Classic shows : 203. Why your blog fails

This week on boagworld: the secret of successful blogging, will Google personalisation affect your sites ranking and how to help users too busy to read.

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Posted on: Friday, March 12, 2010

Podcast: Download (Duration: 46:58 — 32.3MB)

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This week in web design

This week: Giving and receiving design feedback, are you bored of your sites design, CSS typography and helping users when they are too busy to read.

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The secret of a successful company blog

Increasingly organisations are publishing a blog. They are perceived as a powerful marketing tool and a great way to engage with customers. However, the majority fail for one simple reason…

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Does Google personalised listings affect your sites ranking?

Google has added a number of tools that allow users to personalise the search results they see. The question is – does this affect how you approach SEO?

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In the trade these are known as calls to action. Feel free to take your pick!

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http://Nickpierson.com Nick Pierson

Wow Paul,

I really was surprised when I heard your view on SEO.. Statistically SEO is the #1 best ROI for most major businesses who make sure its DONE Right, and by the right person or team.

I admit , there are some in the field who can make a bad name for all of us, but I bet you cant name an industry or profession that doesn’t have those few bottom feeders.

I challenge you to allow me to present a alternative example with statistics behind it..

Also, when you help a client conform there website to standards, help guide them for the best keyword phrases they should use that are most relevent.. that IS NOT ” Manipulating” the Search Engines..

Its like helping a client list themselves in the proper sections of the yellow pages… (given, with much more complexity )

and lets face it, if you are not on the first 3 pages of results on Google for a search for x,y or z.. then your business basically doesn’t exist on the internet.

Your Avid Fan & SEO Specialist,

~Nick Pierson
http://Nickpierson.com Nick Pierson

Not to say that Paul needs any help with his website, you surpass us all with your success with this podcast.. However..

May I also suggest, that Boagworld could benefit greatly with an alternative approach to your Title Tags, a bit more longtail could help you with new visitors , e.g listeners.

When you see the increase in new visitors ( while keeping a low bounce rate) you will not doubt me on this one. dont take my word, or anyone else’s for that matter, Test it out and look at the qualitative results.

~Nick Pierson
Nickpierson.com

werther

Does having your senior class picture on your homepage benefit search engine rankings?

http://www.jailbreakcreative.com Aaron Mills

I would have to say that I agree with your perspective on SEO when it comes to ranking as number #1 vs #4 or #8… But I highly disagree with the concept that SEO is not a valuable service.

Take for instance small business websites that are selling local products. If you do not show up on page one of your local business results you may be losing business on a regular basis.

I would also note that getting incoming links is often very hard for new websites, thus getting on page one is very hard for a lot of people. I build many small business websites and also work with people trying to break into ecommerce. There is an ocean of poorly ranking ecommerce sites that will never have a chance at success because no one can find them. In this case SEO is often a better solution that pay per click.

SEO practices should be a normal part of every web designers process in developing and re-developing new sites. This does not mean that building a good site is all there is to SEO. I would challenge your perspective that SEO has no ROI as I personally know SEO experts that take on projects where they are only paid for their results based on a measured ROI.

I would also say that the smaller or newer the website is, the more it could benefit from SEO. SEO is not for every client. For instance using SEO to manage the reputation of a large university could be valuable, but probably is not needed to increase enrollment directly. Take then a small trade school that was just formed, they might need the search traffic of qualified visitors in order to survive, so without researching commonly searched phrases and helping pages rank for them, their site may not get the kind of traffic it should.

An additional thing to consider is the long term value of new web visitors, or even the people who are already customers becoming visitors of the website. It would be foolish to spend a bunch of money on a high quality site only to have no one see it because you show up on page three of google and bing. When you consider other goals besides sales like customer retention, and customer engagement, ranking well can be very valuable even if and immediate effect on the bottom line is not apparent.

SEO is certainly important but also requires balance. For instance whats the point of a site that ranks well but is unusable because no user testing has ever been done. Or a site that ranks well but looks like crap and makes a bad impression on people. SEO’s value completely depends the client and the situation.

I am an avid listener to your podcast, and generally agree with most of what you have to say, but I think you have it wrong on this one guys.
http://Nickpierson.com Nick Pierson

Aaron Just Restated my initial comment, so I obviously agree with his reiteration..

So Now its up to you guys, Get a Real SEO guy on the show to have the chance to represent an alternative view.

I am available by the way :-)

your fan,
~Nick Pierson

http://headscape.co.uk/people/boag.html Paul Boag

Well before I do that I want to write a post that lays out my arguments against investing in SEO. So far I have only said that I don’t like it but I haven’t said why.

Will

I think you make a valuable point about search engine rankings, I think the way I use a search engine result page is fairly typical: Once the results page is loaded I scan down the first 4-10 links or so, rapidly skim-reading the text for keywords or urls I recognise to check the search term I used brings up the sort of thing I am looking for, then picked the one that looks the most promising (or try different search terms if nothing looks relevant).
What I DON’T do is mindlessly click the first link, then the second link, then the third etc in order until I find what I am looking for!

Another thought, would it be fair to say that the websites that feel the need to spend thousands on SEO are the ones that lack a unique selling point? Must be depressing if the only thing that differentiates your website from it’s competitors is that it is a notch or two higher on the google ladder!