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How Do You Know When A SEO Expert Is An SEO Expert: 3 Things To Check When Choosing Your Networking Event

By
Services for Real Estate Pros with Inner Architect

I am no SEO expert, no marketing expert, and no blogging expert but I do have expertise in all of these categories. In my travels around the SF Bay Area I attend upwards of 10 networking meetings or keynote events per month.

The hot new topic is Web 2.0 SEO aka How to drive traffic to your site.

Unfortunately time and time again when I do my due diligence on the speaker's background, their substance factor, and how their blog or websites rank I have recently been surprised by the results. Many speakers are knowingly misrepresenting themselves in regard to their credentials. Often times these speakers are leveraging their business accomplishments in other categories, unrelated to SEO or Web 2.0, as a means to securing these speaking "gigs."

Cost

Simply put the average networking event keynote speech here in the Bay Area runs anywhere from $30-$65 per event. That adds up quickly and is of great concern when I am choosing events to attend

3 Key Factors To Check

When an "expert" claims they are going to speak about methods to increase your site's traffic, Google rankings, and add links to your site you MUST perform some background checking if you want to understand if the speaker can deliver on his/her claims

#1 Alexa.com: Alexa.com (free service) remains one of the easiest, most telling sites in measuring traffic (page views and unique visitors) to a site either website or blog. Go to Alexa and input the url of your "expert's site" for instant rankings. Alexa will return Global traffic, US rankings, and a mix of page view and unique visitor numbers.

Note: If an expert claims to be able to make your traffic "explode" then they better have an Alexa ranking of UNDER 1,000,000 at the very least.

Note 2: Alexa like any other measurement tool can not capture all web traffic. It is best to combine other traffic measurement tools with Alexa for a solid idea of a site's traffic. Try Quantcast too

In my last two due diligence investigations on SEO "expert" speakers the first one came back with an Alexa ranking of over 19million which equates to about 10-20 visitors per day to their site. The second guy had a ranking in the 6million range which might provide 30 visitors per day

#2 Technorati: Links are considered the measurement of a site's Google authority and a big part of the SEO formula. If you go to technorati.com (free tool) you can input the url and check on the number of hyper links which are coming into your "experts" site. If your expert has fewer than 10 links and they are old--he probably isn't writing a worthwhile blog or he is not writing with consistency

#3 Evaluate their site: Do they write a blog? How often do they write per week? What is the date of the last blog post? Do they have a blogroll? Do they have widgets like mybloglog directory on their sidebar? Does the platform look dated? Do you like the way their sites looks?

Hits Myth

If your "expert" begins to speak about "hits" you might just want to bail. The term hits, although that is the only traffic measurement widget offered on wordpress blogs, is out dated and misleading. Hits can refer to any visitor who arrives at your site, clicks on any pictures, articles, or other documents. Each item is tallied as a hit.

You want to understand how many page views your expert's blog-website receives; how many UNIQUE visitors, and their over all traffic ranking

Remember

If the "expert's" site does not measure up in these 3 critical ways then how can the expert teach others how to increase their traffic and SEO power?

 

Comments (4)

Bill C. Merrell
Merrell Institute ~ Appraisal Education Network - Bohemia, NY
Ph.D. - Merrell Institue

Great Article blog- you hit on some very viable points.

Keep up the good work.

Bill

Jun 21, 2008 06:03 AM
Anonymous
Anonymous

Hi Bill- Thank you for your kind words. I hope this helps you when you are considering SEO expert services

dean

Jun 21, 2008 06:07 AM
#2
Glenn Sanford
eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC - Bellingham, WA

Actually Hits is even more misused then what you have indicated.  In a weblog a hit is anything rendered from your webserver.  As mentioned this includes photos, however lets say that you have one visitor visit your home page and you have 30 photos on the page this will actually generate 31 hits in your log file.

So there are # of Vistors, # of Page Views, and # of Hits.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
--
Founder / CEO
BuyerTours Realty LLC &
Working The Magic LLC
Check out my Real Estate SEO Blog

Jun 21, 2008 04:16 PM
Dean Guadagni
Inner Architect - San Rafael, CA

Glenn- Thanks for adding information to this important point.The problem lies in the symantics. Back in the good ole days people used to "Xerox" rather than copy a document. Back in the early days of traffic measurement people referred to hits and had no idea of the inaccuracies surronding this term.

More to the point, the real measure of an SEO guru is if that person has a well read blog, tons of page views, a mountain of uniques, and he/she is providing more than lip service.

The analogy: if you were going to hit Gold's Gym to get big you would hire a trainer who fit the physical description. You wouldn't hire the avid cyclist or runner who has no idea how to pack on muscle--their bodies being their resume.

The same holds true for SEO experts. If I am paying $30-$65 to hear a "expert" speak on SEO then they better have a blog, a blog that is well read, a blog that garners an Alexa ranking (1,000,000 at the very least) in line with their claims, and I need to be able to follow all these factors before I will spend the time and money for their keynote.

I appreciate your help!

Jun 22, 2008 06:11 AM