Our SEO Experience – Search Engine Optimisation or Obsession?

The world of SEO is a rapidly expanding one.  As more and more businesses use the Internet as a major source of income, competition for the top slots in organic search engines results becomes increasingly vital.  

At Wampit HQ, the more we look into SEO/SEM as a tool to help launch our business across the likes of Google, Yahoo and Bing etc, our days and nights have become longer, and our eyesight has become much…much shorter.   

In our quest for search engine positioning perfection we have discovered (rather ironically) that although we wanted a home page that was as simple, uncluttered, and as clean as Google’s, we have since been advised by every SEO company we have contacted that Google’s algorithms do not actually like home pages that are as simple, uncluttered and as clean as theirs.  In fact, it is starting to seem that the only business that can have an extremely simple home page, and still get to the top of Google’s search results is………wait for it…………….Google

The importance of search engine positioning should not be undervalued, or the complexity underestimated, and the sheer volume of SEO companies now available on the Internet reflects this.

Even large businesses with their own in-house SEO teams have to continuously invest time and money in this area to ensure they continue to rank highly across their relevant areas.  It does make you wonder who’s helping the smaller businesses that make up the lifeblood of the UK understand this dark art.

There seems to be algorithms for everything in the world of SEO, a casing point was when we received an initial SEO report on our website, and one of the sections was dedicated to the “readability” of our pages.  The report summarised its findings with the statement:

“On average your website text requires approximately 11.6 years of formal education to read.”

How do they know that?  What if you were “informally” educated at home by your mum who was an ex-teacher that won “Teacher of the Year” 10 years running?

Apparently it is based on an algorithm developed by Rudolf Flesch called the “Flesch–Kincaid readability test” and it goes a little something like this;

Ruldolf Flesch Algorithm

 

 

 

If that doesn’t impress you, what about if I told you that this algorithm is used in conjunction with another algorithm called the “Gunning – Fog index” which goes like this;

Gunning Fog Index

At Wampit HQ we decided that the readibility issue was one that we were willing to let slide for the time being, and would like to officially apologise to all 3 – 10 year olds that are having difficulty navigating our site – we are working on it!

So what do you do if you are a small businesses looking to engage an SEO company?  It is still early days for us, however based on our experiences; here are my top 5 tips to consider when thinking about employing an SEO business.

1 – Take your time and do your research.  There seems to be more “SEO Specialists” available on the internet than there are cars on the road, and call me cynical but they can’t all be good…can they?

2 – Don’t offshore your SEO – just my opinion, however this is one area where you need to make sure your SEO consultant understands your target market, your competition, and your geographical needs.

3 – Don’t go for the cheapest.  There are a lot of completely automated tools that SEO businesses use, some very effectively and others (I would imagine) not so.  I would be wary of those offering impossibly cheap SEO reports, as you may find you get nothing more than an automated report that has little to no human intervention/research.

4 – Be wary of companies offering a gazillion back links a month, and submission to hundreds and thousands of search engines/directories.  There is a very good chance that you will be submitted and linked to completely irrelevant (to your business) sites, with low ranking scores across the major search engines.  This could be detrimental to your SEO and actually reduce your positioning rather than improve it.

5 – AVOID any SEO business that suggests any unethical or “Black Hat” optimisation techniques.  Search engines, particularly Google appear to be well aware to these techniques, and if your site uses them and is caught, you could be completely blocked from appearing in that search engines listings.

Good luck with your search for an ethical, competent and not too expensive SEO consultancy, and please drop me a line if you find one!

Tags: seo company

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Misc Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.