This week I was preparing my slide deck for a webinar I’m presenting on Tuesday for my friends over at Lurn. The webinar is titled “Ten Best Practices for Writing Headlines, Descriptions and Meta Data That Get Traffic”. The preparation for this webinar reminded me of wrapping paper and my ultimate love for Christmas. Yes you read that correctly, in my mind I think of titles and meta as wrapping paper.

Here is why. Line up two presents of equal size and cost. One is wrapped in a brown paper bag (earth day was this week so let’s recycle) and the other is wrapped in beautiful shiny paper with perfect corners and exquisite ribbon to match. Which one do you want to open? Unless you have mental issues, you’re going for the one I wrapped. That would be the pretty one. Blog entries and website pages are the same. Visitors and search engines lunge at the page or post that is wrapped perfectly. This means well-written content that is accompanied by a fabulous title, concise meta description, and relevant keywords (if you are targeting search engines other than Google). These three elements are the teasers that make you want more. Just like the perfectly wrapped present.

Unfortunately, blogger and “wanna be” webmasters are a dime a dozen these days and everyone thinks they are the next great publisher of content on the Internet. They are not. I am thankful the folks over at Lurn feel the same as I do and they are trying desperately to education these up and coming Internet moguls with some good old fashion SEO expertise. Once you get past Lurn’s glitzy landing pages, you’ll see they have great content on SEO and Internet marketing. So much so that I wish they’d been around seven years ago when I entered into the world of SEO and website design. This isn’t a push for Lurn, it is an education. I 100% believe they provide great content for the SEO newbie. Below is a list of best practices I’ll be discussing Tuesday. Lurn believes in these just as I do, which is why I believe in Lurn.

Ten Best Practices for Writing Headlines, Descriptions and Meta Data That Get Traffic

1. Write an eye-catching, well-written headline
2. Use your headline, descriptions, and tags to gain traction
3. Use your keywords in the title
4. Build keywords into your alt tags
5. Include headlines and descriptions that will resonate with those readers
6. Include information you want your visitors to see when they see your link in search engines
7. Watch your character limit
8. Don’t overdo it
9. Utilize the H1 tag so it helps both the reader and the search engine
10. Pick the right header for the job

So my SEO friends, I will leave you with this thought. When crafting your next blog entry or web page, ask yourself this – is your wrapping job good enough to give to your mother (aka Google)? If you aren’t pleased to attach your name to it, rewrap it and make sure the presentation is as good as the page content itself.

I’ve talked to a lot of prospects and clients who have ongoing pay per click campaigns. When I say ongoing, I mean they’ve been spending hundreds to thousands of dollars per month for years. They’ve been doing it for so long, it is part of their annual marketing budget and they cannot envision a world without PPC. I believe the pay per click campaign hype is an enabler for avoiding SEO.

Here is my stance on pay per click – I’ll manage it for you and optimize it to your heart’s content, but I’m also going to do whatever I can to detox you from your addiction to PPC. I believe in organic search engine optimization. I’ve made it truly work for companies and I believe in the power it has for energizing a company’s web presence. As an SEO consultant, if I’m doing my job, you won’t need PPC. Or at least you’ll need very little of it. If you have good content that is related to your product and service offering, you will receive traffic. If you cannot produce enough good content to drive traffic, you’ll probably also struggle keeping visitors once they reach your website via PPC activity.

So now what? How do I drag you out of the black hole of PPC? As much as I’d like to do so, I don’t do it kicking and screaming. I help you build solid content and present it in a way Google and other search engines will like and reward. Once your organic traffic is up, we cancel your PPC keywords one by one until you no longer need them. While I don’t whip you into a PPC rehab program, I do try my best to manage your withdrawal symptoms with good old fashion organic traffic.

Back in my early days of SEO (search engine optimization) I was overwhelmed by the over abundance of SEO information on the Internet. I didn’t know whom to believe and I definitely didn’t know who was really credible. After all, SEO consultants tend to be compared to lawyers and used car salesmen. There are a lot of consultants that claim to be SEO gurus, but when it boils down to it, they are not.

Once you know what good SEO is, bad SEO is like a neon sign. It just jumps out at you and almost bites your nose off. That was the thought I had this week. It was nonstop bolded words, repeated words without benefit, or hidden tiny text at the bottom of the website that was there for search engine spiders. Not only are search engines smarter than these tactics, these practices don’t work and they look horrible to visitors that actually do land on your website.

Good SEO just flows and it is designed around strong content. If you have strong content, you don’t need all the tricks that bad SEO consultants try and play. It doesn’t work and it is does much more harm than good.

If it looks like SEO, it’s bad SEO. If you employ an SEO consultant and you can “see” his or her work on your website, it’s bad SEO. Run and run quickly my friend.

“There is a sixth dimension, beyond that which is known to newbies. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, and it lies between the pit of newbies gullibility and the sunlight of their naiveté. This is the dimension of smoke and mirrors. It is a dimension known as SEO Scams and Newbies Realm of Gullibility.”

Okay, so I took a little poetic license with Mr. Serling’s classic narration. But I did it to make a point, and the point is, everyday thousands of naive and gullible newbies are targeted, and ripped-off by common SEO scams – mostly scams that have been around since the advent of the Internet. You may even have been a victim yourself.

The question is, why do these seemingly obvious scams continue to thrive year after year after year? My guess is, because most of the victims are newbies who have entered the newbies realm of gullibility.

Hopefully, this article will prevent other newbies from entering this undesirable realm, and being unnecessarily victimized. Anyway, following are some of the most common SEO scams:

1. E-Mail Solicitations

First of all, legitimate companies, SEO or otherwise don’t send out e-mail solicitations without permission. And unless you signed up to receive e-mail solicitations from a particular company, delete all spam immediately. Don’t open it, and don’t send these scam artists your hard-earned money!

I always delete all spam – except when I’m doing research for articles like this one. On those occasions, I find opening e-mail spam extremely useful, because I can pass on what I learn to my readers.

Anyway, if you’ve registered a new domain recently, you’ve probably been solicited by SEO scam artists, looking to steal your hard-earned money. See if any of these e-mail solicitations look familiar:

“I just looked at your website and we can help you get better search engine placement.”

I had to laugh when I received this solicitation, because I had just registered a new domain, and hadn’t even built my website yet. The only thing I had up was a generic “This website is coming soon” placeholder. Obviously, there was no way they could have looked at my website.

Here’s another e-mail solicitation I received recently:

“We have performed a free analysis of your website, and we can help you get better search engine placement”.

Again, how could they have performed an analysis of a website I haven’t even built yet? Answer: They couldn’t.

Here’s another one:

“I was just browsing your website, and realized that despite having a good design, your site was not ranking on any of the search engines for most of the keywords pertaining to your domain.”

Despite having a good design? It’s a freakin’ generic placeholder you scamming idiots!

This next e-mail solicitation I received doesn’t even bother wasting time with false pretenses. It goes right for the jugular (i.e. your wallet) immediately:

“Website Listing Service”

Annual Website Search Engine Listing.

From Nov. 1, 2009 thru Nov. 1 2010

Amount Due: $65

At first glance, this solicitation appears to be a bill for some sort of “annual website search engine listing.” But if you scroll down like I did and read the fine print at the bottom of the letter, you’ll see this:

“This is not a bill. This is a solicitation. You are under no obligation to pay the amount stated above unless you accept this offer.”

I can’t emphasize this point enough: Legitimate SEO companies don’t send out e-mail solicitations without permission. And unless you signed up to receive e-mail solicitations from a particular company, delete all spam immediately. Don’t open it, and don’t send these scam artists your hard-earned money!

2. “We’ll Submit Your Website to 2500 Search Engines “

First of all, there aren’t 2500 search engines out there – at least not 2500 that actually matter. There are really only three search engines that matter.

The three search engines are:

• Google
• Yahoo
• Bing (Formerly MSN Live)

And the reason they’re the only three that matter is because they’re the only ones that can send you any significant traffic. And that’s not my opinion, that’s a fact!

According to The Nielson Company, 66.1% of searchers in this country use Google. 16.6% use Yahoo! and 8.8% use Bing (formerly Microsoft Live).

The point is, since there are really only three search engines that can send you any significant traffic, paying anyone to submit your website to 2500 search engines is really a waste of time and money. The three aforementioned search engines will eventually find your website on their own.

However, if you want to submit to them you can easily do so yourself. There’s no need to pay anyone to do it for you.

3. “Achieve Top 10 Search Engine Rankings Guaranteed!”

No legitimate SEO company will guarantee you a top 10 search engine ranking. Why? Because they can’t. A website’s ranking is determined by a variety of factors within a search engine’s algorithms. SEO companies have zero control over the constantly evolving algorithms of search engines.

And since SEO companies don’t have any control over those algorithms, it only stands to reason that they can’t legitimately guarantee you a top 10 ranking, right?

Now it is possible for you to get a top 10 ranking for certain long-tail keyword phrases that are less popular – keywords that aren’t heavily searched?

Yes, that’s very possible. But again, no one can guarantee you a top 10 ranking for those types of keywords either.

And even if you do manage to get into the top 10 for certain keywords, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to stay there. Because the search engines are constantly changing their algorithms to thwart cheaters.

For example, you can be on page one today and just as easily be on page one hundred tomorrow. It can happen just that quickly. Don’t believe me? Do some research on Google’s infamous Florida Update.

4. “Generate 10,000 to 1,000,000 Visitors to your Website Guaranteed!”

This SEO scam is called a Guaranteed Traffic Program. And yes, you’ll receive plenty of traffic, but they won’t hang around on your website for any length of time, and they won’t buy anything.

Why? Because the traffic is poor quality. It’s garbage. It isn’t targeted. In fact, in many cases, it’s not even humans that actually visit your site through these programs.

I discovered first-hand that when you purchase guaranteed traffic credits, it’s actually bots clicking through to your site, and then immediately clicking out. While doing research for this article, I actually tested a guaranteed traffic program.

And the numbers don’t lie. When I checked my raw data logs, I discovered that all of those thousands of visitors I received only stayed on my site for about five seconds. Don’t waste your money with guaranteed traffic programs.

5. Avoid SEO Contracts That Hold You Hostage

This particular SEO scam struck close to home recently, when my sister became a victim. Here’s how it works: Unethical SEO companies coerce you into signing a contract that commits you to using their service for 12 months or more. My sister got reeled in, because they told her that they needed to optimize her website’s coding every month to keep up with the search engines algorithm changes.

Can you believe that? What a load of bull crap! Anyway, she didn’t know any better, so she entered the newbies realm of gullibility, and signed a 12 month contract.

Unfortunately, when she finally got around to telling me about it, since she had already signed the contract, there really wasn’t anything that I could do to extricate her from the situation. And since her SEO contract is also tied into her hosting, they’re holding a huge hammer over her head.

In addition to that, they have all kinds of penalty clauses built in, in the event she tries to terminate her contract early. The good news is, next time, she’ll check with her big brother first, before she signs anything.

In fairness to legitimate SEO companies, I want to make something perfectly clear. Not every SEO company that has you sign a contract is unethical. And there are legitimate reasons for contracts.

For example, if you are implementing a link-building program, that obviously has to be monitored over time. Or perhaps your SEO company is managing your pay-per-click program. Again, this is something that has to be monitored over time.

That being said, caveat emptor! Personally, I have a problem with even legitimate SEO companies holding people hostage with long-term contracts.

Seriously, what do they need to hold you hostage for anyway? Now I don’t have a problem with a month-to-month contract. That way, if you’re not happy with the results you’re getting after a month or two, you can simply walk away without penalty.

So there you have it. The most common SEO scams rampant on the Internet today. Hopefully, you’ll heed the advice in this article, and walk away from these schemes, whenever they rear their ugly heads.

But should you choose to ignore the advice in this article, you can’t say that you weren’t warned!

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

State of the Index

Ms. Moskwa then points to the FAQ section of the forum that states PageRank is one of Google’s 200 plus criteria for performance, but that it is only updated a few times a year so it should not be a focus of SEO consultants.  The FAQ continues with a suggestion of focusing on Google Analytics and a website’s actual performance.

So PageRank is not fully dead, just not nearly as important as solid and unique page content.  In the end is this news at all?  Didn’t we already know content was king?

What does this mean? For some SEO consultants, it means meta keywords can be completely ignored. I consider this the lazy approach. For me, this means I will take note and simply not place as much weight on meta keywords as I did in prior search engine optimization projects. Why? While Google does not use meta keywords in their primary search results, other search engines still do. Yes Google holds the most market share, but it does not hold the entire search market so SEO consultants cannot ignore the fact that keywords are still relevant.

What disappoints me most is the reason for this change. Matt specifically stated that Google assumed this policy because spammers continue to try and capitalize on competitors’ brands by stuffing unrelated keywords into their meta tags. As a SEO consultant who loves the search marketing industry, this saddens me.

Regardless, Google and Matt Cutts continue to win my heart as they collectively come out with additional insight on their algorithm and specific instructions for webmasters and SEO consultants to follow. This transparency makes me believe their tolerance level for illegal and blackhat SEO tactics will grow weaker in the coming days. Google is making every effort to guide Internet marketers in developing quality websites which rank well in their organic search. Take note fellow consultants, as I truly believe the ramifications of blackhat practices will be both swift and deep.

9. He knows SEO and is informative.

8. He knows SEO, is informative, and entertaining all at the same time.

7. He is a geek.

6. He is a geek and was an Internet geek way before it was cool.

5. He is a geek, was an Internet geek way before it was cool, and manages to make money while pursing his passion.

4. He loves cats.

3. He loves cats and lets his cats work with him.

2. He loves cats, lets his cats work with him, and proudly displays this to the world.

1. He makes me look normal.

Ugly or Just Confusing?

Some may question if a given URL can be ugly, but to Google and other search engines, a URL can be as ugly as the shirt your grandmother gave you on Christmas. More importantly, designing a website with friendly URL’s is key to making a website easy for search engine spiders to read and index. They are also important to the actual website visitor, because the pages are easily remembered and shared.

Here is a classic example of SEF versus Ugly URL’s:

UGLY = www.web-savvy-marketing.com/cgi-bin/gen.pl?id=871&view=basic

SEF = www.web-savvy-marketing.com/internet-marketing/search-engine-optimization-seo/

The first URL provides little information. The second URL tells the search engine spider and visitor that the page “Search Engine Optimization” is indeed about search engine optimization and that it is a subset of the category “Internet Marketing”. Visitors and search engine spiders like to see clearly defined pages and easy to follow website structures. Such use of SEF URL’s help both a physical person and a virtual process digest the information conveyed by the website’s designers.

Flipping the SEF Switch

There is a time and a place for “flipping the switch” on SEF URL’s. Typically a new site or a complete website redesign will utilize the ugly URL’s until right before launch of the new website. This will allow the website development process to change dynamically without the need of creating the SEF URL’s or worrying about the URL’s changing as the project migrates through the build process. Good website designers will stress this caution, because large scale websites can dramatically change as the design and build process unfolds. Once the build is complete and the site is ready to launch, the migration to SEF URL’s is fast and relatively painless in mainstream open source CMS packages like Joomla or WordPress.

A quality and experienced SEO consultant will write solid content that is useful to website visitors as well as search engine friendly. There is no reason to select one or the other, because both objectives can live in harmony with each other.

A bad SEO consultant will spend all of their time writing and optimizing websites for search engine spiders and forget completely about actual website visitors. Optimizing in this manner will result in one of two outcomes, with both scenarios being detrimental to a website promotion campaign. The first outcome will be that these tactics work and search engines drive increased traffic to the website, yet actual people become frustrated upon arrival and leave to find a more user friendly source of information. The second outcome is even worse. In this scenario the search engines notice the poor behavior and remove your website from search engine results completely. Neither outcome will produce increased sales of your products or services.

Regardless of the potential outcome, a reputable SEO consultant will write content and optimize website pages designed to please the user and not the search engines. If you hire an Internet marketing consultant and you are leery about their tactics, run away as fast as you can.

When discussing Internet marketing, organic means natural. It refers to the process of driving website traffic (aka people) to your domain (aka www dot something dot com) through the natural optimization of your website’s content (aka words). It refers to the process of writing solid content and bringing visitors to read it based on the matching of their search terms and your actual content.

If that is the case, then what does nonorganic mean? Nonorganic refers to the process of PPC (aka pay per click) advertising. It refers to the process of paying for higher placement on a search engine to artificially attract traffic (aka people) to your domain (aka www dot something dot com). For my friend, the farmer, this would be related to fertilizer.

As the farmer plants and tends to his crops, so must the webmaster plant and tend to his website. The process of planting or tending a website is internet marketing, search engine optimization, and other related activities. I’d love a great comparison in here for farming and blogging, but it hasn’t come to me yet. Check back later because it just might appear for a later blog entry.