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Feb 25 2008

Seo manager what?

If you cannot find your website on internet, you must know what a Seo manager is made for. search engines

You thought a website was the answer to exist on internet today, but looking at things a bit closely, you are finding out, this doesn’t seem to be what you wanted exactly.Yes, you have a website like 100 % of companies who chose to make the move on internet, but looking at Google results makes you wonder, what for ?

“I’m not even there !!”, Next thing coming to mind is: “How come ?”, “Where is all the traffic I was supposed to have ?”,”I paid good money for so little !!”

You are slowly understanding what’s going on with most web-agencies, they’re making websites, not putting you up first page in Google.com (approx: 67.5% in July 2009, source: http://www.businessinsider.com). Back in 1999 this was no big deal, there was thousands of websites online and customers could eventually find your website. Old days are gone, and today being on the first page, in whatever activity you are working-on, is a hell of a job, a daily work.

Yes, you are right, we can actually avoid any sort of work on your website and still make it on the first page. Google knows how to do that, it is called “Sponsored Links” (managed with Google Adwords), see on the right side and top of the google result’s page, get your money set. Everbody wants to be someone on his own and not only forever stay mom and dad’s son or daughter. This is how I feel about the “Sponsored Links”, they are great to give you a hand but if it’s the only way to make traffic on your website, you should stop and ask yourself ” Have I ever seen someone able of running without also being able to walk ?” (I don’t myself.)
Once we are certain structure delivers a more relevant content, we’ll be able to push things forward and think your website in terms of visibility and from there think advertisement, we will increase traffic and make your website more profitable.

SEO Manager, what for ?

by some estimates, there are 100 million sites on the web. Do you think yours makes such a difference ?

Seo definition:

Before going to far and getting you lost along the way, here is the definition of SEO :

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. © wikipedia.org

Internet has anarchy in its DNA.

They are few rules, alot of changes on the way, it is constantly in movement, it’s what makes it so great ! Everyone can create a website, do things the right way, the worst way, it’s like every human activity. Within the world wide web, rules had to defined. It’s also when search engines just as Google are starting to be necessary, to clear the way a little, trying to capture the best picture as possible, so you can find what you are looking for… or not.

This is where work begins for a Seo.

HTML Definition

Every website is made of: HTML (well… almost, you also have Flash websites, I’ll one day talk about that too). As an old html coder I can tell you one thing: Think STRUCTURE. Structure is a consequence of common sense and common sense is the result of analysis.

A toe is a toe right, so if someone comes up to you in saying look at my nose (while it is a toe), you might find it somehow a bit weird and out of place. The biggest, most common mistake when people are making websites is not paying attention to the HTML semantic. HTML is made for describing the structure and meaning of content, but not for describing presentation. Some of you are already starting to think, we are now sinking into technic, but hey NO! I Promise we won’t , I’m just trying to show you evidences. But you need to know what we are talking about, here is the definition of HTML :

HTML, short for Hypertext Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document - by denoting certain text as headings, paragraphs, lists, and so on - and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded images, and other objects. HTML is written in the form of labels (known as tags), surrounded by less-than (<) and greater-than signs (>). HTML can also describe, to some degree, the appearance and semantics of a document, and can include embedded scripting language code which can affect the behavior of web browsers and other HTML processors. © wikipedia.org

That’s it !

So, want to have fun ?

Go and find what’s in web pages. To do so you just have to right click on a web page and then choose “Source Code”, for Mac users use the “Ctrl” tab and press the mouse at the same time to get the menu, then also choose “Source Code”, this may vary from browsers to browsers but usually code is written somewhere.
You are there ? can you find at least 1 tag called <h1> ? is there any <h2> can you read <p> tags ? If none of them are there, this is NOT really a website, it looks like a website, it feels like a website but it’s not. It doesn’t “talk” HTML. Even Websites entirely made with flash should hide an html text, just in case your internet user doesn’t have the plug-in.

Think organic search results, Think natural search results

You exactly see what a tree looks like, right ?

A web page needs HTML tags to respects exactly the same structure, where you also have leaves and roots as well as branches and trunk.

  • In HTML, you have a <head> where you set all the general informations (<title>, description, keywords, etc.)
  • A <body> where you have the main content, inside <body> you use HTML tags to organize a hierarchy :
    • <h1>
    • <h2>
    • <p>
    • <h3>
    • <p>

If your content is structured and uses the right HTML tags, you will simplify life to your readers in making things clearer, but you’ll also give hierarchical meaning to crawlers and search engines. In pushing things a bit further you could also make your website accesible, and this could extend and widened your audience.

In fact, your website is an entity and should be considered like it. Having a bad coded website is like working close to “Stinky Pete“, you deal with it, but you would rather go without it.

Here is an exemple of a simple structured page about a SEO manager.

If you pay attention to your code your page will be lighter. Most Seo managers are not really aware of how great a well structured site can improve and optimize a good visibility on internet. In fact, and to be honest in a perfect world a webdesigner should know everything about html coder’s work, html coder should know everything about seo’s work and a project manager should know everything about what his client wents… (just a thought)

What I’m trying to explain is simple : a good seo job starts from first stone, even before the project begins, and not like it’s done today, months, even years after website got launched, a tree begins with roots.

You should be aware of these articles :

Organic and natural : last but not least

seo manager You should always keep an eye on what you do on your website by considering every page as part of whole :

  • Choose appropriate words for your <title> in the case of this website, I chose this title : SEO Manager - Search Engine Optimization Manager, make it short, it will emphasis efficiency. Fill with most important words first.
  • Give images real names, for example : here i have filled the alt=”" attribute and I also completed title=”Seo manager website” in the link.
    So here is the code you can read : <a href=”http://www.seomanager.fr” title=”Seo manager website”><img src=”img/seo_manager.gif” alt=”seo manager” /></a>
  • Watch your keyword density
  • inbound and outbound link placement should be well done.
  • Make sure your code is valid by W3C standards by testing pages on this adress : http://validator.w3.org
More about semantic html:
More about accesibility:

The most important search is on content, always.

From where internet users come from ?
Why they come to visit your site ?
These are the questions you should always think of and keep in mind.

Even if you had the most ugly website on earth (This one ?!) you would still have an awesome traffic if you were to simply supply effective content (information, knowledge, images, videos, lyrics, programms, etc.)

Good quality content is actually the key to traffic. Do you watch programms with no interest at all, I don’t. Your Internet users don’t neither. From where internet users come from ? Why they come to visit your site ? These are the questions you should always think of and keep in mind.

  • What can you provide, no one does ?!
  • What makes your website special or at least different ?!
  • Who could be interested in what you do ?
  • Do NOT COPY and PASTE, bring something new.

Being able to supply something original is great because your work is then easier, orginal means it draws more attention. On the contrary, having to sell something everyone else sells will be a hell of a job. If tomorrow I was to “rank” on Britney Spears CD for example (it’s really an example), I would have to compete with many, many other websites and this means more implication and more time spending and in the end, more money.

Build links and draw attention

Building links and having people linking to your site is the hardest/simpliest thing to do.

Imagine, you just arrived in town, you know nobody and nobody knows you.

What is the first thing you would do ? Go out and shout: HERE I AM ?

I would first try to know my closest neighbors, then would find out about stores, streets, library, cafés, avenues, try to get around with people sharing the same interest. These people might introduce me to new friends, these new friends might talk highly about me. You need to find avenues and main streets of your activity / interest, and find the right people to share it.

You will from then need to keep in touch with these connections, to make authority and most difficult keep up with it. In the world of SEO today they are two websites making authority : www.seomoz.org and www.seobook.com

It sounds simple doesn’t it ? (Well, it’s not) and it is why SEOs are getting paid for.

So here we are, your website is up, and anybody should know, this is where you must go FIRST :

imagine, you just arrived in town, you know nobody and nobody knows you. What is the first thing you would do ? Go out and shout: HERE I AM ?!

You can also submit to Paid Directories website, it helps. » More about directories on this article : Web Directories…are They Relevant to SEO?

These are only fundamentals in search engine optimization.

They are plenty of websites dedicated to give you advice and knowledge about being a Seo manager, there are different ways and approach to do this job, only good practices will be rewarded in the end. Being a Seo is an experimental science, it involves common sense, analysis and time, it is just like making a puzzle, taken separatly pieces are useless, all together it shapes what your website is all about.

Thinking globally and acting locally is also true in the web ecosystem.

Great websites about search engine optimization :

One Response to “Seo manager what?”

  1. Ben de BI Says:
    December 8th, 2009 at 1:51 am

    Man that’s fun to read you ! :)
    I was first looking for some info on SEO and I was laughing reading you, telling to myself “whoa that is a GREAT article”… I was interested enough to try to reach the author…

    What a surprise… de réaliser qu’en plus d’être français l’auteur s’avère être mon voisin de bureau et souffre douleur de la playliste à Gary ! Ahh excellent ! J’espère que ça roule pour toi !

    Trop marrant de tomber sur ta tronche comme ça au détour d’un article sur le référencement.

    Je suis freelance et je vis maintenant près de Cognac avec ma miss et je vais devenir papa dans moins de 2 mois maintenant… Je me renseignais sur le SEO parce que je me suis fait embaucher par une école pour donner divers cours d’info (bureautique, office, création web, photoshop, etc.) et le directeur m’a demandé de créér une formation d’une journée sur le référencement web (plutôt axé chef de projet, analyse de résultat Google analytics ce genre de choses).

    L’occasion est rêvée pour te demander si par hasard tu voudrais bien partager ton expérience avec moi. Si par hasard tu possèdes un support quelconque ou juste des conseils pour une formation, je te serai reconnaissant :)

    Sinon tu vas comment ? Toujours en agence ? Sur Paris ? Tu vois encore des gens de la belle époque ? (j’ai vu que tu étais linké avec le site de lydie et de laurent leborgne :))

    (tain je suis pété de rire j”arrive pas à m’en remettre de cette coïncidence…=)

    Merci d’avance :)

    A tchawal JeanHugues !

    May the Force be with you :)))

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About

My name Jean-Hugues Bretin, I’m S.E.O Manager for LSF-Interactive in Paris.

I know, I’m supposed to do Search Engine Optimisation, but I just can’t avoid mentioning Findability, Finding the right approach in adding lasting value to a Web site over the long term.

Gradually building authority through clever content and inching my way to the top of the SERP’s is my goal. Search Engine Optimisation is part of a whole, and it’s hard to pretend you do SEO when you don’t pay attention to what matters most : VISITORS.

Particular sign: I love doing it without any of the fluff.

Personnal moto: Be creative, ideas are under-evaluated!

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