Part 4 : More on SEO, plus rules for writing on the Web

Companies offering search engine positioning services seem to vary from scam operators through to true professionals like yourselves. What should a potential client be looking for when considering which company to hire?
Jill: I would imagine that the most important thing to look for would be proven results. To check for this I would ask the following questions:

• Can they show you up to date reports of where their client's sites are currently ranking? (Be sure to actually go to the engines themselves and check to see if the rankings on the report are fairly accurate.)
• Are they ranking high for keywords that people might actually use, or are they company names and other obscure words that no one is searching for?
• Are they ranking high in only 1 or 2 engines for only 1 or 2 key phrases, or do they have a good, across-the-board representation among all major engines with many different search terms?
• What methods does the company employ for getting high rankings and do the search engines approve of these?
• Will they give you email addresses or phone numbers of satisfied clients so that you can get references?
• Do they have monthly fees or one up-front fee?

Although the idea of paying only for actual rankings is appealing, this often means that you'll have to pay for those rankings for as long as you want to keep them. Once you stop paying, you no longer have them. (They do this by putting special pages on THEIR server as opposed to yours.) It may be more cost effective in the long run for you to pay one fee up front which gets you high rankings that are yours to keep for the long-haul.

Heather: I would definitely avoid any seo firm who makes claims like, "We guarantee to get you a #1 ranking for any keywords you want." Or, a firm that promises you high rankings in a matter of days. Like any marketing investment, it takes patience to get the results you want. If a firm is promising a "quick fix" and instant results, run away fast.

Thinking more now of the writing side of things - is it possible to simply transfer offline writing skills to the web, or does the online environment mean new rules for writing?
Heather: I think the basic fundamentals of Web writing are similar to print. Write for your audience. Deliver strong benefit statements. Create copy that's fun to read with a powerful call-to-action. However, writing for the Web is mechanically different. Unlike brochure writing, for instance, where you figure people start at the beginning of your brochure and read sequentially, Web readers use hyperlinks to bounce from Web page to Web page. If you force the reader to read your copy a certain way, you'll lose them.

If you write for the Web, you have to make sure that each page makes sense and stands on its own. People can enter your site on any page (the equivalent of reading a brochure starting at page 10,) so it's important to constantly stress your benefits and always have call-to-action links for more information.

Usability issues are important, too. If you force your reader to scroll 1,000 words before they can find your contact information, you're missing the boat. Reading off a computer screen is hard work - and research shows that Web readers skim copy - they don't read it line for line as they would a print brochure. So, the trick is to create copy that's long enough to explain your benefits without overwhelming your reader (and there are certain tricks that make that happen.) Jakob Nielsen from UseIt is my usability guru - and I highly recommend people surf his site for the latest and greatest usability studies.

Jill: Regarding people finding your site from any page and not necessarily the main home page...(this doesn't really have anything to do with the question, but Heather's answer made me think of it). When we optimize a site, ideally EVERY page should be optimized. This means that if everything goes as planned people will most definitely be finding you from some of your inner pages. Each page becomes its own "doorway" to the site. This is often very hard for some clients to understand. Too many people are wrapped up on having their main page be the be-all end-all of their site and forget about the rest of the pages. So just as you have to write the page as if it's the first page they'll see, you also have to optimize it the same way and get over any weird feelings about that.

Continued...