Q and A: How well have we optimized our site?

Dear Kalena...

Last year I took both your SEO101 and SEO201 courses. They were very informative and I really appreciate your putting them out there for us. Shortly after completing the course we did a complete overhaul on our website and implemented many of the lessons learned from your class. I'd like to continue to improve my rankings on search engines and I'd like to begin by targeting my product pages. Can you have a look at them and give me some pointers, please.

Thank you
Jonathan

Kalena's Answer:

Hi Jonathan, nice to hear from you!

I've taken a quick look at your site and to be quite blunt, I don't see much evidence of our lessons in your SEO implementation. Maybe your web designer has changed things since you sent me this, but looking at the site today, quite a few things worry me:

1) Where are your optimized Title attributes and META tags? There was a whole lesson dedicated to this in SEO101. I can't find them on ANY page. This is mission critical.

2) Where are the search friendly URLs you learned were so important in SEO201? For example, This URL doesn't tell users or search engines anything about the page content.

3) Where's the 250 words of optimized text on each product page?

4) Is there really a need to use session ids? As stated in our lesson notes, Google has stated in the past that they don't index URLs that use session ids.

5) Your home page text seems optimized for a very narrow selection of keywords or the keyword density seems too low. For example I can only find one instance of the word "flower".

I could go on but you get the gist. May I suggest going over your course notes again, particularly Lessons 5 and 6 of SEO101.


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Q and A: How do I start a SEO business?

Dear Kalena...

I want to ask how do I start a SEO business? I've got some knowledge and background as I'm going through some training about SEO and would like to know more about it. Do you have any advice? I'm currently in Indonesia and I'm Chinese.

Proson

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Proson

Assuming you already have good SEO skills and experience, you shouldn't have any problem setting up on your own. Start off by becoming a freelancer, bidding for projects and doing SEO jobs wherever you can find them. Read my posts about SEO /SEM jobs for more information on setting out on your own. I also recommend reading my article 11 Reasons Why You Should Consider a Job in Search Engine Marketing.

If you think you need more SEO training, you might want to consider taking one of the Search Engine Optimization training courses we offer at Search Engine College. Our Advanced SEO course even has a bonus chapter on starting your own SEO business.

If you'd like to consider alternative training options, my article SEM Industry Training: What are the Options? should point you in the right direction.


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Q and A: Should we outsource SEO or take it in-house?

Dear Kalena...

Our company is looking into doing SEO for all of our publication and trade show websites. They feel that we need to outsource because a consultant did it for their company, versus keeping the knowledge in-house (either hiring or training staff).

Do you feel that if writers are trained to write for the web and a staff member is adequately trained, we need to outsource? We have about 45 websites.

Thank you
Gabrielle

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Gabrielle

The decision of whether to outsource SEO or manage it in-house is a difficult one. There is no "right way" because the requirements of each business are so different. But the job of optimizing 45 web sites is a large one and I doubt you could manage this effectively in-house without hiring several specialist SEO staff.

If the company you work for has used outside SEO consultants in the past, you need to discuss how well that relationship worked for them and whether it was cost-effective. Were the desired results achieved? Was it value for money? Could in-house staff have achieved the same results for less cost?

Unless a company is willing to hire a dedicated staff member to look after search engine optimization for their site/s, or send their existing staff for fast-track SEO training, my inclination is to recommend outsourcing, for the following reasons:

1) SEO has a steep learning curve and it could take your in-house staff many months and/or years to learn the ropes. Outsourcing it to professionals will save a lot of time (and therefore money).

2) A little bit of SEO knowledge can be a dangerous thing - the person/s optimizing your sites need to know *exactly* what the consequences are of the code changes they are making, or else they could end up doing your site more harm than good.

3) Successful SEO requires very specific knowledge and experience gained from years of trial and error optimizing web sites. It is unlikely your in-house staff have this knowledge and so you will likely get much better results by outsourcing to professionals.

4) Optimizing web sites is not your core business. Your staff should be focused on the core business of your company. Also, staff members assigned a new task of SEO are unlikely to dedicate themselves fully to the task if they have other responsibilities as well.

In my opinion, the best balance could be achieved by outsourcing a percentage of the work (e.g. the optimization of 5 web sites) to a professional SEO firm with a solid reputation and have them work closely with your in-house copywriting team to ensure the optimized web sites accurately reflect your business without compromising search engine compatibility.

If the arrangement works well, you can outsource optimization of the remaining web sites or bring it in-house if you feel that would serve you better. Best of luck!


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Number of SEO and PPC jobs has increased by 200 percent

According to this graph on Indeed.com, the number of SEO and PPC related jobs advertised has increased by 200 percent since January 2007. That's right 200 percent.

Indeed.com searches thousands of job sites and the trends graph linked above shows an increase in the number of jobs posted on those sites since 2005 using the search terms SEO and PPC. The massive spike since January this year tells the story. Demand for people with search engine marketing skills is massive!

So there are no more excuses. If you want to get trained up quickly and take advantage of the huge demand and tasty paychecks currently being offered to those with the skills, you should consider taking SEO, SEM or PPC Certification from Search Engine College.

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Search Engine College Reaches Global Milestone

We had a little celebration in the Search Engine College office this afternoon. Why? Well today we enrolled a student from Singapore, which takes our global reach to 30 countries. Yep, we now have students in 30 countries around the world. A real milestone!

We're very proud of the fact that anyone in the world can learn search engine marketing with us, provided they have access to a computer and an Internet connection. Here's to expanding our reach to another 30 countries!


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Q and A: Why haven't I profited from my site?

Dear Kalena...

This is Parthiban from India. I have a site which is relating to home based business and about personal loans, because I'm working in a private finance company.

My question is why I haven't I profited from my site, even though I have a Google Adsense account? I get very few visitors to my site. Please tell me how to increase my site's traffic and how to add meta tags to my site. What is search engine optimization? How do I add my site to get listed in Google's search engine? Please guide me to get some income from this site.

Thanking you
Parthiban

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Parthiban

I've had a look at your site and I'm not surprised it hasn't made you any money. Let me take your questions one by one:

1) Why I haven't I profited from my site, even though I have a Google Adsense account?

Because you don't take the site seriously. For starters, your site is hosted on a free hosting service and doesn't even have it's own domain. Next problem is that it's covered in ads. I can't see the content at all because it's totally buried in AdSense units and referral links. Visitors aren't going to try to find your content amongst all those ads.

2) Please tell me how to increase my site's traffic and how to add meta tags to my site.

Get your own domain. Search engines won't take the site seriously until you do. Clean up the site and put some real useful content on there. Delete 80 percent of those ad units, they are putting people off. Build links from sites in your industry. Write articles. Start a blog. Download this free SEO lesson. It will teach you how to develop title and meta tags from scratch.

3) What is search engine optimization?

How long is a piece of string? Why is the sky blue? All these questions have endless answers. Best if you take our SEO 101 course to learn the answers for yourself.

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Q and A: Can you give advice to an SEO Beginner?

Dear Kalena...

I am glad to know you as one of the SEO Consultants, I am SEO beginner and want to learn more tips on seo.

I want you to suggest, comment or whatever advice to improve my learnings in SEO, please see my website www.webdesignervisayas.tk and please comment and suggest.

Cartujano

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Cartujano

In terms of learning SEO, there are almost unlimited resources. You can read articles, blogs, forums, e-books and sites about the subject and here is a good starting point for those. You should also practise and tweak your skills as much as possible on as many web sites as you can.

If you are interested in training options, you can take a course such as those we offer at Search Engine College. David Temple has authored a very detailed article about the various Search Marketing Training options available which will be appearing in the next issue of Search Marketing Standard magazine, so make sure you catch that.

With regards to your site, I'm sorry but I don't provide free site assessments. These are available via my hourly consulting rates (contact me for more details). What I will say is that any site that has a META refresh embedded in the home page and a pop-up ad on the redirect page is more than likely going to send a big red flag to search engines.

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Cre8asiteforums Educational Scholarship Fund Selects Search Engine College

I'm thrilled to announce that Search Engine College has been chosen by members of Cre8asiteforums to be one of the five recipients of the first Cre8asiteforums Educational Scholarship Fund.

Cre8asite members were asked to take part in a poll over the past month to vote for the training institution they would most like to see allocated $400 US of forums revenue in order to cover search engine marketing tuition for a deserved forums member. Search Engine College came in as 3rd most popular training provider behind SEMPO and FreshEgg Internships.

It is my great pleasure to announce that the recipient of Search Engine College training for this educational scholarship is Elizabeth Able from Olympia in Washington. Elizabeth is a long-time crea8asiteforum member (nickname = ablereach) and is interested in accessibility, data analysis, seo and just about anything in between.

Congratulations Elizabeth and I hope you enjoy whichever Search Engine Marketing course you choose to take from our curriculum.

But that's not all folks! We were so impressed with the educational vision that Cre8asiteforums have come up with that we've decided to match their scholarship fund dollar for dollar so that two people can participate in our programs. So stay tuned for the second lucky scholarship winner.

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Q and A: How do I start a career as a Search Engine Marketer?

Dear Kalena...

Hi, I am interested in starting a career as a Search Engine Marketer but honestly do not know where to begin. I currently have an online store hosted with ecrater.com, but I am looking to supplement that income. I am looking for a suggestion as to how to start the new endeavor. Any help would be appreciated.

Carolyn

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Carolyn

I can only assume you are writing to me after reading my article 11 Reasons Why You Should Consider a Job in Search Engine Marketing? Apart from the tips contained in the article, I have the following suggestions:

• Scan the Search Engine College Employment Forum and these SEO/SEM job sites to see what employers are looking for in an employee and try to match your skills to the demand.
  
  
• Consider taking an industry-recognized formal certification course in SEO/SEM such as the Certification Pathways we offer at Search Engine College.
  
  
• Join Elance.com to freelance your services and bid on projects you are interested in to supplement your income.
  
  
• Practice your skills on as many guinea pig sites as possible.
  
  
• Join a few busy webmaster forums and observe and participate in discussions regarding the search industry. This really helps keep you up to date with methodologies used by the experts and the problems faced by general webmasters. I recommend cre8asite forums and high rankings.
  
  
• Read everything you can get your hands on relating to search engine marketing. This includes blogs, sites, newsfeeds, magazines, articles and newsletters.
  
  
• Create a business plan, even if you are setting up a part time freelancing business. It helps you get organized and focus on where you want to be in 5 years.
  

Good Luck!

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Q and A: Do you offer any kind of online SEO course?

Dear Kalena...

Hi. I recently visited your blog. i wanted to ask you if you offer any kind of online SEO Course.

Sami

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Sami

Yes, at Search Engine College, we offer a wide range of Online SEO and SEM courses. In fact, most people find our main SEC site before finding this blog! Nice to see someone bucking the trend.