It’s true. I love search engine optimisation.

That might seem an odd statement, because surely SEO is just background processes that help bushinesses get an edge, right?

No, as a matter of fact. It has that effect, which is incredibly useful to anyone with an online presence. But it also helps create a “cleaner” world wide web. It helps streamline the internet, making things easier for every one.

SEO helps make sure your site is found by people actually interested in what you’re selling. From that person’s perspective, it’s made their time online easier.

It also helps force us to make better websites, and better content. You need to be writing for the web properly, you need to be as concise as possible without coming across as terse, and most of all you need to communicate carefully, thoughtfully and strategically.

SEO makes the web a better place. And done well, it makes you more money as well.

I explained my services and pricing to a potential US-based client recently. He came back with a list of things another firm over in the States had offered him, and asked if I could match their list, and name my price to do so.

Here’s my reply. In short, I said I couldn’t match their list because it was a dishonest, shoddy practice.

My service is as described, at the price I gave. The service is that way for some very important reasons, not the least of which is that I offer a service ideologically matched to what search engines what us to do–anything else is trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

I would suggest considering what I’m about to tell you before choosing any SEO consultant. Here’s a quote from the firm you’re considering retaining:
“Therefore we conduct our campaigns in a white-hat manner to ensure our campaigns look natural and organic in order not to leave any footprints for Google to detect.”

That is NOT white hat. Trying to conceal the way you are buying links (which is what you’d be doing) is decidedly against Google’s ethos and terms of service.

Before their Panda update I saw many people make the same claim as the above, and then what do you know, Google worked out how the links we being built (Google has said they will always work to stamp out this behaviour) and all those sites got slammed.

True white-hat, and I strongly believe the best approach, is to actually build organic content and links, not to try to trick a company who has enough computing power to detect if God Himself shifts his weight to his other butt cheek on his giant chair in the sky.

Also, on the content front, I believe the best person to write content about your service, is you. I will guide and direct, and share ideas, but ultimately any SEO company you hire to write copy for you doesn’t understand what you do; not like you do.

If you write regular, on topic content, of course it will help SEO. It will be filled with all manner of useful search terms.

But most of all, it will be USEFUL to a reader.

SEO firms write content for one purpose only–keyword stuffing. And it might well help with positions on Google. But SEO is worthless if the visitors you do get are going to be put off because the articles and posts don’t appear to show any actually insight.

Anyway, that’s just my two cents.