This article gives you a quick run down regarding what goes wrong with most DIY optimisation efforts and some important pointers regards what you can do to improve your own SEO.

Chaotic Optimisation Theory

When we meet a new client or prospective client the first job we do is take a look at the current site. Sometimes the sites a total train wreck, other times they are okay from a user perspective but have no optimisation and other times, some optimisation has been done here and there but without any kind of plan.

Most often, this 'chaotic optimisation' is what we find with small to medium business websites whether it has been done by the site owner or by a small web design firm that offers SEO services as a bolt on. This is where many people give up and lose faith in SEO.

Chaotic Optimisation?

SEO, like any kind of marketing, is another one of those cases where a little bit of knowledge is dangerous. You learn that you need keywords on the site so you throw some keywords into your page titles but it does not help, you also pick up various other nuggets of information and try to add them to the site.

Little by little, you apply lots of patchwork SEO to the site and wonder why it is not making any difference.

I love it when a plan comes together!

Why did the A-Team always pull things off? Because they had a plan! The good Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith made sure that they knew exactly what they were going to do before they did it and SEO is no different.

You need to identify the important keywords and make sure they are well allocated across the site on the relevant pages and that the pages are optimised for their own terms. You need to make sure that the internal link structure is optimised to further promote these pages for these keywords and you have to use this same approach when building links in from other sites.

Plan your attack

If you have downloaded and read my SEO book (oh, so your the one) you will understand the various stages of planning and executing your SEO strategy and by taking this structured approach you WILL see results. If you have not read the book, grab it again, it's only 20 pages long, and it's free - you really can learn 90% of SEO in an hour or so.

I'll be your plan-man

You really can and should do much of this yourself, but if you want someone to help with the initial plan and then provide an hour or so of consultancy a month to make sure you are on the right track, then drop me an email back. I will review your site, let you know what needs to be done and before long those hours you are pouring into SEO'ing your site will be paying for themselves.

That's all folks

Right, another newsletter, that was longer than I expected and I even managed to shoehorn an A-Team reference in (I am not wildly excited about the new film, honest).

Give me a shout if I can help and let me take the Chaos out of your SEO efforts - This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

All the best
Marcus