Living Organism

We’ve seen a good bit of SEO work from local search engine optimization companies. And it seems that a lot of them are missing the mark in consulting their clients.

SEO by definition: Increasing the likelihood of your web site being displayed as a top result in search engines. The best and simplest way to achieve this is twofold. If you do these two things well, your probability in coming up organically is pretty darn good. So good in fact, one could argue that a small, services-based business may not need an SEO company to optimize for local geographic searches.

1. Create a Site That is XHTML Standards Compliant - If you do so, a search engine will be able to “SEE” your site’s content without a challenge. This is 50% of the battle. It sounds simple, but a majority of web development firms still do not code sites properly, leaving their clients with a site that search engines will have a harder time “SEEing.” If a search engine cannot “SEE” your site’s content seamlessly, coming up for keywords related to your services will be an uphill battle right from the start.

2. Provide Good, Solid Content - Create several dedicated web site pages for your most desired keywords.  These pages should contain copy that is keyword relevant and should have plenty of keyword links to web pages within and outside of your web site. Use the keywords in headers, page descriptions, body copy and alt tags for images. The more fresh and relevant you keep your content, the better.

Back to the SEO companies. If you bring a site to an SEO company that’s not coded to XHTML standards, and that SEO company doesn’t have an XHTML developer on staff to update it, what would benefit that SEO company to consult you in updating your code? They would immediately lose business by sending prospects to a web shop before getting the SEO business themselves. Could this be an inherent flaw in the SEO business model? If so, this flaw creates a consultation strategy that puts the SEO company’s best interests ahead of the client’s.

So how can an SEO company be helpful to you?

Programs like Google ad-buying and Ad words are great programs to have managed through an SEO company. But if you want to optimize your site for basic keywords, I suggest finding a web development partner that understands how to best help achieve organic keyword results. If you must use an SEO company for keyword optimization, try to find one that’s reputable (get a recommendation) and gather their ideas on how to improve your site. Pay them (of course) for the consultation. Then take their recommendations back to a good web development firm – one that understands and adheres to standards in web development – and have that web firm implement the SEO changes. If you are not sure you have a good web firm ask them about XHTML standards. They should have a good answer and it should resonate this post. If they don’t, shop around until you find the right fit.

Are you an SEO company that works differently than we have experienced? Or, have you ever worked with an SEO firm that’s different? If so, we would love to hear your thoughts.