Opinion of Sitepoint's Search Engine Marketing Kit?

[jbernat]

Has anyone purchased Sitepoint's Search Engine Marketing Kit?

I have encountered little information on how to run a successful SEO business in my travels. There is an abundance of information on what to do to perform the SEO work, but I have not had much luck finding a good proven model for activities such as scoping a project, pricing services (or is everything by the hour? :)) and strategies such as how to optimize a client's site without having to know how to program every server-side web technology known to man... or dealing with their rigid content management system, or reprogramming a storefront that is not well-suited to search engines, or... lets just say that lots of questions have come to mind that are of a strategy nature rather than the work itself.

I thought the chapter on the topic of running an SEO business, plus the companion CD ROM might have some of the answers I was looking for. I am curious to know if anyone has experience with the kit, or knows of similar resources that they would recommend.

Thanks,
Jim

[Connie]

jbernat, personally I would not purchase anything from Sitepoint. I delete their e-mails without reading them.

Not sure how I got on their mailing list. That's JMO. Others may have a different opinion.

[stoptime]

I have just finished reading it, and found it very informative and detailed. He really goes into depth about how search engines work, and why it matters knowing such things. What I found especially helpful was the process overview - he divides everything up into phases, with as much detail as you want to know. He doesn't ignore technical issues either, with web server configurations, databases, dynamic pages, etc. His PPC chapter was very helpful as well. I also appreciated his ethical stance on SEO issues.

The CD is OK - a few handy documents, but that's it really.

The only thing I was left wanting more of is how to run your SEO Business. While there's a chapter dedicated to this, I still wanted more.

As for dealing with shopping carts, CMS's and server side issues, there's some detail there. But it's more of a "look out for this" or "the CMS should be doing this" type of thing then a how-to for fixing existing issues on a programming level. As a developer, I found it informative - especially various header issues with the server.

Anyways, as a web developer adding this service onto my business, I loved the book. I actually just had a meeting about SEO and PPC with an existing client yesterday, and thanks to this book and a bunch of preparation on my part, I knocked their socks off.

Cheers!

[ihelpyou]

Welcome! :hi:

I find it strange to be promoting some kit out there. And now a new member registers to do the same? hmmm.

I'm not sure how some book can help things much if you are 'new' to SEO. Pricing and ALL else depends on the individual site you are looking at. Different strokes for different folks. One size does not fit all at all.

You are a developer that all the sudden is offering seo services? What you need to know is that SEO starts with the actual design of the website. No book is going to help you how to build a website both search engine friendly and visitor friendly the first time.

[stoptime]

So I'm a sitepoint fan - so what? I came here looking for information, saw a post about a book I just read, and posted my opinion for the chap, and received a very mixed welcome message because of it.

I think it makes perfect sense for a web developer to add this service on. The material I read about optimization makes perfect sense to me, and I was already doing much of what the book talked about in my current projects. But with the new info I learned, it's taking me to the next level. It's certainly not the only good source of such information on the web, just the latest one I read.

Cheers.

[JohnC]

Originally posted by stoptime
I think it makes perfect sense for a web developer to add this service on. I think what is trying to be said here is that SEO is not an Add On service, its an integral part of the web development process.

It sounds like you are well on the way to begin with, but if you think of it as separate from your web development skills you will not progress as much as you could. :)

Cheers and Welcome !

[Quadrille]

And the perennial book problem - it's already out of date, almost by definition.

I find it strange that no-one would pay more than $10 for a slim paperback at the corner shop - but ephemeral 'Internet Books' - often 100 page ebooks with zero printing costs - are promoted at $100+

Where SEO and the Internet is concerned, finding a forum where you feel comfortable takes a small time investment, and will give up-to-date information indefinitely. For free.

And you can move up to more specialized forums as your skills and interests develop. Not rocket science, but, sadly, worth repeating occasionally. ;)

[jbernat]

Thank you for all of your responses. It is much appreciated.

I am gathering that web development should not be considered separate from SEO. Does this mean that if a prospect has a large corporate web site powered by a CMS or has a large eCommerce store with lots of business rules embedded you would take on the job like a combination "custom software development" and "SEO" project?

Or would you take more of a consulting role for the internal technical staff?

When a prospect calls requesting a proposal, do you get a copy of their site, and install it in a development environment to evaluate complexity in changing the system, or to determine of the technology is even within your skillset?

Since I cannot know all server side technologies, and coming up to speed on the internals of a specific business system might be cost prohibitive, I was wondering if there were some other strategies for scoping and pricing a job (something more structured than a T&M agreement.)

I guess I am looking for strategies on defining scope and identifying/limiting risk on jobs which can be in the range of easy to support (from a technical/programming perspective) to infeasible due to system complexity, technical skills required, etc.

I also see SEO websites out there that quote a fixed rate for a certain number of pages or some other fixed metric. The problem is that a static HTML site is much different than trying to optimize an unfriendly eCommerce application or unfriendly CMS. Is it reasonable to expect to have any sort of a price list?

Forgive my ramblings, but these are the types of issues that prompt me to look for proven strategies as a starting point.

Thanks again,
Jim

[Quadrille]

I'd be very suspicious of anyone offering a fixed price package for SEO services; so much depends on the size of the site, the required functionality, the technologies that'll be needed, and the competition in that area of the web.

The point of the discussion above can be neatly summarized as SEO = DESIGN = SEO; so the price will vary significantly depending on the design and rebuild requirements of the site - and that will depend on the age, current success and SEO attributes of the existing site.

And there are 762 other items that will inform a useful quote.

SEO that is not individualized to the site's needs is very largely a waste of money; there's no short cut to a good service.

[g1smd]

>> Does this mean that if a prospect has a large corporate web site powered by a CMS or has a large eCommerce store with lots of business rules embedded you would take on the job like a combination "custom software development" and "SEO" project? <<

Since the SEO is a part of the design, then yes the two are linked. You cannot "bolt on" the SEO afterwards.



Some concrete examples:

Every page should have a unique <title> and meta description that reflects what is on that page. The database entry for each page of content will therefore need two extra fields: one for the title, and the other for the meta description.

That is a very simple example, but very few sites have actually bothered to do that - and they could do much better if that feature had been designed in.



Another example:

URLs with query strings should present all of the parameters in the same order in every link on every page of the site. I have found some sites that present the items in a different order on different pages, and that makes the search engine see duplicate content: more than one URL that serves the same content.



Yet another example:

There is one site that I use a lot, that has "print friendly" pages without extra navigation or adverts. Many of those pages are indexed (yet more duplicate content!) and when you go to one of those pages directly from a search engine result, the page displays and my printer starts up ready to print the page. I find that very disconcerting. The URLs that have the &pf=1 parameter in them should be adding <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> in the <head> section to keep them all out of the search engine indexes. I already wrote to the site several times, but they have no clue as to what I am talking about.



This is a much more complex example:

Many forums have a link from each post to the "next oldest post" and "next newest post". Those links are responsible for hundreds of millions of badly indexed forum postings.

Say that this post is /showthread.php?threadid=20248. Say that the next oldest post (at this time) is /showthread.php?threadid=20200 (and the next one, one older than that is /showthread.php?threadid=20100) and that the next newest post (from here) is /showthread.php/threadid=20300.

Now see that, from here (20248) I get to access the next oldest post by using /showthread.php?threadid=20248&goto=nextoldest and the next newest post by using /showthread.php?threadid=20248&goto=nextnewest..

Already you can see a problem. Each post has three ways to access it. See that the page shown at
/showthread.php?threadid=20200 can also be got to by way of /showthread.php?threadid=20100&goto=nextnewest and by way of /showthread.php?threadid=20248&goto=nextoldest.

But that isn't the only problem, there is more. If any of those threads has an additional post made at any time in the future then the content of the page that the &goto=nextoldest and &goto=nextnewest links point to will then be a completely different thread. Every time the bot comes back the page content will have completely changed again. If I bookmark a thread, or follow such a link from a search engine result page, then I will end up on completely the wrong page, and with no hope of finding the correct thread either.

This is a typical sort of design issue that has a major effect on SEO, indexing, and ranking. This stuff has to be thought about at the design stage. Once the script is coded it might already be too late to get fundemental stuff like that fixed. In this case the fix is simply to "detect" when the &goto= parameter is in the URL and force a 301 redirect to the canonical "true" thread number with no other parameters). So, /showthread.php?threadid=20100&goto=nextnewest would need to be redirected (301 redirect) to the new URL of /showthread.php?threadid=20200 (without any parameters at all) with the actual thread number dynamically calculated at access time, every time.


Many CMS and forum scripts present multiple duplicate content, and unstable URLs. Their performance could be drastically improved.

There are many many other examples that I see every day on the web.

[ihelpyou]

Very nice posts!

And jbernat; Nice post by you as well. You are getting the hang of it in that this process 'some' out there call "SEO" will 'not' be in the form it's currently in for too much longer. There are "many" SEO's "ONLY" out there that give quotes no matter what the actual site is or what problems the site may have. That's simply crazy stuff. As Q said, there are soooo many problems a site can have that giving a fixed price based on number of pages or some other dumbF way of pricing is only screwing the client. g1 gave some "great" examples of just a few of the problems with websites out there.
Is it reasonable to expect to have any sort of a price list?
No way. My firm has the bottom line price for a site that does not need a redesign, etc, but that price ain't cheap either. :) Anything else that needs to be done including a redesign from scratch only goes up from that bottom line price.

[Blue]

Originally posted by g1smd
... You cannot "bolt on" the SEO afterwards. ... Got to be one of the best ways I've heard this put!!! :cheers: