SEO made easier or hype?

Hi Justin,

Good post to elicit views and thoughts about an all important issue like SEO. As far as iam concerned, proper SEO does not involve tricks.It's a process which requires quality time apart from dedicated,intelligent and knowledgeable effort over a period of time to achive any worthwhile results. A quick fix will rarely work, and if it seems too good to be true it probably is...

I have been associated with a website for quite some time now which provides free SEO tools. I and my partner are in the process of upgrading it in a big way wherein more and better SEO tools will be provided in near future. Please have a look at http://www.siteometrics.com. Any suggestions about this site will be highly appreciated...

-Anita CM

(http://www.siteometrics.com)

I never trust any site with that general layout and big hype pitch...

Do you have any specific questions? I don't think anyone should have to pay for SEO!

I spend most of my time writing "long copy" sales letters and know the world this guy is coming from pretty well, but he's got to put more work into making his site look pro.

The fact that it's a salesletter site isn't the problem . . . it's just that it's a bad salesletter.

For this same concept done right, check out http://www.seoelite.com

Best, c

Hi Chris-

I'm interested in why you think the seoelite.com page is done right. I could barely read the headline, it felt so hyped to me. And then what totally turned me off was the date on the letter- it was today, and I suspect that the copy wasn't placed there today. So I'm thinking it's an inserted date, and so that means whoever it is is lying to me from the get-go.

Ugh.

I'd love to know what you were wanting us to look at with that letter.

I write a fair amount of long-copy sales letters that have been very effective as well, and I have a very different approach.

Anyway- not to hijack the thread.

I think SEO is great, and I tend to have a more organic approach to it. Meaning, I like to do these things:

• make personal connections with customers and clients, and encourage them to link to our site and our blog.
• put up solid content consistently, that others want to read, and who enjoy linking to us.
• create strategic alliances where others are recommending/referring us.

All of this has built up a large number of incoming links, as well as a large library of content, which has organically done well for us SEO-wise.

I think we could do more by actually hiring a real SEO person, but all in time.

One thought for you, Justin, is to start building up content on your site. For instance, my father writes a blog/ezine on wine for my parent's retail store in Washington, D.C.:

Pearson's Wine

Since he's constantly writing about all different kinds of wine, three times a week for years now, they do quite well with searches. They've given up traditional advertising completely in exchange for building a list, and organic SEO through content.

I could see you creating compelling, interesting content about flowers, about arrangements, about people using flowers, pictures of flowers, etc, etc. Things that will come up when people search.

And a little knowledge of SEO will add to how effective the content building is. What do you think?