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SEO is the foundation of your marketing campaign - at least it should be. Aside from any other marketing that you participate in, you should also make sure your site is ranked in the top of the engines so you can tap into the millions (actually over 400 million) searches performed daily.

So, how do you pick an SEO Firm? It is a very important decision.

I was talking to a man recently who told me the problem was he didn’t even know what questions to ask, let alone how to evaluate the answers.

Here is some guidance on what to ask and what to expect in response.

Do you have any initial or set up fees? How much and what are they for? Are there ongoing fees and how much are they?

They should be able to outline all fees and tell you exactly what is included. Different firms price things differently. If they require full payment up front, that may concern me. Most firms will require some payment up front, and that is to be expected. You need to look at what they are proposing, make sure it is clear to you and make sure you are OK with it.

Is monthly maintenance necessary?

Any SEO Firm that knows what they are talking about should tell you that maintenance and monitoring of rankings is required to ensure you don’t start losing rankings. If they tell you that you will lose rankings as soon as you leave them, they are lying—or more accurately they are just guessing. They don’t really know for sure. However experience shows us that rankings do tend to maintain until the next major algorithm shift and then if no one is maintaining them for you, they may begin to drop. SEO is not the kind of thing you do once and then you are done. To maintain and hopefully even increase your rankings, you need to have someone continually working on your behalf. Alternatively, you could learn to handle some of the maintenance items yourself. But the key is to realize that someone needs to monitor your rankings and work on your in order to hold on to your top rankings and grow them. Don’t forget the engines themselves reported that approximately 25% of searches each month are never before seen phrases. So, at the very least you’ll want to monitor what new phrases are popping up and make sure you are getting exposure for them.

How long is my term of service?

Typically you should hear anywhere from 3—12 months. Anything less than 3 months isn’t long enough to see any matured results. Six months seems to be the industry standard middle ground. With six months you aren’t locked in too long, but it does allow time for the campaign to mature.

Do you offer a Guarantee?

Contrary to popular belief, guarantees aren’t all bad. You just have to make sure you aren’t being promised something that no one can actually deliver.

- Top rankings in less than 30 days? Not likely.

- Guaranteed amount of site visitors or conversions? With regular SEO and no other services no SEO Firm can guarantee the precise number of visitors or the conversion rates.

- If you are told you will get rankings on a precise keyword within a precise amount of time, that just isn’t possible unless they are doing PPC or have magic fairy dust.

The kind of guarantee that is safe is the kind where the company states they don’t control the engines and can’t predict exact timeframes but they will not stop working until they have delivered what they promised (ex: 20 rankings within the top 20 for 6 months—so they may have to work 8 or 9 months of real time to deliver the full 6 months of “guaranteed” time.) This offers you protection but it also honest and lets you know that the Firm does not control the engines.

Do I own the work you do for me? Where does it reside?

The answers should be: yes you own the work (once it is paid for in full) and it resides on your server. If they are hosting content on another server or another domain, you want to think twice before getting involved.

Do you provide regular reports and how often are they provided?

You should be provided reports once a month to show the results and your site’s rankings.

When will I start seeing results?

That is a question that varies from site to site. Your site’s history and competitiveness of the industry are big factors and the SEO firm should try to answer honestly considering what they know about your site. Any blanket statement is just a guess. They could also tell you their average time for other clients and that is a good indicator of what you could expect.

What engines do you submit to?

This could change as things in the industry change. Basically you’ll want to look at the list of engines they give you and make sure you have heard of them all. Most Firms focus on the Big 3 (Google, Yahoo! and MSN) and then about 6 or so other engines.

What about past results?

Do you provide references and testimonials? The answer should be YES! They should be happy to show off past results.

What techniques do you use to optimize my site?

An ethical SEO Firm will focus on content and on-page optimization as the foundation. They should also look at whether you are in need of links and may include linking as part of their strategy. More people tend to get links on their own, but they don’t focus on the on-page portion, so maybe all you need is the on-page work. The SEO Firm should evaluate that and let you know what your specific needs are.

They shouldn’t hide any text or code on your site, and they should be willing to explain every step of their process and not want to hide any information from you.

If they tell you they have a special relationship with Google, or proprietary techniques that should be a warning sign to you.

Do I have access to anyone on your staff, so I receive personalized service and can ask questions at anytime?

The answer should be yes. SEO can be confusing and you need a Firm that will work FOR you and WITH you.

Any SEO Firm that is worth working with should be happy to spend time going over each of these questions with you. Selecting an SEO Firm can feel intimidating but if you use these questions as a guide and follow your instincts, you should be fine.

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Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing for EcomBuffet.com. Over the past 10 years Jennifer’s expertise in marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on SEO and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications. Jennifer is the editor of the popular Spotlight on Success: SEO and Marketing newsletter. Follow Jennifer and stay current on SEO, marketing, social media and more. http://twitter.com/EcomBuffet

Tags: marketing online, SE Tactics, seo firm, social media

There are literally thousands of internet forums. They are a wonderful place to advertise your business. Best of all, online forums bring free advertising to your business; what is better than free advertising?

Online forums are simply a way to exchange ideas and offer information to others.

There are two main reasons to participate in forums:

1) To answer other people’s questions/comments

2) To post your own original questions/comments.

One of your goals is to promote your expertise in your particular industry. Remember, people are attracted to leaders and if you come to the forums with a leadership mentality ‘ people will begin to seek out your advice and counsel.

How to Participate in a Forum

Simply click on a link at the bottom of this page to log into an online forum.

- Create your free account (including username and password; keep the same username, password and signature for all the forums that you belong to)

- Create your signature file (an ad placed at the end of each of your forum posts). This signature file is of the upmost importance! It advertises your business to everyone that is in these forums. The more posts that you make on online forums, the more people will potentially be exposed to your website (through your signature file).

Here are 10 sample signature files that you can use for your home-based business:

Finally….an Honest AND Lucrative Home-Based Business Are You Ready to Make $5,000 a Week?

Dreams CAN Come True! Take Part in a 7-Trillion Dollar Industry! Don’t Let Another Day Pass You By… You Deserve Prosperity! It’s Time to Change Your Life! EVERYONE Loves to Travel. Tired of Living Paycheck to Paycheck? It’s Time to Plug Into Success!

You then “hide” your URL inside of the signature file. This can be done by clicking on the button that says “link” and then typing your URL inside of this pop-up box.

Remember, some people will help you out a great deal; others will be negative and difficult. Don’t let the negative people depress you. Keep your focus always positive! Don’t get into fights or “yell” at people online. You want your posts to always remain positive and helpful, no matter what!

RULES FOR FORUM POSTING:

- You can post in any forum that is interesting to you. Although the “Main Discussion” areas will have the most activity, experiment and get to know the people in the different online communities. You will find that they offer an enormous amount of support and free tips. They will, in essence, become your friends as you travel through your online adventures!

- Make sure that when you respond to posts you never blatantly advertise your business. BLATANT ADVERTISING IS HEAVILY FROWNED UPON! Instead, offer comments, suggestions, and questions. Remember, your advertising is in your sig file.

- In addition, your posts should always add fresh insight to the discussion. - If you decide to begin a new post, take the time to look back over the previous original posts to make sure that no one has posted on that topic before. If there is a similar post, join that discussion instead.

HOW TO POST YOUR REPLY:

- Click on the Title of the discussion that you would like to contribute to

- Click on “Reply to Topic”

- Type you reply in the new page

- Click “Preview” to look-over your post

- Click “New Reply”

Your job in forums is to establish new relationships with people. Once people begin to see you as a leader and an expert, they will be much more open to hearing about your business!

Jessica Swanson is an extremely successful entrepreneur, marketer and life coach who has achieved a high six-figure income. She has mentored hundreds of others to achieve the same results. You can visit her at http://www.unlimitedprosperityteam.com

Tags: forum marketing, SE Tactics

Putting up a company would of course require a lot of things, to get straight to the point, you need a capital. To make money requires money as well. But of course, with the versatility the internet offers, there are many ways you could find that could help optimize the potential of your site or business in generating traffic.

While there are ways to jumpstart your traffic flows, many sites don’t have the resources that others have to generate more traffic for your site. Well, you don’t have to spend a cent; all you need is the proper mindset and a lot of eagerness. You also must have the drive and perseverance to do hard work and research to generate more traffic for your site.

How sweet it is to have more traffic for your site without spending a single cent. Now it’s a sure thing that many sites have articles that offer tips and guidelines in how to generate traffic using only free methods. Because it is possible, you don’t need to speed a single cent, it may take time, to say honestly, I’m not going to beat around the bush with you. You get better chances by paying for your advertisements, but at least you get a fighting chance with some of these free methods I’m about to tell you.

Take advantage of online forums and online communities. The great thing about forums and online communities is that you can target a certain group that fits the certain demographic that you are looking for. You can discuss about lots of things about the niche that you represent or offer. Another great advantage is that you know what you are getting into and you will be prepared.

With online communities and forums you can build a reputation for your company. Show them what you are made of and wow them with your range of expertise about the subject, with that you can build a reputation and build trust with the people in your expertise and knowledge.

You can also make use of newsletters. Provide people with a catalog of your products and interesting and entertaining articles. If you make it really interesting and entertaining, more people will sign up for your newsletter and recommend it to other people. The more people who signs up for your newsletter, the more people there will be that will go to your site increasing your traffic.

Another great idea is trading links with other sites. You don’t have to spend a cent. All you have to do is reach an agreement with another webmaster. With exchanging links, the efforts both sites do will benefit both sites. Every traffic that goes to the site could potentially click on the link of your site and visit your site as well. This works well especially when both sites feature the same niche.

Write articles that could pique the attention of people that have interest in your product. Try writing articles that will provide tips and guides to other aficionados. Writing articles that provide good service and knowledge to other people would provide the necessary mileage your traffic flow needs.

Many sites offer free submission and posting of your articles. When people find interest in your articles they have a good chance of following the track by finding out where the article originated. Include a link or a brief description of your company with the article and there’s a great probability that they will go to your site.

Write good content for your site. Many search engines track down the keywords and keyword phrases your site uses and how they are used. It is not a requirement that a content should be done by a professional content writer. You could do your on but you have to make content for your site that is entertaining as well as informational. It should provide certain requirements as well as great quality. Generally, internet users use search engines to find what they are looking for. Search engines in return use keyword searching in aiding their search results. With the right keywords, you could get high rankings in search engine results without the costs.

All of these methods and more will drive more traffic to your site for free. All it takes is a bit of effort and extended man hours. Learn all you can about the methods depicted here and you will soon have a site with a great traffic flow without the usual costs that come with it.

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Tags: generate traffic, SE Tactics

If you are new to internet marketing then you may not realize that one of the keys to online marketing success has to do with building a well targeted and responsive email list. Success will come allot faster when you take the time to build relationships with a large list of subscribers, but you must know something that your potential customers don’t and then they must want to learn it from you.

It took many years for me to figure out that I can succeed much faster if I take the time to help my subscribers succeed.

Below are a few things you can do to get people to subscribe to your newsletter and build your own profitable email opt in list.

1. Trade solo or classified ads with other publishers. Before doing so make sure their subscribers are interested in what your newsletter offers. The other newsletter should offer content that your subscribers may be looking for. This will not only help you gain more subscribers but the other publisher to.
2. Publish your own articles. This will give you an advantage over other publishers by not only providing your newsletter with more subscribers but by also improving your search engine placement. How? Through the resource box at the end of your articles. Your resource box should contain a link to your newsletters subscription page and it should also include your major keywords. Submit your articles to article directories, announcement lists and to other publishers that need articles for their newsletters.
3. Offer a free bonus to your subscribers. You can create an e-book of all your articles or offer free software. The better the bonus you give the more subscribers you will have.
4. Visit message boards and forums and begin posting on them. Only post on forums that are related to the topic of your ezine. Once you establish your credibility people will visit your website and subscribe to your newsletter. Most forums permit you to ad a signature file when you post. This is a great way to get traffic to your website, so make sure you have a good sig file.
5. Submit your newsletter to directories. This will not only help you get more subscribers for your newsletter but will also help you find other publishers who may be interested in joint venturing with you. Just go to Google, type in “Ezine Directory” and start submitting.
6. Post an ad for your newsletter on ezine announcement lists. This will give you an easy way to promote your newsletter continuously.
7. Provide a sample issue of your newsletter. This will increase your subscriptions by providing people with an example of what you are offering.
8. Use your sig file in your outgoing emails to help promote your newsletter. Just about all email programs allow you to add a signature file at the end of every email you send. If not, then get another email program.
9. Run an ad in other ezines. Target your audience and only advertise with ezines that offer good advertising rates. By placing your ads in at least three consecutive issues you will get the most for your money. Repetition is the best way to attract new subscribers. You can also place free ads in other newsletters if you are a subscriber to their publications. Track your ads so that you can then pay for advertising using only ads that you know work.
10. Place a subscription box for your newsletter on every page of your website. That way any visitor will be able to subscribe no matter where they come from.

These are just a few ideas that you can use to help get you started. Don’t forget to have good content in your newsletter and always place your link wherever possible.

The main reason for building an email list is to constantly stay in close contact with your targeted prospects and eventually turn them into customers.

This is how successful internet marketers do it, and how you can to.

So, are you building your email list? If yes, way to go! If not, why not?

Joe Rispoli has been gathering free advertising resources online for over 10 years. You can also subscribe to his Free Advertising Resources Ezine which includes Free Email Marketing Software with subscription.

Tags: SE Tactics

Search Engine Optimization is Not Always the Answer

Search engine optimization has a purpose. Keyword targeting lets search engines link their users to your website when they look for your keywords. They will not do this satisfactorily without optimizing your site with proper web design techniques. Unfortunately, however, it is more complicated than that. Have you ever wondered why Google will almost always place Ebay on the first few pages when anything is entered into the search field accompanied with the word buy?The word buy has been targeted from more sites than you could count so what makes Ebay special.

For example, take the word bike. If a person uses Google by searching for the string buy bike, a page from Ebay will usually be listed before any of the major bicycle makers. It goes without saying that any of the major bicycle dealers have spent a great deal more time targeting keywords related to bikes than a site that manages hundreds of thousands of different products. The answer to this problem is the nature of this article.

Can My Website Compete?

The answer is to increase the importance of your site in the eyes of the major search engines. Ebay gets searched before many other sites because it has been decided by the search engines to be more popular with internet users. So what I am offering the little guy is a way to do what Ebay and the other ‘big dogs’ have done to become popular.

The world of search engines boil down to the stereotypical high school hierarchy. Search engines pay more attention to those that are popular. In high school, teens usually become popular by having popular people associate with them. The online world is no different. But how do search engines know that popular sites are associating with you? That is an easy one - they link to your website. The three biggest search engine players all crawl the web indexing links to and from all the websites that they have found. They create a ranking system based on many factors, but the most substantial one is how many sites link to you. It could be argued that an optimized site is key, and my opinion expressed here is based on the assumption that your site has been built with proper design techniques. It is also assumed that you have well written content based on your main products or ideas. If you feel that your website does not currently qualify as well written or properly designed, I recommend that you rectify these issues before attempting to build your popularity as it may turn out to be a waste of time.

Do Not Jump Right into Getting Links

There are many tempting ways to get other sites to link to you that are very unsavory. I choose to address these first. These include:

* sites that promote linking as a primary activity.

* sites that have illegal or inappropriate content.

* sites that are entirely unrelated to your target market

Sites that do nothing more than link to other sites may look like a great option but a site without content is not very popular with the search engines. They need to offer something to internet surfers in order to be important. If they are not important to the search engines then a link from them should not be important to you. Link marketing is based on quality links not the amount of links. I advise staying away from these sites all together. Next it goes without saying, sites with illegal and inappropriate content are never a safe bet.

Getting a Good Start with Link Marketing

Most of us do not have a lot of expendable income starting out so I do not spend much time explaining the options that involve paying large sums of money. In my experience, webmasters with that kind of money contact a company to handle this for them (I have had enough of them as clients to know). I intend on putting out another article to cover this option more in depth, however this article only covers the less costly options.

There are 3 cheap ways to get get some link popularity:

* Ezine articles

* Field related forums

* Banner/Link exchanges

Ezine Articles

Ezines are online magazines. Ezine articles offer two great benefits. First and foremost, they allow you to link to your site from your article or resource area. Also, they offer a chance to show off the knowledge you have in your field. Although this is essentially a free way to get a quality link, it does come with some work. You must be able to write a content rich article on a topic related to your site. Most Ezine sites do not mind giving you the opportunity to get your name out there but you need to provide them with a well written article that offers something to their users. Searching for ezine databases on any major search engine should provide you with a list of great sources for this linking method. Be sure to consult the guidelines of an ezine site in which you decide to submit articles.

Related forums

Forums are another great opportunity to get your site out there without paying up. Again, it does take some time. Find forums that cater to questions about your field. For instance, if you sell natural supplements for joint pain, search for forums related to arthritis. Find strings that are talking about different options for arthritis or ask about what works. This opens a perfect opportunity to link to your site. It is important to know that most forums are not keen on letting sales pitches post for long. The trick here is to offer up quality information on these posts. You could compare your arthritis product to others, you could even provide a plug for a competitor (attempting to prove yourself superior, of course). This makes your post look less like a sales or link pitch and helps make the internet more content driven like it was intended to be.

Banner/Link Exchanges

There are usually two main ways you can get a banner or link on another site without offering any content. You can pay them a fee, or you can offer a trade. Like the other two options, only target sites that are related to you in some way. Exchanges require a little research on your part. You want to search for your potential link partner to see that they are worth the trade. A easy rule of thumb is to check their pagerank compared to yours. You can use this free tool to compare at http://www.checkpagerank.net. Put your web address in and check your pagerank as well as theirs. If you are paying for a link and they have a pagerank of zero it would be wise to save your money. If you are trading links, use your better judgment. If they have a quality site it may be worth the exchange in hopes that their site takes off and they can share a little of their success with you.

Take note that a link from no single site will boost your website’s importance significantly. Every quality link helps a little bit so you need to practice all methods for some time before you see the results you want. Stick with it and be patient.

Mason Curry - Lead Designer, Vexart Studio Web Design Fort Wayne Web Design

Tags: SE Tactics, search engine optimization, seo