Every so often, I either receive an email, or phone call, or have a conversation with a potential customer or customer about the pitfalls of moving web pages from sub-directories to the top directory of the website.

Unbeknownst to some, your web architecture is a vital part of your search engine optimization (SEO) effort and content, in addition to creating unique, value-add content that focuses on customers first and search engines second.

When designing or redesigning your website, it is imperative to understand how web architecture, including URL structure, can positively and negatively impact your website’s potential to rank in search engines highly.

Today’s post will try to shed light on SEO advantages and disadvantages of not planning your web architecture to be SEO-friendly or changing your web architecture without considering the SEO impact.

How fast can you get my website ranked and how much will it cost me?

I can’t tell you the number of times those two questions start a SEO relationship with a potential customer.

It’s quite a common occurrence in my line business as one would expect.

However, what’s more interesting is path the relationship takes as we converse about their SEO needs, asking and answering questions volleyed back and forth.

In most cases, I tend to find small business owners with previous SEO experience, whether a SEO do-it-yourselfer, in-house or outsourced SEO, are the ones to quickly derail my questioning with their own agenda.

Much talk can be had regarding buying domain names with hyphens or dashes.

The don’t ever buy a domain with a hyphen camp…

There is the camp that is totally against it, as if buying domains with hyphens is an unforgivable sin.

If a hyphenated or dashed domain were the last domain name on earth to use, they wouldn’t dare think of buying and surely not using such a domain name.

The use of hyphens is like breathing camp…

Then some fall into the camp of not blinking an eye at buying and using domain names with hyphens.

This camp of folk buy and use hyphenated domain names even when non-hyphenated domains are available.

The hit-or-miss hyphen camp…

Then you have those in the middle that, depending on the day and hour you catch them, are a hit or miss on buying and using domain names with hyphens.

This crowd tends to base their decision to buy and use domain names with hyphens much like flipping a coin.

They don’t necessarily have a method to their madness for buying or not buying and using dashed domain names.

Which camp do you best relate to, and, more importantly, which camp will stand the test of time?

But no matter the camp you find yourself in, I think it is safe to say that buying and using domains with hyphens is nothing new under the sun in the Internet world.

There will always be a market for selling and buying domain names with hyphens.

But before you scurry off into the deep abyss of buying hyphenated domain names, I’d like to share some thoughts on why and when to consider buying and using domains with hyphens.

Is it best to have multiple keywords on an optimized page or create multiple optimized pages with different keywords?

I received this question in an email last week from a customer trying to determine the best SEO strategy for optimizing their website content. I thought it was an interesting question, rather questions, for a number of reasons.

I can see through this questioning and quite clear. The customer is grasping at every straw possible to drive do-it-yourself SEO results in the shortest amount of time possible.

They are viewing SEO as a science based on a magical SEO formula to rank well rather than both art and science.

It’s much like a man showering a woman with gifts, dinner, and no conversation of any sort and expecting the woman to fall in love with him for who he is and not what he gives. You get the point, but I digress.

SEO is both an art and science when it comes to refining and finessing your optimized content marketing efforts.

Is it worth spending thousands of dollars on pay-per-click (ppc) campaigns if my website is not ranking well? Can you provide me with any PPC campaign tips?

What a loaded question with a variety of stances to answer from.

Initially when I received this question from a potential customer, I was tempted to answer with a simple answer of yes and why.

However, I decided to delve a little deeper and volley a response back to the potential customer by way of another question.

We exchange emails a few times before arriving at the potential customer’s pain: a website that once ranked well is no longer ranking.

The idea of using PPC advertising and needed PPC campaign tips came about when the potential customer had been in contact with a competitor and industry colleague.

This colleague had indicated with proof that they were spending a good bit on PPC campaigns after their website had been penalized to no existence by the latest Google update.

Not ever having an experience with PPC, the potential customer was gung-ho about moving forward with their PPC effort in hopes of boosting their web rank.

But where should they start?

We’re back in the saddle for another fun-filled post about SEO and doing it yourself.

Do-it-yourself SEO, or DIY SEO, as it is also known, can be quite an experience for small business owners looking to take matters of SEO into their own hands.

Whether you have had a good or bad experience with SEO, in general, there is always a thought that crosses one’s mind: they too could optimize their website to rank well in search engines just as good as, if not better than, SEO professionals.

In addition to performing small business SEO for multiple customers, I’ve experience coaching and consulting a fair share to do SEO themselves.

Some small business owners take SEO coaching and consulting like a fish to water. They succeed in learning, executing, and sustaining sound SEO strategies and tactics to keep their websites highly visible and ranked in major search engines.

But with the good comes the bad who were too smart for their good and stepped on the dark side of SEO due to impatience, naïve, or shrewdness.

And for their unjust actions, they return to me or another SEO professional, endlessly pleading with us to rescue their website from black-hat SEO snares, penalization, or de-indexation in search engines.

I proclaim that anyone can learn do-it-yourself SEO and find success or failure.

But most small business owners don’t truly consider all facets of do-it-yourself SEO.

Most of the time, the do-it-yourself SEO approach is entered blindly based on small business owners not having adequate resources related to time, money, and labor or effort.

And just like you need the S, E, and O to spell SEO, you also need time, money, and effort to invest in an ongoing SEO.

So before you launch into do-it-yourself SEO, let’s take a moment to discuss some common do-it-yourself SEO pitfalls, so you can thoroughly understand the pros and cons of do-it-yourself SEO before causing great harm to your business and having to call the SEO professionals in to clean up the mess.

I’m constantly asked about the length of time it takes to see SEO results and why results cost so much.

It’s to the point that I now start most conversations by informing the customer that it takes anywhere from 1 hour to years to see SEO results. 

Based on the website’s health and a long list of various SEO attributes, customers could immediately see positive or even negative SEO results.

So there, I said it. You can expect to see positive or even negative SEO results immediately.

The irony in making such a broad, sweeping statement is that neither party has an accurate definition of “immediately,” nor can either party definitively express in great clarity what “SEO results” are and are not.

SEO professionals’ lack of clear definition and communication typically sets unrealistic expectations in both time and results for most website owners.

And confusion enters amongst a twisted he said, she said game of trying to figure out whether SEO results were delivered as promised and on time.