blogging 102

Reading time: 9 – 15 minutes When researching SEO companies, it is tempting to choose any company willing to offer guaranteed SEO services. It is human nature people love a guarantee. This holds especially true for purchases where the buyer is purchasing something outside of his or her area of comfort. When companies first consider pursuing search engine optimization (SEO) as a potential marketing channel, particularly when there is an ongoing cost involved, they get a sense of comfort from purchasing “guaranteed SEO.” Unfortunately, with many SEO companies, this confidence in the guarantee is ill-placed. A lot of questionable SEO companies offer what I like to refer to as a “leprechaun repellent” guarantee. In other words, it’s a guarantee that is easily attainable if you purchase such services and are not subsequently harassed by a pesky leprechaun, the guarantee has been met. How can you complain? The truth is that SEO companies do not control... 

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes By Craige Stacey Recent studies suggest that more than 80% of new visitors to any web site get there as a result of a search engine query. If this study is to believed, it certainly suggests that working to get high rankings in the search engines might be the most effective thing you can do to bring traffic to your site. The following 12 design tips will help you get started in optimizing your site’s search engine placement. 1. Design for Specific Search Engines – there are hundreds of different search engines, but for best results you should design your site to take full advantage of the search criteria of the big three – Yahoo, Google and MSN. If you can get high rankings in these three, you won’t need to worry about the other search engines. Knowing how these search engines rank sites (as well as why they will penalize a site) is important. The rules change often, but the tips below are the most current. 2. Know your target audience....