I manage a range of websites in various industries including some personal websites of my own. For clients I follow the basic rules of seo down to a T, as I know from past experience that these methods work best to achieve good SERP positions. Now to my own personal shame I run a website promoting unsigned music for artists and fans.  The website was not designed by me (thank god) and I haven’t even attempted any seo as its a maze of random code and bad practice design. So the Google update happens, and currently I have all the following issues going against the site:

1. The titles and Meta’s are the same throughout the entire site
2. There is a huge flash image at the top of the site (making the initial part of the page unreadable)
3. The site sells advertising space (quite clearly)
4. The url structure is not seo friendly
5. The site architecture is horribly confusing
6. The homepage size is over 75kb in size and takes a while to load
7. Backlinks are not high
8. Anchors for the backlinks are not at all relevant to keywords
9. The site uses Text-Link-Ads
10. Sitemap inaccurate and contains an error in Google webmaster area
11. Very few site updates, although new pages added by users
12. No RSS feed

So with all these seo basic being blatantly ignored I expected a boot in the rear from Google on the update.

WRONG

1. The website has moved from a PR 3 to a PR 4
2. The SERP positions have steadily climbed to a point where I am top 5 of Google for multiple strong keywords in the music industry
3. Traffic has increased to well over 30,000 a month and still climbing
4. No penalty for selling links

So why, after so many reports of good quality seo friendly websites being penalized by Google does this sorry excuse for a site continue to be loved by Google? Who knows, but this isn’t the first time Iv’e looked on Google and see poor “seo” websites maintain high SERP positions. I’m not entirely sure but I will investigate further and see if any pattern emerges. I will continue to use the basics of seo as standard as it helps for site usability as much as anything. If anyone knows of any similar sites, please let me know.

For you that don’t already know and have spent the last few years in a nuclear fallout shelter, Alexa is a company that measures web traffic. They run www.alexa.com which is becoming more and more visible to web users.

I have always been taught and read many blogs that you should never judge a websites traffic performance based on the data collected by Alexa. Why? Well Alexa only registers traffic that has downloaded and used their very own toolbar. So in theory the data collected should only be a portion of your websites real traffic as the majority of “normal” web users have no need or really understand what it’s used for.

So as I performed my daily task of looking at websites information, looking for possible link opportunities I quickly noticed a trend in the data. It goes without saying that most web savvy people do use Alexa, if for anything an indication of possible traffic.

So what’s your point Matt?

Well my point is that if you are in the SE/SEM/SEO industry and you are specifically looking to target webmasters and like minded people then the Alexa data is spot on. You know if an seo website says they are performing well, then in fact they are listed at 2 million there are some white lies being told.

I still believe that Alexa is not a worthy tool of measuring non-internet related websites, simply because more people don’t have the toolbar installed than people that do. I did a small test to show these results. I looked at well known www.seomoz.org our website, www.seounique.com and a very popular gadget website in the UK www.firebox.com. In terms of traffic, reach and page views I would have said that Firebox would have been top, followed by Seomoz and last but by no means least my website.

The results clearly show Seomoz miles above the rest, and at the beginning of September Seounique was very close to beating Firebox. Now I’m not going to lie about my traffic, it’s regular and ranges from 5000 unique visits per month down to 1000 per month, it really depends how I promote the site in that particular month. However I can guarantee you that Firebox will almost certainly have three or four times more traffic than I have in a good month at their lowest point. Seomoz is so far ahead because the traffic that flows to their site will be almost all webmaster based.

What’s your final thought on this Matt?

Well my feelings on this subject have slightly changed. I still advise people not to look at Alexa data on non-seo/sem/se websites because it’s still not accurate by any means. However if you are looking to reach the webmasters out there then Alexa should be used and the data collected analyzed.

I know this sounds like a silly question but over the last 6 months I’ve seen more and more people in forums and social media sites give people advice which is just plain wrong!

I personally believe that webmasters who know very little or nothing of what seo is are picking up bits of advice from various blog sources and suddenly believing that they know seo. I’ve worked with seo for just over 2 years now so I know I’m no “Guru” but I understand the basics well and my day job is seo for a digital marketing agency in London. I understand that there are hundreds of factors to take into account when developing seo for a website, its not a case of creating 100 strong PR 7 links and waiting for the cash to come in, it takes time and effort.

I feel very strongly when I see “seo” companies selling strategies for £5000 + and in the list of “services” you see “1000 search engine submissions” – alarm bells should be ringing when they have set prices people! A small list below just to look out for when considering creating an seo campaign.

1. The company guarantees a top Google position – this is impossible to guarantee before you even know what the keyword is.
2. A full site analysis – This comes standard, someone that advertises this is obviously trying to fill up a list.
3. No mention of site architecture – site architecture is very important in seo, you don’t want to stop those spiders moving around your site do you?
4. The company says it will only take 30 – 60 days – listen folks seo demands a continuous strategy to be effective, you should have an on going plan and budget set aside.
5. They promise you 5000 links instantly – this is a sure way to get banned from Google, don’t do it, it won’t help you SERPS anyway.
6. They don’t ask for access to your server – they should be looking at the code and source files and be installing some kind of analytics program to monitor traffic.
7. They don’t know what web 2.0 is – if they don’t know what web 2.0 is then move on quickly!
8. They think Google is the only search engine to use – I hear this so many times these days and although I do believe it’s one of the best ways to find out queries its by no means the only search engine that will provide you with good quality traffic – broaden the mind!
9. When “experts” on forums just dismiss your ideas – if you post something you believe to be true, a good seo worker will investigate, test and comment. If you see a so called “expert” putting down everyone’s ideas without consideration they obviously don’t understand that seo is constantly changing and that they will die in this industry.
10. They believe page rank is important in rankings – this is inaccurate, page rank is useful when selling links but in terms of SERP positions it really doesn’t matter.

Well I feel like I’ve had a good rant about this, I could go on forever but I’ll keep it short, well ish anyway!