What does TWW think of this? DIY? Pay someone? Is it a scam?

I have, and continue to google it but not taking advantage of a resource like tww is as dumb as not googling in the first place.

I need to get a website set up for my parents business. I have no issue setting it up, designing, publishing etc, but this is new territory.

What experiences do you guys have with it?

2/5/2010 10:22:49 PM

Its probably going to depend on who you ask. Personally, I wouldn't pay anyone to do it for me. You can get a lot of benefit from just using some tutorials. If you pay some consultant 1000s of dollars to do a bunch of "optimization" it could easily be nullified as the major search engines tweak their algorithms. Of the few SEO consultants I've seen, it seems most were doing shady stuff reminiscent of the BMW/Google debacle a few years back.... http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-02-04-n60.html.

[Edited on February 5, 2010 at 11:19 PM. Reason : .]

2/5/2010 11:19:12 PM

step 1: span

2/6/2010 2:23:05 AM

^ span?

2/6/2010 8:34:43 AM

soloseo.com

use their free trial to learn about different things you can do, run some reports, etc.

That will get you started, and then you can do the rest yourself ...

It really is all about

1. keyword density - make your page titles, headings, content full of the keywords related to your product (and popular search terms related to your product).

2. Links - find partner sites that you can either pay to link to you, or exchange links with them. Also, get your site in the major web directories.

Definitely do it yourself at first.

2/6/2010 8:42:49 AM

Awesome thanks for the tips and links!

2/6/2010 12:28:51 PM

Quote :

" find partner sites that you can either pay to link to you, or exchange links with them"

see http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-links-and-pagerank/ and http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/ to read about why this is a risky practice

[Edited on February 6, 2010 at 2:25 PM. Reason : if you want to advertise on other sites, go for it. trying to game pagerank is lame though]

2/6/2010 2:07:59 PM

seo is a scam. If you have to fill your site with bullshit to make people visit it, theres probably no reason for them to go there in the frist place.

2/6/2010 2:10:28 PM

^yeah i have heard that a lot too.

Still there must be a middle ground that makes your legit website as friendly to search engines as possible without being disingenuous.

The resources in this thread have been a huge help. Thanks all again.

2/6/2010 4:08:34 PM