what has worked before.
Anyway, thanks Rand, will use this metaphor in the future!
You absolutely have to start from the beginning with the keyword selection in mind otherwise what`s the point? I agree in that a lot of business/websites probably feel that it`s an easy process to just "add" seo to an existing site but the truth is it could be a site that is a mess or just hasn`t been structured properly to make it more accessible to the spiders. I believe it is key to prioritise the keywords from start to finish though.
<grin> great analogy, Rand!
and I now await that "half-baked" follow-up, eh!
:-)
Jim
Great post, solid analogy.
Education is the major hurdle. Getting clients to understand that you have to begin with the end in mind is a challenge.
Convincing them to "tear down the house" and start over is tough too, however, completely necessary.
A lot of sites were built with what worked 5 years ago or what some "consultant" convinced the company was cool/best.
Don't be afraid to tell someone their "site" is a tear down!
Controlling the process from day 1, step 1 is ideal and ensures optimum performance/results.
Great points. I knew very little about SEO when I started my photography website, and luckily, I was able to easily make the changes I needed in order to start ranking in google. I see so many websites in my industry that try to work with what they have when sometimes the easier solution is just to scrap the existing pages and start over.
It is a good comparison. Seems to be simple. But competition for each keyword is growing.
I agree with you, cookies are increasingly better hehe but there's always a way to add new ingredients for better results.
It's an easy-to-understand post !