AT&T is offering to help build and “improve” websites with a purchase of their web hosting services — fan-freaking-tastic (please note the sarcasm).

They’re doing this under the guise of helpfulness to small and medium sized businesses, but I promise this will be less helpful and more hurtful. No disgrace to AT&T, I like their products, have an AT&T mobile phone and think they do good work; however, building and improving websites isn’t their specialty.

These are going to be more off-the-shelf crap generic products. If you’ve seen one FrontPage site, you’ve seen them all, which is exactly how I imagine the AT&T developed ones will be.

Their design experts will work with business owners on, “issues such as copywriting, blog and forum integration, database development, search engine optimization and electronic shopping cart capabilities.”

Now, maybe it’s just me, but when was the last time you met a designer you’d trust with your SEO efforts? Seriously, SEO is rooted in good content strategies. How many designers do you know who would love to write and give you tips on your writing?

I promise you this: There will be some messes to clean up after this. Web hosting companies should stick to what they do well: web hosting. If we all just do what we’re good at, the world will be a happier place.

Are you passionate about what you’re doing? Seriously, are you? Whether you’re working online (go team!), working at home or just working because you need to work, you should be happy about what you’re doing.

Right about now I figure you’re probably asking yourself, “And this has what exactly do to with SEO?” Well, as Yoda said in Star Wars, “everything.”

Alright, well, I’m not exactly sure if Yoda said that, but as far as I can remember he did — so just go with me here.

Do you like your site? Are you proud of it? Do you want to tell everyone you know about it? If you’ve answered all of these a resounding yes, then you’re well on your way to a good SEO campaign. Seriously, that’s exactly what SEO is: it’s telling everyone about what you do.

When someone heads to your site and is impressed with what you have on there, do you know what they’re going to do? They’re going to tell other people about it and recommend them to visit your site.

You’ll then have more visitors, who then tell more people…oh yes, the numbers will multiply.

Do you know what The Google Machine will then do? It’ll take notice and start ranking you higher. This will happen because it sees lots of people visiting your site, and if lots of people are visiting, then sure enough other would want to as well.

Oh yes, it all comes down to passion. So if you’re not passionate about your current work, maybe it’s time for a little evaluation. You see, online, you can be whatever you want to be.

These days, everyone seems to be talking about SEO standards — that is to say, whether there should be any standards. This, to me at least, is an adorably cute question.

Regardless of if we want standards, “need” standards (as prescribed by some outside entity) or care one way or the other about them, they’ll never be enforceable.

Seriously, who or what could police the Internet? The most sophisticated Net users are typically those who break the rules, the hackers. It’s not that I don’t think a hacker wouldn’t get a kick out of policing SEO practices, it’s just that I think they have better things to do.

Not only that, but let’s, for argument’s sake, say that we were to attempt to develop a set of SEO standards. Who, pray tell, would come up with these? A government entity? A conglomeration of SEO professionals?

Come on now, have any of you been watching the John Adams mini-series? Notice how well the delegates to the Continental Congress worked together? Yeah, they didn’t — and that was kinda a life and death situation, this isn’t.

I imagine the squabbling that would go on between SEOs would look something like the amazing politicking that happened between the pirate leaders in the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Lots of shouting, little of anything getting accomplished, but certainly a fun time.

Moral of the story: if we ever attempt to do anything as silly as get some “official” SEO standards, sign me up for the conference, because I’m sure it’ll be a wild and crazy, but ultimately unproductive (as far as the standards go) time!

When it comes to ranking for Sherman Oaks SEO terms, you’re dealing with local search. You won’t have to worry about ranking globally, because most of your prospective clients will be from the area. This reduces the amount of people you are trying to outrank, making your job much easier.

All you have to remember is to keep things simple and don’t try to get too fancy. Many people struggle with their SEO efforts when they aim for amazingly broad terms. Usually, when you’re doing local search, you don’t need to beat out millions of people, you only need to beat out thousands. When you utilize good SEO strategies, your Sherman Oaks SEO efforts will prove exceedingly successful.

Local Search for Sherman Oaks SEO

Here’s the thing about local search: directories often dominate it. This means that there is definite room for growth for local companies, because all directories are just places that gather and regurgitate information. Most directories don’t even usually give people anything beyond phone numbers and addresses. Rarely will they even mention store hours!

When your business has a website and you want to rank locally, you won’t have to work too hard to beat out these directories. This is because the search engines value usefulness to the searchers. Which do you think is more valuable for someone searching for a local hardware store, the hardware store’s own website, or a directory listing that doesn’t even give store hours?

Keyword Research for Sherman Oaks SEO

When you research keywords for your business based in Sherman Oaks, you should start general. For instance, if you sell furniture, that’s a good place to start. However, all companies who are ranking for “furniture” aren’t exactly your competition.

You need to think and research like the end user. What are they going to search? Let’s imagine a typical person in Sherman Oaks; they probably will search for “Sherman Oaks furniture” (granted, probably without the capitalization). This is exactly what you should do!

Your competition isn’t going to be coming from Furniture.com, it’s going to be coming from…well, actually no place really good! As of this writing, there are only directories currently trying to rank for “Sherman Oaks furniture.” And as we know, directories are pretty worthless in the grand scheme of things!

Optimization for Your Sherman Oaks SEO Efforts

Even though you’re going for local search, it doesn’t mean that you can ignore good optimization techniques. Make sure you have good content, keep your content fresh and optimized and you’ll be well on your way to ranking in your Sherman Oaks SEO efforts!

Here’s the thing: Most people don’t want to link out from their website because they’re worried that it’s going to steal their link juice. They’re paranoid that they’re going to lose their precious juice. Oh, my precious. (Yes, obvious Lord of the Rings reference here.) Funny thing with this is that if you don’t link out, how are people going to know about you?

Seriously, are they going to happen upon you from Google randomly? Not bloody likely if you’ve just put up your site…thanks sandbox, you’re the best! You need to link out to sites to get noticed and get on the radar of Google (other search engines too, but Google’s the big beast on the block).

However, you should still be selective with who you link to, don’t just link to anyone. When you’re linking out, you should link to authoritative resource sites — meaning sites beneficial to your users. SEO is, fundamentally, all about the user experience.

Just like how a good report will cite its sources, if you know something will benefit your readers, link out to it! Once you do this, the people who you’ve linked to will see your link, visit your site and see what you’re doing. Worst-case scenario from that is that this person does nothing, no big deal; at least you got another viewer that day. Best-case scenario, this new viewer likes what you’re doing, becomes a loyal reader and maybe even link back to you.

That, my friends, is what link love is all about — you gotta give it to get it.