
Ask HN: how to buy SEO? Can SEO be automated? - andrewstuart
We need SEO but I don't know how to buy it effectively.  Getting value for money seems to be a challenge -<p><i></i> How do I know what I am buying?<p><i></i> What should I pay?<p><i></i> Do I need to be paying a monthly retainer to an SEO specialist?<p><i></i> Is there an automated SEO service that allows me to put in my site address and it tells me what needs to be done?<p><i></i> How effective or not would this be?<p><i></i> How closely related to SEO is SEM?<p><i></i> Should I be buying SEM services at the same time?<p><i></i> How to tell the SEO charlatans from the SEO wizards?<p>Any hints and tips on buying SEO would be much appreciated.  I feel like I am buying services from a car mechanic - they could charge me any amount of money and provide any level of service and I wouldn't know the difference.
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devmonk
It sounds like you are ready to get fleeced if you are asking these things on
HN without Googling around enough to have a basic idea of what you are talking
about.

Some suggestions:

1\. If you don't have talent on board to assist with this, and you have the
money to, then why aren't you talking with them?

2\. As detailed in many other places on the web, just making your site/webapp
provide textual content without a lot of crap or images/flash containing the
important stuff is a step in the right direction. Try this out:
<http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html> What do you see? Is it content that
you think a search engine would view as crap (would _you_ view it as crap) or
does it look like something that someone searching through it would view as
representative of what they'd be searching for if they were looking for
something that your site provides?

3\. This does _not_ mean that you have to axe images, flash, etc. (although it
might help), but use alt tags, etc. and put in metadata, descriptions, etc.
that would help someone looking at the _source_ of your webpage(s) as if it
were a human reading through it. (right-click -> view source, etc.).

SEM is getting listed in the ads in google, etc. Google Adwords are great and
can help get yourself noticed if you are selling something and competing
against a lot of others for the same search terms that are in the top of the
results, but doing the SEO stuff (even by itself) might be better if you rank
highly enough in the search results for the terms you want people to find you
with.

There is a lot more to it than that and the tricks change over time, but odds
are someone told you that you need SEO, and now you are freaking out. Don't.
Your site may suck. Fix it. Consider getting your URL out there in other ways
(printed ads, business cards, etc.).

~~~
fbailey
Well your advice is pretty much dated...but I wish you good luck. It'll be
interesting to see how you rank by having a nice looking source code.

3.Metadata is not relevant.

SEO is seriously one of the things every startups has to consider, especially
in many niches it's essential for growth.

------
bigiain
Ted Dzubya says: "Non-brain-damaged web design and link building are 100% of
SEO."[1]. Patrick says a similar thing somewhat less confrontationally -
"People treat SEO like it is black magic, but at the core it is very simple:
Content + Links = You Win."[2]

They're both 100% correct, but both gloss over most peoples understanding of
"content" or "brain damaged web design". Read all of Googles guidelines[3] and
ensure you're not making any obvious mistakes. Make sure you know what
keywords you're targeting, and test and iterate and re-research as a continual
process. Make sure you've got analytics in place so you can see what's going
on and measure the responses to changes you make. Keep in the front of your
head that (for most websites) the goal of SEO is not really "more traffic",
it's "more conversions". Learn about goals, goal funnels, and conversion
rates. Learn about A/B testing (read _everything_ Patrick/patio11 has
generously given the HN community about this).

That's the "easy" bit.

They're also both possibly not strongly enough making the point that on-page
SEO is the easiest part of the job - way too many people desperately hope that
guessing the right keywords and changing their titles, meta tags, headings,
and body text will shoot them to the top of the search returns. It's not that
easy, unless you've got unique keywords or are intentionally targeting super-
specific long tail keywords, you're going to spend more time link building
than tweaking your own website.

In my opinion, unless any "SEO plan" you're being offered includes a
description of an ongoing process for link building, they're only addressing
the easiest part of the problem. (And yes, I think _that_ part of the problem
is ripe for automation, and I suspect probably _has_ been automated by the
very successful people).

[1] [http://teddziuba.com/2010/06/seo-is-mostly-quack-
science.htm...](http://teddziuba.com/2010/06/seo-is-mostly-quack-science.html)
[2] [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/07/17/seo-for-software-
compani...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/07/17/seo-for-software-companies/)
[3] the pdf linked here:
[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-s...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-
seo-starter-guide.html)

~~~
anderse
What if the other guys do "Content + Links" as well(seeing how this has been
the general consensus SEO silver bullet for 5+ years now), we all win?

Link building is to on-page optimization what marketing is to product
development. You can conquer worlds with crappy products and brilliant
marketing, but the reverse is also true. Doing both with passion = highest
chance to win.

Depending on the type of site and how many links you already have, fortunes
can be made by clustering your data/pages better, naming your stuff
differently, changing your internal linking etc.. .

"And yes, I think _that_ part of the problem is ripe for automation, and I
suspect probably _has_ been automated by the very successful people" You have
gotten it backwards. A lot of link building (read: blog spam, paid bloggers,
paid articles, link brokers etc..) has become automated, far beyond the level
of automation of on-page optimization.

------
illdave
It's really, really difficult to know who to accept SEO advice from if you're
not sure of what needs to be done. The best advice I can give is to first
learn the basics yourself, read Google's latest guide:
[http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-
optimiza...](http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-
starter-guide.pdf)

I'd also recommend reading some of the guides on seomoz.org - you don't
necessarily need to know enough to be able to handle it all yourself, and
create your own search marketing strategy, but knowing the basics will help
you enormously if you choose the route of pitching for help from an agency or
freelancer.

I would generally avoid 'automating' SEO - stay away from software that makes
unrealistic promises. There are some tools that can help give basic advice by
grading a site, but you should definitely stay clear of software that promises
to improve your rankings all on it's own, or software that says it will
automatically build a ton of backlinks to your site (9 times out of 10, that
software will hurt you in the long run).

If you do choose to eventually hire an SEO, or an SEO agency, you can
generally tell the good ones from the bad because they'll be happy to answer
any questions you have. Good SEOs will be open and honest, will NOT guarantee
to get your site ranking for your selected keywords and WILL sit down with you
and run you through a proposed strategy for improving your site, finding the
right keywords and working out the most effective way to build good quality
links to your site. I'd also recommend asking them for case studies that can
demonstrate effective results for previous or current clients.

Good luck!

------
iuguy
Start by reading this: [http://guides.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-search-
engine-op...](http://guides.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-
optimization)

Realistically there are two main parts to SEO (from what I can fathom) - on-
page SEO and off-page SEO. Your on-page SEO is all about putting the right
content in the right way. If you use Firebug, consider download SenSEO for
firefox. This will let you check your own pages and give you a checklist for
on-page SEO.

Off-page SEO is really all about links. That requires a bit more thought and
effort.

I would suggest that you find a decent book (bearing in mind that much of the
advice may be out of date) on the principles of SEO, and/or start working
through the SEOmoz site (<http://www.seomoz.org/>).

------
mrnothere
I would say value for the money is not the primary challenge. Expertise is
expertise.

You are buying a specialized marketing campaign, hopefully devoted to raising
your targeted organic traffic from search engines.

You should expect to pay the consultant's hourly rate. You might receive
recommendations for other services like content creation or link building,
either performed by the consultant, or sourced on your own.

You don't have to pay a monthly retainer. I would preferably make an RFP to
several seo firms for a proposal that outlines their approach to your site.
Generally, you are looking at an engagement of longer than 1 month. Like any
marketing campaign, testing and measuring is crucial to best results.

<http://www.woorank.com> will show you how you stack up, and give you some
hints, but if you "need" SEO and you have other duties, and you have budget,
hire this out. You likely will not outrank me if you are brand new to the
techniques.

Auomated services will give you some tips, that will undoubtedly improve your
rankings. Submitting forms will not give you an understanding of how to align
business goals with search engine algorithms. Nor will it show you how to
determine a worthwhile link from a crap one. SEO is a real discipline, a
sophisticated art, and a process for repeating results that has been improved
over dozens of iterations by the consultant.

SEO and SEM are not unrelated but they success in 1 has little to no causation
of success in the other one. SEO and SEM are often connected by the same
consultant. I do both.

You should bid SEM and SEO out separately, if somebody bids on both, you could
seek a discount. EXPERTISE IN ONE DOES NOT MEAN EXPERTISE IN THE OTHER.

Wizards explain what they are going to do and why, just not how.

In my experience, the better SEO's treat the process more like a developer
would bid for a contract programming project i.e. Scope, specs, change orders,
deiverables, etc. If you feel like the potential hire is kind of talking like
his magic is just going to rub off on your site.

It is perfectly legit to pay another consultant to evaluate your proposal.

------
malandrew
Make sure you are writing good accessible semantic HTML to begin with. If your
HTML isn't semantic, you are already starting with a huge disadvantage.

Google is the most important blind user on the Internet. If the blind can't
read and navigate your site, then Google can't index it.

Check out Jeffrey Zeldman's book Designing with Web Standards, 3rd Edition,
for advice on making sure you site is as accessible as possible.

------
mattgratt
Check out this book by Rand Fishkin (he posts here) and others - it's probably
the best place to start - [http://www.amazon.com/Art-SEO-Mastering-
Optimization-Practic...](http://www.amazon.com/Art-SEO-Mastering-Optimization-
Practice/dp/0596518862/)

------
fbailey
Start here <http://www.seomoz.org/blog> the tools are pretty good too

