Comments on: Knowing Why Is As Important As What

By: Edo Cohen

Edo Cohen — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:29:11 +0000

I think you hit the nail with this one. It’s crazy how many people set up a blog and do not install the proper SEO components and plug ins because they don’t know the why…

By: Nick Stamoulis

Nick Stamoulis — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:50:40 +0000

Knowing why is a huge challenge in the SEO world, and to me that seems half the battle. The fact that many don’t know “why” is a big reason the value of SEO isn’t known by many.

By: Nicola Connolly

Nicola Connolly — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:28:12 +0000

So very true Sarah. Understanding the role which a blog, for example, is playing within your SEO campaign is paramount. Simply setting up a blog and not posting anything meaningful or keyword related will never increase your traffic.

By: Sean - Seo Blogger

Sean - Seo Blogger — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 23:59:30 +0000

I would say ‘when’ applies mostly when it comes your internet marketing efforts are on social networks. Knowing the time that best fits for your promotion via social media is one of the best methods to market on them.

By: Dan Horton SEO

Dan Horton SEO — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:55:21 +0000

Valid points raised.Just getting the developers time can sometimes be difficult though. There are loads of seo myths out there, think it’s just a case of sticking to what’s tried and tested. I’d always stick a robots.txt file in, just habit I guess and sitemap.xml

By: Vee

Vee — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 01:53:17 +0000

Great point about the candidate setting up a blog but the person could not give a reason for why it would help. The “why” is the most important factor, especially if it is going to detail changing someone’s site design or structure. SEO is sometimes not just about what people see at the surface, but it also includes whats under the hood of the website and in the files. While I know a little html, php, css etc, it is not my strong point and I will therefore have to communicate with the web developer of the site or programmer to have the changes made. A site owner would never authorize such as thing unless they knew the “why”.

By: Christina

Christina — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 11:55:06 +0000

Agree, I use to be one of them but somehow it took my interest and led me to do some research “why” I need to do it. Thanks for further elaboration on this. Greta article btw.

By: Sarah Carling

Sarah Carling — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:51:00 +0000

I agree if there is something that the robots.txt is needed for then get one uploaded, but on a lot of sites it’s just not required, for instance when there are none of the issues that you mentioned. What is the point n uploading an empty file, I’ve never been able to figure that out, but I have seen a lot of people do it because they have been taught that “a site needs a robots.txt”

By: Shahid

Shahid — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:13:38 +0000

Hi Sarah,

Im not so sure I agree with your Robots.txt example.

“upload a robots.txt file is wasting a developers time”

Its a simple file that takes 5 mins for an seo to create and probably 30 seconds for a client dev team to upload to the root server. The .txt file deals with :

* dupe content…
* sitemap location…
* Partners pages etc…. to name a few

Ive had a number of clients where the robots.txt file has been essential, simply because their CMS does not handle content well.

I just dont see how you could compare the above process getting priority over other changes.

Just my observations…

Shahid

By: Goosh

Goosh — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:16:34 +0000

Sarah, great article!

I’ve experienced this a few times with clients and they have essentialy had to be re-sold an idea because of poor implementation.

I must, however, disagree with you and Dean on SEO not being a process. There is always a process in what you do, whether it’s formalised or not, but I think the real problem occurs with the application of the process.

For example, we have a check list of regular problems & elements that we encounter in websites along with “nice-to-haves” or “best practise”. Like you say, robots.txt is “best practise” but only if its needed. I think this is where our process of checking a website against pre-requisites helps us out immensely as it allows us to not only solve common problems but it also allows us to train new members of staff in “best practise”. This allowallows us to show these new starters WHY they are on the list and when it’s best to apply – and more importantly – when not to apply it.

Like you say, development time is limited, but when I ask for stuff – I’m asking ’cause I need it (http://seobullshit.com/seo-pisses-people-fact/) not ’cause I read it in a “top 25 SEO rankings tricks” document.