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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Information
Search Engine Visibility - The Mantra of Corporate Profitability
The corporate fundamentals are par excellence! The product is unsurpassable and the website is a web designer?s dream in creativity and design ? but there is a vacuum ? of potential online customers! ? The website lacks the basic ingredient of success ? Search Engine Visibility! ? which is what search engine optimization is all about.
The Business Case for SEO
It?s interesting how potential clients have preconceived notions about which aspects of search engine marketing have the most value. In fact, they tend to fall into two camps that are 180° apart. The first camp believes completely in the value of pay-per-click marketing (PPC). It?s easy to understand why. PPC provides immediate and measurable benefits. The ROI of PPC marketing is obvious. This group doesn?t understand why it?s necessary ?to bother? doing SEO. The second camp believes the only way to go is SEO. Clicks are free and the branding benefits of high rankings have been well documented.
Screwed: Is this an inevitability in the SEO World?
By about 2pm everyday, each of my team members has spoken to a good handful of clients and potential clients who have been speaking with other SEO firms. This an absolutely wonderful thing to see, as in the past in our industry, not enough of our consumers were questioning what they were purchasing. It is a sign that accountability will come and the bad guys will be weeded out.While this is a good sign, it?s the cause of my having to answer the same questions over and over. The consumers in the SEO world are being fed out and out lies by some of the people who call themselves experts in the area of Search Engine Optimization. They hear these lies and while comparing prices, contact us at Abalone Designs. They then proceed to tell me everything that all of these other companies promised them and I am utterly astonished. Here some of the most asinine claims I hear through the grapevine.?We can guarantee your rankings?Don?t be fooled! Ask the company what you will be ranking for, immediately! 9 times out of 10, a company that guarantees you rankings, is guaranteeing that you will rank for your own company name, which means people on Google or MSN or Yahoo! would have to know your company name before searching. How does this produce new customers and visitors to your site? Chances are, as soon as these search engines index your site, you will rank within the top ten for your company name, if not first, because it is unique. Why bother paying someone for something that is already going to happen, anyway?Guaranteeing rankings is highly unethical. It is impossible to guarantee rankings unless you have access to Google?s database itself, and even then I?m not sure it?s possible. Keep in mind, we are working with a 3rd party, here. A highly guarded 3rd party that doesn?t, under any circumstances, reveal it?s secrets. No one outside of the companies that run these search engines knows what it is exactly that makes search engines rank sites high. Especially due to the fact that these search engines and the rigorous ranking filters they use to spit out search results change almost monthly. Even a former Google employee doesn?t know how to guarantee rankings! If someone is telling you they?ll guarantee top rankings, run fast! Those are some shady, shady claims. Google themselves have said:?No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google - Beware of SEO's that claim to guarantee rankings, or that claim a "special relationship" with Google, or that claim to have a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is by using the page at http://www.google.com/addurl.html. You can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.?- http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/seo.htmlAn ethical SEO company will not guarantee rankings. They will guarantee that their methods follow search engine guidelines, and they will guarantee customer satisfaction, but at no point in time will any SEO company with a conscience guarantee your rankings.?Your site needs to be continually resubmitted to get on and stay on the search engines?When will I see the end of this one? How old is this method now? 5 years? 10 years? We?re talking about the days when Webcrawler was the biggest search engine and all computers were beige! This claim is so fully untrue, had Pinocchio uttered it, his nose would have stretched from Rome to Poughkeepsie. And the good folks at Google will once again back me up on this one:?Submission is not necessary and does not guarantee inclusion in our index. Given the large number of sites submitting URLs, it's likely your pages will be found in an automatic crawl before they make it into our index through the URL submission form. We DO NOT add all submitted URLs to our index, and cannot predict when or if they will appear.?- http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/1.html#A2?Meta tags are not important anymore?Sure they aren?t. If you don?t want a decent ranking on MSN. The new MSN search places a lot of value on the keywords and description meta tags. Without these tags in your site?s code, your ranking on MSN will suffer. Just as importantly, if your keywords and description meta tags don?t use proper language, your rankings will suffer. The description tag is also what MSN uses as the visible description for a site in the search results. And of course, to prove I?m not the one blowing hot air, here is what MSN themselves say about it:?Site descriptions are extracted from the content of your page each time MSNBot crawls your site and indexes its pages......the best way to affect your site description is to ensure that your web pages effectively deliver the information you want to see in search results.? - Click here to see the page this is found on.?Your Web Site Has Been Sabotaged?This one is truly unreal. I can?t believe it?s even been used as an excuse for why an SEO company hasn?t achieved decent rankings for you. But alas, more than one SEO company has told potential clients of ours that the reason they are not ranking well, or why their search engine optimization campaign is not effective, is because someone else has been sabotaging the site. Some of the clients who have been told this are small businesses, like bed and breakfasts or pet sitters. We always explain to these potential clients that the likelihood of someone even having the initial idea to sabotage a web site, the site in question would have to be a fairly large one, and the target of a lot of hatred. Why? Because sabotaging a web site?s rankings takes a massive amount of time and energy. We?re talking months, maybe even years of hard, hard work. Why would anyone devote months or years of their life to taking down a pet sitting site? Or a bed and breakfast?Once again, these are some hefty claims and it is a clear sign that the company who is running your SEO campaign is unwilling to be held accountable for their actions or lack thereof.Don?t Put Up With It.The bottom line is, your search engine optimization company works for you. You are paying them. Hold them accountable as you would any other vendor. Keep reading these articles, read info at the search engines, educate yourself and if something your SEO says smells a little rotten, don?t be afraid to call them on it.Is being screwed an inevitability in the SEO world? Damn near. But thanks to the increasing interest of our consumers in self-education and their increased questioning, our industry will slowly climb out of the gutter and someday down the line, send this article into antiquity. In spite of my pride, I?d be overjoyed to see that day come.
DIY SEO
Part 1. Wordtracker for keywords.
Whats Link Popularity?
Link popularity is just one of the ways you can try to promote your website with the intention of getting to the top of the search engines.
New Free Online Tool for Keyword Research
I came across a new website the other day and was quite pleasantly surprised.
Boost Your Search Engine Ranking And Generate Free Traffic With Reciprocal Links
Reciprocal links are an important step in your overall plan to get site visitors.
13 Tips For Good Search Engine Placements
When used properly in combination with other basic search engine tactics, these tips can help to dramatically improve your placement with the search engines and increase the traffic to your web site.
Why Is SEO So Important To Your Site?
You have heard the phrase LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION. But wait, this is online! You don't have to worry about location... or do you??!! Location is everything! Let's take a moment to really think about this. You need to find something. What do you do? Most people will go to their favorite search engine and input what they are searching for. They will type in a few words that describe what they are looking for. The Search Engines come back with the most relevant websites for your search. However, your search for a keyword can result in thousands of links (if not millions).
Search Engine Traffic: Winning With Content
Targeted traffic is the lifeblood of any online business. The best source of free-targeted traffic to your site is the search engines. To be visible at the search engines, you have to appear in the first three or so pages of the search engine result pages (SERPS). The quest for attaining high rankings at the search engines has spawned a whole industry, the search engine optimization (SEO) world.
Search Engine Optimization, Positioning: Is Chasing Google Algorithms Worth It?
Google is the undisputed heavyweight champion of search engines. Most SEO (search engine optimization) companies pitch their tent around Google. Apart from being the king of search engines, unlike Yahoo and MSN, Google does not serve sponsored results on top of its search results, drawing away considerable attention/traffic away from the search results. Hence ranking high with Google is worth all the trouble it takes to get there. Little wonder then, that most SEO revolves round Google. When Google sneezes, the SEO world catches cold. When Google tweaks its search algorithms, SEO experts scamper back to the trenches to gaze at their crystal ball, to figure out what Google is up to.
Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website - Step Seven ? Website Submissions
Welcome to part seven in this ten-part search engine positioning series. Last week we discussed the importance of human testing. In part seven we will cover the best practices of website submissions, where to submit your website to, and how to do so.
Blogging, Spamming, and Blog Spam
Email marketing once proved to be immensely effective, but the greedy and idiotic polluted the well by spamming the planet with everything from weight-loss products to sexual enhancement drugs and beyond. Because of the stench, filters and laws have been created to attempt to fix the problem, but still the Internet is polluted with more and more junk each day. So obviously, filters and legislation are not the solution, for consumers, publishers, or marketers.
The SEO Game - Do You Play It?
Most people do not think of SEO as a game. Let me take 5 minutes of your time and explain how SEO is simply a game of Chess.
How To Measure Search Engine Marketing ROI
According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), advertisers spent $4 billion in 2004 on search marketing programs and are expected to spend 39% more than that this year.
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