If you spend time at some of the SEO forums on the web it is quite common to have people stop in and inquire about hiring someone to help their website achieve better rankings in the search engines. What’s fascinating is one of the popular answers is to not hire anybody - that if you want to achieve better results you should just do it yourself. I’ve always found this answer to be a bit surprising.

This will be a two part series. This first article will look at whether or not you should do your own SEO. In a follow-up article we will then look at what you will have to learn should you decide to do it yourself.

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“What’s in a name?” - Well hopefully your keywords, that’s what!

One of the biggest mistakes you can make in blogging (or on any website for that matter) is to not fully utilize your title tags. The title tag has been and will continue to be one of the most important elements in search engine rankings. Title tags are the over-arching descriptor for the page; they communicate with the search engines telling them what each page is about.

So then why is it that so many websites fail to optimize their title tags?

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Episode 1 - 4/30/2007

Guest: Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder of SEOmoz.org

Background: Search Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing

Total Time: 21 minutes

In this, our inaugural podcast, we talk with Rand Fishkin - Search Engine Optimization specialist for SEOmoz.org. Rand gives some optimization advice to help you optimize your website. He also explains the new Premium Membership that SEOmoz.org now offers and finishes with a few personal questions! Who knew that Rand Fishkin would be iPod-less!

This being our first podcast we did have some technical glitches. The volume on my phone is a bit low at times, so click the webPod wheel on the right and turn it up!

Podcast Highlights

• 00:30 - Hear Rand’s thoughts on reporting paid links to Google
• 04:18 – Rand tells us his opinion on .gov and .edu links
• 07:20 – When optimizing, is what’s good for one good for all?
• 10:21 – Rand gives us some pointers on how to optimize
• 12:14 – Rand tells us some of his favorite keyword tools
• 18:32 – Get to know Rand a little bit better

Play the podcast right now! Notice the Random Bits podcast on the right? Just click the Rand Fishkin link and it will start playing. It might take a few seconds to stream-in…

The Google Blog explains the robots exclusion protocol:

“Usually when the Googlebot finds a page, it reads all the links on that page and then fetches those pages and indexes them.”

But, what if you don’t want Google to index a page, or follow the links on a page, or archive a page?

Here is a list of META tags you can use:

• NOINDEX tells Google not to index the page
• NOFOLLOW tells Google not to follow the links on the page
• NOARCHIVE tells Google not to store a cached copy of the page
• NOSNIPPET tells Google not to show a snippet (description) under your Google listing, it will automatically get NOARCHIVE too

When you work for a company, quite often you can convince your boss to send you to the awesome tech conference that is being held in your area, but what about when you work for yourself? You are a small or even a one-man shop. Do you spend the $500-$2000 to go to a conference JUST to network? We’ve all been to those conferences and typically, that is what you get out of it the most; contacts. But do you ever learn anything that can really help your business and increase your income? I haven’t. Enter the Elite retreat.

When I first heard about this retreat last November, I was intrigued. The press was good and bad and people wondered how it would go. The first “retreat” occurred in December and the attendees came out of it very pleased. The next retreat will be held in March with Guy Kawasaki as the keynote. I would love to be there. This retreat is aimed at site owners and webmasters.

Here is what makes the Elite Retreat different from the other conferences. Basically you have a panel of 6 experts and for 2 days; they are yours. The price tag may be steep to some at $5k a ticket, but to have access to these successful minds for 2 days would be worth it. The experts are: Lee Dodd (Social Networking), Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker (SEM), Aaron Wall (SEO), Darren Rowse (Blogging), Kris Jones (Online Media), and Neil Patel (Marketing). They do have an agenda set forth, but the idea is you get access to these six very successful minds and they help you with your sites. They find out what your goals are and they give you ideas that help to achieve them.

So, how do I justify spending $5000? Well, right now I don’t because I don’t have $5k. Maybe later this year though. Here are the things I would weigh: 1) do my sites have the potential to recoup my investment with the right direction? and 2) Will I have the time after the retreat to take all of the advice and everything I’ve learned and put it into place. It’s that simple to me. Right now, I don’t believe my current network of sites could recoup that investment within a reasonable timeframe, but I am working on other sites that may just do that.

Would you attend something like this?

Best Travel Credit Card Offers - submit your application today.

Google Webmaster Tools users are in for a real treat! Google now provides a table that list pages within your site that have links pointing to them from other sites. You can even download the table.

Thanks Google, that’s very handy…

[ more here ]

Search-This welcomes Dan Schulz to the team!

Dan is another SitePoint catch and a good one. He draws from a wide area of web expertize, but his passions run deep for CSS, XHTML, usability and standards compliant code.

One thing is for sure, with the Search-This team we have assembled, you won’t find any crappy code here.

Enjoy Dan’s bio below:

User Name: Dan Schulz

• childhood ambition: to get out of the house
• fondest memory: meeting my best friend
• favorite music: whatever sounds good. Usually classical, rock, alternative-rock. I don’t listen to rap. Record company executives took the “C” off of a certain word to make it marketable.
• retreat: nature
• proudest moment: two of them, getting out on my own, and becoming self-employed
• biggest challenge: staying self-employed
• alarm clock: I have a biological clock (and a 27-hour sleep schedule)
• perfect day: every day I wake up
• first job: bagger at the local Jewel-Osco
• indulgence: sports, reading, table-top warfare gaming, computer games, being with friends
• favorite movie: no favorite movie - there’s too many I like
• inspiration: too many to list here