What an SEO Expert Does

I don’t often re-post blog comments into their own blog posts, but I think a comment left by SEO expert Bill Hartzer is worthy of its own post. Bill was responding to another comment, and he left a lengthy response about what search engine optimization specialists actually do. Bill would probably tell me that by re-posting his comment I am not doing myself any SEO favors, but I think it’s good for us to know.

If you want to learn more about SEO or have a discussion about your website with Bill Hartzer, visit his website,  BillHartzer.com.

Here’s the comment Bill left the other day:

“SEO is not just about making a website “rank better” for certain keywords that will ultimately bring more qualified traffic to a site.

Frankly, 90 percent of the “SEO” that I do on a daily basis for clients is cleaning up what a sloppy or ineffficient “web designer” did when they created a web site. For example, title tags, meta description tags, and other content-related issues must be taken care of: search engines use those as part of their search engine listings. Title tags also show up in the web browser, as well as when someone “bookmarks” the page (nothing to do with search engines).

SEOs also clean up tons of spam, such as duplicate content on web sites. There’s not need to have multiple copies of the same page out there on the web.

By the way, Jeff, did you know that you actually have duplicate copies of your home page on your own site (one copy at http://www.usebiz.com and another copy at usebiz.com). You could actually be called a “search engine spammer” for having multiple copies of the same content. Not a good thing. But I digress.

SEOs work on a web site’s structure, such as by making it easier to navigate from page to page–and once someone is on your website, they can find it. Nothing to do with “search engines”, but creating a better user experience. I bet that if you took usebiz.com and broke it into multiple web pages (rather than actually having ALL THAT CONTENT on the same page, you might keep visitors around on your site a bit more–and they might be more inclined to do business with you if you have an “about page” and people could learn about you and your company.

They might trust you more if they could see a photo of you and understand your company’s background and your group’s overall goal.

Another thing that SEOs do is make sure there’s a clear call to action on your website. What do you want someone to do when they come to your site? Contact you? Fill out a form? Email you?

There is a call to action, which is an email address. But did you know that you could “optimize” this better? If you had an online form for contact, you could track the referrers–how people found out about you. They could find out about you from another website, or a search engine. Or they could be directly coming to your site. But you wouldn’t know that since you haven’t employed the services of an SEO to give you these ideas.

My point here, Jeff, SEOs do a lot more for websites than just “get better rankings”. SEOs will optimize your website so that you make more money.”

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

31 COMMENTS

  1. Google knows what ( Market Saturation Obsolescence) means, by being victim to it. Why do you think they are going to type-ins themselves. Get ready to hear about this very crippling subject,more and more over the years to come.

    (Market Saturation Obsolescense) is caused by the massive amount of illegitimate SEO manipulated data that is dumped into the Search Engine Experience.It literally bastardizes information supplied to people searching for your business through a Search Engine. End-Users who trust being found In cyberspace through the Search Engine Centric Marketing Model, suffer the consequnences.

    Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)

    • There is no such thing as “Market Saturation Obsolescence” in regards to it being some standardized industry term. You’re quite regular about cobbling together esoteric phraseology, capitalizing each word, then presenting it as though it were some ‘inside term’ of the cognoscenti. In reality, it’s just more gibberish from your deluded mind.

      That’s actually an extremely common dysfunctional personality trait we see often from internet megalomaniacs deeply engaged in projecting their delusions of ‘expertise’.

  2. @ Bill,

    Nice pitch Bill. End-Users have been hosed by trickery an treachery for too long.

    You will be exposed by us for what you real;ly are doing in the big picture of it all.

    By the way character assassination with me will get you no where.You are the spammer Sir.

    Gratefully Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal tiger)

  3. I think Tony Montana said it best in Scarface: “In this country, first you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women”. Or perhaps more to the discussion at hand: “First you get the type traffic names, then you get the money, then you build the websites that sell stuff and make deals.” All you have to do Jeff is get offline roll up your sleeves and make it happen. We’re in your corner and rooting for you!

  4. From frager factor

    Tuesday, July 01, 2008

    dot HAHA
    A true early domainer story that David Kesmodel missed.

    Once upon a time there was a man named Joe who wanted to be a player in the “biggest game on the Internet.”

    He planed to build an Internet kingdom.

    So he registered the following domains:

    hahaaffiliate
    hahaagent
    hahaagents.com
    hahaalaska.com
    hahaamerica.com
    hahaamerican.com
    hahabr.com
    hahabrazil.com
    hahabs.com
    hahabusiness.com
    hahabz.com
    hahaca.com
    hahacab.com
    hahacalifornia.com
    hahacanada.com
    hahaegypt.com
    hahaelectric.com
    hahaemail.com
    hahaengineer.com
    hahaengineering.com
    hahaengland.com
    hahaes.com
    hahaetoys.com
    hahaeverything.com
    hahafamily.com
    hahawinestore.com
    hahawinner.com
    hahawoman.com
    hahaya.com
    hahayahoo.com

    and literally hundreds of thousands like them.

    His theory was that each domain has its own content, for example:

    hahamap.com selects the top site from every major category.

    hahaautos.com is a portal for used car.

    hahaboard.com is a category indexed public message board.

    hahafranchise.com is a site for franchise partners share their traffic.

    hahaamerica.com is a site about this great country.

    And so on….

    But all domains were under hahainternet.com.

    Type any of them in today and you’ll see where vanity domains will lead tomorrow.

    Whether HAHA comes before or AFTER the dot, the joke will always be on you.

  5. When I was younger I did not like to admit I didn’t understand something. When I became an adult I realized that asking questions is a good thing and no one knows everything, those that think that they do don’t realize it but they come across as the stupidest people of all.

  6. When’s the last time you saw a .us domain rank high on p1 of Google? Well you can see Frager.us rank high and it’;s Messier Hartzer who helped make that happen. He is a miracle worker and Jeff’s attack is baseless-

    • The TLD is an irrelevant factor in ranking, save for regional IP targeting.

      IF you’re “impressed” by a SEO because they ranked a .us, you’re “impressed” for the wrong reasons.

    • All domain extensions are equal as far as SEO is concerned, search engines rank webpages not domain name extensions, so a .US domain will rank as well as a .COM in the USA search results, and a .CO etc will also rank equally globally, its the work you put into your website i.e on page and off page seo, social networking and updating regularly. The reason we do not see many other domain extensions ranking page1 is because most other extensions are bought to protect brands…. He is by know means a miracle worker

      Paul

  7. What I find interesting about Bill or any SEOist worth his/her salt is how they must keep up with ever change and trend across a whole spectrum of search engines..I can’t imagine just trying to keep current on just code versions , i.e. Javascript, HTML5, PHP, Ruby etc, and how all of those acronyms can effect SEO, and then just unexpected subtle changes in a SE algo blowing up in your face, Panda…I don’t envy Bill’s reading pile, it must be four feet high…

    Kudo’s Bill!

    Cheers!

    C

  8. Wow, so much non-sensical bs in this comment thread. It’s not just that they’re off-topic, but that they’re some weird cryptic, nonsense phrases and concepts loosely tied together with other weird, nonsense phrases and a few random conjuctions here and there.

    I read a lot of blogs in many different niches and by far the most weirdest comments are always on domaining blogs.

    I’m a newcomer but what i’m most afraid about the future of domain aftermarket industry is not the ngtlds or overall economy or the like, but the image of the domaining industry. I mean, a lot of these comments make us look like a bunch of lunatics. Add some egoistic bloggers (definitely not talking about you elliott) trumpeting their overall superiority in about every field imaginable, and voila, a big fucking problem when it comes to taking domain industry further and getting even a tiny bit respect from outside the domaining world.

    Sorry for the rant.

  9. The Online Business expansion is being held hostage by SEO Manipulated Search Engine Marketing.

    Picture an infinite laned highway with only one entrance ramp?

    This in effect is the only option SEO Manipulated Search Engine Marketing supplies to businesses begging to be found in cyberspace.

    Full Optimal Internet Expansion can never be achieved through SEO Manipulated Search Engine Marketing.More and more web businesses will be stranded and isolated in cyberspace, never to be found because of the Search Engines Foundationally and Fundamentally Flawed Achilles Heal, called (Market Saturation Obsolescence)

    The SEO Manipulated Search Platform by its very design is the big problem. Any Business Locator system that has to be manipulated to find your business is not a direct and honest solution.

    Google knows what Google knows what ( Market Saturation Obsolescence) means, by being victim to it. Why do you think they are going to type-ins themselves. Get ready to hear about this very crippling subject,more and more over the years to come.

    (Market Saturation Obsolescense) is caused by the massive amount of illegitimate SEO manipulated data that is dumped into the Search Engine Experience.It literally bastardizes information supplied to people searching for your business through a Search Engine. End-Users who trust being found In cyberspace through the Search Engine Centric Marketing Model, suffer the consequnences.

    We are especially concerned with the whole foundational Dysfunction of ALL Search engines inability to efficiently locate Businesses legitimately. SEO Manipulators are just a part of this highly inefficient system employed by Search engines in locating businesses with their totally dysfunctional and by the way obsolesced Marketing Function. The SMART money will be going around them more and more.Count on it !

    Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)

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