Internet Marketing, Web Design, SEO, Web 2.0 Optimization
Posts tagged good SEO
How to Find an SEO Company
89 months ago
It’s true that everyone who owns a website needs SEO to make it big with the search engines. But then again, not everyone who owns a website knows the first thing about SEO. While it’s a good idea for everyone to learn more about SEO, fact is that it takes time to fully understand its concepts and use it to your advantage. So unless you’re willing to put website optimization on hold, it’s recommended that you leave the hard work to the experts.
Putting together an in-house team could be really expensive though. But even that should not keep you from getting expert help. When the costs outweigh the benefits of an effort, business owners simply need to find alternatives such as outsourcing business practices. This should not be difficult considering the number of companies that now offer outsourcing services. The real challenge is finding a company that can deliver results.
For instance, when outsourcing IT services like SEO, it is important to make sure that you are getting the services of a reputable SEO company. But how do you know if an SEO company is reputable? Finding out requires open communication lines and good research skills.
Ask—and then ask some more
When you first get in touch with a business IT outsourcing company, it would be a good idea to take the time to sit down with a representative whether offline or online. Face-to-face meetings these days no longer require the parties to be in the same room—much less the same continent. What matters most is that you will have a venue to ask the important questions. Prior to the meeting, make a list of the items you are most concerned about so you will not miss out on something. The list should not restrict you though. If more questions come up in the course of the conversation, then go ahead and ask them. An open communication line is especially critical for business IT outsourcing set-ups because the partnership sometimes involves companies on two different parts of the globe.
Do your homework
Every company puts its best foot forward. Keep this mind and take the time to do your own research. Outsourcing business practices has become such common practice that fraud incidents are no longer uncommon. There are many bogus companies that offer their business IT outsourcing services, but actually have no intention of putting out quality work once the transaction is done.
To avoid this and to get value for your money, do your own research. Do a background check on the company offering its outsourcing IT services by reviewing their portfolio. Get in touch with some of their past clients and ask for a recommendation. If the company offers free trial, by all means, avail of it. This would not only give you insight into how their team works. It would also allow you to test drive the working relationship. In the end, a good research can go a long way in preventing scenarios that could be possibly harmful for your business.
Perform a reality check
Any SEO company that guarantees a number ranking position should not be trusted. A reputable SEO company knows that SEO isn’t about instant gratification. In fact, it takes approximately six to twelve months before significant results can be seen, especially for small businesses. The most realistic claim that a business IT outsourcing company can guarantee is a first page listing on search engines plus increased unique visitor traffic. To make sure that you are on the same page, present to them your business and website objectives and ask them how they propose to meet your goals realistically.
Looking for a Search Engine Optimization Company
01 year ago
This is a guest post by Pete Handley
Pete Handley is an SEO consultant and expert. He writes article and blogs for Vertical Leap UK. For more information on the topic of search engine optimization and related issue, he recommends you to visit www.vertical-leap.co.uk website.
Search engine optimization is a fairly new industry, but the importance of SEO is increasingly recognized.
Results of a recent study in which 467 small firms were questioned, found that a large number of businesses recognize that they have failed to address SEO and have never attempted to improve their internet rankings. Nearly half (41 per cent) of the companies questioned admitted they had never optimized their website.
If your company is one of them and you understand the benefits seo could bring to your businesses’ website, there is nothing stopping you getting in touch with a search engine optimization company, unless you are unsure how to go about choosing one.
When choosing an seo company there are a number of things that can be done to ensure you are choosing the best supplier. The best thing you could possibly do is check their own rankings. Google search terms such as seo, seo services, internet marketing etc… it’s also worth localizing the search to the geographical area in which the company operates, to see how they fare in comparison to their local competitors.
After making contact, ask for phone numbers of clients they are currently working with who will be able to provide you with references. Do not just trust quotes on the website, sometimes they are solicited so do not use online testimonials alone. Speak to their customers; find out their ranking achievements, how soon did they see results? Do they find it easy to contact their campaign delivery manager? These are the types of questions you should ask.
Image via Wikipedia
Steer clear of companies that are secretive or fail to explain clearly exactly what they intend to do. Look for trusted search marketing companies, ultimately the company you hire is your responsibility so ensure you know exactly how they will ‘help’ you. Beware of SEO companies that claim they can ‘guarantee’ you a number 1 ranking for certain keywords. There are no ‘special’ relationships with Google so don’t be fooled.
Employing a SEO company to work on your website is a positive thing and it’s worth remembering that the firm you employ should share the same passion you do for your businesses’ website.
5 Things Every SEO Needs To Succeed in the SEO Industry
51 year ago
This is a guest post by Jeffrey Gross
Jeffrey Gross is the owner of a Long Island based SEO Company. When he is not helping his clients dominate the Long Island SEO landscape, he teaches small business owners how to help their own SEO causes. Jeff teaches SEO and lectures on the topic at various colleges around Long Island and loves every second of it.
If you are reading this, chances are you have at least one SEO horror story. Most in SEO do, like pirates at sea comparing scars, “argh! And this is when I lost me left leg” as another removes the patch from his eye to reveal the gaping hole there within – well perhaps not that dramatic. Just like pirate horror stories all involve Sea Monsters, so SEO horror stories almost always stem from a lack of upfront preparation by the SEO consultant. “Here there be monsters!” would say the map to the buried SEO treasure. Let us try to find where X marks the spot.
1) Explain SEO – SEO is a “buzzword” many business owners hear and marginally understand – but it’s very safe to assume they do not know the whole story. Even if they think they do the odds favor that they were informed (or misinformed) a long time ago. The world of SEO changes daily – so unless they heard about SEO yesterday or today from an SEO expert then it’s important you start from scratch. Tell them how SEO works (broad overview) and why it’s time consuming, difficult, and well worth the effort.
Building your relationship with this new client on assumptions of SEO prowess is a bad idea.
2) Be Honest – Perhaps the most common mistake is not being 100% honest and upfront about the time needed and the lack of instant results often associated with SEO. As you all know SEO takes time, and lots of it!
The client will likely not know this and must be told upfront that SEO can often take upwards of 9-12 months (in some niches) to see any quantifiable results! There are of course cases where results happen faster – but it’s always best to over estimate time then to underestimate it.
3) Make sure you have a legally sound contract – It is crucial to have a legally sound contract to protect both yourself and your client. SEO is a very unpredictable industry and as an SEO professional you have limited control over the outcome of a campaign. You might be saying – “hey wait, I’m the best SEO ever – its guaranteed with me!”…well it’s not. You aren’t Google. It’s crucial to layout the monthly rates, the time needed and any opt out clauses that protect you and the client. In other words – make sure this contract is air tight and ready to roll when you are at the table with the client.
4) Send Reports – Once you have the client make sure you stay in touch. Send reports on a monthly basis (at a minimum). Include their rankings (for the keywords you are targeting) and the + or – change when compared to the last month. Also include any crucial traffic data as well. Increases in certain segments of traffic (advanced segments in Google Analytics can be your best friend here!). One common complaint many businesses have with their SEO company (present or past) goes something like this…” They never send reports, I never hear from them!” bad way to do business!
5) Be Proactive – Surprise your clients…check in on them, call them! Imagine how happy they will be if you were to call them once a month. Your SEO clients DO NOT want be treated like a number. They want you to know their name and speak to them once in a while. They are spending quite a lot (I hope!) on your services – so make sure they feel attended to.
So there you have it – 5 tips on how you can avoid some very serious SEO client related problems. Batten down the hatches and full sails ahead, matey.
How to screw up your SEO
21 year ago
I’m sure that most of you have heard the old saying “There’s more than one way to skin a cat” (or a similar saying, depending on which region of the world you are from). Well, this saying applies directly to SEO; SEO can be a tricky business, and as with everything, there is a right way to do it and a wrong way, or rather there are multiple “right ways” and multiple “wrong ways”. The reason that it is vital for you (business owner, blogger…) to be aware of the right way to do SEO is b/c if you do SEO the wrong way you are likely to be punished by Google, and this may mean the total delisting of your website or blog. Additionally a number of SEO companies (those that guarantee results) have been known to follow “Black Hat” SEO practices, and as a result have gotten their clients sites banned from Google. (The term “Black Hat” refers to things that Google deems illegal, I will go into this later; “White Hat” refers to legal SEO techniques) In this post I will discuss a few ways that you can screw up your SEO, although I may suggest a few unscrupulous methods of doing SEO, I am in no way endorsing these methods, nor will I give a clear explanation of how to do SEO illegally.
Before I start talking about the wrong way to do SEO I would like to spend a minute talking about what I mean by the “right way”. When I use the term “right way to do SEO” or “White Hat SEO” what I am referring to is the current best practice methods for SEO, these methods have changed and evolved over the years, and it is certain that SEO best practice will continue to change as the field matures. At the moment there are many best practice/White Hat strategies that you or your SEO company can choose to use in order to improve your rankings in search engines, these include link building (organic link building rather than fake or paid links) the usage of proper keywords, proper keyword density… There are indeed many best practices, and I will gladly discuss those in the future, but for now I’d like to focus on ways to screw up your SEO.
When it comes to screwing up your SEO there are many ways that you can accomplish this, and a few of these ways may earn your site a lifetime ban from Google. There are a number of Black Hat tricks that unscrupulous SEO’s like to use in order to try to beat Google’s system (such as keyword stuffing, mirror sites, duplication of content…); these tricks may get you to rank high for a little bit, but if you use them they will get you banned, but that is enough talking about the illegal stuff, I do not want to give anyone any ideas…
I would like to talk about the best way that most people screw up their SEO, by choosing the wrong keywords. If you choose to target the wrong keywords you can get one of two outcomes: either keywords that are too competitive, where you will never rank for them; or keywords that have too low of a search volume, in which case you might rank #1, but since there are only a few hits each month you will never get good traffic. Basically, choosing the right keywords is a combination of being able to select keywords that have a high enough volume in order for you to get enough traffic, and yet are not so competitive that you will never rank, a good way to accomplish this is by targeting keywords that are geo specific or that have adjectives, for example, “Hardwood flooring NJ” is a competitive keyword, but you might instead want to target “Best hardwood flooring in NJ” or “Hardwood floors Summit NJ”.
If you have any further questions about screwing up your SEO, selecting the right keywords, or anything else, please feel free to leave a comment on this blog. If you know of a good way to screw up your SEO that I overlooked please tell me about it in a comment.
Qualities of a good SEO Expert
61 year ago
SEO is currently a very hot field to be in, it is a field that is very young and that has not yet fully matured, and best of all, SEO is not something that requires a ton of equipment/being in a specific area; all you really need to do SEO is a computer, an internet connection, and a client (website) to do SEO. Given the relatively low barrier to entry, this is a field full of fraudsters and of people claiming to give you the moon for a low low price of… (I often get unsolicited offers from so called “SEO experts” who promise to do magic at a low price. Such unsolicited offers must never be taken seriously; a Good SEO does not make cold calls!)
When it comes to qualities of a good SEO (and of things that you, as a client should look for in an SEO) the most important thing is a passion for the subject, and the desire to learn. An SEO has to be part computer guy, part marketing expert, part writer/editor, and part researcher (since the field changes rapidly a good SEO must be on top of the latest changes as they arise and must be able to implement them). Most importantly I believe that a good SEO must be honest (to both himself/herself and the client) and must be willing to admit when a project is too big for them to handle (instead of taking on every project, promising the moon and failing).
When it comes to my advise to anyone who is looking for an SEO expert I would advise you to be realistic and to not believe everything that you are told; talk to multiple SEO’s get different quotes/opinions… and most importantly Do not go with the cheapest bid! (You get what you pay for!)
Advantages of SEO versus Advantages of Adwords
61 year ago
Most search engines today have two primary types of search results: organic results (also known as “natural search results”) are search results that are compiled based on the search engines algorithm, and are generally determined by a few factors, such as the # and quality of other websites who have chosen to link to a result, the age/authority of the site… The second type of search result is known as Pay Per Click (PPC) these are ads that consist of businesses paying the search engine to appear on top of search results whenever a specific keyword is searched. Both organic search optimization (known as SEO) and PPC have their advantages and disadvantages and it is wise to evaluate each strategy on a case by case basis to see which of these can generate the greatest result for the least amount of cost. Today PPC ads are the primary method by which most search engines generate revenue, for the sake of this discussion I will focus on AdWords, which is Google’s PPC system and is the largest PPC system currently on the web.
Pay Per Click has some clear advantages when compared to SEO, one of these is that with PPC ads you can see an almost instantaneous result, you place an ad for “Home remodeling Ct” you can be certain that within minutes you will start to appear when people search for those keywords, and you will see immediate traffic. Additionally PPC (especially AdWords) allows you to be in complete control of your budget. AdWords allows you to set up both a daily and a monthly budget, so that you will never spend more than you intend. The way that AdWords works is like an auction, where you set the limit that you are willing to pay per keyword, and Google acts as the auctioneer, if your limit is high enough you will rank for your top keywords. In terms of disadvantages, one of the biggest is cost, today it is very costly to purchase ads for competitive keywords and some competitive keywords (such as “home remodeling sites”) may end of costing upwards of a few dollars, or even $10 per click, and this can add up quickly. Another disadvantage of PPC is that you will only get traffic so long as you have room in your budget, once your daily/monthly budgets are met you will no longer appear until the new cycle starts. It is also important to note that you will only get traffic to your site so long as you keep paying for ads; PPC does nothing for your organic search rankings and once you stop paying your traffic will return to its previous state. As far as examining when and if PPC makes sense, I would suggest that there are a few circumstances when I would advise someone to utilize this service, the first of these is if you have a brand new site and you require immediate traffic (this can be a site for an event…) Another instance where it may be wise to use PPC is if you are able to target long tail keywords (long tail keywords are keywords that are longer and less competitive, so instead of targeting “hardwood flooring” you might consider trying to target “Hardwood floor installation NJ” which would be much cheaper) targeting long tail keywords will give you the biggest bang for your buck, but since average search volume is low on long tail keywords, you would need to target many such keywords and manage these actively.
When it comes to the advantage of using SEO to improve your organic search rankings there are a few clear advantages, the most important advantage is that you are not paying for every click, and a successful SEO campaign can thus attain a much lower cost return in the long term. In addition most traffic that comes to a site from organic results is higher quality than PPC traffic (people who click on an organic result are far more likely to be interested in your product/service as compared to people who click on PPC ads) you can thus be expected to get a much higher conversion rate from your organic search traffic. In terms of cost, SEO is often cheaper than PPC in the long run, but since an SEO campaign requires at least 6 months to show results, it is often difficult for many to wrap their minds around this. Another advantage of SEO is that even after a campaign ends you will see the results of the SEO for a long time, although organic search traffic is likely to decline at about the same rate as it rose. Some of the disadvantages of SEO are: you do not see instant results; an SEO campaign needs at least 6 months to be successful. Also, most SEO (or rather affordable SEO) requires the client to be proactive; contributing to the development of content (blogs, articles…) and depending on the individual this may or may not work.
It is my sincere belief that anyone who is looking to get the best long term results should focus their efforts on SEO; whereas those who have short term websites or sites that need to have a strong push at a given date should concentrate more on PPC. What are your thoughts on this? Please leave your thoughts in a comment below.
How to choose bad keywords
31 year ago
One of the most important aspects of on page, as well as off page SEO is choosing the right keywords. And the best way to screw up your SEO and to ensure that your SEO campaign will fail miserably is to choose the wrong keywords to target. Your keywords can help determine both the amount of traffic that comes to your site (the # of hits) and the quality of this traffic (are the right people coming to your site). There are 3 things that you should concern yourself with when picking your target keywords: how competitive are your keywords, are your keywords geo specific, and lastly, what is the search volume of your keywords, I will try to answer each of these below.
The first thing that you must ask yourself is how competitive are your keywords? If your keywords are too general and too competitive it is unlikely that you will rank for them (unless of course you are willing to spend tons of money on off page SEO, in which case, be my guest). A good example of this is as follows, if you are a bookstore it is unlikely that you would be able to rank for the keyword “books” or “bookstore” unless you spend a great deal of money, but it is far more likely that you may be able to rank for “buy classic books” or, “buy cheap textbooks online”. Currently the best tool that exists for measuring the competitiveness of keywords is Google keyword tool. (This is also the best tool for checking the other 2 things that I will discuss below).
The next question that you must ask yourself is, are my keywords Geo specific? Should my keywords be Geo specific? Geo specific means that you are targeting keywords from a specific geographical area, so if you are an electrician in New Jersey, one of your keywords might be, “professional electrician NJ”, rather than just “professional electrician”. This is important b/c local keywords are far less competitive than national keywords, and if you are a home remodeling contractor in New Jersey you would have no need to spend tons of money in order to rank for this keyword nationwide.
The third and last thing that you must be aware of when choosing he right keywords is search volume. Search volume is the # of monthly hits that a certain keyword is searched for in Google per month (again, the best tool to use to check this is Google keyword tool). This tool can enable you to select the best keywords in your area that get the best volume (if each of your top keywords gets under 100 searches per month, and you want your site to get 10,000 monthly hits, you should probably select more competitive, higher volume keywords).
It is my hope that this brief article about how to select the best keywords will help you in choosing the best keywords for your site and improving your SEO. If you require any help with selecting your keywords please do not hesitate to contact NetLZ, we are your leading SEO experts.
Facts about trading links
12 years ago
Today link building remains one of the most important aspects of off site SEO, and is perhaps the primary method by which to get a site to rank in search engines for chosen keywords. There are multiple aspects to a proper link building strategy (social bookmarking, organic links, blogging, web 2.0…) but what I want to discuss here is trading links.
I know that I have spoken on this topic on a few previous occasions, but the question of link trading (otherwise known as exchanging links) is one that arises often in my day to day work for my clients. I recently had an impromptu debate on this topic with a marketing expert who I met through one of the forums in which I am active. I expressed a desire to this person to trade links between my clients and hers, and she responded to me that she never traded links b/c she did not see any purpose in doing this. This post is therefore written in response to that debate (and if the person with whom I had this discussion is reading this post I urge you to leave your response as a comment)
Trading links is perhaps the oldest type of link building and dates back to the early days of the internet, and is also the most straight forward method of getting links (although not the easiest by far). In trading links you essentially make a deal with another webmaster in which they link to you and you, in turn link to them, under such a deal both sites benefit. Although this type of link building has lost much weight in recent years, as Google and other search engines have refined their algorithms – to the point where Google can now detect when a simple link exchange has taken place (I link to your homepage on my homepage, and you return link to my homepage on your homepage) link trading still counts in the eyes of Google. Additionally trading links has a secondary benefit b/c not only does it help you with improving your keyword rankings, but it also helps improve your referral traffic b/c (for example) if you are an author of a kids adventure book about summer camp and you get a summer camp in New Jersey to link to your book, it is very likely that many of the visitors to the website of the summer camp will visit your site to see what your book is about, and it is also likely that your sites’ visitors may be interested in a summer camp in New Jersey.
In addition to a two way link exchange (which isn’t as powerful for search engines as it once was) you can also do a 3-way link exchange, or a 4-way link exchange… Under this method, instead of linking 2 sites directly to each other, you link 3 sites to each other, where site “A” gets a link on site “B”, site “B” gets a link on site “C” and site “C” gets a link on site “A”, or, using the above example, you simply add a third site into the loop, so the New Jersey Summer camp would add a link to the summer camp adventure book, the site of the summer camp adventure book would add a link to a Summer camp stories blog, and the blog would in turn add a link to the NJ summer camp. (This is more complicated, but it also more beneficial and it is worth it)
Another important thing to consider when trading links (and another thing that was discussed in my debate with the marketing expert) is the page rank of the site with which you are exchanging the links. The answer to this is relatively simple, the higher the page rank of the page where your link appears, the better the quality of the link (as seen by Google), although if you are trying to increase your referral traffic the page rank question should not be of concern.
There is one more potential factor to look at when trading links; this is relevance of the links. It is always beneficial to trade links with websites that are similar to yours, regardless of the page rank – this will help to make you an expert in your field (at least in the eyes of Google).
To sum up, and to put an end (however temporary to the link trading question), yes, it is always a good idea to trade links. If you have any thoughts on this topic please leave a comment, I approve all legitimate comments.
The position of keywords in your URL
02 years ago
In proper the little things count. The little things are particularly vital if you are trying to rank well on very competitive keywords, in this case it helps to take advantage of every tiny, virtually insignificant/obscure preference that Google might have towards this or that. The exact position of keywords in your url is one such preference that plays a small role in the way that Google ranks your pages (if you do all of the small things that each play a small role in your rankings, the net result will be a big improvement in your rank!)
This video discusses the importance (small as it may be) of the position of your keywords in your URL. This video features Matt Cutts, who is one of the senior developers at Google.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRzMhlFZz9I&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
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