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This myth has been around for as long as I have been involved with SEO, so about 8 years.  I recently replied to a thread on DigitalPoint forums concerning this myth.  The original poster mentioned that they recently bought a domain name and a hosting package and the hosting company was offering them a fantastic deal of 50% off search engine submission.  The offer read something like this:

For a limited time receive 50% off the regular price of search engine submission for SEO, we submit to 13 of the top search engines to get  your website indexed quickly.  Regular price is $99.99 – sale price is only $49.99.

My response was that not only is search engine submission unnecessary but I think it is a ‘red flag’ for a company that does not have a clue what SEO actually is.  It seems Rand over at SEOmoz agree because he is redoing Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization over there and he states:

Since 2001-2, search engine submission has not only not been required, but is actually virtually useless. The engines have all publicly noted that they rarely use the “submission” URL lists, and that the best practice is to earn links from other sites, as this will expose the engines to your content naturally.

So be careful and don’t waste you money on useless services.

In Canada we are still hurting for decent pay when it comes to SEO jobs.  I just saw an ad on Monster.ca where a company was offering 28k-30k for advance SEO, online marketing and analytical skills.  In my opinion even if a canidate had half the required skills they were asking for the minimum salary expectation would be $50k+ – I guess it is just a matter of time until business learn that they will not be able to fill their SEO/SEM positions on-the-cheap.

At the same time it looks like the US is well ahead of us in recognizing the value SEO can have on a business.  Here are some US job details:

well, really bad…

Here is some content I found that was written exclusively for the search engines – it uses the keyword multiple times but sounds absolutely terrible.

The photographs can be something useful in making us able to get the certain memories stay in our mind. Without using the photographs we might not be able to recognize some moments in our life. And this is something that works on people too. It means that through the photographs, we can have someone stays in our memory forever.

There is a very amusing (toungue-in-cheek) article over at SEOMOZ that talks about the different types of clients that SEO’s get.  The one that sticks out for me and actually makes me wince is this one:

The BTJ Client (or Bigger Than Jesus) is someone who is obsessed with getting a PR9 or PR10 site, no matter what you tell them or how hard you try to convince them that Page Rank isn’t something they should obsess over.

Client: “I really want us to get a PR10 ranking.”
You: “Um, for your wool socks site?”
Client: “Yes. It can’t be that hard, right? Lots of sites have PR10s, yeah?”
You: “Well, there’s Google.com…”
Client: “Okay, maybe a PR10 is a bit of a lofty goal. How about a PR9? I think we’re PR9 material. Which sites have a PR9?”
You: “Uh, Yahoo.com…”

Been there, heard that!

The amount of misinformation floating around the web as it relates to search engine optimization is staggering.  It seems that 9 out of every 10 posts I read contains blatantly wrong advice.  I am begininning to think that some very sneaky SEO pro’s are spreading incorrect info on purpose.

Here is a thread I came across today over at DevShed Forums – the poster is asking the following question:

Hi all,

I’m based in Australia, and looking around for a VPS host. It’s down to 2 options, local or US hosting. I’m told that if my host is in Australia, that will help my Australian search ranking, but that if my host is in the US, it will help my US ranking. Is this really true? Why would it be so? Is it some kind of algorithm that assumes added relevance if the host is local?

Some of the responses (as quoted below) were quite interesting and only added to the confusion.

“yes it is true, but it is not necessary that you need to host in particular country.”

“Server location affects the ranking in Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) but not always”

“It depends on what and where you are targeting rather than the server location”

“this is one of the factor among 1000 which affect your ranking”

“Constant work on the website will improve the website ranking on Google dot com too”

It seems like the object of the above replies was to keep the original poster as confused as possible!!

Hiring a qualified in-house SEO is very difficult. I myself have been working from home on my own projects for the past 7 years and had very little time to take on contract work for other folks. Because my lifestyle changed (kids are growing up) and I was feeling very socially isolated I decided to feel out what was available in the job market in Toronto, Canada where I could use my SEO/SEM skills. I was quite picky about which job postings I would submit my resume too and in fact only sent in approximately 10 over a period of 6 months. I took a job with a local public software company a few months ago and am really enjoying it.

One thing I have noticed is that SEO/SEM is really in its infancy insofar as mainstream business understanding it’s concept and it’s enormous ROI potential. Another thing I have noticed is that most business owners, marketing managers and definitely human resource folks don’t have a clue as to the value an experienced SEO brings to a company. Many companies are listing a wide range of requirements, like below:

· 5 years experience optimizing SEO campaigns through “White Hat methods”, with a minimum of three years successfully creating and managing Google AdWords and Yahoo! Sponsored campaigns;
· Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing, Advertising, Business or other related field;
· Track record of leadership, coaching and mentoring abilities, with proven experience in managing people;
· Excellent analytical skills, including experience reviewing campaign performance results and making recommendations for future action;
· Strong knowledge of search engine algorithms, organic searching, and ranking strategies for Google;
· Experience with Landing page conversion optimization (A/B testing, multivariate testing and offer testing background);
· Proficiency with Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc.);
· Minimum of 3 Years Management Experience, with demonstrated proficiency in the competencies for Senior Leadership (achievement orientation, team leadership, adaptability, business acumen)
· Experience hand coding HTML and CSS are definitely a plus;
· Working knowledge of web analytic and bid-management tools such as Atlas One Point, SearchIgnite, Webtrends, Hitbox Professional, Omniture, Core Metrics;
· Experience with online display advertising, banner advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Web site Analytics and Web site Conversion Metrics (CPM, CTR, CPC, CPL, CPA) is a bonus.

• Organic Search Program Management
• Monitor overall SEO program success with regards to ranking, indexed pages, back links, traffic acquisition and report to senior management
• Analyze sites for opportunities in optimizing architecture, usability, conversion and navigation results
• Audit the website’s technical infrastructure and identify obstacles that may cause spider accessibility issues
• Perform competitive analyses to monitor weakness and opportunities and help improve natural results
• Identify editorial/keyword opportunities and assist in the content strategy and execution to acquire traffic for targeted terms/phrases
• Optimize various website components to improve visibility/rankings as well and traffic conversion
• Examine the linking environment and craft a plan for the acquisition and optimization of inbound links
• Ensure the necessary tracking is in place to monitor the performance of the optimization program
Analytics Management
• Ensure Web analytic tools (Omniture and Google Analytics) are correctly implemented and managed as to ensure reporting is available to key stake holders
• Analyze and create reports that highlight the progress against key performance indicators.
• Experience developing, implementing and maintaining a search strategy, with a strong emphasis on organic search
• Experience with SEO reporting, web analytics tools and multivariate testing
• Experience working in both a B2B and B2C internet space, with an emphasis on transactional/ecommerce
• Extensive knowledge of primary and secondary search engine mechanics
• Ability to interact with a variety of departments and different levels of management
• Strong computer skills, including extensive knowledge of MS Excel and PowerPoint
• Organized and attention to detail is a MUST. Ability to work independently and as part of a team, pro-active versus reactive, ability to problem solve and to work successfully within a set process, and coordinate as needed with multiple internal clients and vendors.
• Strong understanding of technology (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, AJAX)
• In-depth knowledge of search engine technologies (algorithms, ranking strategies and industry trends)
• Ability to understand HTML code for title tags, meta-description tags, keyword tags, ROBOTS.txt files, redirects, etc
• Strong understanding of Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
• Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing or Business Administration is preferred.
• Minimum 2 years SEO relevant work experience
• Familiarity with how web browsers and servers work and interact
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Strong analytics and reporting skills

But then they offer salaries in the range of $35k-$45k – I think it will take a while yet till those doing the hiring catch on to the fact that SEO and most of SEM is not taught in school and only comes from specific experience and following the trends and changes on a daily basis. Many parts of proper SEO is still an art and not quite a science, so offering a low salary while requiring tons of specialized experience is the recipe for having a position sit empty for a long, long time.

I currently see five positions that have been searching for someone for more than six months. I can’t even imagine the opportunities (and $$) they are losing in the meantime. I would also guess that many of these SEO positions will be filled by unqualified candidates that will either harm the websites or do nothing for them. There are two major barriers which seem to be causing this problem; firstly, many of the people doing the hiring don’t know very much about SEO – other than, they have heard their business can leverage it to increase the bottom line. Because of this lack of knowledge it is hard for them to differentiate between candidates and it also makes it difficult for them to offer substantial salaries because they are not sure what type of ROI it will achieve. Secondly, many of the good SEO’s make considerable hourly income just offering consultations or running and optimizing their own sites, so the talent pool is very thin in almost every job market world-wide. Thirdly, a decision maker in this process may have come across some sort of advertisement online where a company is offering SEO services from overseas as ridiculously low rates and they figure if they could contract it out for X amount of money they should be able to get someone locally quite cheap. What they don’t realize is that 99.9% of these overseas operations offer zero value and are just doing low-quality directory submissions or submitting poorly translated articles or making spam comments in blogs to build up a few backlinks, which might have an end result of a search engine penalty or ban.

My advice is that every single business that has a web presence would benefit substantially by hiring an in-house SEO expert but don’t scrimp on the salary you are offering. If you find the right candidate don’t lose them over a few thousand dollars because long-term SEO can double, triple or add even more to your bottom line. The salary for an SEO professional should be in the $75k-$100k range and even more if you are asking them to take on marketing management duties in addition to SEO/SEM. If you have any doubts that those salaries are a ‘real’ bargain then take a look at our SEO pricing section.

The web is the wave of the future and if you wait too long to hire the right person you are not only losing tons of potential business but will have a lot of catching up to do and it will prove very costly.

Like a good wine or a wise-man, proper SEO takes time to achieve fruition.  One of the most challenging things I have had to accept as a professional SEO is the time it can take to see the fruit of my hard labour.  And over at SEOMoz.org they hit this nail squarely on the head.

The engines need time to re-crawl your site. For a lucky few, this might take only days or a couple weeks, but for many large sites and even for smaller sites that aren’t terrificly high on Google’s “must crawl” list, we’ve seen as much as 3-4 months pass before a site’s pages are fully updated.

The engines have to crawl all your link partners, too! If you’ve recently launched some great widgets or viral material or a new content licensing system, it’s going to be a solid wait before you experience the full impact of that work.

The algorithms reward patience. Even if the engines start to see those links right away, it might be a few weeks or months before the algorithm rewards the full weight and heft of their existence. Why? Because search engines learned years ago that manipulative link building is often temporary, while high quality links stand the test of time. This issue is particularly true of new domains (or newly moved domains), so be aware that you might have to earn some trust over time before you feel all the positive ranking impacts of links.

It takes time to attract links. Last, but not least, on our list of reasons is the growth of links themselves. If you’ve just started new content, design and promotion strategies to attract links, you not only need time for those campaigns to reach their targets, you need to wait for the links to start rolling in (and then get counted by the engines). This can be a long, tough slog, and understandably, a lot of site owners and SEOs give up without ever getting the full benefit of their work.

Convincing a client that SEO results take time and that time can vary from a 2 or 3 months to as long as 4-6 months is tough but if done properly SEO results can be well worth the wait!

It is not really a close-kept secret but it is relatively new and is quite powerful as I am finding with my tests.  It is the power of image alt tags. 

With Google image search being used at a growing rate you can really drive substantial amounts of traffic to your website by utilizing your alt image tags.  Make sure they are descriptive but also that they use high-traffic keywords.  For image heavy niches they can drive tons of quality traffic as I am finding out with my fashion blog, last month I recieved 12k visits from Google images and my adsense has tripled for that site.  It seems three of my images are on the first page of Google’s image search for some very popular terms and those are driving the nice boost in traffic and conversions.

Another great thing that I am noticing so far is that the increase in traffic has not triggered ‘smart pricing’ because the quality of traffic from these image searches are high.  So start going through your websites and find all the older images you have that are missing alt tags and add them in.  The traffic boost will be well-worth your time.

Yahoo has been busy as a beaver (as we Canadians would say) with a slew of new announcements yesterday.

The most interesting one is the launch of Yahoo! Circular, an online retail marketing program modeled after newspaper circulars/inserts.  This activity blitz comes just as Yahoo’s annual shareholder meeting was set for August 1 where Corporate raider Carl Icahn and a slate of new board members are expected to attempt their coup at the meeting, targeting CEO Jerry Yang’s job and trying to force a Microsoft acquisition agreement.

As part of this aggressive plan, Yahoo has brought Walmart.com on board in a multi-year deal allowing Yahoo to provide display and video advertising for the retail giant. Wal-Mart also announced this week its foray into the classified advertising space. According to the Yahoo deal, Wal-Mart will use Yahoo’s AMP! Advertising management platform to reach Yahoo audiences, and Yahoo will be the exclusive reseller of Wal-Mart’s display inventory.

I wonder if all this excitement and activity will die down once the Yahoo! changes ownership?

I am always keeping an eye out for what my competition charges (click to enlarge the image) and here is the price page for an SEO in New York.  I won’t comment on whether his prices are too high because I don’t know a lot about the quality of his work. One thing I do know is good SEO/SEM is very valuable and can pad the bottom line of a company more often and at a better value than almost any type of advertising and promotional campaigns

Our SEO/SEM monthly packages are on sale now for 50% off (this offer may end without notice) and start at an affordable $300, take a look at our pricing page for more details.  Click here for a free, no obligation custom quote