Acquiring the services of a respectable and professional SEO company is sometimes a mind-boggling and challenging episode.

The market is filled with many developers and experts, and each search engine optimization company or SEO firm utilizes and implements different methods and follow-up patterns to chart the direction of their SEO services. At the end of all SEO forms, it is virtually the same, stating that the best method in optimizing your web site is to get higher ranking. It is vital to check into the following details when you decide to sign up the services of an SEO company.

Parameters In Choosing A Professional SEO Company

- Track Record And Roster Of Clients. One of the first aspects you can verify into is the project experience, or track record of an SEO firm. Whether or not the SEO firm that you are considering for your web site optimization, has sufficient experience, you need to find out how long the SEO entity has been in business. The most potent way to choose a quality SEO firm is to check out their present clients and acquire the feedback from the references.

- Do They Employ Ethical SEO Strategies. In choosing a credible SEO firm, you need to look at its methods and working strategies. Verify what methodology a search engine optimization company is employing, as you need to avoid SEO firms that practice unethical methods and procedures. This may in turn ruin the reputation of your web site.

A list of unethical SEO firm practices include unnecessary stuffing of keywords, page swapping technique, copy-write violation, utilizing irrelevant keywords, putting similar content in all web pages, using invisible text and overuse of flash & graphic design. These unethical practices may pose a dangerous threat to your web site. While you choose an SEO expert, you need to identify whether it is an ethical SEO firm or not, based on the parameters mentioned above.

- Know The Potential Return on Investment (ROI). Generally, the art of SEO is often a time-consuming, technically straining and expensive approach. As such, contrary to what some SEO companies might say, it may not be a suitable investment for every business. Before you choose to apply SEO or invest in SEO, it is worthwhile to calculate what the potential return to your business is. An ROI may depend on several factors, like the size of your market place or geographical target area.

- Experience In Employing Conversion Enhancement Strategies. A credible SEO company should have adequate experience of conversion enhancement strategies and thy must include this in their SEO proposal. Conversion enhancement strategies can include copywriting tactics, advanced conversion reporting, call to action tactics and site usability. If an SEO company can improve your sites conversion rate, as well as drive relevant traffic, this will be a powerful and winning combination.

- Are They Result Oriented SEO Firms? Check out for an SEO service provider that is result oriented. You want to make your site attractive, but the most important thing is to get a high ranking so as to attract more traffic to your site.

You need to keep in mind these few aspects in selecting an SEO service provider for your website. Determine your business strategy and calculate your ROI for either a Pay-Per-Click method and SEO, and thus you may afterwards have a clearer path for your online business or website.

7 SEO – http://7seo.com

Author: Vanessa A. Doctor
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Pressure cooker

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the art and science of making search engines rank your site high in the natural search results when someone types in a query. That’s the intent of SEO, however. Since SEO is still an emerging field, there is no “governing body”, and the rules sometimes change. A good SEO professional understands these changing rules, and knows how to properly apply them. A bad SEO specialist generally makes mistakes, or purposely tries to deceive the system to win “fake” high rankings.

It is not true that you have no control over what appears in the search engines. The content that you put on your site determines where you appear in the search engine results page (SERP). If your site is about “widgets”, you’re probably not going to appear in search results about “bus fares”. The most important thing you can do on the web is to represent yourself honestly. If your site is about “widgets”, and the content on your site talks about “widgets” then you’ll probably appear somewhere in the SERP for “widgets”. A good SEO professional can help you rank higher for “widgets”, among other well-researched, and relevant keywords.

What is the Difference Between a “Good” SEO Service, and a “Bad” One?

A bad (“blackhat”) SEO marketer is like a vendor walking down the street selling snake oil. You may think you’re getting a deal, but you can’t be sure of the consequences. A good SEO marketer is like a pharmacist. They have studied all the tried and true techniques to solve your problem and probably have a good idea of how to safely and effectively address your issue.

The Benefits of Hiring bad SEO:

• Your site could shoot straight to the top, ranking #1 for your keywords
• You could earn a few new customers quickly and make a quick buck
• The cost is far less than what your friends and competitors are paying for SEO

The Costs of Hiring bad SEO:

• When the search engines catch on, your site could be penalized (drastically downgraded) in the rankings, ending up worse than before
• Your site could be temporarily banned from the search engine (completely unfindable – expect 6-12 months)
• Your site could be permanently banned from the search engine (completely unfindable – for good)
• When any of the above occurs, there will be lost productivity from having to remove all the search engine spam from your site
• It could be hard to track down all the tricks the SEO marketer used to artificially boost the rankings, and therefore it could take a long time to get back into the results pages
• Once penalized or banned, you will lose all the potential customers you would have gained had it been done correctly
• A professional SEO consultant will probably have to be hired at additional cost to fix it and do the job right

Don’t believe it? In February 2006, BMW was given the Google Death Penalty for employing blackhat SEO practices. They presented a slick design to anyone with JavaScript, and showed everyone else (that means the search engines) a keyword-rich page. Showing one content to visitors and another to Google is a no-no. BMW Germany was banned from Google.

The Costs of Hiring Good SEO:

• The initial cost will be higher
• There will probably be an ongoing subscription fee
• The implementation time will be longer (for the site to rank high)
• There will be changes to the content of the actual site, and probably the structure, as well

The Benefits of Hiring Good SEO:

• Higher rankings overall
• The high rankings tend to stay there
• The keywords you are ranking high for are relevant to your organization and the people who are trying to find you
• It is more cost-effective in the long-term
• Future pages that you add the the site will be easier and faster to rank higher
• No blackout periods or customer loss because of penalty

What Is “Bad” SEO, and Why is it So Undesirable?

First, let’s examine some of the techniques available to the blackhat SEO marketer. Here are just a few:

• Doorway Pages: Many pages stuffed with keywords are placed on the web, and all link back to your site
• Cloaking: Showing one version of the site to visitors, and another to search engines.
• Dynamic Content: Not all dynamic content is bad; in fact, most is perfectly legitimate. But having the server generate large lists of keywords that change frequently is generally a bad idea.
• Scraping: Some sites visit high ranking sites, copy bits of the content that has the keyword they want, and post it on their site. This is a very good way to really annoy other websites.
• Hidden Text: Keywords on a page that are the same colour as the background, or that are hidden by CSS are a bad idea
• Setting up links pages that use the keyword-rich link text of other sites to gain ranking. This makes the link page appear to be more relevant for the desired keywords. This annoys not only the search engines, but also the visitors.
• Keyword Stuffing: Writing almost meaningless text in the site that is basically a long list of keywords. Responsible SEO will use keywords carefully in the text, but like all things, you can overdo it. Search engines appreciate good grammar.
• Overdoing RSS: Go ahead and syndicate large portions of your website. But syndicating all of your website may raise a flag. There are rumors suggesting that there might possibly be changes in the way Google indexes RSS in the future.
• Bait-and-Switch: Submitting the search-engine friendly page to the search engine, then after it’s indexed, uploading the “real” page. This is a very temporary boost in your rankings.
• Irrelevant Keywords: WHY would you promote the keyword “sex” on your site about “widgets”? Do you honestly think someone looking for “sex” will see your site and say, “oh wait a minute, I think I wanted a widget”? If you sell “widgets”, then promote “widgets”, so people who want to buy “widgets” can find your “widgets”.

Why do Search Engines Dislike All This?

Search engines are in the information business. Specifically, search engines provide helpful answers to questions. Sites which use these techniques dilute the relevancy and usefulness of the search engines. The search engine that allows their results to become irrelevant is useless and out of business. No-one will search that engine, no-one will click on their ads, no-one will want to buy or display their ads, and eventually no-one will want to invest in them. Search engines are protecting their investments and their future by ensuring the continuing relevancy and usefulness of their results.

How to Hire a Good SEO Professional

Let’s first look at some of the signs that indicate the possibility of a blackhat SEO marketer

• If you hear anything like “we guarantee top placement”, don’t hire them. A good SEO marketer cannot guarantee you a good ranking any more than your broker can guarantee you a great return. All they can do is a good job, or not.
• If the company representative talks to you about the advantages of Meta Tags, don’t hire them. Meta Tags are very obsolete in terms of search engine marketing (SEM).
• Get a list of previous clients and check their current site and rankings. If their rankings are now low, or if the client sites seem to have spammy content, or little content, don’t hire them.
• If first contact with the SEO company is made through an unsolicited phone call or email, be wary. Why? SEO is not an aggressive marketing technique. SEO is the art and science of providing people with what they were looking for anyway. It is fulfilling a need in response to a request about that need. In a sense, it is an entirely passive marketing technique, because it is only triggered when a person is actually seeking it. Be wary of search engine marketers that seem overly aggressive.

My personal pet peeve is the ones that call and announce that we are not at the top of the search engines but they can “help” us. Rest assured, we are listed at the top for every keyphrase we’ve ever really targeted. When they are informed that we are at the top, they start demanding to know which keywords we rank high for. Such valuable keyphrases should not be given away so cheaply. I politely hang up on these people.

These are a few signs of a good SEO marketer

• A good SEO marketer will insist on content changes to the website, and perhaps the structure of the site
• A good marketer will thoroughly research the keywords they are going to be targeting, making sure that the keywords or phrases are relevant to the people trying to find you
• They will generally provide you with regular reports, or at least suggest a strategy for collecting reporting data
• Good SEO marketers will probably charge an ongoing subscription fee. This is because the web is a growing, organic network, and web marketing is an ongoing process.
• Good SEO should be able to provide client names & sites from a few years ago that you can look up online. If you are unsure, then feel free to contact the owners of the site for a reference.

Life provides us with so few quick fixes. As in all things, hard work and dedication pay off, and those looking for the “quick buck” generally get it, and not much more. If you are serious about your online business, or the ongoing “findability” of your website, it is absolutely worth investing in long term strategies for search engine success. After all, search engines are not going away any time soon.

Author: Helen Overland
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital TV, HDTV, Satellite TV

The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry has grown tremendously in the past few years, and to such an extent that many SEO practices have become important components of the Internet marketing strategies for many businesses.

However, although the ever-changing dynamics between search engine algorithms and SEO techniques have evolved in complexity and in many different directions, very little has been done to actually measure the effectiveness of these SEO methodologies and processes. Significant amount of money is budgeted yearly by businesses for their website’s SEO projects, but only a few actually conduct a regular review of their SEO programs. A well-designed SEO audit is therefore a necessity. The SEO website audit is also fast becoming the norm in many companies wanting an objective assessment of the effectiveness of their SEO initiatives.

As with any other audit, SEO website audit is a means to examine the efficiency and effectiveness of business websites. It seeks to identify the gaps between expected and actual website performance. The end goal of SEO audit is to recommend improvements and maximize the benefits from SEO investments.

SEO Website Audit in a Nutshell?

SEO audit is a means to track the performance of the various SEO activities conducted for a website. Through the SEO website audit, the status of the site as evaluated by search engines can be assessed. With SEO audit, there is now a way to examine the robustness of the website’s technical framework and infrastructure, which includes SEO keywords, content, meta tags, and link popularity, and in comparison with top competitors.

The SEO website audit is both a quality and performance review. It measures the value added to the website as a result of the SEO work done on it, such as search engine rankings, traffic volume, and conversions.

The output of an SEO audit is a report on the site’s performance. It contains the issues and problems that cause poor website performance, and the most efficient and effective SEO techniques to employ from thereon to improve performance. Moreover, the SEO audit report will identify SEO methodologies that can be removed from the SEO program altogether because they are not effective and are a waste of investment.

Benefits of the SEO Audit

What are the benefits of an SEO audit? Here are a few of them:

1. An SEO website audit can pinpoint reasons for poor ranking performance and provide helpful performance improvement advice.

2. An SEO audit can assess the extent and scale of poor performance. It can also rectify whatever damage done by past SEO methodologies by providing valuable decision-making information on whether to hire professional SEO experts to work on the problem, or continue with in-house SEO work.

3. An SEO website audit guarantees management buy-in and support, particularly when conducted by a third-party SEO auditor. When confirmed by concrete metrics, this can convince decision makers in the company that present and future SEO strategies are working effectively for the business.

Making SEO web site audit a part of the business road map should be one of the most important undertakings for a company. SEO audit ensures that the company’s SEO initiatives are well-validated and worth the investment.

Author: Debbie Everson
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Benefits of electric pressure cooker

What is natural search engine optimization (SEO)?

Natural, or Organic, Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It’s a process of making your site more search engine friendly by optimizing the entire website design and content. Then the site will be visible in SERPs against optimized keywords or Key phrase.

Why is SEO important?

Search engine optimization is important for a number of reasons including:

• 36% of searchers attribute top organic position with brand quality
• 60% to 70% of all search traffic comes from organic listings
• 90% of organic search traffic is driven from the top five listings
• 62% of searchers view only one page of results before clicking (Jupiter Research)
• Having the No. 1 listing in both organic and paid search can increase click rates by three times

How do natural search differ from paid search?

The primary differences are:

• Paid search can be launched quickly. Natural search generally takes months to show a return.
• Paid search focuses on a large number of keywords. Natural search needs to be focused on a few high-return keywords.
• Paid search is highly measurable. Tracking results on natural search is more difficult (although not impossible).

How much time will it take to see SEO result?

Time is most important factor in SEO life cycle. Once your website cached by search engines, it will take at least 2 weeks to update the results.

Can any one guarantee a #1 ranking in Search Engine?

No. No one can guarantee a #1 placement in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), as there are simply too many factors outside our control. In fact, in Google’s Information for Webmasters, they recommend that companies beware SEOs that guarantee results.

We are, however, willing and able to make a guarantee as to our SEO ethics.

Will my website stay at the #1 position once my website is placed there?

Search Engine ranking fluctuate frequently. SEO is an on going process. However if your website is maintained by SEO Specialist month to month then it can be stay in top positions.

How long will it take to see results?

This largely depends upon how old the site is. If the site is new, you shouldn’t expect to see significant results from Google until the site has been in Google’s index for at least six months. Results for new sites can be seen in Yahoo and MSN, generally less than three months.

For sites that have been in existence for a year or more, results from on-page optimization can generally be seen within a few weeks of being placed online.

Google, is highly dependent upon links in its calculation, and prefers links that have been in existence for a long time. As a result, if the market space is competitive, it may take six months or more to see significant results.

What is SEO Copywriting?

In a webpage where the same keyword is repeated again & again, in a way that makes it very difficult to understand what the page is actually trying to say. This is SEO’ed copy.

SEO copywriting is the creation of website copy that includes heavy usage of keywords in hopes to move a page up the search engine rankings. It is generally written to a particular “keyword density”, which will supposedly perform well in the search engines.

For search engines with a heavy reliance on on-page factors, such as MSN, or for particularly uncompetitive keywords, SEO copywriting might work, at least to a certain degree. For keywords with any amount of competition on Google and Yahoo, however, it is rarely effective.

What’s more, even if the SEO’ed copy works in a search engine, it is rarely effective for the human beings visiting the site.

In addition, SEO copywriting can be very profitable for the SEO firm, as the search engines regularly change their preferred keyword density. This results in more work for the SEO firm as they rewrite the SEO’ed copy, and up charge the client.

We prefer not to use SEO copywriting. We recommend that the targeted keyword be used in the page’s copy, but used in a manner that is natural sounding and effective for readers. Our SEO efforts focus on other on-page factors and most importantly – links.

Does this mean copywriting is not important to SEO?

Copywriting is certainly important in SEO. The copy of a website should always be written to maximize the return on marketing dollars. If the visitors to a website do not convert to leads or sales, then the efforts on SEO are wasted.

The copy of a page should focus primarily on effectiveness and conversion rate. Simply use the page’s keywords in a natural manner, and optimize the other on-page factors and links.

Also, landing pages can be created to address specific keyword needs that cannot be found on other parts of the site. Each such page must have substantially unique content and not employ deceptive techniques such as redirects, or run the risk of receiving penalties from the search engines.

We offer a full range of copywriting services which can be used in conjunction with either our paid or natural search services.

Do you engage in unethical SEO?

We tend to not see SEO in ethical terms. Notwithstanding potential issues of deception, the way one structures one’s webpage is not a concept that should inspire discussions of morality.

There are, however, issues of risk management and tolerance with SEO. Certain techniques might run the risk of being blacklisted by one or more of the search engines. Typically, the more competitive a space is, the more risky the needed techniques are.

As SMO Solutions Search does not work with companies in the truly hypercompetitive space (e.g. gambling and pornography), we have never needed to resort to risky techniques to achieve the rankings our clients demand.

One aspect of SEO that can raise ethical questions is the communication between the SEO firm and the client. Some firms engage in risky techniques without informing the client. That is certainly unethical.

Another area of potentially unethical behavior can be found in firms that provide “SEO” services by building a network of their own sites that drive traffic to the client’s site. These are often sold on a per click basis. While this is a viable marketing model, many clients do not realize that the moment they stop paying, the “SEO” they’ve been buying goes away. In fact, many SEO firms will then turn around and sell this traffic to the former client’s competitors.

Apogee Search’s SEO practice is built around achieving superior results in the natural listings of the search engines. Baring an algorithm change in the search engine, the traffic does not go away if a client does not continue to engage with Apogee Search (although listings do tend to degrade over time if continue SEO efforts are not made).

Do you offer search engine submission services?

We’ll let you in on a secret, assuming a page can be read and indexed by a search engine’s search bots; all that is needed to submit to the search engines is a link from a page on another site that is in the Google index.

The automated submission services that you receive constant email spam for are, at best, a waste of money. In many cases, they can actually hurt your site’s performance in the search engines, as repetitive submitting of the same site can cause the search engines to invoke a penalty.

How do you select keywords?

Ideally, keywords for natural search are selected by using data from a properly configured and managed paid search campaign. This way, keywords that generate leads and/or sales are certain to be focused on.

Alternatively, detailed analysis can be made on a group of potential keywords to measure their relative search volume and competitiveness, but this data is greatly strengthened with the addition of conversion data from a paid search campaign.

Will you make the changes on my website?

We are not a web design firm, and don’t manage the actual pages of your site ourselves. We do, however, make specific, detailed suggestions of changes. And, if you do not have the staff to make the changes yourself, we have a number of web design firms that can do this for you.

What about link rental or purchase?

One of the dirty little secrets of the SEO industry is that many of the people at the top of Google bought their way there through paid links.

Many links can either be bought on a one time basis, or rented month to month. One of the biggest advantages of this is the ability to configure the link exactly how you want it for maximum SEO benefit (begged links often have to be accepted “as is”).

Competitive market spaces are likely going to require paid links. We typically recommend either purchasing permanent links or budgeting link rental for at least six months (preferably eight or nine months). Links must “age” before Google allocates them their full benefit.

How do we track the results?

Many SEO firms create their own fuzzy metrics, generally around the idea of “visibility”. If a particular key phrase improves from a ranking of 100 to a ranking of 20, they call that a 500% visibility. Rarely do you see such firms concerned about the traffic the rankings bring to your site.

While we certainly monitor rankings in the search engines for our targeted keywords, we are much more concerned with the traffic those rankings generate. And, we are happy to work with you to connect the traffic generated by the search engines to specific leads and sales.

Author: Shankar Soma
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Wordpress plugin Guest Blogger

SEO Training Courses in the UK

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation, is an extremely valuable skill.

The job websites – at a time of increasing unemployment – seem to be full of very well paid positions for SEO executives. The reason for this is that actually, there are very few people in the UK who are truly skilled in SEO – and for that reason, those that are tend to choose to work for themselves regardless of the large amount of money they could earn working for an SEO firm.

The main reason that very few people in the UK have real SEO skills, is that there are very few UK SEO training courses available. You can’t just go & enroll on an SEO course at your local night school, they don’t teach it in schools, there are no college courses in SEO in the UK, that I’m aware of, and there are very few real opportunities to learn real SEO from someone who knows how it’s done.

I think the reason most SEO consultants don’t offer to train, is that training is much harder work than just doing SEO – and at the same time, when training new SEO consultants, we’re creating real competition for ourselves – and at the moment in the UK, there is not a lot of competition from REAL SEO consultant who actually do the work, and I think most consultants would agree that they’d prefer it that way – it’s difficult promoting a clients website when you’re up against another professional, so really for us, the less true SEO professionals out there, the better!

So – most SEO consultants are self taught. I have been teaching myself SEO for roughly ten years, and I dread to think how much I have spent over these years on ebooks, courses & programs, but I’m sure whatever the amount, I would have saved money by doing an intensive SEO training course, if there was one available when I started !

I have now started to offer SEO training courses in the UK, to help people who are serious about becoming professional SEO consultants. My training courses are one to one, intensive training courses, that include a year of help & support.

Are SEO training courses absolutely necesarry

No – they’re not, however finding a professional SEO consultant to train you, will help you to take a huge leap towards becoming an SEO consultant, drastically reducing the learning curve that most SEO professionals have to go through.

What kind of SEO training course should I look for?

Look for a training course which is run by actual current SEO professionals, people who’re doing this for a living. The world of SEO is an ever changing one, someone who used to be a great SEO consultant who now just trains, isn’t likely to be training you using fresh knowledge & experience.

How much should I expect to pay?

SEO is a very valuable skill, and a good SEO consultant can make a lot of money, therefore logical thinking will tell you that no SEO consultant is going to offer to train you for a small amount of money, they are in effect training a future competitor, so they need to make more money than they would make in the same amount of time working for a client, otherwise what would be the incentive to offer training courses? So, if you do find a course which seems very cheap – just think logically about the value of such a course, and why such valuable training is being offered for bargain prices.

There are some valid reasons that a course would be offered for a smaller cost, for instance a course that was teaching a number of people at one time, would enable a lower cost – but in my opinion SEO taught in a class is never going to be as valuable as one to one training with a professional SEO.

What else should I take into consideration?

The main thing to think about – is what happens after the course? Like learning to drive, the REAL test comes after you’ve passed & you’re let alone to drive. Remember the first few weeks of driving, scary right?

A good SEO course should include after training support. I continue to support people for a year after the course, included in the price of the course – and I offer packages for continued support after a year.

Author: Kevin John Lewis
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Programmable Pressure Cooker

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization, which is also known as SEO, is the process of increasing the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via organic or search results. The higher your company’s website ranks on Search Engine Result Page (SERP), the more searchers will visit your site.

As a marketing strategy for increasing site’s relevance, SEO consultants consider how search algorithms work and what people search for. A SEO process may involve a site’s coding and structure, content and copywriting, site presentation, as well as fixing other problems that will prevent search engines from indexing your company website. If your company’s website is not indexed by search engines, there will be no chance at all for your site to get high visibility rankings on search engines. Therefore, it is extremely important for businesses to take note of SEO and make sure that their websites are properly indexed by search engines.

The term “SEO” can also refer to “Search Engine Optimizer”. This is an industry term that refers to agencies and consultants that carry out search engine optimization process on behalf of their clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Every agency and consultant has their own SEO methodology; therefore they may use different methods to achieve high organic rankings for websites. In most cases, in order to have effective SEO, it may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics will be incorporated into website development and design. That is why almost all credible SEO agencies and consultants will first look at the design and back-end architecture of a website before starting any SEO process. This will ensure that SEO is carried out effectively.

Search Engine Optimization as a Marketing Strategy for Businesses

So how should businesses use SEO as a marketing strategy? The primary objective of implementing SEO to a company’s website is to drive targeted traffic to it. Eye tracking studies have shown that searchers scan a search result from top to bottom and left to right, looking for relevant results. Therefore, if your site is near the top of organic listings rankings (organic listings refer to the web results that are listed on the left hand side of the SERP), it will most likely increases the number of searchers who will visit your site.

A successful online marketing campaign may usually involve SEO, but it also consists of the use of paid advertising on search engines, building high quality websites to engage and persuade site visitors take action either through enquiries or online sales, setting up analytic programs to allow site owners to measure their successes and improving a site’s conversion rate.

Benefits of SEO for Businesses

Businesses can benefit from SEO in a lot of ways, be it to increase brand awareness, get sales leads or increase sales revenue. The following is a list of benefits that businesses can get from SEO:

Get more targeted traffic. SEO can increase the number of visitors to your site who are actively searching for your product or service.

Increase brand awareness. SEO can give your brand a high international profile. You can also use SEO to create brand awareness for any new service or product by optimizing related product/service key phrases to rank higher on search engines.

Marketing your brand 24/7. With SEO, your website will get exposure 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – without stopping.

Higher sales. As SEO brings you targeted traffic, it can mean increased sales of your product or service.

Long term positioning. Once a properly optimized & designed site is in place, rankings on organic listings should be consistent whereas the cost for Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising is ongoing.

More value for dollars. Once your company’s website has achieved high organic rankings for various key phrases, you will not have to pay for each visit. Whereas for PPC Advertising, to enjoy high ranking visibility on search engines, you need to pay for each click or visit to your site.

However, to make sure that you have a successful SEO implementation, you need to make sure that your dedicated SEO agency abides to the guidelines of search engine when optimizing your site…

White Hat SEO VS Black Hat SEO

When it comes to SEO, there are 2 schools of thoughts – White Hat SEO vs Black Hat SEO. White hat SEO is techniques that search engines recommend as good practice and black hat SEO is those techniques that search engines do not approve of. For SEO consultants who practise white hat SEO, they tend to produce results that last a long time. Black hat SEO techniques may get a website to rank well initially, but the site will eventually be banned either temporary or permanently once search engines discover what they are doing.

So it is very important for you to know the best practices in the SEO industry and make sure that the SEO agency that is handling your account uses techniques that conform to the search engines’ guidelines and involves no deception.

White hat technique is generally summed up as creating content for users, not the search engines. The content that is created should be easily accessible to search engine spiders, rather than intending to trick the algorithms from its intended purpose. So, the general rule of thumb is to stay on the safe side by creating content that is relevant to your target audience. Search engines value relevancy – they will definitely want to rank a site higher their organic listings if the content on the site is what searchers are looking for.

Black hat technique usually involves techniques that attempt to improve rankings that are disapproved by search engines, or involve deception. One common black hat technique is to use hidden text, either as text coloured similar to the background of the website, or positioned off-screen. Another common technique known as cloaking is to load a different page depending on whether the page is accessed by a human or a search engine spider.

Search engines will penalize sites which use black hat techniques, either by reducing their organic rankings or even eliminating them from their database completely. This is a very costly mistake on the business point of view as you will lose out a lot of grounds as your competitors are enjoying free organic traffic from search engines due to their high rankings for major key phrases. One infamous example was in February 2006, whereby Google removed BMW Germany from its database for use of black hat methods. However, the company has quickly apologised and cleaned up the offending pages and were eventually restored to Google’s database.

Therefore, it is very important to make sure that your SEO agency is moving away from black hat methods. You will not want to be blacklisted by search engines which will translate into loss in sales and profits.

Keyword Research – The Key Factor to Successful SEO Implementation

Major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN Live and AOL get a lot of searches every day. Before you implement SEO to your website, you must know what key phrases or keywords your target audience is using to search for the product or service that you offer.

Whether you like it or not, there is a good chance that many people have never heard of your company. These people might be your customers, if only they can find you on search engines and buying from you. It is well accepted that building awareness is the first step to land a new customer. For example, when someone sees a TV advertisement about that new car, you hope that he or she is in the market for a car at the moment. However, relatively few people are in that situation at any one time. Majority of people who saw the TV advertisement have no interest in buying a car at the moment. But someday they will. So advertisers know that the messages – the model of the car and company name in their commercials will stick in viewers’ minds, who might remember the message later when they are ready to buy a car. It is the same for SEO.

Searchers might not know that your company offers a particular product or service unless they see your site listed on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Unless they see your listings, they will not think of you. Most of the time, searchers looking for a product or service for the first time might not be aware of any specific company or brand name as they are just gathering information. However, according to a research done by search marketing consultancy iProspect, more than 55 percent of searchers expect to see big brands listed at the top of search results. The same study also shows that over 66 percent of searchers believe that sites that are listed at the top of search results are the top companies in their field. So can you imagine how this affects your company’s brand awareness? If your company’s website is not listed at the top of search results, they will not see your company as a “big brand” in their mind. Therefore, it is extremely important for you to optimize keywords or key phrases that your target prospects will use to find the product or service that you are offering.

So what types of keywords or key phrases should you choose? Businesses should target keywords that are relevant to the content of their websites. Basically, keywords can be categorized into 3 types, which are: “Too Hot Keywords”, “Just Right Keywords”, and “Too Cold Keywords”. Too Hot keywords are single word search terms like “Aircon” and “Translation” which do not seem to be targeted enough to get conversions. These keywords usually bring in high search volume (which is naturally tempting to optimize) but the conversion may not be as ideal as targeting keywords which falls into the “Just Right” category. (For examples: Aircon Servicing, Translation Agency Singapore”) By optimizing those “Just Right” keywords, businesses can get more targeted traffic to their websites and increase the chance of conversions.

Choosing the right keywords is the real beginning of any SEO effort. After you have determined the right set of keywords to target, you can start the work of search engine optimization.

Why do you need to outsource SEO?

SEO is a very time-consuming process as continual fine-tuning and monitoring need to be done. Therefore, it is advisable for you to hire a search engine optimization agency to plan out the optimization plan for your company.

A professional SEO agency will look at your site and make recommendations to increase your search engine ranking and website traffic. Once they start to optimize your website, they will provide recommendations and monitoring reports for you to know the progress of it.

Last but not least, in order to achieve successful optimization results, it is very important for your SEO agency to work closely with your website designer if you have your own IT department. This is because your company website needs to be both visually appealing and search engine friendly in order to achieve high organic rankings, as well as conversions.

Author: Cheow Yu Yuan
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital Camera News

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 the major search engines, and any firm that claims to have a “special relationship” that gives it sway over the natural search engine results is simply counting on your ignorance. Fortunately, this does not mean that guaranteed SEO is impossible, especially when the guarantee has to do with aggregate results and the methods used to achieve them.

What follows is a partial list of some of the more popular types of guaranteed SEO out there some of them roughly as useful as leprechaun repellent, and some of them actually meaningful.

Questionable Guarantees

The “Leprechaun Repellent” Keyphrases Guarantee

Many SEO companies boast that they will achieve a certain number of top rankings in the organic results of major search engines. This type of guaranteed SEO can be tempting, especially to those who are investigating SEO companies for the first time. After all, high rankings are what it’s all about, right? Isn’t that the goal?

The answer is an emphatic “No.” Quality SEO companies will point out that the real goal is to bring high quality traffic to your site. It’s quite simple to guarantee top positions if you choose non-competitive or obscure phrases for example, “leprechaun repellent.” Want proof? Enter “leprechaun repellent into your favorite search engine. You will almost certainly find this article dominating the results (caveat if you are reading this article immediately after its release, the search engines may not have indexed it yet. Wait a week and try again.).

It is extremely easy for SEO companies to achieve high search engine positions for phrases that nobody uses. Such rankings might impress your friends and neighbors, but they won’t send you quality traffic. They likely wont send you any traffic at all. It’s important to note that the phrase “leprechaun repellent” is used only for demonstrative purposes. Many unpopular phrases may not sound absurd. There are surely countless phrases out there that sound extremely relevant to your business that are never typed into search engines. Good SEO companies will avoid such phrases. “Leprechaun repellent” practitioners will embrace them it allows them to attain their worthless guarantees.

There is also another aspect of this type of guaranteed SEO in which SEO companies will guarantee you first place positions on unspecified search engines for more competitive phrases. Unfortunately, this type of guaranteed SEO often involves obscure engines that have very little market share and are not sophisticated enough to quickly eliminate web pages that use spam tactics. In a few documented cases, the guarantees involved search engines that the SEO companies actually owned and operated!

There are really only three major search engines at present Google, Yahoo, and MSN. There are a handful of minor engines that are also worth mentioning, including Ask Jeeves and AOL Search. Any guaranteed SEO should involve prominent engines, not obscure ones.

The “Company Name” Guarantee

There is also a common guarantee that shady SEO companies will use that guarantees that a company will show up for a search on its company name. This, much like the “leprechaun repellent” flavor of guaranteed SEO, offers no real value. Sure, if your company name is “Acme,” it may actually be competitive but chances are that if your website does not already show up near the top of the search engine results for a search on your company name, there is an easily fixed technical glitch that will resolve the issue. Quality SEO companies will address this area immediately. Moreover, ranking highly for your company name, while obviously desirable, provides only a tiny fraction of the potential value of search engine marketing. The real benefit for most companies is that search engine marketing attracts potential buyers who are not already familiar with the company name. Unless your company is a household name, it is unlikely that having your company name figure prominently in the results is going to have a huge impact on your business.

The Pay-Per-Click Guarantee

Some SEO companies will offer guaranteed SEO services that promise top positions for certain keyphrases on popular engines, but they are counting on dealing with prospects who do not understand the difference between natural search engine results and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. With PPC, it is very easy to guarantee a number one result, but this result will appear in the “paid” or “sponsored” results of the engine. Say, for example, that your company installs custom swimming pools. While a competitive phrase like “custom pools” might be difficult to achieve in organic results, the SEO company is not concerned with organic results. All it has to do is outbid the current highest bidder (using your money, of course), and your site will show up as number one in the “sponsored” results. Studies have indicated that sponsored results are held in a lower regard than natural results by savvy web searchers who recognize them as advertising. Also, as soon as you stop paying, your ranking disappears.

The “Submit Your Site to 50,000 Search Engines” Guarantee

There are many variations on this offer, primarily involving the number of engines promised. Regardless of the number, this is probably the most pervasive and persistent type of “guaranteed SEO,” and it is basically a scam that preys on ignorance.

Companies that believe that they have high quality websites are predisposed to believe that the only thing holding them back from search engine success is that the search engines do not yet know that their sites exist. However, search engines measure quality in a much different way than a website owner does. A properly optimized site does not need to be submitted to search engines at all (I refer to actual “spider-based” search engines such as Yahoo, Google, and MSN, not human-edited directories such as Business.com, the Yahoo Directory, and the Open Directory Project). Engines prefer to find sites on their own.

This “solution” offers no real value, except of course to the SEO companies offering the service. Also, as previously mentioned, there are not 50,000 search engines or at least 50,000 search engines worth worrying about. Do SEO companies that offer this service meet this guarantee? Certainly they use automated programs to do the submissions. Is this type of guaranteed SEO worthwhile? Not for search engine positions, but it may keep leprechauns at bay.

Meaningful Guarantees

Given the preponderance of “guaranteed SEO” that is meaningless, the seemingly Wild West nature of the industry, and the reality that SEO companies do not control the results of any major engine, it may seem that guaranteed SEO can never be a worthwhile endeavor. However, this is not the case. If you note the examples above, they are primarily involved in specifics top positions, a certain number of submissions, a certain number of engines. However, good SEO companies, understanding that they have no control over individual results, should be confident enough in the results of their work in aggregate and in the safety of the methodologies that they use to offer guaranteed SEO that lives up to its promise.

The Custom Guarantee

In very rare cases, certain skilled, experienced SEO companies will be able to develop for you a custom guarantee derived from the analysis of your current traffic data, the competitiveness of your industry, and the status of your site. You will ideally be offered this type of specialized guarantee from the beginning of your dealings with an SEO firm because it ensures that you will be achieving targeted, meaningful results based on your specific situation, rather than on generalities that could apply to any business in any industry. Some SEO companies may tell you that a custom guarantee is not possible because they have no direct control over search engine results. However, SEO companies who have been in business for a while know how to weather the algorithm shifts and understand that there is more than one popular search engine. Such a firm will be confident enough to create and back a custom guarantee for you.

The Targeted Traffic Guarantee

SEO companies dedicated to showing value to their clients will take a baseline reading of current search engine traffic at the outset of a campaign. While, as previously mentioned, SEO companies do not hold sway over search engine results, they should at least be confident enough in their overall skills to promise that their clients will see an increase in targeted search engine traffic based on popular phrases relevant to the business. If the firm offering this type of guaranteed SEO charges on a monthly basis, any month of the engagement where traffic for targeted phrases does not, at a minimum, exceed the baseline should not be charged. After all, you are paying on a monthly basis to protect and improve your positions. While major algorithm shifts that make results on individual results unstable can and do happen, they rarely happen on all engines at once. You should feel confident that the firm you are paying has a very vested interest in making sure it adapts to the changing nature of search engine algorithms, and few things inspire such confidence as knowing that it will not get paid otherwise. If your prospective firm is unwilling to at least guarantee that it will send increased traffic to your website from targeted phrases, every month, it may be time to look elsewhere.

The “White Hat” Guarantee

SEO companies are commonly broken up into two camps “white hats” (practitioners who remain solidly within the search engine’s stated terms of service) and “black hats” (practitioners who work to unravel the latest search engine algorithms and base their optimization techniques largely on technology, regardless of the engines terms of service). Both approaches are legitimate after all, there is nothing illegal about exploiting a technical loophole for results. However, black hat SEO companies put their clients at risk of penalization or even outright banishment from the major engines. Getting back in can be a long process, and sometimes it is not possible at all. If you are concerned about potential penalization, get a guarantee from your firm that they adhere to the stated terms of service of all major search engines. If you can (and this is rare), get a guarantee that your site will not be penalized through any action of the SEO firm. This is harder for a company to offer, since the major engines frequently update their terms of service, and techniques that are acceptable today can be deemed unacceptable tomorrow. However, a confident firm that always errs on the side of caution when optimizing client websites will offer this type of guaranteed SEO services, since it will not use techniques that have a potential for penalization in the future.

Abusing the Metaphor (Beating a Dead Leprechaun)

Guarantees have been around for at least as long as leprechauns have been hoarding breakfast cereal and starring in bad horror films. So have guarantees that are essentially meaningless but sound respectable. A good guarantee should not only appeal to the base emotion of a potential purchaser, but it should also afford some real protection that the purchase he or she is making will provide meaningful results. Many of the most popular types of guaranteed SEO do not, and that’s a shame. The industry already has a questionable reputation due to “leprechaun repellent” practitioners make sure you don’t go chasing their rainbow. After all, it’s your pot of gold they are after.

Author: Scott Buresh
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Import duty tariff

When a company undertakes a search engine optimization program, whether it is performed in-house or outsourced to an SEO service, most of the attention (and rightly so) is focused on the company website. This is the one aspect where there is a feeling of control–once a website is released into the wild, the company will have to see how its site fares against all the other websites out there, whether the other sites are using ethical SEO tactics or not.

Apart from changes made to the company website, the assumption is often that the company and, if it is using one, its SEO service, has zero control over what appears in search engine results. However, this is not usually the case. Often, you or your SEO service can have a direct effect on search engine results by monitoring your competitors and reporting them to the major search engines when the SEO techniques used on their site fall outside what is popularly referred to as ethical SEO. (Please note that while I believe that the word “ethical” is tossed around too often, “ethical SEO” has become the standard phrase to describe white hat techniques, and so it is the phrase I use throughout the article.)

Primary Competitors

To start with, lets define competitors. Almost every company has at least a handful of other companies that it considers to be primary competitors–the ones that sell the same products and services, that are of similar size, and so on. It is important that the SEO efforts (or lack thereof) of these competitors, whether they are using ethical SEO techniques or not, be monitored on a routine basis. If they have not hired an SEO service of their own, or if they have not started doing SEO in-house at all, you will have peace of mind knowing that the use of this channel, for the moment, is yours. If your competitors begin an SEO campaign, with or without an outside SEO service, you can learn much about their sales and marketing tactics by evaluating the keyphrases that they target. And you can also investigate whether they are using ethical SEO practices in their campaign.

Your Online Competitors

Its important to keep in mind that it is unlikely that searchers are going to decide only between you and the primary competitors you have listed. They are going to consider any company that matches their particular needs and that shows up for their search term. This is why your criteria for a competitor online should broaden to encompass any company that offers products or services like yours that outranks you for any of your targeted keyphrases. If your in-house staff or your SEO service not only continually monitors your search engine positions but also analyzes the companies that appear above you in search results, you can often identify forward-looking competitors of which you were previously unaware–your primary competitors of tomorrow.

Violations

This brings us to the key issue of ethical SEO. Search engine optimization is still a very new concept to most companies. Even the most respected companies can make mistakes in this arena, either by choosing the wrong SEO service, or by trying to avoid hiring an SEO service altogether by bringing it in house with well-intentioned but unqualified people. For example, BMWs German site was recently removed temporarily from the Google index for using doorway pages–something that is not considered an ethical SEO practice. It stands to reason that your competitors are also not immune to violations.

Bad Firms

There are very notable examples of otherwise smart and established companies hiring an SEO service that put them in a worse situation than before they pursued SEO–by getting their site removed from major search engines for violating the engines terms of service, for example. Not long ago, there was a well-publicized example where most of the clients of a Las Vegas SEO service were penalized. Almost all of the clients claimed that they were not informed that the firm was not practicing ethical SEO and that they were therefore at risk.

SEO firms are generally divided into two camps–those called “White Hats” (those that use ethical SEO practices and will never knowingly violate a search engines terms of service) and those called “Black Hats” (those that do not use ethical SEO practices and that will attempt to unravel the latest algorithms and exploit any loopholes to achieve rankings at any cost). Neither approach is invalid–it is not against the law to violate the terms of service of a search engine. Moreover, black hat techniques can be quite effective. However, the tactics are risky, and anyone hiring an SEO service that wears a black hat and does not use ethical SEO practices should definitely be apprised of this risk up front.

Internal Resources

Firms are often tempted to avoid hiring an SEO service by performing SEO in-house, and the project almost always falls onto an already overburdened IT department. The problem with approaching SEO from a strictly technical mindset is that the strategies employed, such as the keyphrases targeted, will not necessarily be in line with the goals of the marketing and sales departments. In addition, an IT resource will usually approach SEO from a purely technical standpoint, without being aware of ethical SEO practices, and this can lead to trouble. Penalization is a very real possibility, and it is hard to get back onto an index once your site has been removed.

Monitoring

A thorough SEO service will monitor not only the handful of competitors that you deem crucial but also the sites that appear higher than you for any of your chosen search phrases. This may be somewhat controversial, especially to any SEO service or webmaster that uses tactics forbidden by the search engines terms of service. However, many white hat SEO service firms consider it an obligation to their clients to routinely monitor the sites of any competitor found on the engines to be sure it is using ethical SEO techniques.

There is a reason that every major search engine has a form to report sites who do not use ethical SEO tactics and who violate the terms of service so that these sites can be subsequently penalized or removed. Spam filters cannot catch all violations without also removing a large number of good sites. Search engines rely on their users to help them to keep their indexes clean and free of sites not using ethical SEO tactics. There are many techniques to spam an engine–far too many to list. However, a good SEO service not only knows what all of these techniques are but knows how to identify them when it sees them so they can be reported to the engine accurately.

The End Result

Business is business, and your interests often run directly counter to that of your competitors. When you report a website that is not using ethical SEO, it is very likely that it will be removed. This means there is one less company that you need to worry about in the online arena, at least for the time being. If the site in question outranked yours, you also get the added benefit of seeing your rankings improve as the violating pages are removed–provided, of course, that you are using ethical SEO techniques and steering clear of violations yourself, or you may be reported by a competitor of yours or its SEO service!

The engine also benefits from users reporting violations. Engines do not like people trying to trick their indexes, since there might then be pages showing up for particular search terms that are not actually relevant to those terms. Clearly, search engines understand this benefit–if the engines thought they could weed out all the spam themselves, they would not provide a reporting system. Supporting such a system, after all, is not free. Real people employed by the engine have to visit the offending pages to confirm that they are not using ethical SEO tactics.

In the notable example cited earlier of the firm that got most of its clients penalized, the owner of the SEO service in question was quoted as saying, “Google can kiss my ass. This is the Wild Wild West.” He may be right–maybe it is the Wild Wild West. But there are a whole bunch of new sheriffs in town–and they are wearing white hats.

Author: Scott Buresh
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Benefits of electric pressure cooker

SEO software does what exactly?

SEO software frequently starts from the following assumption:

- look at the page that ranks number 1 in Google,

- do exactly the same + a bit better,

- and you will be number 1

SEO software will then examine “all” the SEO parameters that it finds out about the number 1 site in Google. Then this SE software will automate the process in mimicking this for your site.

SEO is more than a software-approach!

SEO is the art of ranking number 1 in any search engine for any keyword.

Spiders rank a web site number one because spiders “think” that this site deserves to be number one. Of course the spider cannot think: there needs to be a programmer who programs the spider to find out which site is best.

Now if you are smart enough to feed the spider exactly what the programmer thinks is important, you will have the knowledge to rank number 1.

This is exactly what SEO software does: it claims to know and tackle “all” the parameters that make a web site ranking number 1.

Pitfalls of a software-approach to SEO

Suppose you find all the parameters needed to rank a web site number 1. You manage to get all this parameters onto your site and you even manage to be rank number 1.

Now if your site is really deserving to be ranked number 1, all is fine. But if surfers start complaining that you are not, the search engine will be blamed!

It won’t take long until Google finds out that “somebody broke the code” of the spiders. The spiders will be updated to give quality results to the visitors!

This means you need to get an upgrade of your SEO software approach… : you are running after the facts in stead of above the facts.

How to be ranked number 1?

You rank number 1 because you deserve it.

In spider logic this still means:

- your page talks about the keyword you are optimizing for

- you page has lots of incoming links about the keyword you are optimizing for.

This is what ranking number 1 should be about.

But my SEO software is really up to date, or is it not?

Your software can only be up to date AFTER the spiders’ software is updated. Unless you write the spiders yourself, you will always be a bit later.

You cannot know all the parameters the spider takes into account, unless again you are writing the spider software yourself.

Some of the parameters you cannot influence: age of the web site is one of them. Suppose the spider needs to choose between 2 websites: the oldest one and the SEO mimic: which one to choose? The oldest one would be the easiest bet, and you cannot change the age of your web site can you?

A close look at SEO software

SEO software advertisements could say that you can get a top 5 Google Ranking in under 30 Days… If that is true, then check out to see:

- is the web site of this SEO software ranking number 1 in Google for SEO or SEO software?

- are the example web sites the SEO software mentions to be ranked number 1, really number 1: number 1 in Google that is?

It’s very easy to type in the keyword phrase of the SEO software example web site and see if they are number 1 or not.

And don’t be fooled by SEO software that gives numerous examples of number 1 rankings in MSN or Yahoo: if you want to have a long lasting number 1 ranking in any of the search engines, you better start having a number 1 ranking in Google.

I didn’t say that it is a guarantee to rank number 1 in Yahoo and MSN once you rank number 1 in Google, but you will surely be high up there as well. On the other hand, a number 1 ranking in MSN can mean that you are no where to be found in Yahoo nor Google.

So you say: well, then I just try to rank number 1 in MSN since it seems to be easier. Well, it is easier, but then it is easier for your competition as well, so it won’t take then too much effort to out-play you again. Therefor do the job good once and for all: thrive to be number 1 in Google and then fine-tune if needed for MSN or Yahoo.

Why do you do SEO in the first place?

SEO is 1 of the ways to get more traffic to your web site. But there is more in getting a lot of traffic to your site, than “blindly ranking 1 in Google”:

— Always make sure you rank number 1 for a word a lot of people are looking for! —

If you buy any SEO software or out-source your SEO to the SEO specialists: always check their SEO examples:

- are they ranking number 1

- are the keywords they rank for popular search keywords (bigger than 10.000 searches a month in the Keyword Selector Tool from Yahoo’s search-marketing is considered not too low)

- how long did it take them to be number 1

- how big is the competition for the keyword-phrase (smaller or bigger than 5 million? As a general rule : above 5 million keyword-phrase results in Google, things become though)

- how big is the competition for the quoted “keyword-phrase” (smaller or bigger than 33.000? As a general rule : above 33.000 quoted “keyword-phrase” results in Google, things become though)

If for all these items the SEO software or SEO specialist can answer YES, then you can start taking them very seriously!

Try it out for each example web site any SEO software claims to have ranked number 1 for a certain keyword-phrase. And of course, always start with checking if they are ranking number 1 in the first place! If they are not, then you are going to buy SEO software that doesn’t do the job! Ranking number 2 is ALMOST number 1, and even worse, ranking number 9 is nowhere near to ranking number 1.

SEO software web sites

Whenever you are interested in something to buy on the Internet, check out the overall web site of the product you want to buy!

Some SEO software web sites are 1 page web sites: just 1 page with the product, no links, no extra pages…

Again back to basics. What was the first idea to set up the Internet? To give people information, lots of information.

And we are talking about a “NET” in Inter”NET”: “net” means links here, links there, links everywhere… (that’s why links are so important in SEO)

If you don’t see lots of links nor lots of content on a web site about SEO, then the SEO web site is not serious about its own subject: SEO!

Back to Basics: web-traffic

Your purpose is getting as much people to your site as possible, isn’t it?

SEO software has the purpose of ranking 1 in Google.

Now it is very easy to rank 1 in Google for the keyword-phrase “jhdkghgkbdcds”,
but who is looking for “jhdkghgkbdcds”??? Nobody!

So if nobody looks for “jhdkghgkbdcds”, then why bother to rank number 1 with it?

What is a nice number when it comes to “popular keyword searches”? If you use the Overture Keyword tool, anything above 10.000 searches a month means quite popular, but: also know that above 10.000 “the big boys’ are competing
with you, below 1.000 you have the field for yourself. So a good SEO advice is work yourself from the bottom up: start with keywords that are not so popular, and once you are ranked high for those, then tackle the next more popular keyword on the list.

SEO software Conclusion

SEO is the art to feed the spiders what they like.
SEO software is running after the spiders trying to catch their attention.

Always check the numbers and the facts about any SEO software and (this) SEO article!

Then make a decision yourself. If you see that the SEO software

- is ranking well for it’s own product

- is ranking web sites for popular keyword well,

only then you can consider buying it.

Author: Stef Glassee
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Wordpress plugin expert

By David A Robinson

I’ve just had a meeting with a potential client regarding their website. They launched into a list of things they wanted including, videos, animations, 360 degree images etc. What they hadn’t thought about was the whole purpose of the site. Who is was for, what it was for, who the stakeholders were and what success looks like.

Building a website is a time consuming and costly exercise. There are many component parts to a website, the look and feel being only one of them. The problem is many people only focus on the pretty pictures and Flash animations, only stopping to think about SEO once the site’s live. This is a recipe for disaster.

SEO starts before a single line of HTML is written or a single pixel has been added to an Illustrator canvas. SEO can be used to help you figure out some of the BIG questions you should be asking when developing a website.

SEO will help you better understand your market, SEO will ensure you understand what your potential market is searching for, SEO will help you understand the competition you are up against. In extreme cases SEO may even help you decide if your proposed enterprise is worth pursuing at all!

Leaving SEO until after your website is live is a big mistake and one that will ultimately cost you dearly. You will be left scrambling around desperately wondering why your site isn’t attracting customers and why Google and the other search engines are not listing your site when people search for what you offer.

Get SEO sorted from the get go and reap the benefits.

David A Robinson – Red Evolution (Aberdeen) Ltd

Specialist advice on all aspects of SEO

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_A_Robinson
http://EzineArticles.com/?SEO-Shouldnt-Be-a-Retro-Fit-Add-On,-Its-Way-More-Important-Than-That!&id=1973114