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The Truth about Search Engine Optimization

October 10th, 2008 | Comments Off | Posted in General SEO by Tom

While the basics of Search Engine Optimization or SEO are pretty much textbook, it isn’t the textbooks that you’re competing with, it’s the competition … who within the most competative markets make it almost impossible to get to that search engine position of being number one. Discovering the Truth about Search Engine Optimization will require an analysis of every factor of optimization.

Professional SEO

Profession Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is more than simply understanding the goal of a website. The real SEO Professional, or real ‘Search Engine Optimizer’, will do extensive query-based keyword research because they know professional optimization needs a strong keyword foundation.

SEO professionals ask the all important question … Who is the “target audience” or the “target market” … and then, they work to create a website that brings their content to that audience through the search engines.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves:

-Optimizing every page’s page titles, meta tags, attributes, anchor text and more. – Theming of the primary domain, sub-domains and supporting web properties (such as blogs, forums and companion websites). – Content is king … and paramount to good optimization.

- Search engine friendly GUI navigation (internal linking strategy). – A must have ‘inbound link’ building strategy (external links coming in).

The professional SEO (search engine optimization) knows that if you want to be found in the top of the search results for a competitive keyword term, you have to cover all your search engine optimization basics and more. That means both, exceptional website on-page and external off-page SEO, as well as a fully comprehensive link strategy.

Professional SEO Company

Any Professional SEO worth hiring understands that effective SEO (search engine optimization) constant continuing education because the search engine algorithms and the rules search engines use to position a web page within the search engine results page (serp) are always changing. The search engine most challenging to the SEO professional is Google. Here’s Google’s tips on things to look for in an SEO company:

- Be wary of SEO firms that send you email out of the blue. – No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. – Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do. – You should never have to link to an SEO. – Some SEOs may try to sell you the ability to type keywords directly into the browser address bar. – Choose wisely. – Be sure to understand where the money goes. – Talk to many SEOs, and ask other SEOs if they would recommend the firm you’re considering. – Make sure you’re protected legally.

- Professional SEO Strategy and Conversion

The truly Professional SEO and Search Engine Optimization Company understands that there are other considerations to be kept in mind.

For example, a website must not only be optimized for search engine spider algorithms, but it also has to remain optimized for the visitor as well. Ranking number one in all the major search engines is what gets the visitors to your website, but then the website must convert those visitors into actual sales.

Professional SEO is like Royalty

If content is king, then website design is queen. The combination of the two, if done correctly, will produce results for both your search engine rankings and your revenue. While keyword location, weight (absolute and relative), density, proximity, frequency, keyword targeting … is a important part of the puzzle, how the code for the website is created and the linking strategies are equally considered royalty in the world of the professional optimizer. The knowledge of how best to accomplish that is always changing and that’s why a real SEO professional who is on top of the trends, can be worth gold to the success of your business.

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The Truth about Search Engine Optimization

October 2nd, 2008 | Comments Off | Posted in General SEO by Tom

While the basics of Search Engine Optimization or SEO are pretty much textbook, it isn’t the textbooks that you’re competing with, it’s the competition … who within the most competative markets make it almost impossible to get to that search engine position of being number one. Discovering the Truth about Search Engine Optimization will require an analysis of every factor of optimization.

Professional SEO

Profession Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is more than simply understanding the goal of a website. The real SEO Professional, or real ‘Search Engine Optimizer’, will do extensive query-based keyword research because they know professional optimization needs a strong keyword foundation.

SEO professionals ask the all important question … Who is the “target audience” or the “target market” … and then, they work to create a website that brings their content to that audience through the search engines.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves:

-Optimizing every page’s page titles, meta tags, attributes, anchor text and more. – Theming of the primary domain, sub-domains and supporting web properties (such as blogs, forums and companion websites). – Content is king … and paramount to good optimization.

- Search engine friendly GUI navigation (internal linking strategy). – A must have ‘inbound link’ building strategy (external links coming in).

The professional SEO (search engine optimization) knows that if you want to be found in the top of the search results for a competitive keyword term, you have to cover all your search engine optimization basics and more. That means both, exceptional website on-page and external off-page SEO, as well as a fully comprehensive link strategy.

Professional SEO Company

Any Professional SEO worth hiring understands that effective SEO (search engine optimization) constant continuing education because the search engine algorithms and the rules search engines use to position a web page within the search engine results page (serp) are always changing. The search engine most challenging to the SEO professional is Google. Here’s Google’s tips on things to look for in an SEO company:

- Be wary of SEO firms that send you email out of the blue. – No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. – Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do. – You should never have to link to an SEO. – Some SEOs may try to sell you the ability to type keywords directly into the browser address bar. – Choose wisely. – Be sure to understand where the money goes. – Talk to many SEOs, and ask other SEOs if they would recommend the firm you’re considering. – Make sure you’re protected legally.

- Professional SEO Strategy and Conversion

The truly Professional SEO and Search Engine Optimization Company understands that there are other considerations to be kept in mind.

For example, a website must not only be optimized for search engine spider algorithms, but it also has to remain optimized for the visitor as well. Ranking number one in all the major search engines is what gets the visitors to your website, but then the website must convert those visitors into actual sales.

Professional SEO is like Royalty

If content is king, then website design is queen. The combination of the two, if done correctly, will produce results for both your search engine rankings and your revenue. While keyword location, weight (absolute and relative), density, proximity, frequency, keyword targeting … is a important part of the puzzle, how the code for the website is created and the linking strategies are equally considered royalty in the world of the professional optimizer. The knowledge of how best to accomplish that is always changing and that’s why a real SEO professional who is on top of the trends, can be worth gold to the success of your business.

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All Link Types and SEO

September 20th, 2008 | Comments Off | Posted in General SEO by Tom

This article covers a much discussed topic in the SEO community. Also, clients and often site owners come up with questions about what links to get, and how to get them. Note that I will not consider reciprocal links here, because of better alternatives, and because their effectiveness only applies to a small number of sites, who use them under 10% of their overall link ratio. I will review the main types you want to get for your site.

The natural one-way links.
This one is solely based in good content and resources. This is the safest method of link building available as far as search engines, which look at the “intent” of links. But it is also the slowest. If your site is new, then as part of its launch, submit it to niche web directories. Start with a few highly trusted directories, but do not have more than 10-15% of your overall links coming from them. Don’t overlook industry-specific directories that may be paid or unpaid. These usually send highly qualified traffic and can be a real bargain. Directories will get you site many natural one-way links, at a natural speed of growth. This combination of type and speed is very beneficial. Look for sites that would benefit from offering users your content.

Linkbaiting, or link bait.
This one is not easy, and involves creativity. But it is worth every effort. Linkbaiting refers to content, videos, images or anything on your site that is created with the intention of increasing links to it. It is highly effective in getting links, probably the cheapest too, based on the cost of the “bait” you use, has no negative effects from the search engines, at least not for the moment, since all links generated look natural. When complemented by social bookmarking, the networks associated with these links will add even more value to them.

Paying for links, or paid links.
These links can have great short-term search benefits. These are good mainly for sites that have tons of pages with content, and have been well established online for years. In addition, these sites also have tons of natural links to them, again because they had been well established online for years. These are not recommended for new sites. Look for sites that are highly on topic with yours, and in complementary niches. A very important factor in the evaluation of these links, like any other, is age. And the latest “Google Slap” effect were sites fall pass the top 30 in the listings, is affecting primarily those which do heavy link buying.

Bad links and their effects.
Outbound links play a big role in the way search engines determine who your “neighborhood” is. Bad neighborhoods will affect your search engine rankings. Things like FFA (Free For All) link pages, links farms, etc, fall in this category. Note that this has nothing to do with your pages going into the supplemental index. That is not the kind of penalty these links cause for your site. And the amount of bad links considered is a big one. A small amount of them would not trigger a penalty, but make sure that your site is not related in any way to those link patterns.

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Affiliate Programs And SEO

September 13th, 2008 | Comments Off | Posted in General SEO by Tom

While good SEO skills will get your page noticed by search engines by themselves there other tricks to help increase their effectiveness. Affiliate programs can be a good way to increase your website’s own SEO attributes. There are different types of affiliate programs. An older one would be the old banner concept which predates pay-per-click. Google’s Adwords is a modern incarnation of this where by people can profit from Google’s pay-per-click business. Let’s look at some of these.

Not all affiliate programs have to be for profit. There are many people who are just looking to get traffic to their sites by cooperating with other sites. Just as a strong page on your website can help increase the rankings of your other pages rankings on affiliates’ sites can do the same. Don’t confuse affiliates with guest books or link pages. An affiliate is working with some kind of service or business to make a profit so it is a function of commerce. This will help with the search engines’ rankings. Search engines look for link pages and don’t give them a very high ranking so they wouldn’t help you very much. However since affiliate pages are used for commerce they are going to have a much stronger ranking. Affiliates can act as a team just like the pages on your site.

Another point to consider is that pages that are involved with affiliate programs are going to be set up well in order to profit from them. So this is analogous to strong members of a team making a colossal team effort. Enough strong pages driving traffic to your site is lie diverting a river to a drought stricken town.

Fortunately affiliate programs are easy to find so just keep in mind what kind you would be willing to do for your site. Don’t give yourself more work than you need to.

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Black Hat SEO – What Never To Do Or Get Banned

September 5th, 2008 | Comments Off | Posted in General SEO by Tom

While there are many legitimate skills in SEO there are also those that can work but if you get caught using them the results can be disastrous. When search engine optimization became an issue many techniques were employed because at that point the search engines used a much simpler algorithm. As these tricks were used to exploit the simpler algorithms they were also served to make them more advanced. Let’s look at a few tricks.

Cloaking and redirects are methods whereby you show one page to the search engine but a different one to the visitor. A redirect merely brings visitors to one page and then sends them to another page by refreshing the page with one on their site. Cloaking involves fooling a search engine’s indexer into thinking that it is something else and getting the indexer to send false information back to its boss.

Other techniques involve overloading metatags with keywords or even hiding keywords in plain site on the webpage. A variation on this technique is to shrink the keywords so that are too small to be seen by the naked eye.

Using unrelated keywords is another trick especially when combined with the above mentioned tricks. By using unrelated keywords in this manner you can drive traffic to your site from multiple sources.

Using an overly optimized landing page can also work. This is not the same thing as a legitimate landing page. In this case you use any and all methods to overly optimize a single and use that to lead people to your site. This would involve using all of the above methods for this one page.

The ultimate penalty for using the unscrupulous methods is banishment from the search engines themselves. Be careful when you employ these dark methods for fear of this punishment. Being penalized is one thing but to not even be on a search engine in the first place is your worst case scenario.

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