SEO Help for my website

Details: Thursday, 14 April 2011 19:34; Hits: 1120

“SEO help for my website” is one of the most common subject lines in the emails I get through this site. Most of the messages I get also seem to have been written by webmasters in despair who believe that optimization is so tricky that the only way to actually get their websites to perform properly is to have a major SEO company do some really expensive work for them or (even) to take over the running of their website which in itself is both a pricey and an iffy proposition.

SEO is not like that, not any more. Provided you have a little time to devote each day and some patience, coupled with a little bit of knowledge, you can successfully optimize your website yourself.

The ability to DIY on the web has been a trend which has been active since its inception. Websites were the first to experience it with many of them becoming an automated, almost, process with a few online clicks.

SEO is the next one to follow, though in terms of time and effort it is not quite so easy. So to the question of whether you can successfully optimize your website yourself the answer is a resounding ‘Yes’.

The ingredients are:

•Knowledge

•Time

•Patience

•Perseverance

Add together, stir and then (for good measure) shake well and wait.

Update: 10.04.12 - Since this post was written the Google Panda update changed many of the peripheral metrics in the way websites were assessed and has introduced the need for content which is of higher quality. These days, the sites which succeed in terms of ranking are exactly the ones which have been focusing on quality and steady, organic growth, all along.

While the 'game' of SEO, so to speak, has changed, this page has continued to rank on the first page of Google for the search term 'SEO Help for my Website' which is indicative of the fact that the advice is still sound and also reflective, still, of the cry of anguish of webmasters torn between the need to work in their business and the need to do SEO and market their business.

It helps to think of SEO as a cumulative gain. Provided you do it well on your website it will deliver traffic on a cumulative basis for many years to come.

Update 01.05.12: Following the Google Penguin update designed to aggressively fight webspam a number of pages have changed ranking in the Google Index, some webapsm has dropped off and some legitimate pages have also disappeared. Interestingly enough, I noticed a drop in ranking on this page from the first page of Google (where admittedly it was questionable whether it really deserved to be there in terms of real value) to the second. My guess is that Google will be refining their Penguin update in the months to come and some pages will be recalibrated.

In the meantime if you have experienced a drop in rankings which is significant and you have seen organic traffic drop off, now's the time to take advantage of the Google Penguin Update SEO Health Check and work to get your website back to the rankings it deserves.