|
 As
most people who read this newsletter will know, Jill Whalen is a pioneer in
search engine optimization. Nicknamed the First Lady of Search, Jill founded
the site HighRankings.com in 1995.
Today High Rankings has grown to be one of the pre-eminent SEO companies in the
US. Jill's company is dedicated to educating its clients and sharing its
knowledge with the industry at large through the High Rankings Advisor
newsletter, the High Rankings Forum and her in-house seminars
In her
presentation for Webstock 2008, Jill
gave the audience a 45 minute tutorial in SEO Basics. First up, Jill discussed
what SEO isn't. Some of the most common SEO myths she exposed included:
PPC Myths:
- PPC
ads will help organic rankings
- PPC
ads will hurt organic rankings
Tag Myths:
-
you
must have a keyword-rich domain
-
you
must have keyword-rich page URLs
-
heading
tags are necessary (H1, H2 etc.)
-
you
need to use keywords in meta keyword tags, in particular you need to use
keywords that are included in your page content. Jill says that it's actually better to use the keyword tag to include
misspellings and other keyword varieties that you don't have in your
pages.
- using
keywords in comment tags will hurt your rankings.
Content Myths:
- page
copy must be a certain # of words. Jill actually made up the 250 word
limit a few years ago and it's stuck, but there is really no set limit to
please search engines.
- that
you need to bold/italicize your target keywords.
- that
you must use a specific keyword density. Jill says that keyword density
tools are ridiculous.
- that
you must optimize a page for a single keyword or phrase per page. Instead,
try to optimize each page for 3-5 phrases that are related, so that your
copy reads better than repeating one phrase over and over.
- that
you need to optimize for the long-tail searches. You don't generally need
to optimize for these - engines will find them on their own.
Design
Myths:
- your
HTML code must validate to W3C. Not even Google.com validates!
- your
navigation must be text links not images. Surprisingly, graphical
navigation is fine as long as you use ALT tags.
- you
can't use Flash. It's fine to use Flash, as long as it is one element of
your page, not a complete Flash site. Use a text-based site too if using a
Flash site.
- certain
design techniques are black hat. Javascript code is legitimate, not just
used by black hats.
Link Building Myths:
- that
Google's link: command is accurate. It's not a useful tool. Use Google
Webmaster Tools or the Yahoo link command instead.
- that
reciprocal links won't count. From the right site, reciprocal links are
fine, even very helpful.
- that
pages are ranked in PageRank order in the search results. They're not.
Google Toolbar PageRank is not accurate anyway so ignore it.
- you
must be in DMOZ or Yahoo Directory to get good Google rankings. In Jill’s
opinion, the Yahoo Directory is not worth the money these days.
Submitting, Crawling and Indexing Myths:
- that
you need to submit URLs to engines. Provided you have a link to your site,
you will be found and indexed.
- that
you need a Google Sitemap. Not needed for the average site. It won't
change your site rank.
- that
you need to update your site frequently.
- frequent
spidering helps rankings. Not true.
- that
you need multiple sites. This won't help in the engines and creates more
maintenance work.
- that
you need doorway pages. Jill says this is so 1995!
SEO
Company Myths:
- that
a #1 ranking will always lead to more traffic or sales. The good rankings
need to be for keywords and phrases that people are actually searching
for.
- that
the company can place pages in certain positions. Not possible, unless
they’re using Pay Per Click or sponsored spots.
- that
your rankings will tank if you stop paying the company. Rubbish!
- that
they have a "proprietary method" of SEO. They’re lying!
- that
they have a "special relationship" with Google. Again, they're
lying. Google has no relationships with organic SEO companies that Jill is
aware of.
- that
they can increase your rankings without doing any on-page work. Run away!
Next,
Jill defined what SEO is. Her definition of SEO is "making your site the
best it can be for your site visitors AND the search engines". She made
the point that search engines need to:
- Find
- Crawl
- Index
- Determine relevancy
- show results
So you
should keep these top of mind when designing and SEOing your site.
Jill also made the point that search engines don't know you. So you should
disclose what you sell and who you are in plain language that naturally
incorporates the keyword phrases. Dumb down your pages for users. What search
engines want is good content. If you're not getting good traffic from your
pages, they're broken, she says. In a nutshell, make sure your pages speak to
your target audience and solve their problems.
Jill then discussed how to choose keywords to target on your site. She
recommended brainstorming with friends, family and business colleagues and
creating a seed list of keywords. Then take that list and run it through
keyword research tools such as WordTracker
or Keyword Discovery and even Google AdWords to determine the best
keywords and phrases to target.
Jill says there are three types of keyword phrases:
1)
General and highly competitive terms - not good choices.
2) Long tail - uncompetitive terms - generally no need to SEO for.
3) Relevant and specific terms, which are the best to choose because
they highly searched, yet are targeted enough to bring qualified traffic.
Next,
Jill explained where to put your keywords. She recommended putting them in:
- anchor text
- clickable image alt attributes (alt tags)
- headlines
- body text copy
- title tags (Don't make your titles less than 10 words, she says.)
- meta description tags
Jill finished up by
teaching the group how to measure SEO success. She said that high rankings are
not the best measure of success because you might be ranking for phrases nobody
is searching on. Instead you should be looking for increased targeted traffíc
to your site and more conversions. Use your web stats to give you the clues as
to whether your site and your SEO is working.
As for the future of SEO, well despite the rumors that SEO is dead, Jill doesn't
think that the big engines will switch to exclusively paid listings any time
soon. In her opinion, there will always be some free ways to get listed so
there will always be a need for SEO. In the same vein, a crawler-friendly site
will always get good results and off page criteria (e.g. links) will always be
important.
By Kalena Jordan (c) 2008
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SEO Articles 
