websense

Some of the better questions and answers that came up:

Is there a an SEO advantage for either .NET or php?

Short answer is no. They are both perfectly fine languages and can generate search friendly dynamic content as long as some simple guidelines are followed.

Mod Re-write, or Isapi Rewrite to keep URLs clean, and of course avoid the common mistakes like session id’s multiple URLs for the same content etc.

There was some mild debate on the panel, as Sage mentioned that in his experience, it has been easier to get Mod Re-write accomplished, thus giving php an advantage for him. Because of our development backgrounds, Colton and I have both had relative ease with both .Net and php.

A good question from an attendee: “I have millions of pages and only a small percentage are indexed. Should I use sub domains”?

All panelists seemed to agree that sub domains are not likely to solve the problem. There is likely another core issue, such as session id’s, duplicate content, query strings, etc., to look into first.

It should come down to the user. If there is reason to break it out into many sites, for the users sake, then do so. However, if it makes more sense to have all of the content under one domain for the user, then leave it that way and diagnose the real reason the site isn’t being fully indexed.

A member from the audience did make the point that with a site that large, it may simply be a matter of disc space. He had observed in his own industry, that sites with millions of pages just don’t get fully indexed due to limited resources of the engines.

Post Author: Jennifer Geh
Something we’re seeing in the SEO Industry is a lot of question and debate regarding how to charge for SEO. Since the industry itself is still in the early growth stages and determining how to set pricing, creating different pricing and package models etc. it can be exceedingly difficult for a site owner to compare and price SEO Services. Obviously, this makes budgeting for SEO equally difficult.

To my amazement many site owners and corporations will opt for huge PPC budgets in lieu of doing SEO simply because the process and the spend can be too confusing. PPC is usually pretty straight forward from a cost standpoint, or at least it seems so. In my opinion it’s a shame that a customer would rather spend more for less results (in the long run) simply because the industry has made pricing difficult to understand.

I don’t mean to be negative about PPC, it definitely has it’s place and purpose. However, when compared to Natural Search Engine Optimization, the long term impact isn’t as cost effective.

So, how do you budget for SEO:

Start by trying to answer the following questions before throwing a random number in a spreadsheet or your “SEO RFP“.

• Was your site professionally built? This can impact the amount of work an SEO/Development team will have to do to make it search friendly.
• Is it performing well/at all now? Do you know your current Search Engine Referral Rate? Are most of your search referrals using your name to find you or generic product/service phrases?
• Your Competition: Are they optimizing? Do they have professionally built sites?
• Your Market: Are they a savvy group? Heavy online users? This will give you and indication of how much business you might be missing out on by overlooking SEO.
• What are your expectations? Do you expect the web to contribute significantly to your sales?

If you start by answering these questions, you’ll begin to understand how important Search really is to you, what state your site is in now and whether or not you should budget a significant portion of your marketing budget to SEO.

At the end of the day, good SEO isn’t going to be cheap. It can cost anywhere from $10,000.00 per year for a small business to hundreds of thousands per year for a large business with a large site. So, in the budgeting process, it’s worth it to take your time, answer the questions above honestly and plan your budget accordingly. Your SEO budget shouldn’t be set by how much is left over in an IT budget, or Marketing budget. It should be determined by how much work there is to be done, and how important results are to your business.

For several years now, we’ve been operating on the philosophy that web development and search engine optimization are integrally linked. In other words, if done properly, they overlap each other significantly. Well, the SEO industry is finally becoming ready to hear that message. At SES San Jose, it seemed that the market was also looking for companies that can do both, in-house. In fact, we pitched a session called “Get it Together” at SES Chicago, and it got accepted.

Here’s the abstract from the SES site:

SEO & Development - Get It Together!
In this session you will learn why your Web development and marketing teams need to make nice. The audience will hear first-hand from a firm performing development and SEO under one roof. The discussion will include the client advantages/challenges presented.

At the end of the day, it seems like common sense to us. If you’re truly optimizing your site, you should be making significant changes to it, not just “putting keywords in the right places”. Why not have a professional web development team making those changes, rather than an “SEO Expert” who might just be uncomfortable with html, css and programming.

If you think about it; how can anyone take a “holistic approach” to website marketing, with out the ability to change more than text?

Sorry for the late post - this is a session review from the recent SES show in San Jose.

Successful Site Architecture:
Review by Josh Best, Sales Specialist, The Karcher Group

There were two speakers for this SES session: Derrick Wheeler from Acxiom Digital and Matt Bailey.

Both had solid information and were entertaining presenters. In my opinion, a key element of a good session is the presenter’s ability to keep the crowd involved and interested. In this regard, both Derrick and Matt did a good job. Derek seemed to provide the nuts and bolts of how to build a site with good architecture, while Matt focused on the legal implications and provided examples of sites that lack successful architecture.

Here are some of the keys points and observations from each:

Derek Wheeler:

To have a successful site, you must have these 4 things to offer your users / search engines:

• proper site architecture
• quality content
• a unique web site
• a user friendly web site

An acronym to help you remember the process of your site within the search engines and your users: C.I.R.T.A.

• Crawl
• Index
• Rank
• Traffic
• Action

It’s better to have short, to the point URLS than it is to have longer, keyword stuffed URLS
Some things to avoid or watch out for:

• Robots.txt
• Search engine crawlers don’t accept cookies
• Sessions IDs can cause a problem with search engines. This is due to duplicate pages and URLs being created
• Javascript

As I mentioned before, I thought Matt’s presentation was more focused on showing examples of sites with good/not-so-good site architecture. Some of the examples used were the Target corporation website and the Prince Tennis website, among others.

Matt Bailey

• Web site submissions are a thing of the past
• Useful tools available to all are the Google Guidelines and the Accessibility Checklist through www.wc3.com
• If you require a mouse action as your first step to accessing your site information, a search engine crawler will not be able to get into your site to index your pages
• Pay attention to alt text. It can save you from many usability issues

I hope this brief overview shares some helpful insights and tips that were passed along @ SES San Jose.

Yes I do in fact cave easily

I know I said in my previous blog about Development Requests For Proposals that doing an SEO RFP was something to be avoided at all costs (to the point that ramming a pen directly into your kneecap to get out of it would be a viable option), but of course this just guarantees that at some point your job is going to require you to do it. In order to spare you any unnecessary Bic-related patella injuries, we have gone ahead and put together a sample SEO RFP that is available for download at our site.

Please note that this Search Engine Optimization request for proposal is even more dependant on you, the client, providing information than its Web development counterpart. SEO strategies and Internet marketing campaigns are tailored specifically to your market, your target site users and what kind of communication medium you use your Web site for. Of course, your competition also needs to be evaluated and considered. So an SEO firm getting a firm enough grip on all of this through an SEO RFP is highly unlikely.

As with the development RFP, just download the SEO RFP template, change the fonts and page background to fit your company’s branding and then start sending out the pain to us, the sad response-preparers. We have also included a TKG-Branded version to give you an idea of how to brand it to your company - which doubles as a not-so-subtle reminder to, of course, remember to hit us with one when it comes time to distribute your finished SEO Request for Proposal!

Our hope is that this will at least get you asking the right questions. Hopefully if you do go through this process, you’ll still take the time to personally interview, and get to know the team you’ll be hiring.