Ask Kalena

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Hi Kalena,

Help! I’ve had my Hightower pottery website for about 4 years. On a good day I may get 20 hits and that’s during the holidays. Normally I get between 0-10 hits a day. I have listed my site in probably a dozen directories over the years and submitted to the same number of search engines. What am I doing wrong? Is it a content issue?

Charles

Yes Charles, it is a content issue. More precisely, it’s a Yahoo SiteBuilder issue. Why the heck are you using a rubbish Yahoo Content Management System (CMS) to build your site?

Just like Homestead SiteBuilder, which I ranted about earlier this week, Yahoo SiteBuilder is yet another CMS that creates multiple headaches when trying to optimize your pages so they are found in search engines.

I’m not hugely familiar with the SiteBuilder interface, but here are just some of the problems I see:

• The Title and META tags are identical on every page. I’m guessing this is a limitation of Yahoo SiteBuilder that you can’t change. This is limiting the ability of each of your site pages being found in search engines.
• You’ve got a serious case of code bloat, thanks to excessive, code added to your HTML pages by the SiteBuilder program.
• All of your image files and probably others are stored somewhere on the Yahoo site and referenced by your pages, instead of being stored on your own domain.
• This isn’t anything to do with the CMS, but your home page doesn’t really have enough text on the page to satisfy search engines and your pages don’t appear to be optimized for target search keywords and phrases.
• Another non-CMS issue, there don’t seem to be many internal or external links pointing to your site. You should probably try to gain some links from other web sites in your industry as theme-based links will help boost your position in Google. For example, I’m betting that within a month, you will be getting more traffic from this page than any other source. Such is the power of a well-placed link.

If you are serious about your business, you need to get serious about your site’s compatibility with search engines. You’d be better off paying a site designer to build you a REAL site that can be properly optimized. If you can’t afford a professional site design, consider installing the (free) WordPress blogging platform on your server and taking full control over your site that way. If you can’t afford a search engine optimizer, consider posting your requirements on our Search Engine College jobs board as there are a lot of SEO students just itching to sharpen their skills on a real site.

Take a month and teach yourself how to use WordPress if you have to - it’s pretty easy and search engines seem to love pages created with it (this site is built with WordPress). I’d also recommend taking the Search Engine Optimization Starter course at Search Engine College so you can better understand what makes a site rank well in search engines. It will be the best investment you’ll make all year and will help you get that gorgeous pottery in front of more eyeballs!

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On behalf of the tutors and staff at Search Engine College, I’d like to offer congratulations to our most recent graduates:

Search Engine Optimization 101

• Bob Schaller
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Congratulations to you all! Please contact your tutor if you haven’t yet received your hard copy certificate, Status Page or certification seal. Please stop by Search Engine College from time to time to download updated lesson material, contribute to Search Engine Wiki or check our Search Engine Marketing Jobs Board to use your certification to find a job in the industry.

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I love finding top-notch resources for our Search Engine College students. Danny posted this one on Facebook today: Link Building Secrets from Pole Position Marketing. It’s basically a PDF e-book with link building tips from some of the best known names in search. Great idea!

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Hi Kalena…

I’m after some advice from a professional and I immediately thought of you as I’m one of your SEO students. I’ve set up my new website and I’ve just had my first request for a quote. However, I’m not sure how to quote, what to base that on, or how others are doing that.

Would you be able to let me know how most content/SEO writers quote for doing websites? It’s really for writing new websites, so not simply editing existing ones. I’m not sure whether to base that on the number of pages/words or on a time spent basis, or what. I don’t know what the norm is.

Could you give me any pointers?

Thanks very much!
Micky

Dear Micky

There are some very good pointers for this in the bonus lesson that comes at the end of SEO 201 so you might want to download the bonus lesson PDF and look at that.

Basically, it’s always better (in my opinion) to quote an hourly rate and then work out how many hours each page will take you to copywrite. If it’s easier, you can always provide the customer an estimate (e.g. each page should take between 2-3 hours at my standard hourly rate of $150 + taxes) and then invoice the final cost after the job is done.

This will require you to keep timesheets and be accurate with your time measurements. It also gives the client the option of reducing the number of pages to be done if they want to save money instead of expecting you to lower your fees. Something else I offer clients is the ability to save 10% or 20% if they purchase consulting hours in bulk e.g. hourly rate is $150 but drops to $135 per hour for 10 hours or more purchased in a single month or to $120 per hour for 20 hours or more in a single month.

You might also find my past blog posts about Home Based Business helpful, particularly As a freelance SEM, how should I structure my fees?

In that last post I talk about Freshbooks online invoicing software that has built-in timesheets and a start-stop timer so you can monitor time spent on projects and bill clients accurately. Apart from the fact that it’s very low-priced, I simply could not function without this software!

Good luck with the business.

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It’s no secret that the courses at Search Engine College are hugely popular. Our students consist of people from all walks of life, including webmasters trying to learn search engine marketing skills to help promote their small businesses, marketing staff at advertising and web design agencies and existing search engine marketing professionals keen to obtain formal certification to help advance their career.

2007 saw us reach the significant milestone of having students enrolled in 30 countries. Our massive growth has resulted in more work for our tutors and administrative staff and also prompted the need to hire more staff. As a result, we will be increasing the cost of our courses early in 2008.

So if you have been thinking about enrolling at Search Engine College but just haven’t gotten around to it yet, December will be your last chance to enroll at our current prices. You’ll have 12 months to complete your course from when you first enter our online classroom, so even if you don’t think you have time to study right now, you can enroll at 2007 prices and study whenever you have time in 2008.

Not only that, but if you enroll from this page, you can snap up one of our individual certification courses for $50 off the regular retail price. What the heck, it’s the holidays, right?

But this discount is only available until midnight Dec 31 and you must buy from the link above and choose the coupon code SECMEMBER from the drop-down list as instructed.

Happy Studying!

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