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Search engine optimization as an industry has
grown in leaps and bounds in the last 10 years.
Starting first as people building websites for
themselves and others discovered the power of
meta tags and words on the page, SEO has evolved
to become an important part of the internet marketing
industry.
Todd
Malicoat of StuntDubl.com
will share his perspective on SEO as someone involved
as a client, a do-it-yourselfer and as a consultant.
He will address the benefits and pitfalls of each.
Recorded Live
October 27, 2006
The Consumer Perspective on SEO
Many people jump right in and build or have someone build a website for them. They figure the next logical step is marketing and in the traditional world, they would be correct. However, in the search marketing world and specifically when it comes to search engine optimization, there are many things that need to be taken into consideration before even starting the build of a website.
Do-it-Yourself SEO
Perhaps your budget doesn't allow for outsourcing search engine optimization but you still want to do what you can to rank for your keywords in the search engines. Or at the very least you would like some visibility in the directories. I mean, how hard can it be, right?
Becoming a SEO Consultant
People become consultants for many reasons. Perhaps they were doing it themselves for their own website and started helping others. Or perhaps they were drawn to the industry because they were ready for a new challenge in their life. People choose career paths for all sorts of reasons and today Todd will share some of his own and tell us what it's like to be a consultant.
Is There a Future for SEO?
A couple of years ago people were predicting that SEO would soon be a thing of the past. Were they wrong or just off base a bit?
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Todd Malicoat Summary
An independent internet marketing consultant
and the founder of StuntDubl.com, Todd Malicoat
chats with eMarketing Talk Show hosts Cindy Turrietta
and Todd Sarouhan about SEO from all sides of
the fence i.e. from a client’s perspective,
a do-it-yourself perspective as well as from the
perspective of an SEO consultant.
Involved in SEO and Internet marketing since
2001, Todd Malicoat began his career creating
websites in 1997. A former Internet Marketing
Consultant at System And Market Services of America
(SAMSA), he has in the past has managed projects
as well as the Internet marketing of a number
of businesses, ranging from small firms to large
corporations. With the SEO Industry growing in
leaps and bounds over the last decade, Todd Malicoat
in this show shares his views on Search Engine
Optimization and its different perspectives.
According to Malicoat before you hire an SEO,
be it a consultant or an agency, it is important
for people to ask certain important questions.
When searching for a consultant or company, one
of the best ways is to go and search for an online
listing. This will help you see what other companies
are doing as well as find references.
On his preference of working with an SEO consultant
or an SEO agency, Todd says it mainly depends
on your needs. “Often smaller companies
just need a push in the right direction.”
In this case a consultant is probably a good start.
But it also depends on what your needs are and
the in-house resources at your disposal i.e. what
you have to work with.
When asked if a consultant or agency should depend
on the size of the company or website, Todd says
that is should depend on your needs. If your need
is to do Pay Per Click, SEO and shopping feeds
along with a complete redesign or everything all
at once almost, then its good to use an agency
because they will tie it all together. But if
you just want to know more about SEO and perhaps
only do PPC then consultants are probably a good
avenue.
Advocating the need for an SEO specialist to
be involved from the onset of a project Todd Malicoat
feels that the process side of creating a website
is in reality project management. It’s making
sure that “all the T’s are crossed
and all the I’s are dotted” and from
this perspective there are a number of ways that
you can create a website. There are different
ways to set up your webs server, as well as different
ways you can design your site for usability. It’s
all these little things that play a big role in
SEO.
On the subject of DIY or Do-It-Yourself SEO,
Malicoat says “SEO is definitely not rocket
science and I think sometimes it just gets pitched
that way because it’s easy to do so and
it seems overwhelming from the onset.” One
of the main keys of understanding SEO is learning
who to listen to and who to learn from. “The
difficult part is that you have to be constantly
learning.” Figuring out where to learn from
is also very hard, because if you listen to the
wrong people or if you learn from the wrong places
then you can get sites banned, or worse you might
never rank at all.
On his SEO philosophy Todd Malicoat says that
he thinks of all things business and online marketing
related as SEO. His advice to people who want
to learn more about SEO is to read the ‘Search
Engine Ranking Factors’ on Rand Fishkin’s
website SEOmoz.com. Reading this a couple of times,
according to Malicoat, explains 95% of the SEO
process.
Of the best blogs to learn SEO, his favorites
are Rand Fishkin’s SEOmoz.com and Aaron
Wall’s SEObook.com, where one can find other
blog listings as well as quality information.
The main reason for this, Malicoat says, is that
these sites don’t have any bias and they
are not trying to pitch people
In the third segment of the program, Todd talks
about becoming an SEO Consultant and encourages
people to get into internet marketing. He feels
that an in-house job is a great place to start
learning as you have fewer responsibilities.
When asked if he thought the industry had reached
it saturation point, Todd thinks that there is
still a lot of room, even in-house positions are
in huge demand. For him the biggest responsibility
of an SEO consultant is “finding a way for
the return to be there for your customers.”
According to Todd, the future of SEO is bright
with older processes fading away and giving rise
to newer techniques. For him, things such as Meta
tags, Meta descriptions, and Meta keywords are
now less and less important along with Alt Tags
as well. What is needed now are newer ways of
improving SEO.
“In the end it’s all about the user.
Reaching actual users is much more important than
getting off topic users.” According to Malicoat,
SEO is now all about encouraging people to vary
their anchor text and as well as use their keywords
and anchor text when people are linking to them.
With websites getting harder and harder to rank,
it’s going to be more worthwhile to be ranked
in the first top 10 sites.
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