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By Joseph Baker in SE Optimization

spn_exclusiveMany businesses have a strong focus on their advertising campaigns, integrating pay-per-click ads, targeted email marketing, social media, and traditional advertising to broadcast their products and services to potential customers. One critical area that many businesses fail in, though, is SEO.

On-page SEO in particular tends to fall by the wayside or is tacked on almost as an afterthought. This would be fine if the majority of users went directly to the website, but most find a website through use of a search engine, even if they already know the URL of the site they’re visiting. The rules for on-page SEO can seem daunting, but in reality the basic on-page rules are fairly simple. Producing quality content that people will want to see should be one of the main concerns, and providing a friendly, functional user interface will improve not only the experience of those using the site, but also the website’s ranking in Google.

Content

Google’s Panda updates have added a new dimension to Google’s algorithm, allowing it to judge content similarly to a human. This is consistent with Google’s attempts to refine its algorithm to the point where every searcher will find the exact result they want as the first result on their first search. Because humans desire content, not filler or ads, the Panda update emphasizes that. Sites that want to rank well on Google must make sure that all of their pages have deep, well-written content.

Before Panda, some sites attempted to fool search engines by posting a well-written paragraph followed by several paragraphs of keyword-stuffed unintelligible text. Now, though, Google can see through that. Content must also be unique, because every time it is reused Google values it less, lowering the rank for the page. Including relevant keywords throughout the text will make the context of the page and site easier to determine, resulting in a higher rank. Going too far, though, will hurt rankings, so keywords should only be used in situations where they might naturally occur. By updating the website’s content–not the overall design–frequently, businesses show search engines that their site has new, up-to-date content that will provide something fresh for users, resulting in higher search rankings.

Site Architecture

Making the website easy to navigate for users will also increase its chances of ranking well on search results. Every page should navigate back to the home page and to the most popular pages or categories, while the least popular pages should be accessible through a standard menu. Page titles should be unique, short and readable. Some businesses include the full business name on every page, but that is an unnecessary and unwise policy. As with the content of the site, search engines favor unique titles and descriptions. Reusing titles and descriptions for unique pages is a red flag for search engine crawlers and will likely result in a lower rank. Links within the site, whether in the menu or within the content of the site, should be optimized. Appropriate, simple anchor text should be chosen in order to help search engines properly categorize links and pages.

In the past, optimizing a website for search engines was very different from building a positive user experience. While keyword stuffing and cloaking used to be capable of quickly raising a site’s position on search results pages, those tactics are now singled out and penalized. Instead, websites should be built to provide users with a positive experience and useful, unique content. As search engines continue refining their algorithms and creating newer, more intelligent crawlers, building for SEO and building for users will increasingly become indistinguishable.

Joseph Baker is a freelance writer living in the Midwest. He enjoys working on his novel and drinking large amounts of Earl Grey tea. He writes this article behalf of American InterContinental University.

By Nick Stamoulis in SE Optimization

SEO-TipsA lot of businesses and websites look into outsourcing their SEO for numerous reasons. For some, they’ve been handling it in-house for a while and are looking to take it to the next level with some professional guidance. Others (usually smaller companies) don’t have the time or manpower to fully manage an SEO campaign so they want an SEO firm to take over the day-to-day management. Whatever the reason you want/need to outsource your SEO, just remember one thing:

Just because you’ve outsourced your SEO, that doesn’t mean you get to wash your hands of it.

Website owners need to remain involved with their SEO, even if they aren’t handling the actual creation and execution of the campaign. SEO is not a “set it and forget it” kind of marketing campaign and even the best SEO company in the country can’t create a successful SEO campaign without your help.

Here are 3 reasons why SEO clients can’t just walk away from their SEO entirely, even if they have outsourced it to a consultant or agency:

1. They Don’t Know Your Company as Good as You Do.

Your SEO partner is going to do their absolute best to learn the ins and outs of your business and website. Who is your target audience? What problems do you products/solutions solve? What are your long-term business goals? Who is your direct competition? They will eventually learn all of these things and more, but they don’t have this knowledge at the very beginning of your SEO campaign. You have to be able to give them an outline of your business so they can create a custom-fit SEO campaign designed to leverage your strengths, bulk up your weaknesses and works towards your objectives.

2. You Help Keep Your Content Marketing at Full-Throttle.

The search engines thrive on content; it’s how they identify if one site matches the search query of a user. Social media networks share, post, link, Tweet and Like billions upon billions of pieces of content daily. Practically everything you do online is fueled by the consistent production of great, engaging content. Your SEO partner needs your help producing that content. Even if they are responsible for writing your business blog and articles published on 3rd party sites, they need your direction and help when it comes to coming up with topics.

As mentioned above, you know your industry like the back of your hand and you know what kind of content your target audience is looking for. You either need to supply your SEO firm with content so they can effectively promote it and leverage it for SEO, or you need to give them topics that they can run with.

If you want your SEO partner to handle the content writing, don’t tie their hands behind their backs! Trust them enough to actually write the content. Obviously you have the right to see it and approve it before it goes live, but don’t let every blog post get bogged down with red tape and a dozen revisions. The best content marketing strategies stay alive with fresh and timely content.

3. Your SEO Partner is Taking Their Cues From You.

It all comes down to communication. If you hand off your SEO to your new SEO partner and walk away without ever looking back, you have no right to get upset if the results aren’t what you wanted. Your SEO firm is going to do everything they can to deliver the best and most successful SEO campaign possible, based on what you told them you wanted. Let’s say your company gets a new marketing director who decides to change the messaging strategy. If you aren’t involved with your SEO firm and actively keeping them in the loop then they are still operating under your initial directions. It might not be until your monthly meeting that you realize your SEO was heading in the wrong (aka old) direction. Now your SEO campaign is a month behind. If you wash your hands of SEO entirely, you’re leaving your SEO partner in the dark.

Your SEO partner will provide the expertise, but you need to provide the direction!

Nick Stamoulis is the President and Founder of Brick Marketing, a full-service SEO and social
media marketing company. With over 12 years of B2B SEO experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his knowledge by posting daily SEO articles to his blog, the Search Engine Optimization Journal (or SEO Journal) and publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, read by over 150,000 opt-in subscribers. Contact Nick Stamoulis at 781-999-1222 or nick@brickmarketing

By Julie Ann Ross in SE Optimization

SEOptimizationReverse SEO can help mitigate a corporate crisis, especially when the crisis is being played out in social media networks and on blogs. Many times, a story grows online instead of in the mainstream media, which can cause major problems with a company’s search engine rankings.

Whenever someone searches for the company name, the story will be the first several listings to appear on the first page, not the company’s home page. But with proper tactics, this story can eventually be pushed down off the first page.

Here are four reverse SEO tactics a PR professional can use to suppress the negative stories from search results

Reverse SEO Tactics #1. Start a Blog on the Company Website

Search engines love websites that post new content on a regular basis. A blog is the best way to do this. Not only does it help the PR pro do some reverse SEO during the crisis, it also helps the marketing department with regular SEO, so the company can be found for their chosen keywords.

If the search engines can see regular updates to a website, they are more likely to push it to the top of their results, displacing the negative story.

Reverse SEO Tactics #2. Respond POSITIVELY to the Criticisms

The worst thing to do during a crisis is to let emotions take hold and to respond in kind to negative comments in the heat of the moment. While the first instinct may be to take on the naysayers and critics, a shrill outburst will not only delay the reverse SEO efforts, it will fan the flames of the story. There are too many cases of PR pros forgetting themselves and causing the story to grow bigger than it would have if they had left it alone. In some cases, the response even becomes a story of its own.

Reverse SEO Tactics #3. Use Social Media Ranking Tools to Determine Whether the Person is Even Worth a Response

Hopefully, companies managing their reverse SEO efforts are using social media monitoring tools to keep up with online mentions. These tools find all mentions of a company’s keywords in different social networks, blogs, and forums. The temptation is for a PR pro to respond to all of them. This can be a big mistake.

Not everyone who responds has the influence to have a big impact on the story. Use a social media scoring and ranking tool to see whether the person has any real “clout” before responding. If they have a low score, it is safe to ignore them. Otherwise, a wasted response to a non-influencer may give continued life to the story.

Reverse SEO Tactics #4. Give it Time

Keep in mind that regular search engine optimization takes time – as much as three to six months. So does reverse SEO. Companies cannot count on immediate results on their reverse SEO efforts. They need to remember they are in this for the long haul. While companies need to deal with a corporate crisis in the usual manner, they need to realize this is a long-term strategy as well.

Just like with every other crisis and problem, this too shall pass. But its effects can linger, thanks to the search engines, if it is not dealt with properly. For some companies and individuals, an old crisis will still rear its ugly head whenever someone searches for the company name, because they did not take the proper steps. But reverse SEO techniques will suppress those results after the original furor dies down.

Reverse search engine optimization is an ideal long-term strategy to deal with company crises, and to protect its online reputation. Not only does it deal with problems as they arise, it can be an effective inoculation against future crises as they develop.

Article by Julie Ann Ross. Rostin Ventures principals have extensive experience in restoring reputations online, using Reverse SEO among other tactics to provide positive Online Reputation Management Services (ORM Services). http://www.RostinVentures.com.

By Bryan P. Hollis in SE Optimization

spn_exclusiveIt’s not so often that I will write on a subject that I am particularly well-versed in without using specific data to back it up (Well, I will use one example!). This article really is designed to take someone new to the World Wide Web, and “catch” them in time to create the proper tagline for their new site.

A site tagline is basically its sub-title. Before we hit directly on the subject, let’s take a step back and start with the domain name. Finding the most suitable domain name for your niche target is critical. However, with so many sites on the web, you may not come away with exactly what you were looking for. Let’s use my SEO Firm’s domain as an example.

Back about, well, almost 5 years ago now, I knew very little about SEO specifically. I was however, doing article marketing, ghost writing, and even a few ebooks here and there. I quickly learned what it took to catch the eye of search engines. In venturing out on my own, being from the middle area of South Carolina, I decided on midcarolinafreelance.com. Now just who in the world would ever make a search related to this domain? Yes, I showed-up for the single keyword “freelance” somewhere along page 3 or 4 of Google. Where am I going with this?

As time progressed and I built a solid foundation and had branded myself as a pretty good copywriter (and some web content as well), I decided to venture out into the world of SEO. It always seemed to me that the written word was ultimately the “kicker” for winning over true followers and Google. The question was, “How would I get my website on page one with this domain name?” My image was branded, article after article was published with some sort of reflection on Mid Carolina Freelance. I couldn’t dump it now. This is where the site tagline comes into play.

In the process of “re-developing” Mid Carolina Freelance, I decided on a new CMS (Content Management Solution). Since I am a WordPress lover at heart (and I believe that Google is too), I went with a business portfolio theme, allowing for a professional static home page. This allowed me to do several things.

First, I was able to “rebrand” myself with the meta title “Mid Carolina Freelance – A Complete SEO Firm.” The landing page content also read this way in a smooth and natural way…not “stuffed.” So, what was the result?

Mid Carolina Freelance has remained the number two ranked position on page one of Google for two years for various keywords. Of 200,000,000 SERPs, it is number two, page one for “complete seo” and of 42,000,000 SERPs, it is number two, page one as well.

So, the point of this article is to make sure that in the development stage of your site, do your homework. By simply typing in various combinations of keywords that pertain to your niche, you can see how and why it needs to be tweeked. Don’t “spam” your own title tagline. Make it a smooth blend of keywords that could make a search engine match in various ways.

For example, if you just bought graceskennel.com, while it may be cute, don’t use a trendy tagline for your site that no one will ever choose. Try to use 3 to 4 words (but no more than 4…too spammy). You already have the keyword “kennel” in your main title, so now you need to find a smooth flow of what essentially is a long-tail keyword. Going back to my tagline – “A Complete SEO Firm.” It is found by “Complete SEO,” “Complete SEO Firms,” and “SEO Firms.” All blended variations of my tagline.

Hopefully this article will help you along in your new ventures into the World Wide Web. Whether you are creating an e-commerce site or a blog, make sure you choose the correct and search engine optimized tagline for your site.

Bryan P. Hollis is the owner and founder of Mid Carolina Freelance, LLC – A Complete SEO and Online Marketing Firm located in South Carolina. He also develops Linux web and email servers. Additionally, he is the founder of Blog Interact, a rapidly growing blogger’s network and a ‘dofollow’ bookmarking site.

By Jason Monroe in SE Optimization

spn_exclusiveNot too long ago, a visitor to my blog posted the question: “What’s more effective, off-page or on-page optimization?” He had just finished optimizing his webpage using SEOPressor, and was understandably annoyed that the expected increase in traffic had failed to appear.

Unfortunately, the most definitive answer I have to his question is – it depends.

If you want to increase your site traffic by ranking well for lots of less competitive, long-tailed keywords, then on-page optimization is your best bet. If you are choosing to improve your ranking in the Google search results for shorter, more competitive keywords, then you should optimize off-page.

If you simply want a healthy and profitable website, then you need to engage in both kinds of optimization.

Google Ranks Pages Based on Content, not Sales Pitches.

Google uses a mathematical formula to rank your webpage based on its relevance to a particular user. That formula uses information found both off your page and on it, which explains why both on-page and off-page optimization are important.

The off-page information that Google looks for is the number of people or reputable sites that have found your web page useful and have linked back to it. The on-page information they look for consists of navigation aids like well-placed keywords and article descriptions, as well as quality content.

Both kinds of information are important, and therefore both on-page and off-page optimization are important, but they are not equally important. It’s been said that on-page optimization only influences about 20% of your Google search page ranking, while the other 80% of that ranking is influenced by off-page optimization.

That piece of information should tell you where the bulk of your efforts should be applied.

Off-Page Optimizing: Choose Your Friends Carefully

Long before the folks at Google publicly confirmed this, I and a few other internet marketers were already aware of it; Google takes a lot of stock in other people’s opinions. Those other people, by the way are the webmasters, bloggers and researchers who choose to link to your site.

Google keeps track of who links to you and determines the quality of your site based on the quality of those backlinks. For instance, if your website sells high-end cookware and you have backlinks from sites like BetterHomesandGardens.com or CooksIllustrated.com, than you’ll be ranked fairly well based on those sites.

However, if that same site has a few backlinks to BubbaJakesRoadkillCuisine.com or VegansforMao.au, you may find your site being punished because of the association with lower quality websites. Guilt by association isn’t necessarily fair, but you need to keep in mind that this is how the internet works.

Consequently, whether your website sells one of a kind children’s clothing, offers free online car insurance quotes or acts as a resource for geocaching in Kentucky, it’s important to pay attention to off-page optimization. This will ensure that you’re keeping good company, and enable your site to rank well for the highly competitive keywords.

On-Page Optimization: The Principal of Low-Lying Fruit

Although off-page optimization will influence the lion’s share of your Google ranking, you can’t afford to ignore your on-page optimizing, either. When deciding where to place your page in terms of a search for a particular keyword or keyword phrase, Google will look in three areas on your webpage:

- The title
- The first or second paragraph
- The meta description

The title of your article should contain your primary keyword or keyword phrase. This should be a natural result of matching the keyword phrase to the content of your article. If you’ve targeted a keyword phrase which doesn’t seem to fit in your title, perhaps you should re-think your approach to the topic.

That keyword or keyword phrase should also be in your first or second paragraph. One of these paragraphs should also contain a concise but detailed description of the article.

This is simply a more stringent standard than the one set by your fourth grade teacher when he or she taught you to write an introductory paragraph for a term paper.

The meta description gives you a second, more targeted area in which to provide a detailed article description to your potential readers. Because this description will often appear as a blurb under your site name on the Google search results page, it will not only affect where Google places you, but it will directly affect the amount of traffic on your site.

While directing more traffic to your site will not immediately result in stratospheric Google rankings, it will bring other, more direct benefits. Direct site traffic is referred to as low hanging fruit, because it’s easy to gather and, while it represents only a small portion of the whole crop, it is certainly enough to live on.

One final way to bring in this fruit is remarkably simple and therefore is often overlooked; simply provide your readers with quality content. If you purposely write informative, understandable information which is meant to be read by humans and not just analyzed by a search engine, your webpage will naturally contain many long-tailed keywords which are less competitive and easier to rank well for.

Tying Up The Package

A well-written webpage which has been properly optimized on-page may not rank particularly well for the shorter, more competitive keywords, but it will rank better for the longer tailed, less competitive keyword phrases.

If you want to – and you should want to – help your page rank well for the shorter, more competitive keywords, your off-page optimization will be far more effective for that task.

Whether your site helps folks compare auto insurance quotes or provides them with a comprehensive index of every film Kevin Bacon has been in, the same rules will apply for improving your search engine rankings. Both on-page and off-page optimization is necessary to keep your webpage visible and visitor-friendly.

That’s one man’s opinion, anyway. I’d be interested in hearing yours. Please share your thoughts in the comment box below.

Jason Monroe is one of the young guns in affiliate marketing loving life in his mid-twenties with all the luxuries that come from being single. But even this young gun knows how to get serious when it comes to affiliate marketing, a career that was born from his innate tendency to be a research hound.

By Margaret Winfrey in SE Optimization

SEO2Because the search engines, including Google, place a lot of value on the actual words in the domain itself, many people are now trying to Search Engine Optimize their web presence by buying domain names that contain their target keywords.

It’s not a bad strategy because it doesn’t hurt you – but how much does it really help you?

Let’s say you now have 30 domains, all containing your target keywords, but not including your main website. What can you do with them?

1. Keep them registered and do nothing. This prevents competitors from registering them and using them for their benefit. End result: No SEO value, for obvious reasons.

2. Within your registrar’s account, you can set up 301 Permanent Redirects for each one, redirecting them to your main website. End result: No SEO value, but if someone types in the exact domain name of one that you have registered and redirected, he/she will be taken to your main website, so you might get some traffic, but not likely and not much.

3. Use them for a mini-site buildout. This strategy is to actually use each domain on its own by building a mini-website around it. End result: Potentially a TON of SEO value.

Let’s take a look at this “mini-site buildout” strategy; the one with the most SEO value.

One by one, you take each domain and host a site for it. If you have a hosting account for your main website, chances are you can just add on new sites to that same hosting account. This is very common and you can easily find out if you can do this and how you can do this by calling your hosting company to inquire.

Once you have your hosting set up and each domain pointing towards its own mini-site, you then want to build each site.

To build each site most easily, you should do two things: first, plan all the content around your main keyword (the keyword that is in the domain name) to include both articles and videos; and second, develop the site using some type of ready-to-go website template with a built-in CMS (Content Management System). Probably the best CMS to use in this case would be WordPress because it is very user friendly, search engine friendly, easy to set up, and there are a ton of free (and well-designed) templates out there.

OK, so now you’ve got your domains pointing to their own respective mini-sites, you have created all the content for them, developed the sites, and finally published all that content you created on to the sites, hopefully using a CMS like WordPress to do it.

Now, keeping your main website in mind, you’ll want to make sure you drive traffic from your mini-sites to your main website. To do this, simply include content about your main website in those mini-sites and include links going back to your main website. Furthermore, if you have a business phone number and operate over the phone, make sure to include your main business phone number on all those mini-sites.

There are more advanced SEO techniques you should employ but that is way beyond the scope of this information piece.

In conclusion, if you have already invested, or want to invest, in buying multiple domains for SEO purposes, then put them to good use. Keeping them “locked up” unused or simply redirecting them to your main website is not an effective strategy. You want to use them to build out an “Internet empire” with a lot of “Internet real estate” all focused on your target keywords and eventually leading people to your main website and business.

This article is by TopLine Media Group and Solar Web Tools. TopLine Media Group, located at www.TopLineMediaGroup.com, has 4 distinct service areas: Website Design & Development, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Internet Marketing, and Online Reputation Management.

Solar Web Tools, located at http://www.SolarWebTools.com, provides Domain Registration and Website Hosting services, among many other Internet-related services.

By Mike Little in SE Optimization

SEO2Search engine optimization has come a long way over the past two decades. When I entered the field in the mid 90′s most SEO was just entering a few lines of Meta tags and making sure your keywords were prominent on the page without overdoing it. Of course, back then there were maybe 25,000 to 50,000 competing web pages for any given keyword. Today typical competition ranges from 800,000 to 1,100,000. That’s a big difference! Go ahead and type in any keyword phrase into Google, Yahoo or Bing to see what I mean. Crazy, isn’t it?

OK, so we know that SEO has become a lot more complicated than it once was, while also becoming much more competitive. This is not exactly new news to most of us.

We already knew SEO was a big deal. Even if we did not know exactly how big a deal, it becomes apparent that it must be both valuable and difficult when you see how much it costs to pay an SEO company.

As of June 2011, the average cost of SEO services in the United States hovers around $9,000.- to $14,000.- per year for a typical service industry company such as plumber or electrician. It is also about the same (high-end at 14k to 18k) for accountants and even more for legal practices going after ultra competitive keywords that bring in the big bucks in clientele (20k plus!).

When all is said and done, the typical business owner will invest ten to twenty thousand dollars per year in SEO. And although it sounds steep, they would not be doing it if they were not making even more money in return. In most cases; much more money. As I guess as the old joke goes – why is SEO so expensive? Because it’s worth it.

But how does that help you? Unless you have the money to invest, it does not help you at all. In fact, it hurts your position because now you are competing against those with a huge advantage. And that advantage is helping them pull even further ahead, steal your customers and make even more money. You have heard the old saying about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer? This is a great example of how it happens in business. But it does not have to be this way. They might have money but you have brains. Now if you are willing to match those smarts with a little hard work, you can take on your biggest competitor and never look back.

First of all, use a free keyword suggestion tool to find the best keywords to target. Just run a search for “free keyword tool” and try a couple out. If you use Google’s free keyword suggestion tool you can even just enter your domain name (or that of a competitor) and let it suggest which keywords are best to target.

Second, make a list of three to five keywords that you think are right up your alley. If you sell items locally, be sure the keywords include your geo… IE/ “plumber in Boston” or “Boston plumber”. Of course, make sure there is plenty of search volume for the whole keyword, including the geo qualifier (city, town, etc.)

Third, run a search for each of those keywords on Google, Yahoo and Bing to see if your site comes up. If you do not see it in the first page or two, there is no need to look any deeper because nobody is going to find it anyway. Tip: You can also look into a piece of SEO software to do this for you by running a search for “rank tracking software.”

Now, make note of the keywords that show the most promise and make this your target list.

Note: If any of these keywords show up within the top ten pages of the search engine results, then you probably do not have to do any onsite SEO like adding SEO copywriting or updating Meta tags. In fact, you can do it all by just building quality one-way inbound links so you can skip to that step.

Finally, if you find you need to update the on-page factors such as SEO copy and Meta tags, follow these simple steps.

1.) Make sure you have at least 300 words of text per page and that your keyword in question shows up at least once per 100 words (1.5 times is optimal), without going over five mentions total.

2.) Most search engines will expect to see your main keyword mentioned more at the top of the page and less as you get toward the bottom. Please note however that you need at least one mention in the final paragraph to keep it feeling legit.

3.) Pay special attention to your Title Meta tag and keep it simple. Having each keyword separated by a “pipe” is a great way to handle this tag with the company name put toward the end. Just don’t use the geo too often and feel free to follow-up with the state abbreviation and state name spelled out. For our example it might be “Boston Plumber | Boston Plumbing Company | Emergency Plumbers | Boston | MA | Massachusetts.”

4.) Get as many high quality backlinks as possible from authority sites. An easy way to do this is to register with as many directories as possible. Easy, but it can be very time consuming as it typically involves setting up a user account, writing a good title, writing an SEO optimized description, verifying your account setup through an email, submitting your request and entering a captcha code to prove you are human and not an automated bot, and finally verifying your submission via email.

There are plenty of other ways to get links, and you will need several to really succeed. If you do not mind spending $75 you can hire a link building company. If you don’t want to continue spending that money you might want to look into buying a piece of SEO software for $150 to $200. if you go this route, get one that does automatic rank tracking for you too and save a ton of time and effort.

Please note that as an SEO professional I am happiest when people choose to hire out the work. However, as a small business owner, I must say that if you can invest $150 or so, you can scoop up a tool that does it all for you. Most SEO professionals have at least this one in their toolbox; http://www.seoeliteweb.com but there are many out there.

Just shop around and spend wisely. You can save an absolute bundle on your SEO efforts, and eat your competition’s lunch, if you do.

Mike Little has been a search engine optimization professional since 1996. In 2003 he joined one of the oldest established SEO companies in the US; DotCom Pirates and has worked with over 200 companies worldwide since that time.

By Karon Thackston in SE Optimization

SEOptimizationWhat’s the first thing you think of when writing with keywords? Probably one of the first is that keywords and phrases are descriptive of the products and/or services you’re writing about. But, what happens in those circumstances where you can’t (or don’t really want to) use your chosen keyphrases descriptively?

Is Your Product/Service Really Cheap?

One of the primary things that causes this dilemma is the word “cheap.” There’s a big difference between somebody typing “cheap travel insurance” into a search engine query field and you calling your own insurance cheap. Nobody really wants “cheap” insurance. That brings up images of companies that go out of business, don’t return calls, fight you on paying claims, etc.

What customers want is inexpensive or affordable insurance. Problem is, in their haste, they type in the first thing that comes to mind. Average Joe doesn’t understand that search engines are (in part) matching the words in their query to words on web pages. “Cheap travel insurance” may be the keyphrase you want and need to target, but you certainly don’t want to label your own product as “cheap.” What else can you do?

Use that search term with the opposite meaning.

Perhaps your copy could read something like this:

Affordable? Budget-friendly? Absolutely! But this is certainly not cheap travel insurance. Coverage is underwritten by one of the most trusted and well-respected companies. With this policy, you’ll find benefits comparable to more expensive coverage, but with rates at, or below what the cheap travel insurance companies charge.

See the difference? Instead of writing “We sell cheap travel insurance,” and degrading your product in the eyes of your customer, you actually use the search term to elevate your product to a higher level of quality.

Legalities That Get in the Way

Another issue with many keyphrases is that they violate government regulations if used to describe a product. You find this often with health supplements. The FDA (and other such agencies around the world) has a long list of what manufacturers can and cannot say with regard to their products. This is mainly in an effort to protect the consumer against snake oil salesmen who make fraudulent claims.

For instance, you cannot call your supplement a cure. In many countries you can’t even call your product a remedy. And so, you face the issue with those ever-popular search terms that use “remedy” and other such words within them.

One of my favorite techniques is to ask questions that incorporate these keywords.

You can’t legally say, “Here’s a new heartburn remedy we’ve just released.” But you can ask questions like:

Tired of that same old heartburn remedy that doesn’t work? Wish someone would create something new?

Looking for a heartburn remedy that doesn’t require a prescription?

Is your heartburn remedy falling short?

You’re not saying *your* product is a heartburn remedy; you’re just asking questions about what the customer might want or need.

When you’re writing with keywords, you really have to think outside the box. We typically get stuck and have tunnel vision when we write SEO copy. The keywords get inserted the same way over and over. But there are so many different methods (like the one listed above) for using search terms when you write.

If you diversify your SEO writing skills, you’ll find your copy becomes more natural-sounding and is able to communicate its message better. Why stick to just one ordinary way to write with keywords when there are so many to choose from?

Stop struggling to make keywords fit. Do it the easy way with Karon’s 11 proven techniques for writing naturally with keywords. http://www.WritingWithKeywords.com

By Sara Royle in SE Optimization

SEO-TipsRunning an SEO agency can potentially mean big business. Competition is rife within the industry, and as such some less than ethical methods of producing impressive looking results have unsurprisingly evolved over time.

Agencies that use these ‘effective’ methods may seem appealing, but look a little closer and you’ll soon realise that not only are their results delivered via corrupt means, but often these same results cannot be sustained over time.

So what do you do to solve this dilemma? You want Google to think highly of your website, but you don’t have the time or specialist knowledge to make this happen yourself. However, you also know that some SEO agencies could potentially rip you off. There is a solution. Although it may take a little time, finding a suitable agency for your business is possible. Here are a few top tips to bear in mind while you’re searching for an SEO company that you can trust.

How Much do They Charge?

We all know that the economic climate is less than perfect at present. Thus, whenever we decide to invest into our business, we want to make sure we’re getting the best possible service for our money. Low prices can be tempting; however they do not always guarantee a satisfactory ROI. Rates should be competitive, but if they seem ‘too good to be true’, they probably are. Ethical SEO agencies do a huge amount of research, writing, reviewing, and more in order to encourage Google’s PageRank to rank your site well. If the agencies prices are dirt cheap, then it is best to err on the side of caution.

Similarly if they are offering a ‘pay-per-click’ service, whereby you pay them for every visitor your site receives, then you will more than likely end up paying significantly more than if you pay a set monthly fee. If a ‘pay-per-click’ SEO agency wants to get money quickly, then they will use any method possible to get traffic to your site.

Number of Keywords Targeted

Both quality and quantity are important to Google’s PageRank algorithm. Certainly it is possible for an SEO agency to target multiple keywords; however it could be the case that many of these keywords do not have much competition and are thus easy for the agency to get ranking highly. More competitive keywords may take longer to rank highly with, but they will be significantly more beneficial for you in the long run.

Traffic Relevancy

SEO isn’t just about the amount of people that visit your site increasing; it’s also about the kind of people that are visiting your site. A good SEO agency will be able to target the appropriate demographic for whatever it is your site offers, thus increasing your ROI. However, a less effective agency will purely base their results on the amount of people clicking to your website, rather than who those people are.

Quick Results

Quick results may look good to you initially, but they don’t always bode well with Google. Google is incredibly advanced, and gets suspicious if a site is fast to rise in the ranks. These kinds of results are often impossible to sustain over time, as Google often penalizes those quick to rank sites. This can put your rankings down, or knock your website off Google searches altogether.

Unique and Relevant Content

As already stated, quality and quantity both matter to Google. If the content an agency is writing for you is automated or copied, then you will have less chance of Google looking upon your website favourably. If the agency is offering a huge amount of article and blog submissions for your money, then it’s possible that the content might have been generated rather than written by a human. Original content is important and affects both your PageRank score, and ultimately the relevancy of your site traffic.

Spam Commenting

We all receive spam email, and thus all know how irritating it is when it appears among other, more important, messages in our inboxes. Some SEO agencies spam blogs and forums in order to get people to your website. However, not only does this not bring in the right kind of traffic to your website, it also undermines the owner of the blog. The blog owners spend time and effort on their blog; spam commenters do not think about the people they are affecting.

Look For Honesty

Ethical SEO agencies should always be open and honest about their results and how they are being achieved. They should review their results and always be looking to improve. If they are not willing to put in this kind of effort, or you feel like information is being kept from you, then they are more than likely not to be trusted.

Finding an ethical SEO agency is not an impossible task, it simply takes a little bit of time. Bear these tips in mind and always be prepared to ask difficult questions to any agencies that you approach.

Kingpin SEO are a UK based SEO agency. Unlike many other SEO agencies, they are committed to providing the most ethical SEO work possible and can help your website achieve both impressive and sustainable results, through extensive keyword research, on-page SEO, and ethical, organic, href="http://www.kingpin-seo.co.uk/seo/link-building/">link building techniques.

By Resource Nation in SE Optimization

SEO2Your company’s SEO efforts have dropped and you’re site is not getting the traffic you desired. Is it time to panic or search for ways to right the ship?

Countless marketers, I.T. heads, webmasters and more have had to deal with this very issue over time, leading some small business owners to wonder how they can get their site’s traffic flowing smoothly once again.

As many small business owners do or do not understand, page rankings are critical to a company’s site, especially given all the online competition there is to navigate through. Even if your site is managing to attract attention, are you actually turning those visitors into customers?

For those small business owners who need to shake up their company’s SEO efforts, there are several ways to go about it.

They include:

1. Review the site’s copy – There is a fine line between keywords and quality copy. Too many SEO heads focus in on hitting viewers with a ton of keywords, yet the copy itself is average at best. Others may have stellar copy, but it is lacking in the right number and value of keywords. Sit down with the person/s in charge of SEO and review both copy and keywords. Is the copy fresh? Is the copy relevant to your site? Are the keywords properly placed in the copy or haphazardly thrown in? Determine where the problem is and fix it sooner rather than later;

2. Review the SEO budget – How much has your business invested in SEO? It may be time to invest some more funds into the SEO efforts, especially in order to see a better return on your investment. Too many companies panic at first when things are not working, oftentimes described as a knee-jerk reaction;

3. Review your analysis – What’s the sense of having an SEO campaign if you’re not going to analyze the results? Small business owners need to be sure their SEO person and/or department is looking at the numbers on a monthly basis at minimum to see where improvements need to be made. Whether it is Google Analytics or another program, analyze those visitors;

4. Do you blog? – While some experts poo-poo the relevance of blogs on a company site, I have always been a fan of them. If done correctly, the blog can serve as a great mouthpiece for your company. The key to a successful blog is having quality content that is updated on a regular basis. Blogs garner search engine traffic, giving your company an SEO leg up on the competition;

5. Don’t be a repeat offender – One of the sins of an SEO campaign is having too much repeat content out there on the web. The simple fact is search engines do not like repetitive copy, so make it fresh and exclusive.

When you integrate some of these ideas with each specific project, your SEO campaigns stand a much better possibility of gaining traffic and increasing your return on investment.

So, ready to search how to best optimize that engine?

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