I had an interesting experience today. Part of the service we offer to new clients is to run a report on how well the company’s web site is programmed for SEO purposes.
We recently met with a gentleman regarding doing some work for his company. And, he said he was happy with where he comes up in the search engines for his desired keywords. But, as I always do, I look for possible improvements.
Interestingly, I typed in the keywords he wants to be found under, and in one search he came up number 1! Wow!, that’s great! So, I had to see his programming to see what a number one site looked like.
It was awful!
The site is beautiful, but the programming made all the worst mistakes for SEO. No alt tags on any of the over 60 images on an image-centric site. NO KEYWORDS at all, on any page. No Meta Data whatsoever.
So, why was he number one? Well, upon further investigation, I was able to determine he has over 100 external links into his site from well-ranked sites. And, because of that, is ranked in the top 6% for traffic to his site.
Now, this is an interesting case study. Apparently, all the SEO stuff we all talk about is not nearly as important as good marketing, advertising, networking, and PR that helps get to the real point; good traffic!
Now, mind you, I am not discounting good programming. It is certainly the best idea to use meta data, alt tags, headers, etc. It will get you on the radar of search engines allot faster. But, it certainly puts an exclamation point on the need for good traffic generated by good marketing.
Tags: advertising, Marketing, PR, Programming, SEO
