Search Engine Marketing Blog: piloSEO

When discussing SEO with clients and potential clients SEOs sometimes neglect to emphasize that they need to tell us about any changes they are planning for their site. Whether they believe the changes have any SEO ramifications or not it is imperative to let your SEO know. Even minor and seemingly unrelated changes can have major implications on SEO work. If we don’t explain and reinforce the need for complete transparency related to site updates our clients may make what they consider minor changes that can have a major impact on their sites potential to rank well.

Seemingly Minor Changes Can Destroy SEO Efforts

Even the most seemingly insignificant change can have a massive impact on SEO work. I recently worked with a client who decided to make a small change to their website without consulting with me about the impact of such a change. To be fair this change seemed totally unrelated to SEO so the client assumed that they could make the change without talking to me about it. When I checked their site and saw what they had done I immediately contacted them to explain the potential negative impact. I think I caught it in time but the damage could have been fairly significant if it had been allowed to remain active.

Tell Your SEO About All Site Updates

No matter what change you make you should let you SEO about it.  SEO is a two way street. SEOs are focused on providing site owners with recommendations on how to help their site perform better in search engines but those site owners should understand that they need to inform their SEO about any changes they will be making too. An open conversation is important and can be the difference between success and failure. So, even if you are adding a few new links or some minor feature make sure your SEO knows what you are doing so you understand the implications and verify those changes are search engine friendly.

Popularity: 22% [?]

I had not checked into Yahoo Site Explorer for a while but when I did today I noticed that they have added some additional information to their listing of indexed pages and backlinks. Instead of just showing the title of the page and the URL they now show the page type as well. The few listings I have checked differentiate between Text/HTML pages and Application Pages (Like PDF Files). Here are a couple of screenshots of the new feature.

Application/PDF

Text/HTML

I am always happy to see more information being provided by search engines and this is a good step. I would like to see them continue to expand on this and provide more detail but I am happy to see them attempting to move forward.

Popularity: 27% [?]

Well, I got another SiteProNews email from a very questionable “SEO Tool” company today. As an experienced SEO I can see through the dubious sales pitch but many small business owners or inexperienced SEOs can’t. This is not the first time I have seen this same email pitch and I wanted to write about before but just did not have the time. On top of that since there are plenty of articles written about these tools and services I felt it would be redundant. In case you want to check out the tool you can find it here. So instead of reaming the tool I want to talk about why SiteProNews continues to allow these types of companies to advertise under their name.

Does SiteProNews Endorse this Tool?

Although I do find some useful articles on occasion I have more or less been programmed to ignore the newsletters they send me. Mainly because half of the emails I receive are for dubious tools and services like this. Like I said I can see through it. The problem I have is that they are reaching too many inexperienced site and business owners who believe that SiteProNews is actually vetting these types of services and tools and endorsing them. Believing this, many small business owners will buy these tools and when they don’t deliver results they will end up having a negative view of SiteProNews and SEO. This is just another source for the hatred of SEO that many have. Inexperienced businesses may consider SiteProNews a leader in the SEO/SEM world and if they even tacitly endorse these products it hurts the entire industry.

I Understand the Need for Advertising but…

Look, I understand the SiteProNews relies on advertising to pay the bills and maybe earn a bit of a profit. I have no problem with that. But, they need to look at what is being promoted through their newsletter and on their sites. This type of advertising hurts the reputation of SEOs everywhere. On top of that legitimate SEOs are forced to explain why they charge so much for their valuable service that does not even guarantee rankings when they could spend a minimal amount of money on this software that offers a guarantee. Allowing advertising like this hurts SEOs on multiple fronts and hurts the industry as a whole. Since most of the people who read their newsletter and visit their site are not necessarily search professionals SiteProNews has an obligation to provide honest and truthful information and advertising. That is not happening right now. I know I am not a huge voice in this industry but I want to lend my limited influence to bring exposure to these shady services and ask SiteProNews to be a true leader in the search marketing world. Stop hurting the industry and small businesses by allowing these tools to be peddled through your name.

Popularity: 32% [?]