Michael Taylor – Owner of Taylortown SEO
When a client contacts me for SEO; they usually have an under-performing website. By under-performing; I mean a website which does not rank well enough in the search engines to generate new potential customers. Google does not like it for some reason.
In most cases, the problems are obvious. The website is technically deficient in many ways. Basically not good enough to rank on the first page. And if I can tell this in less than thirty seconds, you can bet the family farm Google knows the deficiencies as well.
By deficiencies, I mean a myriad of problems both intended or unintended. Some problems are based on the software used to build the site. You could spend a lot of money on SEO but your (pick one) GoDaddy Tonight, Yahoo Sitebuilder, WIX, Homestead or Intuit website will never rank well. I understand that you’re emotionally invested in your GoDaddy site and you did a really great job; but it’s really time to redesign your website on a Google-friendly platform like WordPress. The reason is how the code on sitebuilder programs is constructed. Nothing you really did incorrectly except choose the wrong platform.
By deficiencies, I mean: missing meta titles, poor organization, poorly chosen keywords, flash, slow loading times, dead links, shallow content, spider crawl errors or other common problems. What about your visitor? If your site visitor finds your website confusing to navigate, Google will also.
The SEO industry has been turned on it’s head with Panda and Penguin algorithm updates and filters for off-page backlinking schemes,. Many online businesses who should have known better have buried long term websites with established domains, because they were infected with web-spam backlinks. The safest and “best bang for your buck” strategy is now to improve your website on-page to be as useful and informative as it can be. It’s like a beauty contest now and the best website wins the prize.
News Flash – The best website wins the ranking prize.
This is why I now spend 70% of my SEO efforts on your website. I look for all those technical flaws that might limit your site’s potential. We offer an SEO optimization study which outlines the major and minor flaws that need to be corrected for a healthy, optimized site. In some cases, I recommend a redesign; most often on WordPress.
Why WordPress? Well, I just love WordPress for it’s aesthetics and ease of updating. But just don’t take my word for it. Listen to Matt Cutts who is a Google quality engineer speaking at a WordCamp in San Francisco.
My advice for business owners is to tackle your deficiencies with your website before even thinking about off-page backlinks or other voodoo black-magic you’ve read about. The SEO short-cuts now lead you down the road to disappointment. And finally, never underestimate Google’s ability to make an informed quality judgement of your website. They don’t employ gazillions of Stanford PhD’s to perfect their ranking algorithm for no reason.
Be the best you can be and have the best website possible. Tell the world that you are the expert in your field in a coherent manner and show it on your page. Be a writer and an enthusistic promoter. Let us know if we can help.
