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Top 10 Mobile Website SEO Secrets

By Aymen.B.Rebah in Featured

It was inevitable. Along with mobile websites, comes mobile website SEO. But is it really so different from “regular” SEO?

Here are 10 tips to help your mobile website soar in the Search Engines…

1. Top of the list – make sure you create a mobile Site Map. This piece of XML code is directly from Google Webmaster Central, and Google recommends that, for once, you avoid Sitemap Creation tools.

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″ ?>
<urlset xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″
xmlns:mobile=”http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-mobile/1.0″>
<url>
<loc>http://mobile.example.com/article100.html<;/loc>
<mobile:mobile/>
</url>
</urlset>

(Whatever you do, don’t omit the <mobile:mobile/> tag, or your mobile site won’t be crawled.

2. Each mobile Site Map must have a name that is unique – but “URLs serving multiple markup languages can be listed in a single Site Map.”

3. If you use the Google Sitemap Generator to create your Site Map with, Google cautions that you will “need to create a separate config file for each Mobile Sitemap.”

4. Don’t use huge titles. “21 Tips for Turning your Hamster into a Money-Making Machine While Helping Him Lose Weight” is just not gonna cut it, for a mobile site. Think “short blog post headline” instead. Keep it really, really simple.

5. Don’t forget to submit it to Google webmasters, just as you would with a regular Site Map.

6. When it comes to mobile blogs, if you’ve set them up properly with the right plug-ins, SEO isn’t such a problem. But do remember that if you don’t submit your blogs and websites to mobile directories – you’ll be invisible. All the SEO in the world won’t be able to help you, if you don’t seem to exist!

7. Keep an eye on SEOPrinciple.com, which reports all the latest SEO news from Google (specifically, from Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team). (Also check out the YouTube Google Webmaster Central channel for the latest SEO news.) Cutts is the guy with all the facts and figures: He reports more than 4 billion mobiles world-wide to only 1 billion PC’s. Says Cutts about the planned expansion of Google’s Search features: “…mobile is going to be a big part of it.” (Again – get in on the leading edge!)

8. Drive traffic to your mobile website with a YouTube video – with your mobile site URL and a call to action prominently displayed. If you’ve ever used Google’s mobile web index, it should strike you that most of the results are YouTube pages. This may not be a sure-fire SEO strategy for ever – but it sure seems to be working, right now!

9. Check out the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 page, at www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp/#d0e1099. You’ll find out all sorts of helpful data, including “keep your pages under 21k” and tips for SEO.

10. Meet Googlebot-Mobile, a very special bot that looks for “mobile-friendly” sites, and includes them in Google’s mobile web index. So far he hasn’t been doing a very good job – but then again, maybe countless people aren’t bothering with those, all important, Site Maps.

Googlebot-Squarepants, er, I mean “Mobile”, is a lot slower than other search bots, according to www.SEOprinciple.com, taking about 2 weeks to complete a “rotation.”

When all is said and done, mobile SEO is still in its infancy. By all means follow the tips I’ve included here – but first and foremost, you need to concentrate on make your blog useful, interesting – and worth coming back to.

For more info about iPhone Applications and making money with iPhone – visit 3g best applications.

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Brought you by Aymen.B.Rebah

It’s Easy to Join Twitter and Twitter Tools Makes it Easy to Use

By Peter Nisbet in Featured

It is not difficult to join Twitter, but Twitter tools are not so easy to find or to use. In fact there is plenty of advice online for those that are interested in joining Twitter, particularly for those that want to avoid making mistakes. What is not so easy is using Twitter to its maximum advantage, and for that you have to start by learning about the tools that the twitter website itself offers you.

Once you know how to use these, there a many more Twitter tools that you can use to make life easier, such as those that enable you to attract the right kind of followers, and to check out that the people you are following are following you back. It is possible to achieve this manually by checking the pages of those that should be following you or trying to identify the thumbnails on your page, but it is quicker if a Twitter tool does it for you.

Other tools involve the integration of Twitter with other social networking applications, such as Facebook and YouTube, and methods of reducing the URLs that you publish in your tweets to a more manageable size. It is certainly true that Twitter does this automatically but you have no control over the appearance of the visible URL.

You might wonder why such tools are necessary and why you should even carry these tasks out? If all you use Twitter for is to make and receive tweets and to communicate with your friends and family several times a day, then it is true that you don’t need any tools: you can get by just using Twitter for its main application – tweeting and passing messages with that 140 character limit. Many people use Twitter as a marketing tool, however, and others use it to determine what others are twittering about, away from their usual circle of followers and friends.

Immediately, you join Twitter you will probably send a few test tweets to see how it works. After that you will check out some of the tools that Twitter offer such as lists, trends and retweeting. Once you have mastered these, you will be ready for more advanced Twitter tools such as those above, or even more advanced trend analysis and how to automate your Tweets.

For example, there are tools that enable you to write out several tweets and then have them automatically submitted at specified times and dates. Sometimes Twitter is over-subscribed and you can’t login. By using the appropriate tool you write out your tweet while you are waiting and once Twitter comes back on line have it automatically submitted, thus saving yourself a lot of time.

It is very easy to join Twitter and to get started using it, and if you like what you see, there are a large number of Twitter tools online for you use to simplify specific purposes and tasks. A number of them operate individually while others come in the form of plugins for blogs such as WordPress enabling you achieve integration of Twitter with your blog.

Whatever Twitter tools you use, they are certain to help you make the best use of it, so go ahead and join Twitter and make the best possible use you can of this fabulous social networking application.

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You will find more on how to join Twitter on Pete’s website www.social-networking-guides.com/join-twitter.html and he offers some great news on free twitter tools on www.social-networking-guides.com/twitter-tools.html.

Choosing the Right One for You – Video Conferencing or Telepresence

By Katevinslett in Featured

Sometime, there is a level of confusion between the terms – video conferencing and telepresence. The line of distinction gets blurred, as web conferencing technology continues to improve. It is easy for inexperienced persons to get confused with the various collaborative technologies. There are a number of factors that must be explored for a balanced assessment. For instance, image resolution, bandwidth requirements and connection stability.

Which is Better?

Since being introduced in 2006, telepresence has gained momentum in the communications field. It seeks to create a more immersive experience than that offered by video conferencing or web conferencing solutions. Many business people are satisfied with the video conferencing hence they consider it as a highly evolved technology than telepresence. With the help of large screens, participants are presented life sized and it is the combination of both video and audio communications between two or more end users.

Ultimately selecting one over the other depends on the end user’s requirements. There is wisdom in using an online collaboration solution that grows as the company grows, hence the popularity of web or video conferencing. For smaller companies the cost of telepresence technology is prohibitive. There are efforts underway to develop reasonably priced options to capture all segments of the market.

Telepresence might be the best option for the people who consider “immersive” aspect vital to the success of a meeting. Users of video conferencing are generally happy with their choice, notwithstanding the possibility of connectivity and image quality issues.

The only real option that successfully combines the best of both worlds is web conferencing. These two options are seen as appealing to different sectors of the market often. Nonetheless, both online meeting options serve the same but bit differently. Web conferencing not only allows interactive web conferencing, it enhances it with a number of useful features such as:

* Whiteboards * Application sharing * Meeting recording * Remote access and remote support

While companies like RHUB Communications have helped to define the communications landscape, some end users still have questions. This company and other providers have delivered quality web conference solutions that are easy to use, reliable and help to cut costs.

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For more information, please visit: www.rhubcom.com.

7 Campaign Killing Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

By John Thornhill in Featured

Affiliate marketing is becoming more and more popular, especially with the current state of the economy. High unemployment rates have many people turning to the internet as a means of making ends meet.

It sounds great at first. You’re told all you have to do is start a free blog and write a few articles, and you can achieve wild riches. Many people buy into this myth, and are let down after weeks go by and they haven’t made a single dollar.

Believe it or not, more than ninety percent of internet entrepreneurs fold up shop within the first month. Once reality sets in, it’s easy to get discouraged. Affiliate marketing, like any other business, requires hard work and effort for success to become a reality.

In this article, we’re going to discuss seven of the worst mistakes that an affiliate marketer can make. If you can avoid these career killing pitfalls, you’ll have a good chance at becoming a successful affiliate marketer.

1. Using Free Services

The problem with many affiliate marketers is they don’t want to make an investment into their business. This is due in part to all of the tutorials available that instruct marketers to use free services. While there is nothing wrong with free services, the lack of imminent control over one’s content can be a problem. If the company providing the free service decided to delete your account, or went out of business, you could lose content that may have been making you some money.

2. Promoting The Wrong Product

Market research is especially important in affiliate marketing. Many affiliates promote products that have a very low demand, hence making it near impossible to succeed. Researching your chosen niche is crucial.

3. Promoting Too Many Products

It’s easy to lose focus. There are so many great products to promote that many affiliate marketers try to promote five or ten products at once. It’s not good to spread yourself so thin. Rather than promoting ten products and giving ten percent effort to each, it’s better to put one-hundred percent effort into promoting a single product.

4. Not Starting An Email List

Many affiliate marketers refuse to believe in the importance of email marketing. This is partly due to the wealth of information available about article marketing. Many are led to believe that article marketing is a miracle money maker. While it’s true that money can be made this way, it’s much better to establish a contact and build trust with a potential buyer through email.

5. Spamming

Spam is a gray area when it comes to affiliate marketing. Basically, spamming is blatantly promoting your products or services to those who didn’t ask for information. The worst kind of spam is email spam. Many affiliate marketers engage in this without even knowing. Spamming is a surefire way to ruin your reputation as a marketer.

6. Not Writing Unique Content

Affiliate marketing requires a lot of writing. It usually comes in the form of sales copy, classified ads, and articles. Since outsourcing the work is costly, many affiliate marketers turn to what’s known as private label rights, or “PLR” articles. These are articles that have been written specifically for the use of others. The problem is that they have been sold to many people. This means that they are no longer unique. Most marketers rewrite the content before publishing, but the general idea of the article remains the same. Content is king on the internet, and those that write fresh, exciting content will always have a leg up on the competition.

7. Not Using The Products They Promote

A great way to promote affiliate marketing products is by writing reviews. However, many affiliate marketers review products that they don’t own. If written properly, this can be effective. For the most part, though, readers can tell if the reviewer has actually tried the product. It’s not a good idea to recommend a product to anyone that you don’t like and use. If you don’t purchase the product, you can’t honestly know if you like it. If the product isn’t quality, and you continue to recommend it, you’ll quickly lose customers and tarnish your reputation.

Affiliate marketing is hard work. However, you shouldn’t get discouraged. The best advice I could give you is to avoid making the above mistakes, and NEVER, EVER give up! Persistence and knowledge are the two most important tools you could possess if you want to be a successful affiliate marketer.

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John Thornhill is a full time Internet Marketer and has sold thousands of products as an affiliate. Find out more about John and his no nonsense marketing approach at his blog: ,a href=”http://www.planetsmsblog.com/”>www.planetsmsblog.com

How HTML 5 Makes Using Audio and Video in Web Pages Easy

By Anadi Taylor in Featured

Web pages and their design are laid out using HTML. HTML stands for Hyper Text Mark-up Language. HTML is comprised of ‘tags’ or elements that tell your browser what the different areas of your webpage are. You can use these elements to define paragraph areas, images and their
dimensions and also font sizes, colors and styles etc. There are many HTML elements and a lot of these have varying attributes like width, height, name, etc. This article will not focus on specific HTML elements; our aim is to give you a brief overview of HTML before moving on to
how it has developed into HTML 5.

HTML came to life at the end of 1990. The original HTML, developed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, comprised of about 20 elements which were strongly influenced by SGML, Standard Generalized Mark-up Language (The only exception to this was the hyperlink tag that allows links to be placed in web pages).

As the internet became more widespread, users demanded more functionality. This meant a huge development in browser technology and also in HTML. In fact, HTML was developed to version 4.01 before evolving into XHTML which incorporates HTML 4.01 and XML (Extensible Mark-up Language).

Making Money Online With Google Adsense

By Pilar Torres Wahlberg in Featured

For most bloggers, Google AdSense is the first and easiest way to start making money online. But reports of how much money you can actually make with it vary widely across the board. While popular bloggers have had a great deal of success with it, smaller blogs often find AdSense to be frustratingly limited. This discrepancy has been perpetuated to the point that many bloggers now believe that to make money with AdSense, you need to have a lot of traffic.

While that’s not exactly wrong; your site’s traffic has a great impact on how much you can earn from it; it’s not the whole truth either. Most importantly, you should not give up on AdSense because of this, because, as famous bloggers themselves have proven: when it works, it works like a charm!

In order to make money with AdSense, you first need to understand how it works. AdSense is a simple ad-publishing tool that can be incorporated into a variety of online mediums and displays ads based on the keywords within the existing text on the page. Every time a visitor to your site clicks on an ad published in your data, you are paid some money. Hence it is called PPC or Pay-Per-Click Advertising. This is usually a figure in cents or pennies, and the exact figure depends most of all on how competitive and profitable your keywords are.

Types of AdSense

AdSense is available for web content (on blogs and web sites), for search (as when you add a Google search bar to your blog and visitors click on a sponsored search result), for mobile content (for mobile-version web sites and pages), for feeds (so that you can display ads even within your RSS and Atom feeds), and for video, parked domains and mobile applications.

How to Make Money With AdSense

1. Understand how AdSense Works

In order to make good profit from AdSense, it’s not enough to just sign up and start publishing ads. First you must know its rules – so that you don’t break them – and its payout method – so that you can develop your strategy accordingly. Take a look at Google’s AdSense center to begin learning.

2. Choose profitable keywords

Even if you already have an existing web site, in order to make money with AdSense you need to choose the most profitable keywords within your niche. If you plan on writing your own content (as opposed to hiring freelancers or copywriters), it is also crucial that you know something about the subjects of those keywords and can research and write useful material on them.

3. Create useful, keyword-rich content

Once you have chosen your keywords, you can actively start creating content while keeping those keywords in mind. Don’t start keyword-spamming, because users will not find your site useful, and while they might click on an ad just to get away from your page, that’s not a profitable or traffic-building strategy. If your content doesn’t make sense, you also risk getting banned by Google; not just the AdSense program but the search engine too!

4. Place your ads strategically.

The placement of your ads within your content really matters. The optimum placement will of course depend on your design and the placement of your text. You also have the choice between image, text and video-based ads, and how well one works for you will depend on your readership, the type of your content and primarily your existing web design. Many WordPress themes and the like come already enabled for displaying ads, but don’t let that prevent you from trying different options and choosing for yourself which one has the best ROI.

5. Build traffic

The more traffic your site has, the more users will click on your ads – it’s that simple. Traffic building is a whole another blog post, but remember that it goes hand in hand with creating useful, keyword-oriented content!

Making money with AdSense is easy – once you understand the program and follow some simple strategies for maximizing your profits, it’s truly a program you can “set and forget”!

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Pilar Torres – Access our Free Jargon Free Web Marketing Strategy videos aimed at beginners at www.pickaweb.co.uk. You can also visit our Professional Website Hosting Services website for more services. We also offer Reseller Hosting and other services such as Online Website Builder, Dedicated Servers, Domain Names, Data Backup, Web Design, Web Design Templates, Email Marketing, 0800 Numbers and VPS Hosting.

In Their Own Way: Stories of Online Branding Success

By Enzo F. Cesario in Featured

One of the most important elements of any venture is inspiration.

Humans like to have heroes or idols to look up to, people to examine and hold up as the best examples of success. It is reassuring on a very basic level to be able to point to someone and say; “They did it, so I know it can be done.”

With that in mind, consider the following web branding success stories. These are not the names that are usually thrown about, like YouTube or Facebook. Rather, these are people who have developed a niche success in their own field, and have become world-famous brands in their own way, and their own time.

Zero Punctuation: The Saga of Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw

Few stories are as appealing as those of overnight success, and the story of Yahtzee seems to fit the bill. Around late 2007, he posted a pair of video animations to YouTube. In these videos little paper-cutout-style characters enacted humorous scenes against a yellow backdrop while Yahtzee reviewed video games in a slightly frantic tone of voice. Yahtzee tore into the games’ flaws with a vigor and incisive sense of humor that spoke directly to the irony-conscious gamers of today. Shortly thereafter, an online gaming magazine called The Escapist hired Yahtzee to produce the videos on a weekly basis for its site.

The result was an explosion of interest. The Escapist’s traffic jumped nearly 400 percent following the addition of Yahtzee’s series, dubbed “Zero Punctuation” because of his increasingly trademark style of rapid-fire speech with few pauses for breath. The white avatars on yellow background have become icons of the gaming world, recognizable at a glance. Major game designers such as Fable’s Peter Myoleneaux have responded directly to Yahtzee’s criticism and sent him their newest game to review as well, even knowing that he is likely to treat this second effort even more brutally than the first.

Of course, Yahtzee actually isn’t an example of overnight success at all. He’s been a gamer for more than 20 years, having played others’ games and designed his own as well. He’s developed his signature style with dedicated hard work, and the hard work ultimately was rewarded when the right audience was found. The lesson here is both that brands must be ready to jump on the opportunities of the moment, but also be prepared to put in a great deal of work and effort for their brand to succeed.

Yahtzee currently writes for the Escapist, as well as his own website, Fully Ramblomatic, and the Australian magazine Hyper. He resides in Australia, and still produces the weekly ZP show.

Nostalgia Critic: Remembering It So You Don’t Have To

Continuing the theme of YouTube branding success, another tale is that of Doug Walker, popularly known as That Guy With the Glasses. A few years ago, Doug began uploading a series of short videos to YouTube touching on things he found entertaining. His 5-second-movies feature was a deconstructionist look at popular films by editing them down to brief impressions, while the Nostalgia Critic was a persona he used to examine popular films and series his generation grew up with. From there, everything exploded into a story of epic web success.

He left YouTube to found his own site with several friends who had lost their retail day jobs. They expanded on the content of the site, adding new characters, additional writers and performers. A team of fellow critics and reviewers became Team TGWTG, video gamers come to the site under the title of Blistered Thumbs, and the site has gradually prospered (if by gradually of course one means that from 2008 to 2009 the site began making $10,000 per month).

Perhaps the biggest element of this brand’s success is Walker’s rivalry with fellow nostalgic reviewer, the Angry Video Game Nerd. AVGN is a series reviewing nostalgic cartridge video games, and the similarities between the two series sparked comments among the series’ fans that one or the other might be stealing the concept. Taking this idea to a perhaps bizarre new level, the Critic and the Nerd launched a series of videos detailing their epic battles and struggles to claim the title of “winner,” and both their viewership’s prospered from it.

Walker’s story is an inspiring one because of the sheer scale of his success. In less than a decade he has gone to making sums of money one would normally associate with a major business venture. Yet at the core of it, he and his friends make short videos about old movies from the 1980s, in their homes, with software and equipment you can pick up at any computer store. Yet now there are people going to comic and movie conventions costumed as the Critic or his cronies, and the various pop culture lines he references have become a new canon of online in jokes.

Closing Thoughts

These two stories are not the rule. There are many reviewers out there who haven’t achieved the level of success these people have. However, the fact that they have achieved it at all shows that it can be done, and both stories share the same important lesson for anyone interested in branding: Do what you love.

Neither of these two Internet heroes has branding as his first priority. Instead, the priority is on doing something they love, and always doing it well. Walker’s first Nostalgia Critic video is of noticeably poorer quality than his newest videos, and Zero Punctuation has grown more eclectic and daring in its animations as time has gone on. These two have a passion for what they want to see done, and the brand has grown as a result of the effort and love they have put into it. If you take no other lesson from their story, take this one: do something you love, and do it well.

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Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the “voice” of our client’s brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to www.BrandSplat.com or visit our blog at www.iBrandCasting.com.

Learn More About Website Planning

By Jack Collins in Featured

Successful projects start with careful planning. No matter what type of project(whether building bridges or organizing world peace), ample thought needs to be given to the task. This is especially true for web development. Engineering the strategy for the site is an absolutely essential phase for both the website developer and the client.

Thorough website planning helps streamline the process for the developer while helping the client gain clarity on their vision and an understanding on the processes to come. A number of questions should be addressed and fully thought about before starting.

Here is a sampling of things to consider:

What needs to be achieved with the website?

Who is the target audience?

What “feelings” should the website design evoke?

How can we express the websites vision?

And this is just the beginning.

No need to get overwhelmed before we start – this is where the fun begins: Planning a website can be a very enjoyable and eye-opening experience when you get to think of all the ways to bring your brand to your space on the web.

Generally, there are 2 perspectives to keep in balance while in the planning stages of the website:

1.) what is your brand and how will it come across on the web to fit with the larger vision of the site? and

2.) how will your users experience the site?

It’s best to keep the original goals of the website in mind as you consider the user’s perspective and how they will use the site. All too often, websites are built entirely around the client’s goals and visions with little consideration about the end user (the customer). Often this creates a disconnect in the site’s purpose and intended function if the user isn’t quite sure how to use the website.

For example, filling the website with industry specific jargon can help build trust in the website visitor, but over doing it can leave the user confused and could ultimately push them to the competition who may talk a bit more “with” the user versus “at” them. Everyone involved in the planning phase must always keep the end user in mind. When a visitor comes to a site, they come with questions and are seeking answers:

Can I trust this company?

Do they do good work?

Are their products affordable?

Can they get my job done?

How to reserve, buy or get more info?

Through careful website planning and design, you want to have all of these bases covered. The website needs to answer these questions with haste and provide an easy way for them to take action – a purchase, filing out a contact form, signing up for your newsletter, etc.

Since the attention span and patience of a typical user is very short, this interaction process needs to be clearly called out so as to not leave them guessing. Some intrigue is OK on a site if that is part of the fun of your brand and the experience of your site, but the user should never stare quizzically at your site for more than a couple minutes asking themselves questions like this: “I just want to do X, but I don’t know how or where to go.” By the time a user has to ask that question, odds are good that they will start looking elsewhere – like a competitor’s site. Just sayin.

A well thought out website plan keeps everyone’s expectations inline and ensures that the developer, the client and the end user all walk away with a positive experience.

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Connective Web Design offers affordable web design and website development services specializing in WordPress, Ecommerce, Social Media and Search Engine Optimization. Visit www.connectivewebdesign.com to learn more!

Use Local SEO for National Reach

By Julie Ann Ross in Featured

Local SEO (search engine optimization) can actually help with your national reach if you are trying to expand beyond your local online footprint. Local SEO involves improving your local footprint by pumping up your information on different local and community sites.

If you have enough of these local listings, you may even be able to start appearing on some regional and national searches too. Here are a few local SEO tactics you can use to help.

Google Local

This is the must-do for anyone doing local SEO for their business, store, or restaurant. As more people give up Yellow Pages and start searching online, it is a good idea to promote your Google Local listing. For one thing, it is free, not like the Yellow Pages listings. (Plus, there can be two, three, or even four Yellow books in your city, which can be a complete waste of money.)

How Much is Too Much to Pay for SEO?

By Kurt D. Lynn in Featured

How much is too much to pay for SEO? (…or should you try to do it yourself first?)

Yes, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be an excellent way of getting leads.

Yes, good SEO can level the playing field between you and competitors.

Yes, you should do some level of SEO.

…but how much is too much?

Too much? Good question.

You’ll find that everybody that uses the word “Internet” is going to suggest that you engage in SEO and many will make you an offer to do it for you. There’s nothing wrong with that as far it goes. But what you have to decide is how much you should pay for having it done.

Some Perspectives On Paying For SEO

Here are a few important tips to help you decide the answer to that question:

(1) First, make sure you really do need outside assistance. If you’re looking for better SEO placement for relatively unique or so-called “long tail” key words (e.g. “pine street rental condominiums” ) it might be worth trying it yourself before you involve an SEO consultant or SEO firm.

(2) SEO is not rocket-science. Mostly it’s monotonous drudgery. So what you pay should not be about hiring “expertise”. The SEO effort is more like 90% drudgery, 8% experience, and 2% expertise and you should compensate accordingly.

(3) The value of SEO boils down to “clicks” – preferably clicks that result in a sale conversion. SEO should be measured on the same cost-per-click basis any search-engine-marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC) campaign would be – i.e. the basis of ROI. If you don’t know how many clicks or orders you want, do not engage SEO until you do.

(4) SEO is not static and optimization is competitive. You may be on the first page today but your competitors aren’t necessarily going to sit still forever. You could be bumped at any time. So if you’re not prepared to maintain an ongoing and strategic SEO effort – no matter what the competition does – then save your money.

(5) Search engine “secrets” are just that – secret. The search engines aren’t telling them and anybody that claims to know the secrets is just guessing. It doesn’t mean they can’t help but it’s not as if they have some special advantage. Impossible.

(6) Frankly, from the search engine point-of-view, if your site doesn’t have enough useful and relevant content to be on the first page, ethical SEO notwithstanding, eventually it won’t be. This is the objective of the search engines and there’s little likelihood that the SEO “expert” pitching you is going to out-think Google, Yahoo!, Bing and others in the long run.

Is Doing SEO Yourself An Option?

It’s almost always worth taking a first crack at SEO yourself. Often only a little effort can make a significant difference. If you do want to make the effort, invest a few dollars in a do-it-yourself SEO guide and try to adhere to the following minimum suggestions:

(1) Focus on keywords that are realistic. You’re not likely to get a good placement with a keyword like “real estate” but you might get first page with a keyword like “Hill street real estate”;

(2) Make sure your keyword is mentioned in the link to your page. Instead of saying “click HERE” make sure the text for the link says something like “for more information about HILL STREET REAL ESTATE”;

(3) Make sure your keyword is mentioned in your page title, your keyword list, your page content, bolded page content;

(4) For every keyword you’re interested in, make sure you have an appropriate page to focus on it (and that it complies with #1, #2, and #3 above)

(5) Register with search engine webmaster accounts so that you can submit your site to them quickly and efficiently (search for “google webmaster”, “bing webmaster”, or “yahoo webmaster” to find the details).

Don’t Forget Links

Lastly, if you going to make an initial stab yourself, understand that quality links to your site are a vital factor in your ultimate placement. The more the merrier. To get a head-start on building links to your site, do the following:

(1) Enroll in all relevant local or regional directories – (search “free directories” to find lists of these); many will be free, some will want nominal fees or backlinks. You decide.

(2) Ensure that any press releases and announcements you make refer to your site and specific pages within it.

(3) Post pages of your site to delicious.com or to digg.com and to similar bookmarking sites.

(4) Ask local friends and business acquaintances if they will exchange links with you.

(5) On the other hand, DO NOT sign up for paid links without the guidance of someone experienced in Internet marketing.

Do these things sound particularly difficult? No.

And well worth taking a stab at by yourself. From there you can decide whether its desirable or worth the cost to pay for SEO services from a 3rd-party.

No Matter What You Do…

You need to think in terms of what kind of return you are going to get on your investment. The calculation is simple: Divide the total SEO cost (yours or a 3rd-party’s) by the number of orders/sales you’ve received as a result of the effort. Then compare that cost-per-sale against your margin-per-sale. If you have margin left over, you’re in the right territory. If you don’t, you’ve got a problem.

The bottom line is that when you talk with any SEO service provider, you must think in terms of ROI. Not in terms of “secrets” or first pages or top spots, but ROI. (Note: it is theoretically possible to be on the 3rd page and still get a positive ROI – not likely, but possible) If the ROI doesn’t work, then search engine optimization may not be for you and other Internet marketing methods might yield better results and a better ROI.

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Kurt D. Lynn offers business consulting services for growing businesses in the U.S. and Canada. www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com For more information or more articles, check out his blog at www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com/blog.

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