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These days any discussion about hiring SEO service inevitably veers toward obtaining or maintaining visibility in Google search results.

Such is Google’s stranglehold over aggregate search queries from all corners of the globe that thinking of optimizing for other search engines almost looks like wasting valuable time.

In a way that is okay because the common wisdom says that the less you have to focus on, the more focused you will be. Is that true?

I would argue it is not entirely true in case of optimizing for Google. Why?

The reason is that Google’s criteria for high search visibility is at best akin to shifting goalposts.

What mattered yesterday in terms of must-do steps may no longer be true today, and consequently what we do today may be less important in the coming days.

Take for example what Jill Whalen, the organic SEO specialist, has to say in the video discussion (coming below) with Dr. Ralph Wilson of Web Marketing Today on how to select an SEO company.

Let me put Jill’s suggestions below gleaned from the video discussion.

Not All SEO Steps Are Important..

According to Jill, if you to hire SEO service, consider that certain SEO actions are no longer important, implying therefore that SEO companies that stress on them may not be aware that those are already passé. These are the companies you may probably avoid hiring for SEO service.

Now what are some of those SEO actions that may not be needed any longer? Here they are:

• Unless a site is really huge, XML sitemaps do not mean much.
• Would you spend your time on PageRank sculpting with NoFollow tags? Think over.
• Do not lose sleep over changing URLs to include keywords in them.
• Submitting the site to various search engines does not make much sense.
• And, headlines in H1 tags do not carry any extra incentive. But keyword in headlines is important.

[Image source]

What Does Google Suggest..

We will come to the video discussion but before that let us find out what Google suggests to small website owners to succeed in the search engine visibility game.

Sometime back I had prepared a video on 6 top Google tips to succeed with your website (below). This was made based on none other than Google’s Matt Cutt’s WordCamp SF presentation on May 30, 2009.

Of the 6, 3 specifically relate to optimizing webpage for – what else but – Google search engine. Let me have them here for reference:

Using Keywords

1) Know what search terms visitors may type

2) Brainstorm with AdWords Keyword Tool

3) Use URL’s /%postname%/ & put KW there (in case of WordPress blog)

4) Use KW in title & sparingly in content

5) What about KWs in category names

Contents Aplenty

1) Write something you care about

2) Be relevant, creative, interesting, frequent

3) Use Katamari technique: Start in a small niche, then build up, build up

4) Original research is good

Use Video

Let there be no doubt Google loves video. Going by Matt’s emphasis on doing video it is safe to argue that websites that have lots of videos may stand to benefit in the long term.

Side note: If you haven’t ever made web video but eager to make a beginning, consider enrolling for our video production course. You’ll learn creating 5 types of web videos and audio podcast, and combining all of them into a single sleek video.

Why SEO Is Important

Notwithstanding phenomenal rise of social media like Twitter, Facebook, and others, people still seek online information through querying search engines (read Google).

Whether this is true can be easily verified from the logs of websites. For example, 2WebVideo on an average gets 65% traffic from Google followed by 20% from referrals. This perhaps is the case with many websites.

Watching out for more clues, I just came across a valuable stat by Brendon Sinclair in his SitePoint Tribune column. Let me quote the ‘few ways he generated business (of web development work) over the years’:

• Cold calling has worked at giving us just a few clients. Direct mail barely raises a ripple.
• Referral business has worked well for us over many years, but I often speak with web developers who hardly ever gain new clients from happy regular clients.
• Newspapers have failed to do the business for a long time, but we once pulled in a huge client from a simple $30 advertisement in a free weekly newspaper!
• Attending networking events gives some value. Giving speeches and talks generates more business than you can poke a stick at.
• Google AdWords gives us next to nothing in terms of new clients for web development services. Then again, high search engine rankings work great at generating leads for our SEO division.

Okay, let me now come to the video discussion between Dr. Ralph Wilson and Jill Whalen about hiring SEO service. Watch it below:

Update (Nov 28, 2009)

On Sep 21 last before I wrote this article, the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog confirmed what was already widely known which is that Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking.

The same post gave one more very interesting information toward the end:

Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don’t use the description meta tag in our ranking.

Now, this one is a surprise! Well..!

Tagged: Search engine optimization

This article of October 14th, 2009 is authored by Partha Bhattacharya, who runs this website. Catering to the clients' video needs aside, Partha also writes guest articles for other web publications.