13 ms·

Minimum Viable SEO

197 points by omarish 15y ago

tlack 15y ago
A bit off topic, but relevant to the suggestions in this post: a few of my friends are finding it more effective with Google to use a flat file structure rather than the highly nested folder trees that are usually recommended. Anyone have any thoughts/experience with this?
- midas 15y ago
  It really depends on how many pages you have. If you just have 10 pages off the domain (/signup, /login, /about, /jobs, /how-it-works, etc) then there's really no benefit of having a hierarchy. If you have > 1k pages, then a flat structure will confuse google/users and do a poor job spreading your site's link equity amongst your pages. Is that what you're asking?
- AznHisoka 15y ago
  I don't think the actual urls matter. In terms of site structure, I actually don't recommend having too many nested folders/directories if you don't have a lot of inner pages. I see a lot of sites with category and subcategory pages with just 5-10 links in each. Google won't crawl that deep if your site is new. and the deeper a page is, the less important Google deems it (based on flow of internal Pagerank).
- jpzeni 15y ago
  From my experience it all depends on the size of the site. If you have less than 200 pages on your site I'd recomment that you try and stick to no more than domain.com/folder/page whenever possible. But, one other thing I would strongly recommend is to never create extra or redundant folders unless they really add a lot of value to your site usability. And, never, ever, create empty folders ... it seems like a no-brainer but it happens a lot more frequently then you might think with people using them to force a specific heirarchy on their site or for the sake of stuffing keywords into their URLs or just because they think the final URL looks 'nicer' that way. Last thought on why flat is normally better, homepages are likely to accumulate more links than any other page on your site and often more links than the rest of the site combined. So the closer an interior page is to the homepage the more benefit it will derive from the inbound links pointing to the homepage.
- jaredmck 15y ago
  who recommends highly nested folder trees? i've not heard this and have certainly seen it hurt sites. all things equal, flatter is better. my rule of thumb is go as flat as you can while still having an organized, navigable URL structure.
  - blauwbilgorgel 15y ago
    I sometimes recommend nested folder trees, but never deeper than 3 folders. 3 folders deep is enough for millions of pages. I like nested folders for a couple of reasons, some of which are: - Clarity. A good structure will instantly signal what the page will be about, before a user or searchbot follows that link. - Bolded keywords in URL in the SERPS. - Using pages to flow juice to categories. - Benefit of targetted anchor text, when using the URL for anchor text. Compare: big-ecommerce-site.com/yoga-pilatus/accessories/yoga-mat/ vs. big-ecommerce-site.com/yoga-mat/ And search queries like: "pilatus mat" or "yoga accessories". Which will work better for these queries? - Structure. Your URL's will reflect in your breadcrumbs, allowing users to navigate your site through URLs (By removing a folder and going to a higher level in the site). - Silo's. After the Panda update, and this is speculation on my part, Google might lower the imporance of "parts" of your website. Let's say only your blog is of very low quality. Google could discount /blog/ when you have nested folders. With a flat structure your removed "parts" or higher level categories from your site, and don't allow for this. Ofcourse there are benefits to going flat too. But nested folder trees are not neccessarily a bad thing.
kenny_r 15y ago
I have a small nit to pick in an otherwise great post: Codecademy is not the same as Code Academy. It's also noteworthy that codecademy.com ranks higher than codeacademy.org in the google search for "Code Academy". Well played indeed.
- midas 15y ago
  It's practically impossible to reverse engineer the SERP, but if you look at the Domain Authority for both codecademy.com and codecademy.org, you'll find that the former is orders of magnitude higher (65 vs 35). This might explain a lot. http://www.opensiteexplorer.org http://www.opensiteexplorer.org You can also lookup how many inbound links the sites have using different anchor text like "Code Academy".
- AznHisoka 15y ago
  I think Codecademy needs to get CodeAcademy.com as soon as they can.. otherwise they're gonna rely on mostly search traffic to get visitors since most ppl won't remember their url
  - allbutlost 15y ago
    It seems that they do already - see http://www.codeacademy.com http://www.codeacademy.com
helipad 15y ago
The article mentions the beginner's SEO guide, but coming in at 2 pages, the Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet from SEOmoz is my go-to resource: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-sheet http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-shee...
- rhizome 15y ago
  I'm seeing only bad links to the PDF on that page.
  - brador 15y ago
    Yep, same here. Google isn't helping either. Anyone want to upload the pdf for all?
    - fedd 15y ago
      seo pages can't be found by google. meta!
    - iodave 15y ago
      Try it again. I was just able to access the pdf.
- dsrikanth 15y ago
  http://seoeducation.in/pdfs/SEO_Web_Developer_Cheat_Sheet.pdf http://seoeducation.in/pdfs/SEO_Web_Developer_Cheat_Sheet.pd... - this should work
- thematt 15y ago
  Not arguing with the importance of some of those techniques, but just a word of caution that the document hasn't been updated since 2008.
- kruipen 15y ago
  The post is not intended to be a SEO guide. It is priceonomics's doing their SEO (getting inbound links, etc.). Not that there is anything wrong with that.
steele 15y ago
I first read this as Minimum Viable CEO and double face-palmed
- paulovsk 15y ago
  LOL
dsrikanth 15y ago
I have to agree that most people ignore SEO because of the lack of understanding. May be they are intimidated by the very word. The three steps mentioned in the article: URL, Navigation, Page title go a long way. This is were content management systems like WordPress really help as these three things are taken care by design. In addition to this, internal linking structure is important to. Again, a proper CMS makes it way easy to get a decent SEO going to begin with.
chocoheadfred 15y ago
It's not what you say, it's what people say about you. Kinda like a popularity contest in high school. If you are quarterback screwing the hot cheerleader, most people are looking/following you (whether they "like" you or not). So, get links. Lots of 'em. source: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors Yes, setting up your site based on broad or long tail terms is good foundation...but you can rank your site for words that aren't even on your site. Why do you think disney ranks for 'exit' and 'leave'? http://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/2011/04/14/the-evolution-of-google-rankings-rand-fishkin-at-the-searchmetrics-partner-meeting/ http://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/2011/04/14/the-evolution-of...
weeksie 15y ago
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills every time I read something about SEO. I keep expecting there to be more to it or that I'm missing something. Other than that, SEO is just making sure you have reasonably semantic markup and clean URLS. Isn't that just plain old best practice anyway? What am I missing? I swear there must be something!
- WillyF 15y ago
  You're definitely missing the incoming links part.
  - weeksie 15y ago
    Ok, but what the hell does that have to do with building the site. Inbound links are obvious. Wow, really, is that all? And there are entire communities devoted to this? Seriously, I really want to know what I'm missing because I feel like I must be whiffing pretty hard here not to see it.
    - trevin 15y ago
      It's a lot more complicated than you are letting on. What you are saying is like saying architecture is just drawing diagrams or good journalism is just writing about stuff. Like many industries, there's an art to SEO and plenty of nuances far beyond clean coding and user friendly design.
      - InfinityX0 15y ago
        It's not easy getting links. More importantly, if you have a great product where everyone else has great products, the marginal benefit of having the best product with the most amount of authoritative links is huge, because the # of clicks that come from the top result over #2 is monumental. So even if you get thousands upon thousands of links, like those that rank for "cheap flights", it's the site that gets thousands and thousands +1 that will win the day, and make millions more on a long enough timeline.
      - 15y ago
pinchyfingers 15y ago
If you working on an Internet startup and you're not thinking about SEO from day one: you suck. Any decent marketing strategy is at least going to give a nod to SEO. Is your team is so consumed by your awesome product that you think it's more important than marketing and distribution? I really hope that isn't true of anyone here. If championing product over marketing and distribution does sound like your team, I have GOOD NEWS! — you'll be too busy jerking each other off to notice that you're not making any money.
- mattgreenrocks 15y ago
  There's no need to employ this tone; we're all adults here.
tibbon 15y ago
Don't do SEO. Do accessibility. Seriously, don't worry a single bit about SEO. Yet, if you make it so that your site's content, navigation and URLs are screen-reader friendly, then you've probably made a site that has solid SEO and is accessible to people with vision problems. Yet, just doing SEO doesn't make for a very accessible site all the time. Once this is done, make good content, be real and responsive humans to your customers and you're on your way to a good business model and website.
- randfish 15y ago
  I read this, and all I can see is: "Don't do marketing." "Just make a good product and people will find it." I think this is the downfall of many great products. The current startup world has an idealistic belief that better products always win and if you build something people want, they'll find it, when in fact, this has never been true. The "best" politicians consistently lose to those better at marketing and branding. The "best" ideas in organizations often fall to those trumpeted with more style or by those with more clout. Many great startups shut down because they couldn't find a repeatable, low-cost way to acquire customers (and SEO is exactly this). More here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/i-disagree-with-fred-marketing-is-for-companies-that-have-great-products http://www.seomoz.org/blog/i-disagree-with-fred-marketing-is... And here: http://hackersandfounders.tv/RDmt/rand-fishkin-inbound-marketing-for-startups/ http://hackersandfounders.tv/RDmt/rand-fishkin-inbound-marke...
  - YourAnMoran 15y ago
    I believe parent was trying to express the sentiment that search engines inherently favor sites that are well-structured and present the relevant keywords in a format that is easily parsed by web crawlers.
  - pinchyfingers 15y ago
    Totally agree with you Rand. My sentiment was down-voted for being too hostile, so I'm glad you're weighing in on this.
- TomAnthony 15y ago
andrewnez 15y ago
Onsite SEO is essentially good web design and content strategy, any developer worth his salt will produce a site that already ticks all the boxes. All the work is in producing great, relevant content and then link building.
risource 15y ago
Great discussion, thanks. Now im off to the urology forum to ask about my sore elbow. Theyre all doctors, right? They all went to med school. A body part is a body part...skin and bones and theyre all connected anyway.
TomGullen 15y ago
We've spent a lot of time doing whitehat SEO on our website, and it's paying off (2x search traffic in 6 months). I really would recommend most startups spend a few days reading up on it from good quality sources. Nearly 40% of all our traffic comes from search so it makes sense to pay it some attention. It's not hard. What is hard is navigating your way through the crooks/spammers/quacks who will try every trick in the book to try and sell you something you don't need. Startups do not need to hire experts to do it for them. What they need to do is solve problems like they solve other problems, with no money. People who sell SEO usually: - Have the gift of the gab - Prey on peoples ignorance - Prey on peoples greed There are good SEO people out there, but they are rare. Also I struggle to imagine a situation where smart people just can't read up on it themselves and execute it themselves. As a startup you should be focusing on good quality content and sustainable growth. So play to your strengths and don't pay a lot of money for magic potions that offer short term benefits. Play the long term game. SEOMoz is a good place to start (their free blogs etc). Executing good technical SEO on your own website is pretty easy. Tibbon made a good point, 'dont do SEO do accessibility`. I'm not sure I'd go to that extreme, but it's a good way of looking at it. Google is your most disabled user, it can't see very well, it can't really understand things very well either. If you make your site highly accessible you're well on your way to good SEO.
- ddemuth 15y ago
  There's no question that whitehat SEO pays off. And referring to startups, you mention "I struggle to imagine a situation where smart people just can't read up on it themselves and execute it themselves." It has everything to do with your opening line: "We've spent a lot of time doing whitehat SEO on our website". It always comes down to TIME. If you're a new startup, you're trying to work on your business, not in it. Then you need to find someone who can help you with whitehat organic SEO. And as you mentioned, the hard part is navigating your way through the 'quacks'
  - TomGullen 15y ago
    Most startups as far as I know don't have much money, but if they do have money then fair enough they can spend it on SEO if they think it would be beneficial. As you say though it's going to be hard to find someone decent and honest.
blauwbilgorgel 15y ago
I did a quick SEO analysis on priceonomics.com. Most of these tips fall into the 20% category. Maybe they can use some of these tips to perfect their SEO strategies. 1. Blog on a subdomain. Though sometimes easier for administration, subdomains might dilute your SEO efforts. Links to a subdomain don't count 100% as links to your main domain. A /blog/ could help with the generation of incoming links and addition of fresh content to the domain you want indexed a lot. 2. Employ Canonical www. redirects to non-www. Trailing slashes get added automatically. So far so good. But it is still easy to create duplicate URL's by adding random dynamic variables. Without Canonical an URL like /boats/?dupe=content will point to the same resource as /boats/. Here you might introduce a canonical problem. (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-y...) 3. Optimize your site for speed Though not that many search queries are affected by the site-speed algo, site speed remains very important for your visitors, and so indirectly for your SEO/marketing efforts. Google Site Speed plugin, Yslow or these guidelines (http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html) might help you fix some of these issues and gain a few seconds. Mostly loading javascript just before </body>, turning on caching, and compressing and combining resources. 4. Robots.txt vs meta robots /search is disallowed in robots.txt. If you disallow it on a page basis, with meta robots, you can specify: "noindex, follow". That way if people link to your search results, link juice will keep flowing through your site. 5. Breadcrumbs Add rich snippets mark-up. For product information and reviews, but an obvious contender is the breadcrumb. Link to your twitter (and future Google+ profile) with 'rel=me' to signify ownership of your graph. 6. Images Add an alt-attribute to the site logo. Specify the dimensions for faster rendering. 7. Don't critique ehow.com if you fill Google's index with 245.000+ automated results. Or put less bluntly: Write more unique content to introduce bigger categories. Add more relevant content to your listings (reviews, search/trend data, price watch). 8. Make clear if an item is "already sold". If I click on 10 entries and I get 10 times "item already sold" I start to doubt the usefulness of the application. I compare this to a job site, where the jobs are mostly filled: You happen upon such a site through Google, because Google still thinks these listings are relevant. 9. Quality The site is mostly void of trust factors. Due to some listings being in ALL-CAPS, some result pages can look a bit spammy. Add more trust factors, and try to repair spammy listings.
melc 15y ago
In addition to the 3 minimal actions I would also add, to use relevant keywords in each page's content. Often I notice clients creating content without actually using the keywords, by which they want the specific pages to be found. Also check the grammar, especially when creating multi-language content.

197 points by omarish 15y ago

tlack 15y ago

A bit off topic, but relevant to the suggestions in this post: a few of my friends are finding it more effective with Google to use a flat file structure rather than the highly nested folder trees that are usually recommended. Anyone have any thoughts/experience with this?

midas 15y ago
It really depends on how many pages you have. If you just have 10 pages off the domain (/signup, /login, /about, /jobs, /how-it-works, etc) then there's really no benefit of having a hierarchy. If you have > 1k pages, then a flat structure will confuse google/users and do a poor job spreading your site's link equity amongst your pages. Is that what you're asking?
AznHisoka 15y ago
I don't think the actual urls matter. In terms of site structure, I actually don't recommend having too many nested folders/directories if you don't have a lot of inner pages. I see a lot of sites with category and subcategory pages with just 5-10 links in each. Google won't crawl that deep if your site is new. and the deeper a page is, the less important Google deems it (based on flow of internal Pagerank).
jpzeni 15y ago
From my experience it all depends on the size of the site. If you have less than 200 pages on your site I'd recomment that you try and stick to no more than domain.com/folder/page whenever possible. But, one other thing I would strongly recommend is to never create extra or redundant folders unless they really add a lot of value to your site usability. And, never, ever, create empty folders ... it seems like a no-brainer but it happens a lot more frequently then you might think with people using them to force a specific heirarchy on their site or for the sake of stuffing keywords into their URLs or just because they think the final URL looks 'nicer' that way. Last thought on why flat is normally better, homepages are likely to accumulate more links than any other page on your site and often more links than the rest of the site combined. So the closer an interior page is to the homepage the more benefit it will derive from the inbound links pointing to the homepage.
jaredmck 15y ago
who recommends highly nested folder trees? i've not heard this and have certainly seen it hurt sites. all things equal, flatter is better. my rule of thumb is go as flat as you can while still having an organized, navigable URL structure.
- blauwbilgorgel 15y ago
  I sometimes recommend nested folder trees, but never deeper than 3 folders. 3 folders deep is enough for millions of pages. I like nested folders for a couple of reasons, some of which are: - Clarity. A good structure will instantly signal what the page will be about, before a user or searchbot follows that link. - Bolded keywords in URL in the SERPS. - Using pages to flow juice to categories. - Benefit of targetted anchor text, when using the URL for anchor text. Compare: big-ecommerce-site.com/yoga-pilatus/accessories/yoga-mat/ vs. big-ecommerce-site.com/yoga-mat/ And search queries like: "pilatus mat" or "yoga accessories". Which will work better for these queries? - Structure. Your URL's will reflect in your breadcrumbs, allowing users to navigate your site through URLs (By removing a folder and going to a higher level in the site). - Silo's. After the Panda update, and this is speculation on my part, Google might lower the imporance of "parts" of your website. Let's say only your blog is of very low quality. Google could discount /blog/ when you have nested folders. With a flat structure your removed "parts" or higher level categories from your site, and don't allow for this. Ofcourse there are benefits to going flat too. But nested folder trees are not neccessarily a bad thing.

kenny_r 15y ago

I have a small nit to pick in an otherwise great post: Codecademy is not the same as Code Academy. It's also noteworthy that codecademy.com ranks higher than codeacademy.org in the google search for "Code Academy". Well played indeed.

midas 15y ago
It's practically impossible to reverse engineer the SERP, but if you look at the Domain Authority for both codecademy.com and codecademy.org, you'll find that the former is orders of magnitude higher (65 vs 35). This might explain a lot. http://www.opensiteexplorer.org http://www.opensiteexplorer.org You can also lookup how many inbound links the sites have using different anchor text like "Code Academy".
AznHisoka 15y ago
I think Codecademy needs to get CodeAcademy.com as soon as they can.. otherwise they're gonna rely on mostly search traffic to get visitors since most ppl won't remember their url
- allbutlost 15y ago
  It seems that they do already - see http://www.codeacademy.com http://www.codeacademy.com

helipad 15y ago

The article mentions the beginner's SEO guide, but coming in at 2 pages, the Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet from SEOmoz is my go-to resource: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-sheet http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-shee...

rhizome 15y ago
I'm seeing only bad links to the PDF on that page.
- brador 15y ago
  Yep, same here. Google isn't helping either. Anyone want to upload the pdf for all?
  - fedd 15y ago
    seo pages can't be found by google. meta!
  - iodave 15y ago
    Try it again. I was just able to access the pdf.
dsrikanth 15y ago
http://seoeducation.in/pdfs/SEO_Web_Developer_Cheat_Sheet.pdf http://seoeducation.in/pdfs/SEO_Web_Developer_Cheat_Sheet.pd... - this should work
thematt 15y ago
Not arguing with the importance of some of those techniques, but just a word of caution that the document hasn't been updated since 2008.
kruipen 15y ago
The post is not intended to be a SEO guide. It is priceonomics's doing their SEO (getting inbound links, etc.). Not that there is anything wrong with that.

steele 15y ago

I first read this as Minimum Viable CEO and double face-palmed

paulovsk 15y ago
LOL

dsrikanth 15y ago

I have to agree that most people ignore SEO because of the lack of understanding. May be they are intimidated by the very word. The three steps mentioned in the article: URL, Navigation, Page title go a long way. This is were content management systems like WordPress really help as these three things are taken care by design. In addition to this, internal linking structure is important to. Again, a proper CMS makes it way easy to get a decent SEO going to begin with.

chocoheadfred 15y ago

It's not what you say, it's what people say about you. Kinda like a popularity contest in high school. If you are quarterback screwing the hot cheerleader, most people are looking/following you (whether they "like" you or not). So, get links. Lots of 'em. source: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors Yes, setting up your site based on broad or long tail terms is good foundation...but you can rank your site for words that aren't even on your site. Why do you think disney ranks for 'exit' and 'leave'? http://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/2011/04/14/the-evolution-of-google-rankings-rand-fishkin-at-the-searchmetrics-partner-meeting/ http://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/2011/04/14/the-evolution-of...

weeksie 15y ago

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills every time I read something about SEO. I keep expecting there to be more to it or that I'm missing something. Other than that, SEO is just making sure you have reasonably semantic markup and clean URLS. Isn't that just plain old best practice anyway? What am I missing? I swear there must be something!

WillyF 15y ago
You're definitely missing the incoming links part.
- weeksie 15y ago
  Ok, but what the hell does that have to do with building the site. Inbound links are obvious. Wow, really, is that all? And there are entire communities devoted to this? Seriously, I really want to know what I'm missing because I feel like I must be whiffing pretty hard here not to see it.
  - trevin 15y ago
    It's a lot more complicated than you are letting on. What you are saying is like saying architecture is just drawing diagrams or good journalism is just writing about stuff. Like many industries, there's an art to SEO and plenty of nuances far beyond clean coding and user friendly design.
    - InfinityX0 15y ago
      It's not easy getting links. More importantly, if you have a great product where everyone else has great products, the marginal benefit of having the best product with the most amount of authoritative links is huge, because the # of clicks that come from the top result over #2 is monumental. So even if you get thousands upon thousands of links, like those that rank for "cheap flights", it's the site that gets thousands and thousands +1 that will win the day, and make millions more on a long enough timeline.
    - 15y ago

pinchyfingers 15y ago

If you working on an Internet startup and you're not thinking about SEO from day one: you suck. Any decent marketing strategy is at least going to give a nod to SEO. Is your team is so consumed by your awesome product that you think it's more important than marketing and distribution? I really hope that isn't true of anyone here. If championing product over marketing and distribution does sound like your team, I have GOOD NEWS! — you'll be too busy jerking each other off to notice that you're not making any money.

mattgreenrocks 15y ago
There's no need to employ this tone; we're all adults here.

tibbon 15y ago

Don't do SEO. Do accessibility. Seriously, don't worry a single bit about SEO. Yet, if you make it so that your site's content, navigation and URLs are screen-reader friendly, then you've probably made a site that has solid SEO and is accessible to people with vision problems. Yet, just doing SEO doesn't make for a very accessible site all the time. Once this is done, make good content, be real and responsive humans to your customers and you're on your way to a good business model and website.

randfish 15y ago
I read this, and all I can see is: "Don't do marketing." "Just make a good product and people will find it." I think this is the downfall of many great products. The current startup world has an idealistic belief that better products always win and if you build something people want, they'll find it, when in fact, this has never been true. The "best" politicians consistently lose to those better at marketing and branding. The "best" ideas in organizations often fall to those trumpeted with more style or by those with more clout. Many great startups shut down because they couldn't find a repeatable, low-cost way to acquire customers (and SEO is exactly this). More here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/i-disagree-with-fred-marketing-is-for-companies-that-have-great-products http://www.seomoz.org/blog/i-disagree-with-fred-marketing-is... And here: http://hackersandfounders.tv/RDmt/rand-fishkin-inbound-marketing-for-startups/ http://hackersandfounders.tv/RDmt/rand-fishkin-inbound-marke...
- YourAnMoran 15y ago
  I believe parent was trying to express the sentiment that search engines inherently favor sites that are well-structured and present the relevant keywords in a format that is easily parsed by web crawlers.
- pinchyfingers 15y ago
  Totally agree with you Rand. My sentiment was down-voted for being too hostile, so I'm glad you're weighing in on this.
TomAnthony 15y ago

andrewnez 15y ago

Onsite SEO is essentially good web design and content strategy, any developer worth his salt will produce a site that already ticks all the boxes. All the work is in producing great, relevant content and then link building.

risource 15y ago

Great discussion, thanks. Now im off to the urology forum to ask about my sore elbow. Theyre all doctors, right? They all went to med school. A body part is a body part...skin and bones and theyre all connected anyway.

TomGullen 15y ago

We've spent a lot of time doing whitehat SEO on our website, and it's paying off (2x search traffic in 6 months). I really would recommend most startups spend a few days reading up on it from good quality sources. Nearly 40% of all our traffic comes from search so it makes sense to pay it some attention. It's not hard. What is hard is navigating your way through the crooks/spammers/quacks who will try every trick in the book to try and sell you something you don't need. Startups do not need to hire experts to do it for them. What they need to do is solve problems like they solve other problems, with no money. People who sell SEO usually: - Have the gift of the gab - Prey on peoples ignorance - Prey on peoples greed There are good SEO people out there, but they are rare. Also I struggle to imagine a situation where smart people just can't read up on it themselves and execute it themselves. As a startup you should be focusing on good quality content and sustainable growth. So play to your strengths and don't pay a lot of money for magic potions that offer short term benefits. Play the long term game. SEOMoz is a good place to start (their free blogs etc). Executing good technical SEO on your own website is pretty easy. Tibbon made a good point, 'dont do SEO do accessibility`. I'm not sure I'd go to that extreme, but it's a good way of looking at it. Google is your most disabled user, it can't see very well, it can't really understand things very well either. If you make your site highly accessible you're well on your way to good SEO.

ddemuth 15y ago
There's no question that whitehat SEO pays off. And referring to startups, you mention "I struggle to imagine a situation where smart people just can't read up on it themselves and execute it themselves." It has everything to do with your opening line: "We've spent a lot of time doing whitehat SEO on our website". It always comes down to TIME. If you're a new startup, you're trying to work on your business, not in it. Then you need to find someone who can help you with whitehat organic SEO. And as you mentioned, the hard part is navigating your way through the 'quacks'
- TomGullen 15y ago
  Most startups as far as I know don't have much money, but if they do have money then fair enough they can spend it on SEO if they think it would be beneficial. As you say though it's going to be hard to find someone decent and honest.

blauwbilgorgel 15y ago

I did a quick SEO analysis on priceonomics.com. Most of these tips fall into the 20% category. Maybe they can use some of these tips to perfect their SEO strategies. 1. Blog on a subdomain. Though sometimes easier for administration, subdomains might dilute your SEO efforts. Links to a subdomain don't count 100% as links to your main domain. A /blog/ could help with the generation of incoming links and addition of fresh content to the domain you want indexed a lot. 2. Employ Canonical www. redirects to non-www. Trailing slashes get added automatically. So far so good. But it is still easy to create duplicate URL's by adding random dynamic variables. Without Canonical an URL like /boats/?dupe=content will point to the same resource as /boats/. Here you might introduce a canonical problem. (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-y...) 3. Optimize your site for speed Though not that many search queries are affected by the site-speed algo, site speed remains very important for your visitors, and so indirectly for your SEO/marketing efforts. Google Site Speed plugin, Yslow or these guidelines (http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html) might help you fix some of these issues and gain a few seconds. Mostly loading javascript just before </body>, turning on caching, and compressing and combining resources. 4. Robots.txt vs meta robots /search is disallowed in robots.txt. If you disallow it on a page basis, with meta robots, you can specify: "noindex, follow". That way if people link to your search results, link juice will keep flowing through your site. 5. Breadcrumbs Add rich snippets mark-up. For product information and reviews, but an obvious contender is the breadcrumb. Link to your twitter (and future Google+ profile) with 'rel=me' to signify ownership of your graph. 6. Images Add an alt-attribute to the site logo. Specify the dimensions for faster rendering. 7. Don't critique ehow.com if you fill Google's index with 245.000+ automated results. Or put less bluntly: Write more unique content to introduce bigger categories. Add more relevant content to your listings (reviews, search/trend data, price watch). 8. Make clear if an item is "already sold". If I click on 10 entries and I get 10 times "item already sold" I start to doubt the usefulness of the application. I compare this to a job site, where the jobs are mostly filled: You happen upon such a site through Google, because Google still thinks these listings are relevant. 9. Quality The site is mostly void of trust factors. Due to some listings being in ALL-CAPS, some result pages can look a bit spammy. Add more trust factors, and try to repair spammy listings.

melc 15y ago

In addition to the 3 minimal actions I would also add, to use relevant keywords in each page's content. Often I notice clients creating content without actually using the keywords, by which they want the specific pages to be found. Also check the grammar, especially when creating multi-language content.