How to Waste Money on SEO Search Engine Journal

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Mar 07 2011
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How to Waste Money on SEO

Build SEO into Your Website, Don't Slap It on Later
A problem we encounter regularly is the firm that builds a beautiful website - and then, weeks or months later, decides it wants to do SEO. Ugh. SEO is not website window dressing. It's not something you can slap-on after the fact and expect to make your website hum like a well oiled, lead generating machine. Here are five common examples of how well intended, small and midsize firms fall into a money pit by failing to consider SEO up front, before their websites are under construction.
1. Using SEO Unfriendly URLs
With many out-of-the-box content management systems you run the risk of creating SEO unfriendly URLs. A very common and simple example to consider is WordPress. With a basic installation, the default permalink structure in WordPress is structured to look something like:
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]
A URL structure like that does nothing to tell search engines what the page is about. You're missing out on the opportunity to include keywords in the URL. Instead, configure your URL structures to work in a more SEO-friendly manner . For example:
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]
There are two ways companies can get in trouble with URLs: first, by creating poor ones to begin with; second, by not using best SEO practices when attempting to fix them.
2. Going CMS-less
Content management systems are an SEO's best friend. A good CMS allows companies to directly add new content, set up and manage meta information, and control many other aspects of site architecture that are critical to SEO performance. In this day and age , when CMS packages are flying off the shelf, it's hard to understand why a firm would do websites the old fashioned way - by relying on an outside developer to execute (basic) onsite SEO activities. Problems with the traditional approach include: The outside developer may have no clue about SEO
Site changes take forever to make
Site changes are headaches to manage because they seldom get done properly the first time around
Because of the cost, time and frustration, what usually happens is, the firm just stops updating its site. Is tweaking the anchor text to include new keywords worth $ 75? Are blog posts worth $ 50 a pop to upload and publish? The CMS-less firm boxes itself into a corner: either pay through the nose for SEO or skip SEO and wind up with a lovely site that nobody sees. I rarely see firms find a comfortable middle ground. The daily grind of going through a third-party to make routine SEO changes is too much to bear.
3. Patching Keywords into Un-optimized Content
Writing optimized site content requires a great deal of skill. You can't just plaster keywords over existing, un-optimized content and expect it to make any sense to a human being. Properly optimized content - ie, content that impresses search engines and humans - must be woven into the fabric of every page.
If a firm decides to get serious about SEO after the fact, a complete content overhaul is frequently the best, if not only, option. However, firms are repelled by the idea of spending several thousand dollars for content development when the invoice from the website project is still warm: besides the cost, which is significant, the web dev team risks appearing foolish. Upshot: the firm lives with mediocre or completely ineffective content until the next development project rolls around three or four years down the road. In the meantime, its competitors grab all the search traffic.
The proper path for SEO content is simple: Do the keyword research, connect appropriate primary and secondary phrases to each page of the site, and then and only then start writing.
4. Using Plug-In E-Commerce Sites
In some industries, a firm can plug itself into a canned e-commerce site and instantly get in the game. The cost of this approach is ridiculously low compared to developing a custom e-commerce site internally. Here's what firms don ' t realize: the chances of the plug-and-play approach succeeding are also ridiculously low. Why? Because this type of site promises to make you virtually invisible to Google.
SEO problem number one: The content on the plug-and-pay site is identical to that of every other plug-and-play site. Since Google is looking for original content, it will ignore each and every page you have.
SEO problem number two: The canned sites do not allow subscribers to make significant (or any) changes to content or meta information that would render pages unique. In other words, you are locked into an e-commerce program that is guaranteed to be forever worthless from an SEO point of view.
There is a solution to the problem: starting over and developing the site the right way. Unfortunately, this is the last thing a firm wants to hear unless the site is already old and / or its lack of performance is clearly, painfully evident. Even then, firms will try every other marketing option under the sun before facing the financial music and launching a proper e-commerce web development project.
5. Building with Wobbly Site Architecture
Firms should consider site architecture and navigation from an SEO perspective before developing a website. Products and services need to be grouped together in a hierarchy that makes sense to search engines (and people, for that matter). If Google is unable to see how deep site pages are connected, it will not crawl the site thoroughly, rendering crucially important product and service pages virtually invisible for search.
Obviously, this can be a devastating problem, and one that can only be fixed through major website design and development changes. When we take on a web development project, our SEO team spends a lot of time working on the site map, and we will not move to the next phase until the site map meets all SEO requirements. Reason being,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], ongoing SEO efforts need a strong foundation to be successful. Site architecture is that foundation.
Why do firms fall into these traps? Let me count the ways.
Not understanding the value of SEO
Not understanding SEO
Having a DIY mentality and getting in over their heads
Relying on a web development firm that doesn't understand SEO
Relying on an SEO firm that doesn't understand web development
Relying on an SEO firm that doesn't understand SEO
Budget constraints and unrealistic project timelines
Not having a marketing plan in place to support the new website
Very few lead generation and e-commerce websites can afford to underperform on Google. That's why, sooner or later, sites get serious about SEO. It's just that later is a lot more expensive than sooner.

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