Choosing An SEO Consultant

While the most important thing in creating a webpage is the designer a consultant knowledgeable in SEO is even more important if you want to have it show up well in search engine rankings. An SEO consultant can mean the difference between a cool page that nobody sees and a cool page that everyone not only visits but talk about.

A good SEO consultant will not only know the tricks of the trade but also how to use them best. An SEO consultant is as much an artist as the web designer. Whereas the web designer knows all of the tricks of the trade in creating a masterpiece of the internet the SEO consultant is the promoter that makes sure people travel to see it.

When choosing an SEO consultant make sure to find one that is willing to not only work with your website designer, or you if you are doing your own website, but also understands your needs. Am SEO consultant is not there to diminish your website or interfere with its look. They are there to be sure that it is designed from the ground up to utilize as efficiently as possible all of their SEO tricks. An SEO consultant will blend their techniques invisibly with your website. In fact that is how they have to work. The best SEO consultant will not even leave a visible footprint. They must be like the wind. A divine wind to protect your website and breathe inspiration into it.

The most important factor is to make sure that your SEO consultant can work together with your website designer as to not impede their efforts. Do what you did when you chose your web designer. Tell the SEO consultant what you need. Give them a time frame on when you need their services to work. Let them know what your future goals are and find out what they can do for you.

Keeping Your Text Links Natural

After the latest Google Search Engine Ranking Position (SERP) update, many websites that focused too heavily on one keyword lost ground in the SERPs. When it comes to Google’s latest search engine algorithm, if you are buying or trading text links it is becoming more important than ever to mix up your preferred anchor text.

I have always recommended focusing on 4 or 5 “money” keyword phrases you would like to target. Now, to take things a step further, I recommend you consider breaking down each of those keyword phrases into an additional 3 or 4 semantically similar keyword phrases. If you have a Pay-Per-Click account, an excellent way to determine what keywords are your most potent is to study ROI patterns within your account.

The main rule of thumb is to keep your anchor text as natural as possible. This means a wide variety of links to your site from sites in your general category, with a scattering of links from unrelated sites. Run-of-Site (ROS) links are fine as long as they are not overused. After all, one or two ROS links could be something that could occur naturally if you have a great site with valuable content.

Most importantly, increase the incoming links to your site gradually – don’t go from 5 inbound links to 50,000 links overnight. Use common sense and don’t do anything that could raise a red flag with the search engines. For new sites, we recommend that you increase your total backlink count by no more than 25% to 50% each month.

As it stands now, MSN and Yahoo lag behind Google in their ability to identify natural linking patterns. So if you are focusing on non-Google search engines, the more links with the same exact anchor text the better. In fact, many webmasters have actually set up a second site to sell their product through MSN and Yahoo searches while keeping their Google centric site running at the same time.

Oh No, The SEO Company I Hired Didn't Do A Thing! What Do I Do?

As a new age of web marketers filter through the trials & tribulations of success online, it brings us to an important question, who do I believe? If you've paid attention as to how to optimize your site for online performance, you'll eventually come across what we call, bad SEO practices.

In the event that you are looking into hiring an SEO company, you are left with many decisions and concerns. I don't blame you for worrying. Many of the so called “SEO” companies are just out to get your money. Please don't take this article as an attack against SEO consultants but take it as a warning to do your due-diligence and investigate each company you contact.

Here is a small check list to ask:

- Could you show me some of your clients placements?
- What did you have to do to get them there?
- Could you give me something to read about your methods?
- Do you guarantee your placements? (oh oh look out)

If the response comes back something like this:

We don't disclose our secrets or, we cloned their information and placed it on our site to get a good ranking right away or, we simply went out to got 1000’s of incoming links for them. Here's the kicker, stay away from this; we guarantee you top placements and/or placements on the 1st page etc.

These are considered tell tale signs that the SEO Company you contacted is just in it for the money and they don't truly care about your business in the future. All these practices in question may sometimes work but are breaking ethical search engine optimization rules.

Here is what an "unethical SEO "would sound like:
(created for the purposes of this illustration).

1) “we don't disclose our secrets” - There are no secrets to disclose
2) “We cloned their information” - We will get better results than you will
3) “We went out and got 1000’s of links” - Good thing they weren't related to anything you do because we would actually have to spend a lot of time targeting your market instead of bringing in false traffic.
4) “We guarantee everything” - There is no such thing on the internet.

Here is what an "ethical SEO" would sound like:
(created for the purposes of this illustration).

What we plan to do is to strategically target your market by optimizing your site internally to target the right key words that your potential buyers are searching for online. Also, we would like to strategically place your website link on other related websites to gain more exposure to your business with the right people in mind.”

We don't care if other people are “cloning”,”hiding their text”,”linking to everyone in the world”, we are here to build the right foundation, to make sure that your tree will grow for years to come.”

Although we cannot guarantee anything in this business, our track record is strong and our clients are truly happy with their results, here are some references.”

There is a big difference in good practices and bad ones. You can spot them right away as soon as they divert your questions elsewhere. Good SEO companies aren't afraid to answer your questions, in fact, we love to talk about search marketing & positioning and we have the proof to back up our statements.

Some would say SEO Companies are like “lawyers”, they will do whatever it takes to win the battle but many of us SEO’s would strongly disagree. Granted, in every working field in the world, there are bad apples out there. Unfortunately concerning web marketing, we see them world wide but our industry is about helping people grow their business. We genuinely care about your success. The more successful you are, the more success we will attract for our own business.

This information can also be used for everyone trying to perform their own SEO plans. Don't believe every practice you hear out there, in fact, try asking the professionals at “www.webproworld.com” one of the internet's most resourceful informational forums to date. Simply ask one of the professionals about the ethical/unethical methods of promoting your business, and you will get the answer you were looking for.

I hope this information helps your journey!

PPC vs Natural Search – A Cost Comparison Case Study

The attraction of Pay Per Click (PPC) online advertising is undeniable. Each click costs virtually nothing, you only pay for the clicks you get, and you set your own daily budget so you know exactly how much you’re going to spend. Most importantly, your listing appears instantly.

On the other hand, a high ranking in the natural search results seems unobtainable. There’s a perception that hundreds of thousands of other businesses are competing for your keywords, and that makes it seem like a real rat-race. And it also seems like such a big mountain to climb; it’s true that it can take months to reach the first page for your target keywords. To make matters worse, thousands of opportunistic (and some very dodgy) ‘SEO companies’ have emerged, looking to make a quick and big buck out of market naivety. So to CEOs, BDMs, marketing managers, webmasters, and business owners, the road to natural search ranking seems expensive, risky, and beset with traffic.

But does this mean you should forget natural search?

Definitely not!

Firstly, most user studies to date have found that people pay more attention to natural search results because they’re more relevant. That’s the foundation of the success of companies like Google and Yahoo (and the reason they keep their indexing rules a secret).

What’s more, it’s important to put things in perspective. Hundreds of thousands of other businesses may be competing for your keywords, but in most cases, they’re at least as confused and disheartened as you. So the sooner you figure out the real story, the sooner you’ll have the jump on them.

And yes, it can take a while to reach the top, but because your competition is – for the most part – traveling blind, your early progress will normally be quite quick. In fact, for most businesses, it’s not until you reach the top few pages that your progress will slow.

And again yes, there ARE some dodgy SEO companies out there. But there are also some very good ones. (Go to WebProNews.com and sign up to a forum if you want to find out who they are.) So long as you know the basics of SEO you won’t be taken for a ride. (See SEO for CEOs for a rundown of SEO basics in layperson’s terms.)

But let’s talk bottom line…

Is it more expensive to obtain a high ranking?

Certainly not! In comparison with other forms of advertising – even PPC in the long run – reaching the top of the rankings is NOT expensive. The following case study explains why.

CASE STUDY

For the past year, I’ve been working hard on the natural search results for my copywriting business, Divine Write. For my primary keyword, I’m now on page 1 of Google.com (out of approximately 900,000 search results). I’ve done this simply by writing helpful articles and submitting them for publication on the Internet. Luckily for me, I’m an SEO copywriter, so writing articles is all in a day’s work. But had I paid an SEO copywriter to write my articles for me, I’d have spent approximately USD$5,000.

Over the same period, I spent approximately USD$3,000 on Google AdWords (my ads appeared towards the top of the paid listings).

Now I hear what you’re saying; my natural search campaign definitely cost more in the first year than my AdWords campaign. But now that I’ve reached the top of Google.com, I’ve paused all my AdWords ads, so I’m not paying anything. If I hadn’t chased the natural search results, I’d have continued paying for AdWords, spending at least another USD$3,000 next year on AdWords, and another USD$3,000 the year after that, and so on.

Of course, I have to retain my high ranking. If I was paying someone to write my articles, that would involve an investment of approximately USD$1,000 per year (a saving of 67% each year).

So it breaks down like this:

Google AdWords investment: 2 yrs = $6,000, 3 yrs = $9,000, 4 yrs = $12,000, 5 yrs = $15,000

Natural search investment: 2 yrs = $6,000, 3 yrs = $7,000, 4 yrs = $8,000, 5 yrs = $9,000

Conclusion

Obviously the competition for keywords in the copywriting field isn’t as fierce as in a lot of other industries, so the actual dollar investment discussed in this case study may not apply directly to your business. The important thing to understand is that – over time – a high ranking in the natural search results can actually cost less than a high position in the (arguably less effective) paid listings.

Also, these figures are based on me submitting articles to various article banks on the Internet myself. (This is a routine task requiring little skill. You should be able to purchase a list of 50 or more article submit sites from your SEO copywriter or consultant for as little as USD$99.)

Beat Google’s Dampening Link Filter with SEO Articles

Most Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts agree that links back to your site have a great impact on your ranking in the major search engines. Think of it like an election; your site is a candidate and every link to your site is a vote. Of course, it was never quite that simple (high ranking, relevant sites have more voting power) but now it may have gotten even more complicated.

The Dampening Link Filter

It seems that Google may have introduced something called a “Dampening Link Filter” into its indexing algorithm. I’ll give you a layperson’s overview of this filter, but for more intimate details, check out http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/searchinsider/wpn-49-20050407GooglesNewLinkFilter.html#google.

More and more people are realising the importance of links back to your site (or “backlinks”). For some time, companies have been engaging in all sorts of link campaigns designed to generate thousands of backlinks. Many of these campaigns haven’t really paid too much attention to the context or lifespan of these links. And Google knows it. Because these campaigns are designed to artificially generate the perception of a site’s importance – to trick the search engines into thinking they’re important – it’s been suggested that Google has decided to put an end to it. Apparently, there’s evidence to suggest that Google has introduced a new link filter to dampen the effect of new backlinks. So if your link generation campaign has just created 500 links in a day from seemingly irrelevant sites, Google will suspect it of being artificial, and refuse to pass on the full effect of those links – at least for a while. Well, that’s how the theory goes, anyway.

It has been argued that you can avoid being penalized by this filter by generating links:

• more slowly;
• from relevant sites; and
• which have a long lifespan.

The wisdom of relevance and lifespan is already well established; the dampening filter is simply one more reason why people should start to heed it. Writing and submitting SEO articles for online publication is one way to do so.

This article explains how SEO articles satisfy each of these three conditions. (For the basics of SEO article writing, take a look at http://www.divinewrite.com/seoarticles.htm.)

Build Backlinks Slowly

Writing quality articles takes time. It’s as simple as that. Even an SEO copywriter can’t just bang an article together in a morning – it has to be well considered. It must be accurate, informative, interesting, well written, and topical. And once you’ve written the article, the real work begins. You then have to submit it to your favourite article submit sites. And as they all have different requirements and idiosyncrasies, submitting your article to 50 submit sites can take you all day!

Once submitted, even the best articles will only be published gradually. A good article can be published 2 or 3 times a day for a week or two, then interest tapers off. But still, over the course of 6 months a single good article can be published hundreds of times! And remember, each time is a link.

Build Backlinks From Relevant Sites

As soon as you choose the topic of your article, you define the type of site that will publish it. All online publishers have an agenda; they want to generate traffic. Whether for commercial or benevolent reasons, they want particular kinds of articles for very specific audiences. Your article won’t be published on irrelevant sites simply because the publishers of those sites get nothing out of it.

Of course, your article may be published on sites that are only marginally relevant. For instance, this article may be published on general copywriting websites, advertising websites, web design websites, home business websites, etc. But the beauty of a well written SEO article is that you get to optimize it for the keywords that you want to rank for. So even if the keywords on the publishing site don’t quite match your own target keywords, the page containing your link (i.e. your article) does.

What’s more, you even have the power to optimize the links themselves. For instance, as an SEO copywriter, I can distribute backlinks throughout my article that use my target keywords as the link text (e.g. copywriter, SEO copywriter, advertising copywriter, and website copywriter ;-). Some submit sites don’t let you do this, but most will – at least in the byline.

And one other thing – other people link to good articles. This can increase the Page Rank of the site containing your article, which, in turn, can increase the page rank of your own site. It’s a win-win situation!

Build Backlinks With a Long Lifespan

The quality of your SEO article determines the lifespan of your backlink. Write a very helpful article, make it easy to read, and choose a topic which isn’t going to go away in a hurry, and your article will stay online for years.

In any event, most publishers tend not to clear out their article libraries simply because it’s better for them to have lots of content available to both readers and search engines.

Conclusion

While it’s no new phenomenon to SEO veterans and SEO copywriters, the writing of SEO articles to generate backlinks is a tactic which offers much in the way of ranking. The possibility of a Google dampening link filter simply increases the value of that offering.

Happy writing!

Google Is Taking Descriptions From Alexa

If you take your top key word search engine placement within Google and look at your website's description, you will notice something similar with other websites, the descriptions match those taken from Alexa.com!!!

Take a peek for yourself.

1 - Search for your top key word in Google (usually the first key phrase within your title tag).

2 - Now copy & paste this description in a note pad or word doc.

3 - Once you have this, go to: www.alexa.com

4 - Type in your "url" in the address bar

5 - Look at the description from Google and the description from Alexa, they should be an exact match.

NOTE: If you do not have a description in Alexa, Google will come up with its own version but in reality, wouldn't you want to be in control of your website's description within the SERP's?

Not having a description in Alexa - Could it directly affect your Google search engine results?

ABSOLUTELY ! ! !

I would suggest looking at your description in Alexa to make sure that it directly targets your top key phrase that you want performing well within Google.

Your Alexa description could very well determine better SERPS within Google! Google feeds results into Alexa which in turn updates information on website ranking. They are partnered up, why wouldn't they use each others results?!

Alexa's Description is the "text book" definition:

I don't blame Google for wanting to use these descriptions. Most descriptions in Alexa are the "text book version" of your company's description and are usually well written, and well thought out. This would give Google an advantage so that they can spend less time on delivering quality descriptions and more time delivering better results within their searches.

I really like this idea because if this were true across the board, Google would be giving the individual website owner more freedom to write a proper description for their SERPS without using it to spam or create false information. Again, it would have to be approved by Alexa's team anyways, they probably wouldn't allow key word stuffing for their site as it is.