The Search blog · Social media marketing · · 2 min read

How can my site rank highly in the search engines

Matterhorn pointed out that he gets asked "How can my site rank highly in the search engines", when he should be asked, "What can I do to improve my website?"

As an SEO consultant I see part of my job is to educate. The people I talk to do not have 600 SEO blogs loaded onto their favourite RSS feeder, not only do they not have an RSS feeder they don't know what a bloody RSS feeder. Guess what, before I knew what an RSS feeder was I didn't know what an RSS feeder was also. Think about that whilst you condescend to a client about not knowing what H1 tags.

The post reminded me of Oilmans post on the whole SEO is overated yawnfest.

He points out that:

* Title Tags
* Meta Description Tags
* Meta Keyword Tags
* ALT Tags
* H1, H2, H3 (and accompanying CSS)
* Keywords in the content
* Internal Links (images vs. text (keyword rich))

are considered easy SEO techniques but then goes on, "Keep in mind we live in a fish bowl and SEO/M is our lives. We live and breath it and have for possibly years and years."

So when a client asks what we think is the wrong question we gently nudge them to what is really important. Rather than saying, "listen dumbass you obviously no nothing about seo so just shut your gob, give me my fee and allow me to get on with the job before you losers screw things up and get banned by Google."

That last sentance is probably how the average Digg user would sound if he did SEO. (what a great idea for a post)

Matterhorn goes on to detail what the questioner should look at.

Lyndon Antcliff has worked in SEO, copywriting and content strategy for twenty years. He runs CornwallSEO from Falmouth, Cornwall. Book a free visibility audit.