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10 Ways to Get Banned by the Search Engines

01 2010 Tuesday

By Terri Seymour in SE Tactics

When you build your website, you, of course, want to get high rankings in the search engines. There are lots of ways to do this and lots of ways to NOT do this. Below are 10 things to avoid if you want to be in good standing with the search engines.

Duplicate Content/Sites – Do not set up multiple sites or site pages using basically the same content with a few different keywords spread around. This does not fool the search engines.
Cloaking – Cloaking is when a website or webpage is set up to show different content for a search engine spider than the human visitors. The cloaked page (for the spiders) is stuffed with keywords in an attempt to get higher rankings. What it can get you is banned!
Linking to Bad Neighborhoods – Be careful who you link to because you can be found guilty by association. Do not link to adult sites, gambling sites or link farms. Also be careful not to link to sites that use any of the SEO methods mentioned here.
Title Stacking – This is simply trying to give each page more than one title tag so you can use more keywords to get higher rankings. The search engines consider this a dirty little trick.
Doorway Pages – Doorway or gateway pages are pages that are set-up for one keyword topic but then they take you to different content. These pages usually have little value in the way of content and have little to do with the rest of the site. They are used solely to try to get a higher rank in the search engines.
Redirect Pages – Redirect pages are set up to rank high in the search engines but when you click on the page, it will take you to another page which is usually a sales page for a product or service. So, what you see isn’t what you get!
Automated Submission Services – Do not use automated submission services. They are against Google’s TOS and can get you banned.
Hidden Links – This is when a link is added to a page in such a small size that it cannot be seen by human visitors but can be picked up by the search engine spiders. This might work for a time but when the search engines discover it, you will be penalized!
Keyword Stuffing – Keyword stuffing or spamming is simply being too repetitive with your keywords as to the extent of your content not being sensible. For example if your keywords are cat food and your text reads something like this: When your cat gets hungry be sure to feed them this cat food because your cat will like this cat food. This cat food comes in an easy to open cat food can and contains fish, chicken and healthy ingredients that all cat food should have. So, when your cat is hungry for cat food, give them this cat food because this cat food is the best cat food for your cat!You can easily see why this kind of keyword stuffing should not be used.
Invisible Text – This is when you hide text by using the same color text and background. The invisible text is meant for the search engines only and not for visitors. This is done so you can stuff a lot more keywords on your page without wrecking your content. The search engines will discover this and they will penalize you!

Be careful not to use these Black Hat SEO methods because it could cause you a lot of trouble with the search engines. Be careful as well, who you hire to work on your site because some of these things can be done without your knowledge and cause your site to get banned or penalized.

A few things you should do to get higher rankings are:

Research keywords and use relevant keywords on your web pages and in your page title.
Add new content to your site regularly
Link with relevant, quality sites
Use a site map
Don’t use a lot of javascript or flash. The search engines do not read these.

Following all of the above can keep you from getting banned and improve your rankings!

Terri Seymour (also known as “The eBook Lady”) has over ten years online experience and has helped many people start their own business. Visit her site at http://www.seymourproducts.com for resources, $1 resell ebooks & software, free tutorials, affiliate programs, free ezine and free business ebook with Master Resell Rights. http://www.seymourproducts.com/free.shtml

How Keyword Ranking Can Make You Money

01 2010 Thursday

By Riley West in SE Tactics

There are millions of things searched for on Google and the search terms, the keywords, the keyword phrases, etc. are what they use to search for information and things. What you want is to know what your searcher is looking for make that work to find you!

How do you do that? It’s not nearly as hard as you think, and it’s the way all the masters get their pages to the top for their selected keywords.

Here’s the way anyone can rank for a certain keywords at the top of Google. And why do you want to do that?

Traffic!
Targeted traffic!
Money Making traffic! The traffic YOU want!

If the person types in “red umbrellas” and you have a good offer for red umbrellas then you want them to find you right at the top of the Google organic listings…FREE!

Free targeted traffic …it really doesn’t get any better than that.

So, here’s the plan. You have picked a keyword. Now you set out to get put at the top of Google Page One for that term.

First – Put the keyword in your domain name! Or, at least do it this way…http;//www.yourdomainname.com/keyword.
Second – Put a bunch of relevant content on your page with the keyword in it several times but not over 1%.
Third – Now that that page is up, you can write an article describing the benefits of the offer on that page while using your “keyword” in the Title and Body of the article.

Fourth – This is the “coup de gras” as the French like to put it or “the biggie” as Americans are fond of saying. You write an authors resource box that asks the reader to click back to your offer for more information and the clickback (not Clickbank) hyperlinks have to look just like this example… “For the best in [rain umbrellas] selection and accessories go to my page on [rain unmbrella] (I use the singular and the plural) and NOW you have what Google wants to see. Keyword links back to YOUR site!

Getting ranked for a keyword is largely a popularity contest. The more “rain umbrella” text links pointing to your “rain umbrella” page that has your “rain umbrella” offer on it, the higher goes your ranking. One day you’ll write that last article who’s text link pushes you to the top.

One way to get a lot of the anchor text backlinks you need for Google to see fit to put your offer page at the top of Page One is to write an article and put those text links in your resource box. Everybody does this. It works.

Still, if you only submit one article to one place you are going to get only one backlink or maybe two if you go for two different keywords.

I like to write one article and get dozens to hundreds of backlinks. So would you!

And before I go off topic too far, let me suggest that you look into one of these “mass submission” article outfits. It’s what I use and I have thousands of links going all over and growing.

Even better than that is the fact that I’m on page one for some of my terms and I’m picking up more and more targeted Google traffic all the time.

This is something that works and it’s something you can do!

Riley West recommends that you should start putting up offers and driving traffic to them! It’s one of the quickest ways to see how much money you can make! You’ll find FREE DOMAIN NAMES AND WEBSITES at Easy Affiliate Marketing and you will find the best ways to send traffic to your offers at Free Website Traffic – The Post at the Famous Blog!

Social Media Optimization- A Priority For Your SEO Campaign

12 2009 Tuesday

By Julie Ann Ross in SE Tactics

Social media optimization (SMO) is an important ingredient within your SEO and SEM campaigns. In the past, social networking sites were not much more than an oddity. Today, many have received enormous ranking authority from top search engines. If you are not leveraging these sites to increase your exposure and communicate with your niche consumer, your search engine positions are vulnerable to your competitors. In this article, we will describe the influence that SMO currently has on search engine marketing. We will also give you the rules of engagement for executing an effective social media optimization campaign. We’ll explain what SEO social media is, and the advantages of hiring an experienced SEO consultant to spearhead your social media optimization efforts.

The Influence Of Social Media Optimization On Search Marketing

Search marketing has always relied upon exposure in the search engines to drive targeted traffic. For years, gaining that exposure was based solely upon the development of your site and generating links pointing to your site. Both are still important today. However, social media optimization has shifted the landscape of search engine marketing.

Google once maintained several disparate search platforms for blogs, videos, news, and similar types of “social” content. Each functioned as a separate search engine with its own set of organic listings. A few years ago, Google blended the listings from each platform into a system called Universal Search. Yahoo and Bing have since incorporated similar systems. Universal Search is now used as the primary index. That means blogs, videos, and news have been incorporated into the natural listings, pushing many sites off the first page. This is one of the reasons social media optimization has become a critical piece of search.

Another factor that has influenced search marketing is the increased ranking authority given to Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and similar sites. These too, have quickly gained control of a significant amount of search territory.

Social media optimization preserves your current natural listings while helping you to gain even more search exposure. By using blogs, videos, and social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, you can capture a greater number of organic positions.

Your Social Media Optimization Campaign: Rules of Engagement

There are several rules of engagement for launching and executing a social media optimisation campaign. If you ignore them, your SMO efforts will be far less effective than otherwise.

First, you should do everything possible to encourage your audience to link to your site. Integrating a blog is valuable because your content can continually be updated, attracting loyal readers. Encourage readers to bookmark, tag and “Tweet” your blog posts by installing a button plug-in.

Second, link liberally as a resource for your visitors. Social media optimization is dependent on assisting others achieve what they’re trying to do. Once you engage your audience, help them find the resources they need by linking to them. Eventually, your site will become regarded as a resource hub, which will help you attract inbound links. That’s a vital component of SEO.

Third, you must be able to identify your market. Social media optimization relies upon the connections you establish with niche communities. You need to target them properly in order to generate content and engage them. This is true whether you’re engaging them through YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, or your blog.

Fourth, integrate tracking tools to monitor and measure the success of your social media optimization campaign. Track mentions of your site and company. Watch your site’s progress in the natural listings for your main keywords. Generate linking reports showing inbound links pointing to your domain and specific pages. Tracking your metrics is crucial in order to determine whether your SMO campaign is effective.

SEO Social Media Optimization Explained

Each of the elements of a social media optimization campaign that we have described thus far dovetail seamlessly with SEO. The ongoing content creation, tagging and bookmarking, attracting inbound links by being a resource for your audience – these are essential for pushing your website higher in the search engines’ listings. SEO social media optimization leverages a new set of tools to accomplish the same goal as SEO: more exposure for your site on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. The challenge is knowing how to use these tools effectively.

The days of launching a basic SEO campaign within a competitive space and watching your site rise in the search engines’ results are long gone. SEO has become far more complex than it was a few short years ago. This is why many companies have made the decision to hire an SEO consultant. Social media optimization has transformed SEO from a relatively straightforward strategy into a complicated science. Having an experienced hand at the wheel helps to navigate the uncertain terrain.

If you want to boost your exposure in the search engines’ listings, consider social media optimization a priority.

With 20 years in marketing, advertising and 10 years in internet marketing, Rostin Reagor Smith is on the cutting edge. Combining Social Media Optimization with more traditional SEO and SEM methods, RRS is a consulting firm specializing in enhancing clients’ online presence and managing their public relations online. SEO, SEM and ORM, Online Reputation Management, are combined in this successful formula. http://www.RostinReagorSmith.com

12 Ways to Make Sure Your Internet Marketing Really Works

12 2009 Thursday

By Neil Stafford in SE Tactics

Everyone loves the Internet, but not everyone is ready to buy. There can be a level of scepticism you may have to overcome and one way to do that is let them see your face. Use online video and you have an advantage over your competitors when dealing with customers.

Successful marketing is all about establishing a relationship; and that is so much easier when they can see and hear you. You may be very comfortable online, but some people are still sceptical about doing business with you over the Internet and you need to persuade them to trust you before they will buy from you.

These are my top 12 direct marketing principles you can use to make sure your Internet marketing really works for you:

1. History.

People want to know you are not going to disappear overnight so if you’ve been in business for any length of time then this will add credibility to you and your offers.

2. Statistics.

Use genuine statistics to give you more credibility by listing number of customers served, money saved, profits made, and so on.

3. Testimonials

I can’t overestimate the importance of these so get them from your Customers and Clients saying how you and/or your products have helped them. Get experts in your market to validate and endorse your products and services and if appropriate get celebrities who you either ‘rent’ for your marketing, feature at your events or use by association.

4. Demonstrations.

With the use of online video and ‘how To’ DVDs it is very ease to show a demonstration of your product both on and offline. You can even demo an ebook by printing it out and talking through what it contains live on screen. Camtasia is free software that lets you make a screen capture video where you can demonstrate your website talking though the sales letter or giving a demo of how easy it is to download your ebook. If you are in a market that isn’t really familiar with online buying this works really well.

What better proof that your product or service works than by showing an example of before and after. Many markets and products lend themselves to this treatment and it is very effective.

In our own business we use video to show how to confirm emails when signing up to our email lists, when demonstrating how to use our Membership site and examples of results in a number of our ebook markets.

5. Credentials.

What credentials do you have in your market? They don’t have to be academic, but can awards, accomplishments, membership to organisations that are relevant to your market. Both I and Neil Travers my business partner are CIPD qualified which is a training qualification we attained while working at the Bank.

This is ‘proof’ of our ability to run workshops that are designed to aid the learning and intake and retaining of information by attendees and gives us increased credibility in their eyes.

6. Publicity.

Reprints of articles about you in the press, or your articles being published in the media that lend weight to your credibility as the expert or authority in your market are highly valuable to you. Show your market that you are in demand, and have status as an expert.

7. Celebrity Spokesperson.

To be used with caution. It can be effective but can also backfire when the market remembers the celebrity and the advert, but not what it was advertising.

8. Guarantee.

If you can’t guarantee the product you’re selling then find something else to sell that you can guarantee. To really make your potential customers feel safe to buy from you you need to offer an ironclad guarantee.

9. Accessibility.

On your website have your full contact detail if possible as this will give a big boost to your potential customer confidence in you and your company. Using just an email contact is the worst and an email, phone and address the best.

Never give a PO Box as your address as it immediately makes people suspicious.

10. The Personal Touch.

Being visible in the business to your customers is a confidence booster for them. Make it personal so you are a real individual, anecdotes about you and your business, pictures and videos all make your customer more comfortable as if they have already met you.

11. Make A Damaging Admission.

No matter how good your product is it will have a disadvantage somewhere. Admit it up front and honestly comment on this fact.

Answer Questions and objections up front and when a customer asks them via email or the phone. People can call our office throughout the week and email at any time with questions and that makes them feel safe to buy from us.

12. Excess.

Use a combination of as many of the examples above in your marketing! What may seem like overkill to you may not be enough to overcome some people’s scepticism!

FREE for you. The Internet Marketing Review is the UK’s longest running PRINTED Internet Marketing Newsletter. Just visit this special web page for more information: http://www.InternetMarketingReview.com/sya

The 6 Key Elements of a Successful Online Promotion

10 2009 Monday

By admin in SE Tactics

I hear many people talking about marketing and promotion in the same breath as being the same thing. I don’t believe them, because in my experience they are very different, but they are linked by a common theme… your business.

In a nutshell, marketing can be described as everything you do to attract clients into your business but a promotion is a specific event and time based activity to get people to buy your products or services. To understand this difference, I am going to show you what is involved in running a promotion.

These are the six key elements you need to consider and how you can include them in your business, or your next promotion.

1 The Reason Why:

Canadian advertising man John E. Kennedy is credited with inventing the term ‘Reason Why Advertising’ as far back as 1905 and every promotion you run should have a strong reason for why you are doing it. Events are the usual ‘reason’ such as product launches and significant anniversaries. More unusually, I’ve seen marketers use the birth of a new baby for a sale and even “I need to pay my taxes” to run a promotion. Yes, it is cheesy, but it works.

So not all reasons are good, BUT they are still reasons and they work far better than the “I’m running a promotion this week because I can or should” angle. You have to get their attention and one of the best ways of doing that is to make the story hook them in because the more interesting you make it then then the bigger the impact it will have. Your customers will respond to a promotion with lots of BANG and that means it will grab their ATTENTION much faster.

2 Give Them A Discount Or Special Price:

People are interested in your product and that’s great, but nothing will happen unless you prompt them with a good reason to buy it right now. You have plenty of options here: you can offer a reduced price, a bundled special deal on your products, or a one on one consult with you.

3 Put An End Date On Your Promotion

Some businesses seem to be in permanent sale mode, so there’s no urgency for the customer to buy. Customers are not stupid; they see the advertising and know that this company ALWAYS has a sale on. That’s why it’s important you create a deadline for your promotion. If you then you lose credibility. Having a definitive end date creates urgency and a reason for your potential customer to act now or lose out.

4 Give Something Extra Successful:

Online marketers have mastered the art of giving bonuses and any good promotion should contain a bonus item for ordering now. First you need to look at how relevant the bonus you are offering is to the productyou are selling, and see if it can stand alone in its own value.

Ask yourself whether your bonus item could be sold on its own and does it add value to the promotion you are running?

5 TELL People The Value They Are Getting:

The first time I ‘got’ this I saw my sales increase, and although you may think your bonus is valuable, it won’t always be obvious to the customer so you must make it clear to them.

Even if you do put a value next to the items you are selling, don’t assume your prospect or customer has worked it out for themselves. If the total value is £250 tell them it is £250 because if you leave them to add it up for themselves they generally won’t do it.

6 Finally…Tell People What To Do Next All the above points are meaningless unless you follow through with this one. Tell them what you want them to do. For example; fill in this form, go to this website, click this link.

Never, ever leave it up to the customer to find out how to order your products. If it is not clear then they won’t make the effort, so just let them know what you want them to do.

For example: “To order this Internet Marketing Guide and take advantage of the special price with all of your bonuses worth £350 click on this button now.” No mistakes, no confusion…just sales.

Follow these six steps and you are on your way to your most successful promotion ever.

Neil Stafford is Editor and Publisher of the Internet Marketing Review the UK’s longest running PRINTED Internet Marketing Newsletter. ‘Test drive’ the Newsletter for FREE – Visit this special web page for more information: Internet Marketing Review Newsletter

10 Tips For Using Keywords In Your Articles

09 2009 Monday

By Steve Shaw in SE Tactics

There is a right way and a wrong way to use keywords in your submissions: Use them correctly, and you can help your site rank highly for your keyword terms. Use them incorrectly, and you could hurt your cause.

But don’t be afraid–You do not have to have to be a SEO guru to use keywords successfully in your articles.

Here are 10 essential tips for using keywords correctly in your article submissions:

#1 Variety is key–don’t use the same keyword all the time.

#2 Develop a list of 20 or more keyword phrases to work from.

#3 Don’t go overboard on the keywords–a good percentage to stick to is 3%, but keep in mind that individual publishers will have their own limits.

#4 You can use semantically related versions of your keywords–it does not have to be the exact keyword repeated over and over again. For example: race cars, racing cars, race car gear, how to race a car, etc.

#5 Update your keyword list regularly. Every few months conduct your keyword research again, and be sure that your keywords are still current.

#6 Long tail keywords are great as article topics.

Long tail keywords are 3-5 words long and are very specific, while your core keywords are 1-2 words long and are more general. Long tail keywords tend to be less competitive, so it can be easier to rank highly for them. Research your best long tail keywords and try to write articles around those very specific topics.

For example, if your long tail phrase is ‘long distance running shoes’, you could write an article about how to shop for long distance running shoes. Do this for all of your long tail keywords to create blanket coverage for all aspects of your niche.

#7 Use keywords in your title, when appropriate.

Your title needs to describe what your article is about, so you can only use your keywords in your title when the article is also about the keywords. For example, if your keywords were “chocolate recipes”, and your article was a review of various baking pans, it would not be appropriate to include those keywords in your title, because that’s not what the article is about. In order to include the keywords “chocolate recipes” in your title, your article would need to be about chocolate recipes.

#8 Your resource box is a prime spot for using your keywords, but you need to be careful. In an HTML resource box do not hyperlink the same keywords every time–switch things up!

#9 If you will simply write on the topic of your website, then your keywords will likely naturally pop up in the article.

#10 Don’t forget about your article summary (aka, the short description). Article summaries will often appear in search engine results, so that’s a great spot to use your keywords.

A keyword rich article does not have to sound awkward–if you use your keywords correctly, no one will be able to tell that you’re targeting certain keywords. They’ll just think that you’ve written a helpful article.

Using keywords in your articles is not hard, but you do have to be careful to focus on quality and readability, and exercise some restraint. If you follow these 10 tips, you will create keyword rich articles that are a pleasure to read and are easy to write.

Steve Shaw is an article marketing expert, and founder of the popular article distribution service, http://www.submityourarticle.com, used by thousands of business owners. Discover how to use the power of article marketing to reach tens of thousands of potential prospects for your website – download a powerful free report on successful article marketing from http://www.submityourarticle.com/report

Using keywords in your webcopy to get your pages ranked

08 2009 Thursday

By admin in SE Tactics

USING KEYWORDS Hey, guess what search term we’d like to see this article rank for? 74 people a day search using the keyword phrase “using keywords”. Our keyword research indicates that it also a favorable search term and should be easy to rank for. We’ll see. If this article doesn’t rank on the top page of Google for “using keywords” by December of this year, I’ll eat an entire spam loaf without anything to wash it down. (I hate spam!).

Assuming you’re beyond the keyword research phase of your business planning, now you need to understand how to use your keywords. We like to teach our clients that using keywords is nothing more than knowing the keyword you want to promote when you write your page. Using keywords in your copywriting should be a very intentional process. You should not get hung up in the details put forth by anal SEO guys who think you need to have 6.2% of the page content covered by the keywords you are using.

As we build the pages using keywords and grow the core infrastructure of our websites, you should know that what we write is VERY intentional. If you haven’t figured it out yet, the theme of of this page, and the search term we’d like to rank for is “using keywords”. We are NOT putting a great emphasis on the technical SEO aspects. I don’t think getting my clients to focus on “keyword density” is really going to get them very far. I actually get the opposite result. My clients shut down as their creative process gets overwhelmed with technical garbage. It’s better just to say to them that whenever you use text, try to use your keywords. That should be enough…and it is.

Google doesn’t want your page to look fake and they don’t want you trying to decipher their algorithms to get it exactly right. The more you try to match how Google is reading the page, the more you put your content at risk when Google changes their algorithms. The more you write for your audience, the more you’ll be rewarded in the long term, both by the search engines and by your customers who have to ultimately interpret your writing. Write for your readers! Let your keywords keep you on topic!

Now, having said that, there are some things you can do that will improve your chances of getting noticed and indexed by the search engines using your keywords.

Once you’ve written your page, you can improve your ability to rank in the search engines by using keywords in articles that you write. You can distribute those articles and use them to point to the same page in your website (you point to the page by hyperlinking your keywords to the page you want to promote for the same keywords).

There are also provisions within a page that also may help. Most website builders include form based entries for your metatags for every page. Don’t worry if you don’t know what a metatag is. Just know that you are encouraged to enter keywords (search terms relavent to your page), a description and a title when you build each of your pages. So know what keyword you want a page to rank for. Put it in the keywords box. Use the keyword in your description. Put the keyword in your title. Use the keyword or variations of your keyword on your page in the headers, in the regular text and in the alternative text on the images. You don’t need to know any code to do any of this.

Having said this, please note the first sentence of this article. Smart keyword choice is essential to ranking for keywords. If your choices are too general or too competitive, you have an uphill battle no matter how well written your page is. That’s because your links relative to the competition will probably pale in comparison.

Smart choices and intentionally using your chosen keywords in your webcopy keeps you on track, on point and hopefully on Google.

by Greg Newell Greg owns www.buildawebshop.com. This site is designed to help new ecommerce and new business owners understand the nuances of how a website is found. Using keywords is at the core of understanding sound website marketing techniques.

What Comes First – The Web Design Or The SEO?

08 2009 Monday

By Dave Talbot in SE Tactics

This really is the chicken and egg question of the internet age but depending on who you ask will determine the actual answer you receive.

A graphic designer based website development company will argue in a majority of cases that the design comes first of course. And let’s face it without that aesthetically pleasing to the eye design a visitor will bounce off your site within a matter of seconds or so they would have you believe. But then that raises the big question of how did they get there in the first place?

The most common web development curve goes along the lines of website gets designed ..looks great let’s go for it. Needs some content ok, copy and paste something out of our corporate /company leaflet…..time passes and no traffic!

And then more time until eventually perhaps 6-12 months later the situation is either so dire or the company are spending a fortune on Adwords that finally the SEO expert gets called in (or somebody gets intrigued by one of those SEO e-mails that seem to hound webmasters these days), and before you know it you are on a 6 month search engine marketing campaign to try and rescue some website rankings.

Is this really the best way to go? The thousands of business owners that have been through this exact cycle will certainly argue that it most definitely is not, as this hope and pray web development criteria delays any websites success by months and sometimes years, and even more frighteningly results in thousands in lost profit, turnover and ongoing prospect capture.

What is really laughable though is that if you actually read the sales pitch on any one of the myriad of web design companies own websites many of them blatantly claim to be SEO experts as if it is a badge of honour or perhaps a must have tick in the box but a quick check of their portfolio soon reveals that if they are the search engine marketing experts, then it is clearly evident that their clients are definitely not on the receiving end of this claimed expertise.

So what is the real answer, can you really optimise a website before you launch it? Absolutely, web design and SEO should go hand in hand and the thought process of optimising a website and SEO friendly website design should form the foundations of the web development brief right from the outset, as it is the site structure, and ultimately the content that will capture free organic web traffic and also mark the website as a potential authority site or an also ran.

The search engines don’t care about what the site looks like but so often this initial chance to make the best impact when the site first gets indexed is wasted, if all the search engines find is a poorly optimised site with scant regard paid to any SEO requirements or keyword capture.

Extra time and money spent on pre development SEO (which should at the very least include keyword research and SEO copywriting) gives an outstanding return on investment as invariably when the site goes live and gets indexed it will achieve a far better website ranking from day one and even in some cases a page one result straight away.

If a web designer is not promoting web design SEO as part of your initial client brief then they are selling not only themselves short but also the client, if they don’t have the expertise themselves then best practice would be to team up with a non competing SEO professional to give the client the best possible start and return on investment on their new website.

And to any business owners who are commissioning a new website, if your developer does not offer this service then find one who does as a little extra investment will see your website many months ahead of where it would otherwise be.

Author: Dave Talbot: Correct search engine optimisation is a vital ingredient for any websites success, and for new web development projects this is just as important as it is imperative to give the search engines the right initial impression of your website when it is first indexed. To find out more about the essential SEO services you should employ to give your website the kickstart it requires visit =>> http://www.advancedwebmarketing.co.uk

Beware: SEO scammers ahead!

08 2009 Wednesday

By Andrew Plimmer in SE Tactics

All too many website owners, unaware of the many wolves in sheep’s clothing lurking out there, have fallen victim to scams run by alleged SEO (search engine optimisation) businesses which offer unbelievable claims as to the levels of traffic and page rankings their services could provide them.

You know what they say about things which sound too good to be true, of course. Suncoast Internet had a little talk with one of these (again, alleged) SEO companies this week after finding that the company had been pursuing one of their clients.

An anatomy of a SEO scam:

The SEO company contacted Suncoast Internet’s client, telling them that they could get the client’s company listed at the top of search engine results for a primary keyword phrase (a search term that someone might enter into a search engine) that their potential customers were likely to use when searching for their business – for $1,000. As it happens, the client reported this offer to Suncoast Internet as the website designers; otherwise, you probably wouldn’t be reading this right now. Suncoast looked into the details of the keyword the company was offering to help them promote and found that this keyword wasn’t being used by the client’s potential customers; or anyone else, as it happens.

If the client hadn’t had a healthy level of skepticism, they easily could have been duped out of $1,000 for a completely worthless promotional campaign.

If you were to search on Google, you’ll see that there have been a lot of other companies and individuals who weren’t quite so cautious and have fallen for these SEO scams.

How can you tell if an offer like this is coming from a SEO scam artist?

Do your due diligence. Have a look at the page rank for the website of supposed SEO experts who’ve contacted you. If their site isn’t highly ranked, then run in the opposite direction. After all, what kind of results can you expect from a SEO company which can’t secure a high page rank for its own site?
They guarantee that your site will show up in the first page of results or even as the number one result! Time for a reality check: the algorithms that the search engines use are closely guarded trade secrets meaning that no one outside of a few people at the search engine companies know exactly how it all works. Guaranteeing a certain page ranking is a sign of inexperience at best – and much more likely, indicates a scam.
They phone you from what is obviously a very busy call centre. If their sales department is a room crowded with telemarketers trolling for business around the clock, you can hardly expect much personal attention being paid to your site.
They promise to secure your site top rankings for long tail keywords which strike you as unlikely to be used by anyone. For starters, they’re trying to sell you a guaranteed page ranking (but we know better, don’t we?). If the keyword they’re offering you a top ranking for sounds a little fishy to you, look up its popularity with the (free) tool Google AdWords.
Their services are offered at unrealistically low prices. There are some SEO scammers who lure victims by offering to optimize your site and run promotional campaigns for prices that sound entirely too good to be true. An effective SEO campaign takes a significant amount of time and effort for keyword research, reworking page content, building high quality back links and designing and implementing traffic driving strategies. It’s not something that can be done on the cheap, at least not well.
They promise results in 48 hours (or less). If this could be done it would save everyone a lot of money and time. The results of optimizing a site aren’t visible at all for at least a few weeks – and for the results to really begin trending in the right direction, you often need to wait a few months.

Now, if you’re looking for a legitimate SEO firm:

Again, do your due diligence. Look at their credentials, find out who’s used their services in the past and what they have to say about the company. You should expect regular reports on how your keywords are performing and you should be able to easily get in touch by phone and speak to one of the SEO consultants to get their advice and input as needed.

The best SEO companies have years of expertise in the field and know the most effective SEO methodologies inside and out – and how to use them to get results for their clients. They won’t make you the outlandish promises that the SEO scammers will and they may not offer bargain basement pricing, but keep in mind that this is one service where you do get what you pay for.

Andrew Plimmer is CEO of Suncoast Internet, Sunshine Coast SEO company and web design and development specialists. For a free SEO analysis of your website go to => http://www.suncoastinternet.com.au/

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