RWT Webmaster Tools Blog

DIYSEO Review – SEO guide for beginners?

It is funny how things happen.

As I have gotten back to blogging again, I have been cleaning up notebooks, and to do lists. Sorting through old posts, cleaning up pages and deleting RSS feeds I dont want to read anymore.

In the middle of all that I came across the name Andy Hagans. A few years back Andy was writing about SEO and had started a business selling text link ads. So out of sheer curiosity (and throw in a little serendipity), I googled his name. Turns out he is not doing text link ads anymore, nor much in the blogging space. However, I happened to notice on his AndyHagans.com website, a brief reference to “a [new] web based SEO platform for small businesses, launched in April 2010″. This tool is called DIYSEO.

DIYSEO purports to guide subscribers through the process of helping website owners improve their SEO. I hemmed and hawwed about signing up. After the seven day trial, the cost would be $50 a month. I really wasn’t keen on potentially wasting more money. But here are three facts: I have read a lot of information about SEO. I have wasted good money on SEO tools. I have been extremely poor on implementing SEO, particularly off page optimization (I seem to think I have a pretty good handle on the on-page side of things, which, is much easier to accomplish).

So considering that a handy dandy hold my hand guide through the SEO process might be helpful to me, I signed up for the trial.

DIYSEO breaks things down by grade level: SEO kindergarten, SEO Grade school, SEO High School and SEO college. There are two categories within each grade. Each category is a to-do list of tasks to accomplish for your site. All tasks are driven towards the two big picture SEO tasks: on-page SEO (I like to call this “Structural SEO”) and off-page SEO (or link building or better yet, “Relational SEO”).

What is needed to sign-up?

On sign-up, they ask a series of basic questions. What is your website? Who are your competitors? What are your targeted keywords? Completing the two sections of the initial signup gets you passed SEO Kindergarten. In case, you missed it, there are two items you need to know before you can pass kindergarten. Which means you must already sort of need to know what you have been doing to establish your website. So if you don’t know it already, go out there and figure out who your competitors are and figure out your home page targeted keywords.

Following sign-up, DIYSEO generates a series of to-do lists. For example, under SEO Grade School/Basic Link Building, I have the following task: “Ask for links from colleagues, friends, and business partners.”
Rather generic sounding, though there are more specific tasks such as “Submit your blog to Bloggeries”. Each task is either doublechecked by DIYSEO (for example, when you click complete, it will go out and search and make sure your link is on the site they instructed). However, most tasks are labeled “self-check”, meaning they are trusting that you have actually followed through with the instructions.

Overall, I have been pleased with the to-do lists, even with the generic sounding, “no-duh” tasks. These provide reminders of the essential and sometimes forgotten tasks of SEO.

There are a few tasks I do seriously question though. Two examples should suffice. One, “Submit your site to DMOZ”. This was the first task i saw and my face fell when I saw it. Really? DMOZ? My first thoughts included: Is that site still active? Has anyone ever REALLY been included? (being facetious there) It seemed like the whole DMOZ directory thing had died ages ago and yet, this was their first piece of advice?

But, you know what? I did it. I had submitted to DMOZ years ago and never heard a thing. So, what the heck, I thought, do it again and see what happens. So I submitted and checkboxed that item as complete.

Second task I question: Confirm that the total page size of your homepage is under 100k. You know, I have toyed with the whole concept of page speed and website optimization for a long time. Here is my fundamental problem: the standards for page size and speed have not changed (or so it seems) once we entered the broadband era. A lot of the standards for speed are still based on dial-up. In today’s age of images and video and flash, it is hard to keep your homepage down under 100kb. I ran my page through two different tools. My page size is between 450kb and 540kb. Just out of curiosity, I ran DIYSEO’s homepage through the same two tools. Their homepage size ranged from 149kb to 400kb (yes I know thats quite the range, tis an issue with the tools I used, but that is a post for another day).
So is page size ultimately important? Rather, is it ultimately important for SEO? I am leaning no. (I mean, does it really affect my position in the SERPs?) Is it ultimately important as a matter of customer service? Absolutely, for I don’t want my readers to have to wait to get to content. This is a topic I want to further pursue and may post more about it at a later time.

Ok, so all that said, those two examples should not defer anyone from using DIYSEO. My only point in even bringing them up is to question whether they are of modern (2010) current SEO standard practice. I would love to hear more for the DIYSEO on those points and invite them to comment so we can all further our education.

As of this writing, I have completed 24 of my initial 37 tasks. I am close to graduating both grade school and high school. I will have to say, that having a to-do list laid out for me has been fantastic. In my case, I had already done a fair number of the tasks, so I had a head start. Nonetheless, there were a few things I learned, particularly regarding other resources.

My $64,000 to DIYSEO: What happens when I complete grade school, high school and college? Is that it? What comes next? If I pay $50 a month, what will I be paying for after all these initial tasks are complete?

There is tremendous value for the beginner in using a service like DIYSEO. Education, while putting it into practice, is the BEST way to learn. Invaluable really. Wish I had this five years ago. Though, to be brutally honest, there maybe better means for a true beginner to start with in SEO. Will post about that later.

The price is also extremely competitive. I am familiar with two other SEO “learning resources” which come at a price tag of $80 and $300 a month. DIYSEO definitely offers some level of competition to those providers. However, the price is only competitive IF the value holds over time. While the guidance is helpful now, will it be helpful three months or a year from now?

DIYSEO is still young, less then two weeks old. Look for it to grow in features over time.

If you check it out, leave a comment on this post and let me know how you found the experience.