SEO: Keep it In-house or Outsource?

What will YOU do? If you wish to add some more zero’s at the end of your profit by marketing your business through Internet, would you set up a whole new SEO section or you would outsource the job?

Surprisingly I had the opportunity to work under both the systems. Both have their own set of advantages and limitations. My previous post On an attempt to classify Content Writing, I partially touched this topic. With In-house SEO, people get more time to master the subject. But people working in SEO companies need to handle a number of websites all the time; so they hardly get time for excelling a single domain.

This temporary deficiency of domain knowledge sometimes affects the quality of work. A writer who has been creating web content only for a Credit Repair website for 2 years obviously knows more about the topic than the writer who writes on various topics everyday which may or may not include Credit Repair. The same is true for Link Builders, Bloggers and Social Media Marketers. (I will contradict this paragraph very soon; stay tuned!)

Then why do the SEO firms exist? There are advantages of Outsourcing too! Most of the SEO companies have their own networks; network of blogs, websites, bookmarking sites and all. These networks are kept for their clients. Some SEO firms may own good web directories. If you assign your link building task to them, you get good one way links from those places easily.

If you target 100 links per month, you can appoint 4 different SEO companies to do link exchange on your behalf. This way you not only make use of various networks of websites and blogs, but you avoid leaving any link building pattern that Search Engines can blame you for!

Technorati Tags: SEO, SEM

Wright or Rong – Google knows

From the conversation I had with WebProWorld members, it seems that KEYWORDS Meta Tag has lost its past glory! Most of the members agreed to the fact that Search Engines are not paying much attention to KEYWORDS Meta Tag and some of the posters commented that they have stopped using Meta Keywords for their websites!

"I am also concerned that every search engine or other search application can index and rank my sites properly. I do not do SEO only for the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. I try to satisfy all of them! Major and minor."
– by Webnauts

Sounds to be a good advice. Webnauts uses Meta Keywords; if it is not going to help, then it's not going to harm you too!

• Keyword in URL
• Keyword in Title
• Keyword in Meta Description

– these three are most relevant according to today’s SEO workers. Logical enough. These three factors appear in the SERP and Search Engines highlight the keywords if they are found in these three parts of a web page. So better Description and better Title could help you rank higher. If your site URL does not contain your main keyword, don’t worry much. Work a bit on content and try to get some good back links or even internal links with the targeted keywords.

However, I will be using Meta Keywords for all my projects. You never know what Google has for you in its store!


Technorati Tags: Blog, Internet Marketing, Internet, Online Marketing, SEO

SEO Mantra

When Sumantra asked me "Do I need to know basics of SEO so that I can design more search-engine friendly templates?" I kept quiet for some time. I was thinking about Aji’s post – SEO a curse for Content Writers. But, as I think that people involved with Web Development should know basics of SEO, my answer to Sumantra was "Yes".

Here is what I told to him:

Since Search Engines are nothing but artificially intelligent software programs, they cannot sense if a design is good or bad. But, as a Designer you should read the pages from Search Engines’ perspective.

Suppose your site has a good, really good content. Now, while designing the site you place the navigation panel at the left hand side. What will happen now? Search Engines, while crawling the site will read the content of the panel (that may contain product list, site navigation, sponsored ads, AdSense and all) first and then go to the main content. So your main keywords are pushed down if they are not there in the panel.

Now, some SEO checklist makers believe that early appearance of keywords in the page makes positive result. And you are losing it there!

I showed Sumantra some Tools that output how Search Engines read the text of a page. Needless to say that Sumantra was happy with it.

Do you think I should say something more to him? Feel free post your feedback.

Technorati Tags: SEO, SEM, Search Engine Optimization, Web Design