Ok, “great” might be overstating it, but it should be interesting. The Great SEO Experiment was born a couple of weeks ago when Godaddy announced it would start selling the .ME extensions. This was an ultra-rare opportunity for people to get their hands on some premium domain names with the .me extension. Granted, .me is not widely known, and it may be many years before it has the branding power that .com has. But, this doesn’t mean that online gurus should ignore .me.

I was able to get on Godaddy and grab a bunch of great names. What I couldn’t find information on is the search engine optimization ability of this new extensions. So, here it is. I am going to optimize one of my new .me websites and see what happens! Will Google accept it? Will they bury it? Who knows.

The Guinea Pig

JimmyBuffett.me, which was register in July 2008, will be the source of this experiment. I want to optimize the site so it appears at the top of the SERPs for “Jimmy Buffett“. Now, if this were a .com, it would be no problem. The keyword is in the domain name, so that makes it pretty easy. Well, I am going to do some standard things to optimize the site, so we’ll see where we are. Usually it takes me about 2 months before I notice that search engines pull up the site when I type in the actual domain name.

So, stick around and check for updates. This is only part 1! If I can optimize a premium domain name, with .me, it will open the doors to a lot of other sites. Look out .com!

ACTION LOG (here you’ll find everything I have done since my last post)

1. Added site to three major directories; Google, Yahoo, and DMOZ.

I have been doing search engine optimization for several years now and what has never cease to amaze me are the prices some SEO’s are asking for their work. By no means am I saying that SEO’s are con-artists, but I do believe there are some dishonest firms out there.

When I talk to a prospective client they often tell me about other quotes they have received. They range from $1,500 to $30,000 for the service. Some charge by the month, and usually fall into the same range for a year of service. What I honestly don’t understand is what the difference is. Now I understand all to well that there is a difference between a good SEO and a bad SEO pretending to be an expert. But in my many years of working in ecommerce I have never come across an SEO worth $30K.

Some will argue (and with some legitimacy) that if an SEO can rank your site well, you’ll often see a great ROI, so what’s wrong with charging a lot? I agree to some degree, but I know that the amount of labor that goes into the actual work does not justified that amount. One SEO’s proposal I saw was for $22,000 for 6 months. The package included 100 links, and five pages optimized. I am sure some other work would have been involved, but when you break down the amount of labor involved, you’re probably looking at $500 per hour.

I know many will appose this, but to add credibility to the industry I really think it needs a major association, or governing body that can set standards. This would ensure that there are a set of standards out there, and any legitimate SEO would adhere to them.

Let me repeat, I know there are a lot of good, honest SEO’s doing great work. But I also know, from talking to my clients that there are folks out there charging outrageous fees to clueless merchants who don’t do their homework.

I am interested in what you think? What do you think is fair to charge for SEO services?

One of the most frustrating parts of working in search engine optimization is the time it takes for your efforts to bare fruit. In fact, many of my ecommece buddies have given up on their home-grown efforts, and hired an SEO thinking that it would speed up the process. While there is real value in hiring a professional SEO, this is simply out of reach for many smaller merchants.

As you’ll read throughout this blog and many other blogs there is a countless number of ways to improve your search rankings, and improve your website too. Sometimes, the number of things you should be doing get in the way of growing your business! For example, when I first opened my furniture website I spent countless night-time hours researching different website tips, and studying my own SEO practices. What I lost sight of is that my website needed to grow and improve. I was so busy with learning and researching, I didn’t work on adding new products, writing more product descriptions, improving the images on the site, working on the navigation of the site… all the things a site visitor looks for!

What I slowly came to realize was that there were too many things that need my attention, and not enough hours… what a cliché, huh? Anyway, I decided to create two lists… One list was “Things To Improve Website” and “Search Marketing”. I created goals for myself, so that I could get a little of everything done each night, and slowly grow all aspects of my business.

For example, the “Things to Improve Website” list included all the things I mentioned above. I would pick one thing to work on during the week from that list. Then I would take one thing from the “Search Marketing” list and work on that too. By setting small benchmarks each week, I was able to organize and balance the work I was doing on my website.

Here’s what a typical week looked like….

MONDAY: Rewrite description for 5 products. Send out 10 emails requesting a link exchange.

TUESDAY: Rewrite description for 5 products. Improve meta tags on category pages.

WEDNESDAY: Improve images for 5 products. Send out 10 emails requesting a link exchange.

THURSDAY: Rewrite description for 5 products. Check Alt-Image tags, submit site to 3 new directories.

FRIDAY: No working tonight, my eyes are burning and my wife is pissed.

SATURDAY: Check rankings on main keywords, see if Redbox has any new movies out

SUNDAY: (See Friday)

I would highly recommend writing a small schedule for yourself for a week, and see if that helps you achieve more. This is especially beneficial for the small merchants that slave away at a 9-5 during the day.

Good luck! Please leave comments highlighting your weekly tasks so others can see.

I was talking to a fellow seo guru yesterday and he was telling me about the decreasing relevancy of meta tags in effecting search engine positioning. I strongly disagreed, but you know the old saying, opinions are like a-holes…. everybody’s got one, and they all stink.

It is true, that meta tags do not play as significant a role in determining rankings as they used to. This is because all of the non-credible seo’s were keyword stuffing and adding lots of useless junk in the meta section, so of course the search engines responded.

However, as my graphic shows, your title tag appears in most SERPS, as does whatever content appears at the top of the page. If you are a blogger, you’ll find that whatever your recent post was at the time the search engine robots came by will appear in the SEARPS. For the rest of you, it is unusually whatever your northern most content is. This is why many website will include some text about their website at the very top. This is especially important for sites with a lot of flash or images.

The point here is that you’re not going to get to #1 in the search engines by playing with your meta tags alone. However, you should not ignore their relevance. Be sure to write short, powerful titles for all of your pages, as well as a unique description. Your keyword tag should ONLY contain keywords that are relevant to that one page (not the entire site), and should preferably match some of the words used in the description and title.

One of the most important components of any effective SEO/SEM campaign is keyword research. It also happens to be one of the more tedious tasks out there. In a future post I am going to show you how to create a nice keyword spreadsheet that will allow you to evaluate and grade your keywords. For now, concentrate on your most important keywords and check out a cool tool at Google. It’s called Google Trends.

This is only ONE tool out there for keyword research. There is also the better known, Overture Keyword tool, and several others. Most of these just give you an idea of traffic for each particular word. What I like about Google Trends is that it breaks it out by geography, which allows you to effective geo-target with your Google Adwords account.

Internal linking is very important to successful search engine optimization. You really have to utilize every opportunity your site offers to use relevant keywords or create a relevant link. Notice I used the word “relevant”! Don’t keyword stuff, and do not create a page full of links.

One place that is often overlooked for good internal linking is the “click here” or “learn more” links. Most sites have them, and they are totally not necessary, and good opportunities to increase the relevance of the page you’re linking to.

For example, let’s say I am linking from my index page on outdoor furniture to a page that talks more about my company. I could do either of these…

Click here to learn more about our company.  OR

Learn more about our outdoor furniture company.

Obviously the second option is going to tell the search engines that crawl the site, the page about us, is about an outdoor furniture company. “Click Here” doesn’t really tell them anything.

Take a look at your pages and see where you can replace some of these plain boring links to something more descriptive and useful.

I was talking to a client today about the amount of copy they have on their website. From an SEO perspective I know more copy is better, but then there is the design aspect. I hate sites with tons of copy. I think it’s overwhelming for the visitor, and can often be a quick turn-off. Or, maybe I am just a doe-doe who likes to look at lots of pretty pictures.

I suggested putting a lot of the copy into neat bullet points. There are several advantages to this approach.

1.    Bullet points are much easier for the eye and brain to absorb
2.    From a design perspective they usually look nice
3.    It allows you to bold keywords or phrases which help with SEO

Overall, the main advantage to using bullet points instead of paragraphs is for the visitor. In general people like reading lists instead of paragraphs. It allows busy folks to get what they need and go. So if your copy is long but important, try creating a few bulleted lists like; a product features list, benefits, point of differences, common concerns… you get the point.

I hate to be a hypocrite, but I have an important SEO tip that I myself have ignored. Since this blog is only a few months old I simply have not had the chance to make the proper adjustments in order to make it more search engine friendly. Furthermore, WordPress does not make it terribly easy to change title tags.

One common SEO snafu is to have every page begin with your domain name. I believe it’s so common because most content management systems, shopping carts, and blog platforms by default set every page’s title tag with the domain name followed by the page name. For example:

Domain.com - About Us Page

Domain.com - Widgets For Sale

You absolutely do not need the domain name in every page’s title tag. In fact, I have even read that it could cause “duplicate content” penalization. The best practice is to have your index page, or most important page begin with your domain name in the title tag. Then, all other pages can have unique names in the title tag. Many people have suggested it helps rank well under your domain name, but I would say that it is really easy to rank well under your specific domain name, so why bother?

Again, I apologize for being a hypocrite on this issue, but I do plan to update my own title tags soon enough.

I came across an ad the other day promising “Number 1 Placement in all of the Search Engines Guaranteed!”. Wow, that sounds good to me. And heck, there’s a guarantee, so what could be better than that? Uh, how about the truth.

Allow me to be brutally honest, and perhaps save some small merchants their life savings. There is absolutely no known way to guarantee number one placement in any search engine, unless of course you bid on the keyword and appear on the top. Other than that, anyone who makes promises that sound too good to be true, are swindling you. Or, perhaps they’re over confident in their abilities.

If you’re like most small merchants, spending money on SEO is a necessary evil. It can be incredibly expensive to hire a firm to do this, and there are a few good reasons. For one, very few people are good at it. Two, it’s tedious work. Finally, it’s worth a lot if it’s done well. You may be happy to know that there are many, many things you can do on your own to improve your organic rankings without putting out a dime. It’s going to cost you a bunch of time, but it will be time well spent.

1. Spend time seeking out quality link partners. Don’t randomly email millions of people looking for links. Look for quality websites in your industry and solicit link exchanges with them. Industry sites like associations and organizations are a good place to start. Or, sites that compliment the products you sell.

2. Be sure your meta tags are well written and unique on each page of your site.

3. Make sure the copy on your site is keyword rich and written well.

4. Be sure that your internal link structure is easy for site visitors to navigate and access every page on your site.

5. Use links that describe the page they’re linking to instead of generic links like “learn more” or “click here”.

These are only a few tips, there’s much more you can do on your own. Please continue to read this blog and other blogs on the subject for more tips on SEO.

I get a bunch of emails each week soliciting some sort of “site submit” service for thousands of search engines. Of course, these services aren’t free, and what are they really giving you? Well, like most things that cost money, they’re giving you something you’re too lazy to do yourself! Ok, so I made it easy. You only really need to worry about four major sites, and you can easily submit your website for inclusion in just a couple of minutes. You don’t have a couple of minutes? Ok, pay someone $50 to do it see if I care. Well, I do care, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this. And, I made it easy for you. All of the links you need are below!

Yahoo Free Site Submit

Google Add URL

MSN Live Search

DMOZ.org