I frankly don't have time to optimize it well. But I'm not really looking to gain a bunch of visitors to my site from the search engines; it's just my own outlet for personal stuff. So usually I ask for an analysis on this site. I also dabble in some web design, and occasionally, I'll want an analysis on that site, too. I usually reserve asking for the analysis on the last one for when I run across a particularly obtuse company who may not notice the many blurbs or links I have to my SEO site. Strangely, people who spread myths about SEO professionals and search engines leave me relatively unmoved. I feel no need to defend myself against anyone who believes that hiring an SEO is totally unnecessary. Still, some myths can be harmful, and those are the ones I hope to address here. In my own research and desire to streamline my own analysis efforts, I have compared my information over the span of a few months. These are just a few of my findings.Being a writer myself who is always on the prowl for more excellent resources, I really like the list in their right column (though you need to scroll down to get to it) of the blogs that they read and suggest to others. SEO MYTHS Some things annoy me and some things amuse me. I seriously wonder about things that leave me unmoved. For example, hidden charges annoy me, and so does poor customer service. A site that is always selling me stuff while pretending that its sales pitch is content annoys me (though I am guilty of doing the same sometimes). Domain name resellers annoy me (growl, gnash, need I say more). Bloggers can be amusing, and forums moreso. The SEO Analysis: What it is and Why You Need it - What a Site Analysis Should Include 1. Statistical Data - The biggest part of an SEO analysis is the research. Research results in statistical data. This is not just information you have in your web stats program, but other information you may not have access to, such as how many people do a search every day on your particular keyword, or what your competition is doing, and how they are doing it. There can be endless reports and data that an SEO could provide, so be aware you can easily be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers provided. An SEO might consider creating the analysis as an overview, with the statistical data in addenda or reports to back up the information. Keep in mind that the content of your website is more important than the design, which is why people who invest too much money on site designs primarily instead of focusing on its content will only end up wasting it since this will only bring in a few people to visit their website. Instead, try to invest in copywriting initially, and only spend money on the site design later on. Web business owners sometimes forget the importance of great content, and how they should create fresh content. Doing so will greatly benefit their online business since search engines will reward websites that offer fresh content to their visitors, regardless of its format. Some Web business owners tend to overlook this aspect, and they do not implement this in their websites, causing their website to not generate the desired amount of traffic. 21.SEO Myths Every professional field has its own set of "myths" -- things that people either within or outside the profession (or both) take to be true about it. SEO is no exception. If anything, the field is a little more prone to myths because something that worked last week, last month, or last year may no longer yield results. In this article, we take a look at some of the more common SEO myths. "Assumption is parent to all failures." -- Politically correct rendition of popular maxim 2. Explanations of Terminology - You may end up with a huge analysis with lots of data, findings, and reports, but if you can't make heads or tails of it, then it may not do you much good. Some SEO firms put the analysis on paper for you, and then offer a free consultation with it to go over anything you may not understand. This is a good idea if the SEO firm doesn't explain the results in the analysis directly. Doing so will leave tons of format clutter in your HTML code. If you must use Word, you should save the file as an HTML file. Then you can clean up the code with the Word-cleaning tool in your HTML-authoring program. As a last resort, you can also clean it manually using “search and replace” in a text editor (Notepad). 4. Screenshots or Other Evidence - If you get an analysis with a bunch of recommendations or percentages, keyword densities or whatever statistics you are provided without any corroborating evidence, then the analysis provider could just be pulling numbers out of a hat as far as you're concerned. A good analysis will have additional information that will back up the analysis findings. The .htaccess file needs to be uploaded in ASCII mode. This is true for other server-side scripts such as CGI and Perl. A nice free piece of software, and used by yours truly for some time, is FileZilla. It is straightforward to configure and has a great WYSIWYG style interface. Get it here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla. 5. Detailed Findings - It is not enough just to show you what your meta tags say. You can find that information out yourself, so why would you need someone else to do that for you? You need specific research customized to your site that digs pretty deep. You will want to look for a search engine simulation (what a search engine would see if it were to crawl your site), a list of broken links, site structure, navigation crawlability, which pages and how many of them are being indexed, when the last search engine crawl was, and so on. SEO Tips to Avoid Critical Mistakes - So what are server-side redirects anyway? Now to server-side redirects. Using a command file called .htaccess, redirects can be smoothly added to avoid old and dead links. As the .htaccess file is checked before the browser loads the page, a few lines will redirect pages easily. A 301 error code is used on pages to indicate a moved page and 302 for temporarily moved pages. For a complete tutorial on using .htaccess, visit the Apache site at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/howto/htaccess.html. It is a nice walk through and will explain the process. In a nutshell, this will only work on a Linux server. Sorry, if the site is on a Windows server, these methods cannot be used, so refer to my paragraph above on redirecting if this is the case. 6. Current Search Engine Rankings - I don't just mean the top ten or even top 40 results, because chances are you can do all of this yourself. Look for a company or individual who can access 500 to 1000 or more results in more than just one search engine. The method used to achieve this is server-side redirects. Check with your host to make sure that this can be done. If not, each of the pages in question will need to be edited to state that the page no longer exists. Then you need to put a link on the page that will take the visitor to the required content. It is a good idea to automatically redirect the page after about five seconds. It is a technique used ubiquitously on the web. Use this method only to redirect Simply replace the bolded URL with the site address being redirected to from the old page. Change the number 5 to whatever delay is required. Five seconds is a suggested timeout to allow for an apology for the dead or changed link that has been stumbled upon. Place a hyperlink there, too, so that the visitor can click it to redirect to that page. This is purely for convenience. 7. Site Recommendations - If you pay for an analysis, you should be able to take that analysis and change some of your site elements yourself with that SEO's recommendation. Now obviously an SEO wants your business, and wants to do the work for you, so they aren't going to reveal all of the little secrets they have about your site, but there should still be a good portion of step by step instructions for you to work with. If there is a consultation included, it's even better. Maintain the balance between graphics and content. Ensure that there is not an overload of graphical imagery splattered across the pages even if it is an artistically driven site like a gallery. The content and its ability to grab the interest of the visitor must be paramount. Tip 3: Redirecting Old Links to New Pages Hyperlinks should also be allocated the relevant keywords relating to the site theme. This is why search engines like Yahoo will eventually find the site pages by using sophisticated crawlers. These crawlers will follow the links to and from other sites that share traffic. Link sharing plays a big part in traffic diversion and distribution of site visitors. From time to time, however, there is the need to redirect traffic from old pages still showing on the search engines. Also, it may be necessary to move a site to a different server. The search engine crawlers need to know where the pages are located or they will find those outdated and dead links. The SEO Analysis: What it is and Why You Need it - What a Site Analysis Should NOT Include 1. Solicitation - An SEO obviously wants his or her analysis to lead to your purchasing their services. But if your analysis is littered with endorsements, sponsored links or even too much of the company's own propaganda, then you may want to reconsider hiring that company. For example, a client showed me an analysis he received from another company. Even though the analysis was free, it was only about four pages; and of that, only a half a page was even any kind of analysis whatsoever, and it was so general that it honestly was just a waste of paper, and could have applied to just about any site on the Web. The rest was that company's advertising and solicitation of its own services. Needless to say, this was a major turnoff for the client, who hired me instead.
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