Business Management Consultant - Stuntdubl Search and Marketing Consulting

There are so many SEO mistakes out in there in the WWW, that I figured it was worthwhile to showcase some of them to help people improve. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while when I come accross very BAD mistakes on large company websites, but until now haven’t really had the stones to do it. So after this, I bring you the first edition of Mr. Ploppy’s return as a Monday morning SEO Quarterback. If you’re upset that someone is hating on your website - please blame Mr. Ploppy, and not me:)

I will be picking large sites fairly randomly, and offering 2 - 5 suggestions for improvement, because some sites are just SO fubar, that frankly, they probably haven’t yet HEARD the term SEO. It’ll also give a chance to demonstrate some SEO fundamentals (mainly easy ones) that sites should generally always have in place. Hopefully the free advice will be worthwhile enough that the owners won’t get too pissed off at me. This is also my attempt to prove that if SEO is really SO easy - why isn’t everyone DOING it? Just because a company/site is BIG, doesn’t mean it DESERVES to be in the top rankings. Even the big guys should have to prove they know what their doing - it IS kinda simple stuff. Sometimes it’s easy to identify the mistakes, but not always so easy to remedy them.

I was looking for a mountain bike not too long ago, and came across Trek bikes as my inspiration for this project. The have world-class mountain bikes, but their site could use a tune up.

Top 5 homepage fixes:
1. Title is the best place to start - 2 minute fix
- 5 minutes if you wanna overthink it
- 2 weeks if you need legal to sign off
2. Redirect to country by IP lookup
3. Don’t require cookies and flash
4. 302 redirect for language is probably not the ideal solution
5. Some text and internal anchor text on the page would be a good thing

*side note - should probably bite the bullet and pay the price for trek.com - squatters suck, but not as bad as losing traffic.

I’ve talked to Andy, and Aaron about this project extensively, and it’s definitely one of the best ideas I’ve ever heard. Get on the list for Reviewme - this one is gonna be cool. I can’t wait for it to stir the pot a bit.

What does ReviewMe do?

(Minus the buzzwords) Advertisers, you pay to get your stuff reviewed by bloggers. Bloggers, you get paid to review their stuff.

It’s not payola: bloggers are required to disclose that reviews are paid, and they are not pressured to make the reviews positive.

(Oh, and one other thing: the payouts will be fat.)

So what now?

Even after ReviewMe launches, I’ll still be occasionally contributing here, but you’ll also be able to read my writing over at the ReviewMe Blog.

Talked to Darren over on his website about a few different topics - check it out if you get a chance.

Search engine optimization is no longer a process - it is a business school of thought - a philosophy. SEO is a thought process of using specific search marketing tools and principles for creating a successful business. SEO is making specific business decisions based on previous knowledge that will ultimately impact bottom line profitability.

Many “SEO’s” have went through a fairly specific lifecycle of becoming successful entreprenuers. Stumble into the web. Learn SEO fundamentals. Apply SEO. Rinse. Repeat. Apply to personal or affiliate projects. Start a new business based on SEO principles. Re-apply SEO. It’s a shame we don’t have a cool fancy term for what many seasoned SEO’s turn into.

Fundamental philsophies of the SEO school of thought

These principles are used when making nearly any business decision to someone from the SEO school of thought. These newly evolved thought processes directly conflict with some of the principles from previous marketing schools of thought.

I spend far too much time wondering why most the world views SEO as black magic, while so many within our industry (including myself) hold such high regard for the top level SEO practitioners. After a lot of pondering and discussion on why SEO’s are viewed as shady worthless criminals, I have come to the conclusion that search engine optimization may still be a process, - but I’m convinced SEO is a school of thought.

Most people view SEO is a mystical process (which it’s not) - what IS mystical is the creative ideas that come from some of the top minds in the field by applying the principles to business. THIS is magic - because no one with out the SEO school of thought would ever stop to think of them. SEO’s are the brains and inspiration behind many web 2.0 business models. Sometimes these innovators aren’t even aware that they are applying SEO principles.

Just as psychology has various schools of thought, business does as well. Marketing, advertising, and management all have their theorists. I’m sure SEO could be classified into the first two, but there are many areas where it is different.

The BEST SEO’s…

…are not SEO’s at all. They are now successful entrepreneurs and businesspeople. Many of them that owe a large part of their success to organic rankings will always claim “to be an SEO”, or to “know SEO”. They are always looking for other folks who have the same philosphy - unfortunately it’s hard to hire them, or keep them for very long due to the entrepreneurial spirit it takes to learn the SEO philosophy. From Brian Provost at scoreboardmedia: The better I got at SEO, the less I did of it

“SEO’s are the new real estate developers. Our skillset gives us an amazing opportunity to develop an audience on the cheap.”

SEO has become a conduit to learn business

For our brief history of time - a window of opportunity opened. Over the last 10 years, the barrier to entry to learning business, and all it’s backroom antics has been opened up to a select group of people.

The nature of SEO requires that a business provide their SEO person with an abundance of important information for making decisions. The need for this transperancy has taught lots of SEO’s some of the finer points of business. I know I have learned a LOT about business from some of the great clients I’ve had over the years. Since I learned a majority of this through my understanding of SEO - I consider many of these business principles that I learned a PART of SEO.

Why SEO is blackmagic, and most folks will never “get it”

-The don’t abide by the principles above.
-They think links are solely for clickthrough.
-They have never tweaked a title tag.
-They’ve never performed a link request, or hunted for links.
-They have their own school of thought that they don’t want to stray from.
-Search is a threat to their business model.

SEO is a noun, verb, and adjective

I am an SEO.
I need SEO services
I need my site “SEO’d”
It’s an seo site.

The process of search engine optimization is straightforward and easy; the understanding of the SEO thought process is ongoing and exceedingly complex.

Additional resources:
This is sort of continuation from the “SEO is a catchphrase” series a while back.

I was nearly finished with this post when I stumbled across the fact that Randall at 14th colony also thinks SEO is a school of thought. The power of the internet and having similar independant thoughts simultaneously is really strange and amazing sometimes. My apologies for the similar title - I have been thinking about this one for months, and was astonished to come across your great post.

My previous claims about SEO: There is no such thing as SEO.

Anybody else have examples of how SEO is more than just a process now?

The title pretty much sums this one up. I’m not gonna go off on this one here, I just thought it was an interesting parallel after getting off a site that was for a large product manufacturer, had two guys with nice suits on one of the most hideous homepages I had ever seen. I still just don’t get why people want to cheap out on webdesign. I don’t have the ambition to extoll the virtues of proper design to the uninitiated anymore, but it still kinda bugs me on occassion. If you can spend several hundred dollars on a nice suit, you understand why it’s important to make an impression. Why is that so difficult to translate to the web? Any body else got some favorite examples of sites that need a redesign with people wearing suits?

After attending the ASIDIC conference last month, I had a whole new insight into the world of premium content providers. Elisabeth Osmeloski and I wrote a piece for Search Engine Watch dealing with Free versus fee models on the web. It’s really fascinating how revenue models are shifting for many content providers. Part II of the article will be along shortly.