Basic SEO A Rarity
Chris M made a bold statement the other day. He rated that 1 in 500 sites have proper, basic SEO principles instated. Initially, I thought it was a bold statement, but once engaged in discussion, combined with a bit of research, I would have to say that the figures can’t be far from his estimate.
Basic SEO principles might seem a bit of a broad term, but I will hopefully be able to describe things as I go along.
Initially when I saw Chris’ tweet providing those numbers I thought he was crazy. I knew that many sites do not have some, or a lot, of the fundementals SEO foundations in place, but I thought 1 in 500 was an absurd number. With being so interested to learn and grow from the industry experts around me, I asked him what he based this on.
He gave me a recent example that he had come across of the Century City website. First of all, the basic SEO principles on that site are shocking. For a site of that size that surely must drive a fair amount of traffic, it had virtually no SEO principles implemented. The analytics code was in the header which could lead to inaccurate statistics and just leads to a mess. Then their meta data is terrible. Actually I can’t say that as there is virtually no meta data. They have the following title: <title>CENTURY CITY</title>.
Are you telling me that they could not think of a single keyword to link to century city? Nothing at all? Or was this a home made site? I wanted to find out so I did a bit of digging.
Oh no not at all was this done by one man in his basement. The company that designed it is called The Artery. The rank number one for the search term “the artery”, but naturally they should as that can’t exactly be the most competitive keyword out there. Otherwise, Google didn’t really seem to know who they were.
So I moved onto investigating their website itself. I didn’t really like what I saw. The site is mainly flashed based, but at least it has some decent meta data. The title is good and includes relevant keywords without it starting to look too spammy. It could possibly be shorter, but nonetheless it is actually alright. Hey look, there are actually some keywords for the meta keywords, and once again those are actually quite decent. No real surprises as this is a company that have designed a website, so naturally those should be in place. However, there is no meta description. How can there not be meta description? Surely you want your site to rank in the SERP’s, and once you have started to rank, even at the wrong end of the results, you would someone who might come across your result, you want to provide them with some information about your site, and probably sneak in a few relevant keywords in there. Instead, they had nothing. I tried to do a few searchs for them by using keywords that they had listed, and I got no results in the top 20. Not exactly good for business.
Sorry, I was side tracked. Back to the main website in question – Century City. So after investigating the company that developed the website, it is clear to see that they sort of know whats going on and should have at least implemented some keywords and a better title. The front page is also full of flash, and provides no real content for the spiders to pick up. Which once again is not going to drive traffic towards your site. You could argue that with an establishment the size of Century City, that someone will know what they are searching for if they are looking for the place, and that if they are not searching for century city, then it is sort of pointless in terms of implementing these fundementals.
That takes me back to my main point. Even if you do feel it is pointless, why would you still ignore these basic foundations that should be implemented regardless? I investigated further into some of these basic principles and whether they seem to be deemed added features by web developors or not by going through the directory of sites listed on the Century City website.
What conclusion did I come up with? The exact same on that Chris came up with. There were an absolute handful of sites that had proper meta data. By now, you should know that when I refer to proper meta data, I mean a decent title with something more than just the name, a decent bunch of targeted keywords that actually match your search terms and brand, as well as a decent description that could be used effectively in the SERP’s.
Unfortunately, I was very disappointed with the results. So few sites had these in place, and on the odd occasion that the site had all three, they were normally not very well done at all. It seems that basic SEO principles are unknown by those companies, they are taking advantage of the customer when they purchase a website design from them, or these basic principles are deemed to be surplus to building a website.
Surely these principles should be included in the design phase, and not seperately? What is the point of a website if you are not driving traffic to it? What is the simpliest way to drive traffic? To be indexed, and to be indexed correctly, and to the best ability that your site can be. That is how you are going to drive effective, targeted traffic.
It seems the basics are just being shoved out of the window, and what a pity that is for these sites. On the other hand it could work out fairly well for SEO’s as they can come in and clean up the mess, and create some business for themselves, so I guess it is not doom and gloom after all.
P.S I recommend you doing a few tests for yourself. I decided that not even a no-follow for these sites was worth it so that is why there are no links to show you what I was talking about.
- Captain AwesomeIf you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
Incredibly interesting article. I must admit that I generally stick away from SEO and focus rather on marketing of the site in other means – it’s quicker and easier than trying to “guess” what google wants from me. Also, my business is very competitive so I’d be spending days of time and fortunes to get better results.
That being said, however, ChrisM has convinced me I need to pay more attention to my SEO. I’ll have to report back on the results.
T
SEO is very time consuming and doing it properly (and I mean really properly, not this nonsense most agencies and freelancers offer) is a huge task.
That being said, the longevity of the procedure is far greater than a quick marketing strategy, unless you have a huge budget and an incredible brand to work with.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by James MacDonald, James MacDonald. James MacDonald said: is basic SEO A Rarity? http://bit.ly/biLDRI [...]
Hi Tony – Thanks for dropping by and leaving a comment! It seems that so many people focus on the traditional forms of marketing, and seem to forget about how powerful SEO can be. Like Chris said, it is an extremely long process, but it can reap huge benefits if you are willing to invest the time and money.
@Chris-Your first point – what length are you referring to? The length of time that SEO is actually paid attention to? Yea, obviously if you start duplicating content and meta data then it will be picked up, and you will be back to square one! I agree that with all these factors 1 in 500 is very generous actually, but I was simply focusing on the meta data.
Thanks for the compliments guys! :)
Good Article. I love examining website and looking at there marketing strategy online. You can deduct a lot from a company’s SEO strategy.
@Tony best investment you will ever make marketing wise is to spend some time on your SEO. Online is the closer of most marketing campaigns. If you look at the UK their ad use display their website url at the end of their ads instead of their telephone number because people do more research before they buy.
@Captain Awesome It is really appaulling when you start looking around at big brand companies that have no online presence nevermind SEO. Like your said though that is where SEO’s come in.
@Chris M I agree with you, SEO should not be taken up lightly it is most often quite a massive project but always worth the long term benefits.
Have an awesome day!
Hi Chris C! Thanks for dropping by and leaving a comment! I really agree with your views. If you look at quite a competitive term internationally, namely car insurance, but in the SA space, you will see how badly SEO is done in that sector. I think I will open that can of worms next! But that is for another day :) I am amazed at how many companies neglect SEO when thinking of an “online marketing strategy”!
I wasn’t actually saying that the SEO on the Century City website was bad (although it is), I was merely saying that if you visited all the various shops on the Century City website and visited all their actual domain websites, you’d see that most “normal” businesses have very little idea on SEO.
Apart from selecting keywords and when dealing with title tags, there are two important things:
1. The length
2. Repetition across multiple pages
Both of these factors are critical, and even companies who move forwards and think they’re clever by write this | that | another | blah, miss out on the 2 requirements listed above and that’s how I deduced my ratio of optimized vs non-optimized.
I think that saying 1 in 500 was fairly forgiving as well.
Good article!