Web site optimization is one of those things that tends to turn into something that everybody talks about it just because it’s cool. I’ve recently read an article in the newsletter from wordtraker.com about an interview with Peter Kent, the author of Search Engine Optimization For Dummies, taken by Rachelle Money, in which he presents he’s fears about the industry of SEO and web site optimization becoming a mean for cons to take the money from people that don’t know too much about web site development and designing a SEO strategy based on onpage optimization and offpage optimization, keywords, links and good content based on those keywords.
Al thou it’s not an easy thing to accept what Mr Kent said that 80% of the industry are cons we have to take into consideration that maybe it’s true. It’s hard to dig this , for me at least, because on my small company I offer web design services and SEO services (by the way : Peter Kent said : “…never let a web designer to optimize your web site”) and I have to admit that sometime I get trapped into the process of designing the web site so hard that I don’t pay enough attention to the web site optimization. Usually I try to create the site as clean as possible from a design stand of point. Then I add the content which is provided by the client and I try to adept it as much as I can to match a few keywords and at the end I revisit the metatags of keywords and description based on what I putt into those pages.
Sometimes it tends to get difficult to concentrate super well on the job simply because as a small company I get small contracts that usually are paid with 300 euros (and that includes all the taxes so I don’t get too much of this). What catch my attention for some time now are these SEO techniques that could do wonders for an unknown web site.
What I mean is that web site optimization services, if applied properly, can really bust up your web site in SERP’s even if you don’t have too much content. But from my experience even an optimized web site if it’s not updated as time goes by can lose in position in the search engines results.
In conclusion I think that an onpage optimization is a must for every web site. Every web designer that offers web site optimization services should at least fill the metatags with the correct keywords and the correct description and fill all the alt tags for images and the description and use the title tag correctly but not abusing it. He can optimize your first articles or web pages in what means keyword distribution but the rest it’s up to the client. What I mean by that is for example here in Romania peoples majority don’t have a culture of what really is the internet and how to use it to bust up the business. Usually people that have web sites don’t update them for months even years and after a while call you and ask you : “ why I am not in the first position on Google ? “ . For me the answer is clear but they don’t want to add content themselves and they don’t want to pay for me to add content to their site every week for example. So I think that not all the stories that are heard are completely true : sometimes the client doesn’t respects the advices.
I had a potential client once, that I didn’t accept to develop his site, because when I tried to tell him about optimization and how we should build the site for search engines he told me : “I’m not interested in that; I don’t care if my web site is not found on Google. I just wanna have a site and that’s is”. The reason I turned it down is because I knew that after I make the web site in a few months I’ll have that client phone me and ask me : “why I am not on the first position on Google ?”. Some people they just don’t want to listen to you unless their business or lives would depend of it.