Table of Contents

I. Introduction

II. Search Engines: A Brief History III. Web 2.0: The New Internet

IV. Web 2.0: The Technical Landscape

V. SEO Linking Strategy in Web 2.0

VI. Social Media Optimization: A Piece of the SEO Puzzle

VII. Usability vs. Searchability: The RIA Search Challenge

VIII. Googles Personalized Search: The End of Traditional SEO?

IX. Search Behavior R&D: Customized Engines and Long Tail Keywords

X. Conclusion

References

I. Introduction To those of us whose passion for the growth of the World Wide Web is exceeded only by the marketing possibilities that emerge from that growth, the Internet has become a playground for the imagination. There is a large number of marketers, however, who are fascinated by the Web but approach its marketing capabilities more out of necessity than lifestyle. The Internets capacity has advanced in so many areas in the past few years that marketers playing catch-up are at a significant disadvantage. Marketing directors and account managers with traditional media backgrounds need to expand their breadth of knowledge in order to make informed decisions in todays e-commerce. This article provides clarification surrounding the fairly recent buzzword Web 2.0 and focuses on the evolution and future of the search engine born occupation of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO and its implications are expanding so fast and in so many directions that it has never been more important for C level professionals and traditionally oriented marketers to fully understand the world of Internet search.

II. Search Engines: A Brief History When the first search engines began cataloging the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s, obtaining a high rank on search engine results pages (SERP) was not particularly difficult or secretive. It was the webmasters who submitted URLs to the engines and communicated a pages relevancy to a keyword search through keyword meta tags in the HTML code. Early engines, like AltaVista, struggled with providing relevant search results because webmasters, who were paid on a cost-per-impression basis at the time, wrote inaccurate meta tags using high search volume keywords in order to increase visits to their websites.[1]

It was Google who finally answered the call for a more complex ranking algorithm that would greatly improve the relevancy of SERPs. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google, invented the concept of PageRank, an algorithm which helps rank web pages based on the probability that a random person surfing the Internet will find a given page.[2] The PageRank algorithm assigns a numerical value to each web page by analyzing the quantity and quality of the pages that link back to a given page. Known as a backlink, each link represents a vote for the page it links to by the page on which the link appears. The significance of each vote depends on how relevant the page giving the link is to the page receiving the link, as well as the PageRank of the linking page.

Along with the changing search engines continually trying to provide more relevant search results to the user, the entire Web has been evolving to meet the needs of the massive Internet population. In conjunction with the growth of the Internet and the popularity of search, a unique profession known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was born. SEO tactics and skills have evolved alongside the changing Internet, but such changes have never been as significant as the most recent. We have entered into a second phase of the Internet, and as a result SEO is taking on a new face. This second generation of the Internet, often referred to as Web 2.0, has moved away from the old model based on static websites, clicks, and impressions and burst onto a cyber playing field built around communities, participation and open cooperation towards better products and services.[3] An unprecedented level of interaction between consumers, businesses, and interest groups exists in this new Web. Due to the existence of a new social presence, vehicles for driving organic traffic to ones website have expanded far beyond the major search engines. While obtaining high rankings on the major search engines is still an SEOs main objective, the means by which this positioning is achieved requires a much broader capacity for creativity than ever before. Many of these new tactics also provide additional avenues of incoming traffic, which has significantly expanded the big picture view of the SEO professional.

PDF version of SEO White Paper at http://www.bkv.com/search-engine-optimization.jsp

III. Web 2.0: The New Internet

Defining or labeling the new Internet is often met with a considerable amount of critique due to the expansive reach of such a description. There are so many different things that have changed about the Internet in the past several years; a concise definition is difficult to come by. In addition, the term Web 2.0, while perhaps the most accurate term, is typically scoffed at by the skeptical industry veteran who is wary of a vendor or brass employee attempting to sound Internet savvy. The World Wide Web has existed for almost twenty years. What is so significant about the changes in the last few years that distinguish the current Web as an upgrade from its previous omnipotent self? The simple answer to this question is you. Web 2.0 represents the users needs, hopes, and desires finally manifesting into a definable force of voluntary motivation.[4] The blogosphere, social networks, wikis, and other new forms of expression on the Internet have captured the Web population by harnessing their goals, skills, and interests onto a platform of collaborative creation and production. Websites are reflecting an up-to-the-minute common voice rather than a collection of static informational documents. The Web has never before experienced this level of effective interaction between its users, and that reason alone warrants its 2.0 designation.

Ease of self-expression, now apparent on the Internet through the popularity of websites like MySpace and YouTube, is generating massive amounts of original content. Critics of this tremendous increase in creativity and public opinion complain about the dilution of reliable quality content on the Internet. Many social networks, however, naturally weed out undesirable content, and promote popular, well referenced content to the top of searches. In Web 2.0, popular content emerges via a user-generated ranking system that determines the positioning of articles by the number of user votes they receive. This model was made most popular by Digg.com, which joins several community-based popularity websites like Slashdot.com and Reddit.com in providing a user-edited resource for finding news stories, blog entries and other websites. In Web 2.0, up-to-date, reliable content is produced by the editing abilities of the wiki. Wikipedia, the Internets user-written and -edited encyclopedia, boasts an accuracy level not far from the widely accepted Encyclopedia Britannica. In a study that compared forty-two science entries in both resources, Wikipedia had only four inaccuracies per entry compared to Britannicas three.[5]

Social network websites in the new Internet also have a way of allowing like-minded people to find each others favorite content through a system called social bookmarking. Del.icio.us.com is the most popular example of a social bookmarking website. This system of classification, known as folksonomy, involves users assigning labels, or tags, in the form of keywords, to content on the web. Through this collaborative form of tagging, web content becomes grouped by recognizable categories. Continuous tagging and creation of categories by users increases the contents ability to be searched by a wider range of people. This social phenomenon happens because stable patterns emerge in tag proportions [allowing] minority opinions [to] coexist alongside extremely popular ones without disrupting the nearly stable consensus choices made by many users.[6]

IV. Web 2.0: The Technical Landscape

Aside from the collaborative aspect of the new Internet, there is another reason the Web has earned its 2.0 upgrade. The users interaction, not with other users but with the interface of the Net itself, has changed significantly. Technical advancements in web navigation and design, as well as increased penetration of high-speed and broadband connection, make the new Web a foreign landscape compared to its older version. Web applications have continued to improve, providing a profoundly different user experience. The implementation of rich internet applications (RIA) is gaining ground. RIA technologies, such as Flash, Ajax and Java, are leading the Internet in the direction of a Web without web pages. Websites are traditionally made up of networks of static pages linked together by text in the form of the computer language HTML. These pages behave in a synchronous manner. That is, after the user clicks on a link, there is a short period while the server processes the input, in turn triggering the browser to download the requested page. RIAs operate in an asynchronous fashion, allowing response time to be much faster. RIAs increased responsiveness results from the following five factors: [8]

Information can be obtained from a server by anticipating certain user input.

The screen can be refreshed in pieces instead of all at once, eliminating the need for entirely different pages to load when navigating content.

More than one users input can be collected and validated before it is sent to the server.

Some responses to user input can take place without any server communication.

Certain processing that was once handled on the server end can be stored on the user desktop.

Growing implementation of RIA has important implications on search engines and optimizers alike.

V. SEO Linking Strategy in Web 2.0 The Blogosphere & RSS The common SEO adage continues to be valid in the 2.0 world: content is king. It is the content boundaries and means for dispatching content that have truly taken SEO to another level. Since the inception of the blogosphere a term that describes all blogs as a social network of public opinion rumblings of the peoples voice via the Internet have quickly risen to a powerful roar. Beginning in the form of an online diary in the mid 90s, the blog has since developed into a simple vehicle of communication for anyone who desires to send content across the Web. The dissemination of information through blogging has become so mainstream that one can find a blog from an authority source on virtually any topic. The blogosphere, centered on the concept of original content, has provided a link rich venue for the SEO to plan his or her linking strategy surrounding good content.

So what is good content, and what does it have to do with good linking strategy in Web 2.0? In this new era of the Internet, good content is viral. Whether this content is a written article, a homemade video or a podcast, if it grabs, provokes or tickles the user, it will travel, and it will travel fast. From the contents eye-view, the Internet has become much easier to navigate following the advent of Really Simple Syndication (RSS). RSS allows for a program called an aggregator (or feed reader) to notify users of new content added to a website, retrieve that new content, and present it to the user in an easy-to-use interface. RSS and blogging go hand-in-hand because of the constantly updating nature of the blog. As a result of RSS, people are discovering new content on the Internet, passing it along, and linking to it at an unprecedented rate.

Baiting the Link

The SEO practice of producing content in hopes that people will link to it from their own website is known as link baiting. Good link bait has the same qualities as good content. From a well written controversial article to a video clip of a bulldog on a skateboard, website owners will link to any and all content as long as it is interesting and catches peoples attention. There are no boundaries surrounding the types of content one can use to bait a link. In fact, the very name of a new kind of link baiting suggests an indefinable quality. This new link baiting tactic is called widget baiting. Nick Wilson, CEO and senior strategist of the social media market agency Clickinfluence, declared that the holy grail of linkbaiting in 2007 will be the widget.[9]

In reference to computers, a widget is an element of user interface that displays information or provides a specific way for a user to interact with an application. A widget could be a calendar, a stock ticker, a quote of the day, or an icon that collects the most popular YouTube videos. To get an idea of the limitless widget possibilities, check out Yahoo! Widgets (http://widgets.yahoo.com/). In its most basic form, a widget is a downloadable interactive virtual tool made up of simple bits of code that can easily be added to a webpage. When a widget is added to a webpage, if coded correctly, it will act as a crawlable link pointing back to its page of origin. These links can help to boost a site in the search engine rankings, but they also represent great potential for organic traffic.

Creating a popular widget could, in some cases, outweigh traffic from the major search engines. One example of traffic generated by a widget is a blog editor Firefox extension created by the professional blogging company, Performancing, that received close to half a million downloads when it was first released.[10] The brand awareness that widgets can promote has also made advertisers extremely enthusiastic. One would be hard pressed to find a better method of exposure than a logo attached to a button that sits in front of a users eyes daily.

VI. Social Media Optimization: A Piece of the SEO Puzzle

In this new age of the Internet, people have been quick to deviate from the title Search Engine Optimization when describing the organic promotion of a website. In August 2006, Rohit Bhargava, VP of Interactive Marketing for Ogilvy Public Relations, coined the phrase Social Media Optimization (SMO) and defined it as the following:

[The act of implementing] changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.[11] On one hand, Bhargavas point is well taken. If the tasks one is performing to drive traffic to a website are not intended to do so by improving search engine rankings, but rather by building a presence in social networks, than perhaps SEO is not the appropriate definition of their occupation. There is no doubt that SEO has undergone, and will continue to undergo, a certain level of compartmentalization. As different areas of SEO continue to experience the growth of specialized services, such as blogging, widget baiting and social networking, the future SEO will spend a large part of his or her time moderating and collaborating with more outsourcing opportunities that are not, by themselves, SEO related. In the end, however, SEO is a sum of its parts, and from the perspective of a company looking to pay for SEO services, all methods of driving organic traffic will reside under the umbrella of Search Engine Optimization. Notwithstanding the new coinage, SMO is an important component of SEO in Web 2.0. An SEOs intention in a social network is to create the illusion of natural links that occur during the interaction that takes place on networks such as Kaboodle.com, MyBlogLogs.com and Flickr.com. It is these links that search engines value the most because they happen as a result of real interests, not paid or reciprocal contracts. These links often lead to spikes in traffic, which have been criticized for only providing unqualified visitors and using up bandwidth. While these spikes continue to be a topic of debate on SEO forums, traffic after the spike does typically return to a level higher than it was before. The more authentic the illusion of natural interaction created by the SEO, the better the results. SEO in Web 2.0 introduces a new skill set of creativity that was previously not present. The space for this creativity, which ties in with the above link baiting topic of quality content, is especially exciting for the SEO of the future. The possibilities for attracting genuine links and organic traffic are limited only by the SEOs imagination.

To read the last four sections of this white paper — Usability vs. Searchability: The RIA Search Challenge, Googles Personalized Search: The End of Traditional SEO?, Search Behavior R&D: Customized Engines and Long Tail Keywords, and the Conclusion — visit the following URL to download the PDF version of the paper: http://www.bkv.com/search-engine-optimization.jsp

References

[1] Doctorow, Cory, Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia. Version 1.3, 26 August 2001. http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm

[2] Brin, Sergey and Page, Larry, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, Proceedings of the seventh international conference on World Wide Web 7, 1998, Pages: 107-117 [3] Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anthony D. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. London: Portfolio, 2006, Page: 19 [4] Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anthony D. Page: 68

[5] Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anthony D. Page: 75

[6] Golder, Scott A. Huberman, Bernardo A. “The Structure of Collaborative Tagging Systems.” Information Dynamics Lab, HP Labs. Aug. 18, 2005. http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.DL/0508082. Cornell University Library. [8] Loosley, Chris. Rich Internet Applications: Design, Measurement, and Management Challenges. http://www.keynote.com/docs/whitepapers/RichInternet_5.pdf. Keynote Systems, 2006.[9] Wilson, Nick. 2007 Guide to Linkbaiting: The Year of Widgetbait? http://searchengineland.com/070118-074231.php. January 18, 2007. [10] Wilson, Nick. January 18, 2007

[11] Bhargava, Rohit. 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO). Influential Interactive Marketing blog. http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2006/08/5_rules_of_soci.html. August 10, 2006.

Author: Will Fleiss
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Programmable Pressure Cooker

The Negative Perception of SEO

You hear a lot about the negative perception that many in the business world have of SEO. I think a lot of this is inevitable for any new industry just emerging. For years SEO has been relatively easy to jump into and “expert” SEO firms were known to appear overnight, only to disappear months later. I often cringe when reading forums where somebody with a online name of “SEOprophet” (I pulled this name out of my hat, I apologize if it’s yours!) asks a basic SEO question that not only has been asked and answered many times over the past few years but is completely irrelevant to the optimization process today.

Many of these SEOs found ways to get businesses to lay down their money only to prove that they could not meet the expectations they portrayed they would. Expectations are a two way street and its important for any SEO to lay them out clearly and early so the client doesn’t think she’ll be getting something she won’t. In most cases, the high/impossible expectations come from the SEO themselves as they try to sell their service on the unsuspecting business owner. Promises are made which the SEO knows they can’t keep, but closing the sale is more important than full disclosure.

Fly-by-night SEO gurus are not the only reason that many businesses have soured on SEO. There seem to be a few big companies that do pretty much the same thing. These companies stay in business by employing a host of telemarketers who sign dozens of unsuspecting clients daily. Sometimes these firms do their job well, but just as often clients are found to have fallen through the cracks of the machinery. These firms have so many clients that none get the individual attention they deserve.

Balancing the SEO Expectations

We often find ourselves signing up clients that have come to us from other SEO consultants or firms who didn’t serve them well, or as well as they had hoped. One of the things I’m most amazed about is that the clients often don’t even know what their SEO is doing for them. They get periodic ranking reports, maybe the SEO asks them to make a change or two here and there, but by and large, the client has no idea how much (or how little) effort is being put into their website for optimization.

SEO is often hard to quantify and the amount of hours spent on any one client can fluctuate wildly from month to month depending on circumstances. I think those that perform SEO but initiate very little contact with their clients do so simply because they don’t want the client to know exactly how much time is spent from one month to the next. If an SEO puts in 100 hours one month for a client, the client may expect to receive 100 hours of work EVERY month. This goes back to the whole idea of communicating expectations up front.

A lot of work that is performed for clients stems from hours of research and the continuous education that is necessary to keep up with the search engine and their technologies. Even if the SEO is not an algorithm chaser, it’s their job to stay educated. These hours cannot be considered as “billable” time as one would pay a lawyer performing research that pertains to a particular case. A large portion of research hours performed by SEOs is hours spent on forums, blogs, studying search patents, testing, etc., and cannot be attributed to any one particular client. This is why the SEOs time working on an account is so much more valuable, and why the good SEOs charge a lot for their services.

Creating a Positive SEO Experience

When it comes to communicating with clients, we have found that the more you do, the better. Not only will the SEO have a better relationship with the client, but the client will have a more positive experience overall. Communication causes the unachievable expectations to be put down, while the client becomes more aware of the total process and can therefore better appreciate the work that is being performed on their account.

Our client management/communication/reporting system is built in such a way that allows us to be inconsistent communication with our clients about the progress and status of their campaign. It’s not just a matter of providing monthly reports, but offering a transparent system of communication that keeps the client “in the loop” as to who is working on their account and what in particular they are doing.

We don’t have to be overly specific in a way that creates more unwarranted expectations, but we do make sure the client is aware when each team member works on their account and they are kept updated of ongoing progress. On average, our clients get two to three email updates each week. If I work on their account, I document this and the client is emailed this documentation. Whenever any team member works on their account the same thing happens.

Even clients that are performing strongly still get their updates because we continue to work on their account regularly. We don’t believe that a strong performing account should rest so we are constantly analyzing, linking, adding and tweaking. We have found that this matters just as much to the clients that are performing strongly as much as it matters to those that may not be performing as well as we would like at any given period of time. Clients performing well need justification to keep paying us just as much clients who may feel that their campaign has not progressed as they expected. In both cases, this constant communication let’s them know we are on the job, and problems or not, we’re working diligently to overcome any barriers to continued long-term success.

Inevitably, there will come a time, even if temporarily, when a client questions the value of the services being performed. Whether it’s the thought processes of, “I’m doing well so I don’t need you anymore,” or “Why aren’t we number one and Google, MSN and Yahoo this week for our ultra-competitive phrase,” effective communication helps establish a relationship that can smooth over any bumps in the road. Not only will the SEO be more likely to keep the client for the long-term but if client does leave, they won’t necessarily be soured on the whole SEO industry.

Author: Stoney DeGeyter
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Canada duty rate

You hear all the time about bad SEOs. Bad SEOs are offering worthless services, failing to deliver on their internet marketing promises, polluting the search engine resultswell, a lot of bad things. But how much ever gets said about bad SEOs’ spiritual counterparts: bad SEO clients?

As an SEO, I can see things from the other side of the table. You see, despite trying hard to make it clear I’m a good, ethical, results-oriented, smarter marketing, white-hat SEO, I have gotten no end of inquiries from bad prospective SEO clients. Sure, no one who gets cheated is ever entirely to blame, and some cheated businesses are entirely blameless. But the bad SEOs would have too small a market to stay in business if it weren’t for almost-as-bad clients.

Shades of Bad SEO Clients

First, let me make clear what I mean by bad SEOs. Bad SEOs are bad because they either do unethical things to get e-marketing results, or because they consistently fail to deliver results. A good SEO delivers results and does it without trampling over other people’s rights (like submitting automated comments to their websites or trying to get good sites de-indexed).

A bad SEO client, in turn, is someone who will only be satisfied (albeit temporarily) with a bad SEO. Because they refuse to consider ethical web consultants or smarter marketing strategies, they are creating markets for the e-marketing charlatans and black-hats. There are two basic types of bad SEO clients: crooks and fool–oops, I mean, ethically challenged and judgmentally-challenged.

Ethically-Challenged SEO Clients

I haven’t gotten so many inquiries asking for out-and-out unethical services. Still, I’ve been asked about blog-sp@mming software and other shady internet marketing tactics a couple times. A colleague shared this gem with me: Have you thought about just scanning a book from the library and using it for web content? Or is that too high-risk? (Seriously, someone asked him this.)

Of course, judging from the amount of comment sp@m and SEO-motivated hacking on the web, there is plenty of demand for this stuff.

Judgmentally-Challenged SEO Clients

A much larger group of bad SEO clients are simply those who insist on putting themselves in the way of fraud. Yes, that’s right: I’m blaming the victim. Someone who goes looking for a $5 gold watch can’t cry too long if the watch turns out to be fake or hot. With SEO, there are a few more nuances, but it’s the same essential idea.

The overwhelming majority of these judgmentally challenged souls are private individuals whose only business is the business-in-a-kit variety. Yet they are also sometimes representatives of actual successful companies. The real businesspeople tend to be quicker to let their misconceptions go (after all, they can afford the real SEO alternatives), but not always. Let’s look at some representative types of this group, straight out of my own inbox (note: these are inquiries from prospects, not actual clients).

1. Something-for-(Little More than)-Nothing Clients

Really, I tend to think these people should be in the ethically challenged group, but maybe that’s just the remnant of my work ethic making me be mean There are actually two kinds of these clients:

• The ambitious but cheap client: I’d like to get to the top of Google for the keyword, ‘mortgage’ so I can turn over $100,000/month in revenue. I can spend up to $1,000.
• The Adsense-is-my-business-plan client: you wouldn’t believe the numbers of inquiries I get from people who only plan to make money off Adsense or other on-site advertisingthey don’t even have a plan for getting repeat traffic, nor do they have content to synergize with the SEO effort. By buying promotional services, they would essentially be buying advertising in order to make money off advertisingyou see where that could be a problem?

Another way of looking at it: why wouldn’t I just create a site myself and keep all the profit from my efforts? In fact, most SEOs do have their own project sites, which are often monetized by Adsense. The money we could otherwise get from Adsense is one very low baseline for pricing our services. Legitimate SEO clients are typically selling goods or services at a profit rate that works out to ten or more times what they could get from Adsense.

In addition to the greedy, I also see a few other kinds of less common, but still problematic prospective SEO clients:

2. SEO-Starry-Eyed Clients: Search engine traffic is definitely the best way for me to get pet-sitting clients in my tiny Himalayan village.
3. The Little-Knowledge-Is-a-Dangerous-Thing Client: Don’t tell me about keyword research, content, anchor text, or natural linking strategy, just get me the PageRank (or links, keyword density, or whatever the fad is).
4. Gullible-and-Not-Letting-Go Client: I know of at least two services that will submit my site to thousands of search engines for $29.95. If you can’t do that, I’ll take my business elsewhere.
5. I-Will-Never-Trust-SEO-But-I’ll-Consider-It-Anyway Client: No one can guarantee a good search engine ranking so this is all pointlessI’ll just go with that $29.95 search engine submission package someone just emailed me about. At least it’s cheap.

In short, if you are going to find good SEO web consultants, you need: 1) realistic expectations; 2) a realistic budget; 3) solid information. Don’t expect something for nothing, do a little reading, and it’s much less likely you’ll fall victim to bad SEOs.

Author: Lee Rummage
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Cellphone news

There has been much debate recently on the practice of ethical Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The recent removal of a high profile SEO company from the Google results has plunged the industry into yet another debate on what is ethical and what is not in our profession.

I have been involved in the SEO industry for a few years now and the mention of the word ethics and best practices in what is still an unregulated industry creates a level of confusion the likes of which I have not observed in any other industry. Why does this reluctance to discuss ethics and best practices exist? After all, we call ourselves professionals and as professionals we should strive to be part of an industry which stands for best practices and quality of service.

The confusion seems to come from the way that search engines rank sites. Each search engine has an algorithm which is a complex method of giving a value to a site which will ensure that it is returned in the search results when a relevant keyword is typed into a search engine. These algorithms are kept secret by the search engines for obvious reasons. The SEO industry is highly focused on analyzing these algorithms and using any knowledge gained to modify and rank websites. Ask any two SEOs what they consider to be ethical in their pursuit of top results and you will most likely get two very different answers. Hence, the lack of agreement on what is ethical and what is not.

So where do we start? Our commitment must always start with the client and our responsibilities to them. An ethical company will always demonstrate loyalty and respect to their client. This is true whether they are an SEO, a doctor or an accountant.

Having sound business practices and a professional approach to all that you do then we can move onto the search engine guidelines. All the major search engines and directories publish their own guidelines of use for webmasters. This should be the minimum that any SEO practitioner complies with when working on a clients site. Search engines have a right to protect the integrity of their results and the SEO practitioners should respect those guidelines.

The confusion seems to arrive with the interpretation of the guidelines. One SEO will interpret the rules to mean one thing and another SEO will see it as completely different. The stakes are high and a top ranking in Google for your site is powerful branding and can lead to a major upswing in your business.

SEO practitioners have been classified as whitehat, and blackhat. Whitehat practitioners are the ones that try to stick to search engine guidelines while blackhat operate using more questionable techniques and view the search engines as the enemy. Unfortunately blackhat techniques can sometimes adversely affect the sites ranking and worse, get their clients sites banned.

Blackhats traditionally play to the emotional needs of their clients and often convince them to part with their money without giving clear and specific information on the changes they will make to their sites. If a client is fully aware of the risks and is prepared to buy into short term gain then that is their choice. However, many Blackhat SEOs do not disclose their tactics. Would you hire a CPA who submits your tax return including questionable practices and breaking all the IRS rules? You are the one who will get audited, prosecuted and have to pay huge fines.

Blackhat techniques are just plain bad business practice. They also do the search engines and the search users a huge disservice by contributing to poor quality of results. This adds nothing to the end user experience.

The search engines say that any type of manipulation to get a site ranked is a threat against them and the relevancy of their results. Whitehat practitioners will say that they are not manipulating sites but rather fixing search engine obstacles within a web site. The need for their services is great as many web site designers do not know how to integrate search engine friendly designs.

Last year a prospective customer contacted me after being burned by a rogue” SEO company who got their site (and others) banned from Google for spam tactics. A few weeks later they were contacted by the same rogue SEO company under a new name. Perhaps naively she almost fell for it again. She reasoned that if they had been banned once they would not do anything wrong again! This demonstrates the lack of knowledge that consumers have regarding our industry. They dont know the difference between good and bad SEO. People are being taken advantage of because of their lack of knowledge.

No matter what techniques your SEO uses; ethical , whitehat ,blackhat none at all it all boils down to one thing. Doing right by the client? Ethics is often viewed by many in the industry as hype.

I think the focus should be on serving users as opposed to manipulating the search engines. SEOs who concentrate of making the sites the best that they can be for the end user will create a much better longer term affect. The SEOs who chase algorithms and try to game the search engines get burned when there is an algorithm change. Following search engine updates involving an algorithm shift, the industry message boards abound with posts along the lines of I hate Google, they have killed my site If these posters had spent more time improving their site for their clients, and the search users, the algorithm updates would be much less stressful for them.

At this time there is no initiative within the industry to create a trade body which sets a code of best practices. It is down to the consumer to practice buyer beware and ensure that they practice due diligence in selecting an SEO. They need to use even more caution than they would use to select any other vendor. I also believe the industry has a responsibility to provide education and resources for consumers and help de-mystify the profession.

Great SEO companies share their knowledge willingly. They hide nothing to either clients or search engines. They know that they have a specialized skill and are proud of what they do. They get their results through hard work and perseverance. They also know that to do the job properly takes a lot of time. This is something which most business owners feel they do not have. They are confident that when it comes to hiring a professional, their honest and open approach to their trade will be acknowledged by organizations who only want to work with the best.

The following are some golden rules I have written on choosing an SEO. If the consumer sticks to these rules then they should avoid the practitioners in our industry who give the rest of us a bad name.

Only work with a company that follows search engine guidelines. (If I could only make one recommendation this would be it). The three main search engines are Google, MSN, and Yahoo. Look on their sites for their webmaster guidelines.

Only work with a company that documents the SEO process they will use to rank your site

Only work with a company that provides a written contract outlining their process and their costs

Get at least four proposals for your site and compare services before you make a decision

Do not work with a company that offers guarantees of top rankings. Nobody can offer these types of guarantees.

Do not lock yourself into a contract you cannot get out of if you are not getting results

Ask for references and follow up with them. If you still have any doubts ask for more. Ensure that references check out. Check that the suggested site is real and that the contact details given check out against the contact details on the site.

Do not allow any work to be carried out on your site without your approval.

Do not give the SEO carte blanche to do as they will with your site. It is your site not theirs. It is your responsibility to ensure that the SEO does not apply any techniques that would result in getting your site banned.

Check the companies BBB (Better Business Bureau) report. Check for membership of any other established trade bodies such as the AMA (American Marketing Association) Many companies claim that they are more reputable because they are part of SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization.) However this is not the case. All that is required to be a member of SEMPO is a $299 annual subscription.

Do not work with a company that engages in site wide link exchanges. Question their linking methods. Ensure that they only have a policy of linking with on-topic sites. Remember, your site is built for users not for search engines. If your site is about computers and your link to a site that sells childrens toys how useful do you think that link will be for your visitors.

Ask other companies doing well on the Internet who they use for SEO. Always ask about the quality of customer service that is offered. It is not much use having a great SEO if you can never get hold of them.

If it sounds too good to be true. IT IS!!!

In conclusion the SEO industry is a dynamic growing industry. This rapid growth has created some challenges for the industry. One of these challenges is the perception that outsiders have of SEO practitioners being unethical. To counteract this many SEOs are now promoting themselves as ethical SEO. However, as the industry is unregulated it is up to the consumer of the service to become informed and exercise caution when selecting a SEO vendor. As the demand for SEO continues to grow the number of unethical practitioners calling themselves SEOs will also grow. To protect yourself, take the vendor selection process seriously. Look for vendors who are willing to share knowledge and partner with you to provide the best possible outcome for you business.

Author: James Peggie
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital Camera Information

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

The job of a Search Engine Optimizer, popularly referred to as an SEO helps the visitors to acquire the required information from the visited website. So, an SEO plays a major role as far as research and development are concerned. Both, the clients availing of the services of an SEO as well as the visitors to the website, many a times, prove to be too demanding for the Search Engine Optimizer. Well no pains, no gains. An SEO’s job seems to be based on this pattern rather too strictly.

The SEO’s Job vs. Sales

The SEO’s role is quite important not only for researching a particular subject or idea, but more so when it comes to sales. The Optimizer in the majority of the cases provides his services to help the visitors to the website research about the products of the company.

The products may vary from biscuits or other eatables to cosmetics to electronic devices including almost any saleable product, object, idea etc., that exists upon the earth. An SEO understands well that basically his job aims at optimizing the sales for the company. He would not like to displease the company or those who visit the company’s site. So, most of the SEOs prefer a little sentence at the bottom of the page to the effect that the visitor’s search results may vary from site to site. After all, an SEO, like any other professional prefers to play safe!

Expectations from an SEO vs. A Few Realities

As the company’s demands from an SEO are sometimes even unrealistic, he has to be extra smart (that of course, is different from being over smart). When it comes to selling a new product, the Search Engine Optimizer is not just asked to optimize the sales, in such specific cases, he has to initialize the sales for the new product first, more so if the business house happens to be a small one or a newly opened one.

If an SEO’s services are hired by a small or newly opened business, the Optimizer is expected to optimize the sales of the products (if they are new, then even to initialize the sales) so that the business comes closer to the big rivals and then gradually goes ahead of them. Now, anyone can understand the kind of expectations regarding the sales from an SEO. When the expectations are not met with (that may be the case sometimes), the resulting picture may be a sad one.

As if that is not enough, even the sales department of the company loves to transfer the major share of its responsibility to the shoulders of the SEO, once his services are hired. The department’s attitude, most of the times, sends the message across to the SEO, in no implicit terms that it is his responsibility to optimize the sales of the popular products, initialize and optimize the sales for new products and reinitialize the sales even for those that had previously failed in the market.

In other words, it is the SEO rather than the sales department who is expected to optimize and maintain the market. The Optimizer is left only with two options: either fulfill all the expectations or if he fails to do so even once, then provide an absolutely convincing explanation to the company that has hired his services.

SEO: Catering to the Clients’ Expectations

Though the contract letter as provided to the SEO clearly reads the terms and conditions related to the responsibilities and even ranking, traffic, ROI, and conversions etc., it is the result of the work that counts in the long run rather than the job profile as discussed in the contract letter.

An SEO’s Perception of His Job: Risk Factors

Thus a potentially existing, but not a very explicit (and hence not very frequently realized) risk factor is that most of the SEOs focus on executing the operations as specified in the contract letter rather than laying stress on the results. The result: the sales for the company for which an SEO’s services are hired are far from being optimized. In some cases, the SEO fails to maintain even the previously existing sales. It can even tell upon his professional relationships with the sales department of the company. Eventually, he may be sacked and replaced by another SEO, in most cases, a tried and tested one by one or more reputed or established companies. So focusing upon the result is the key factor for any SEO. He must focus on the TARGET.

Services Provided by An SEO: How Do the Clients Evaluate Them?

A large number of the companies hiring the services of an SEO are extremely conscious of their web ranking. Naturally, they want the ranking to shoot up faster when they hire an SEO. A sensible client would allow at least a reasonably period of time to the SEO as even a highly intelligent and professionally smart Search Engine Optimizer would require at least a little bit of time to increase the number of the visitors to the website of his client.

Even if the search engine is optimized making it several times more effective than it originally was, the improvement will catch the notice of the net surfers within a little time only. Given the time (a reasonable one, of course, and not an unusually longer span), the web ranking of the client’s site can be expected to shoot up the popularity charts.

Moreover, the requirements of the visitors to the website of the clients vary from time to time. Thus the SEO is expected to be on his toes all the time. Further, the phrases searched by the visitors most of the time would never be an all time favorite with the net surfers. They may change with the changing requirements of the surfers. Thus the client would obviously expect the SEO not only to make the web ranking go higher, but even to maintain it. Not a very easy job, indeed.

How Does Web Ranking Effect A Company’s Sales and An SEO’s Performance?

Though a smart SEO can employ a number of ways to make the web ranking shoot up, the point is that whether the people who visit the web site actually get converted into the customers buying the products of the company or not. So even if the SEO manages to attract a large number of visitors to the site of the company, what actually counts is whether they are the targeted visitors or not. The SEO must never forget that as far as the results of his work are concerned, the web ranking is to be used as a means to enhance the sales for the company. After all, it is for this purpose that the client has hired his services.

In some cases, a client’s website may already be enjoying an excellent web ranking, but a poor conversion rate. In such case, the SEO is expected even to a greater extent to focus upon the conversion rate. A greater chunk of the traffic visiting the site is to be converted into actual buyers of the products of the company. This is what the SEO is expected to achieve.

The Job of an SEO: A Few Tips

The SEO may suggest the clients to alter a few links in the SERPs i.e., the search engine result pages. It can make it easier for the visitors to the site to find what they are looking for? When a visitor himself/herself refers the site to other surfers, it counts. Because making the web ranking move up, it definitely increases the conversion rate.

Finally, the SEO must take care that the desired, if not higher, conversion rate is achieved within a specific time. Though there should be synergy between the client and the SEO and the required time should be allowed for achieving an excellent web ranking as well as conversion rate, the SEO must not forget that he cannot delay in producing results beyond a certain time period. He is fully responsible to make the client progress in the business as fast or even faster than expected by the client.

Finally, the SEO should be focusing on improving upon the sales for the company. After all, this is what that actually counts for the client. It is the result, the result and the RESULT ONLY that will matter in the long run, as already discussed in this article.

Author: Bibhash Sharma
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Duty tariff

There’s been a story brewing for quite some time about the attempt by Jason Gambert to trademark the term “SEO”.

Gambert claims that the words “search engine optimization” have no real linguistic English value beyond being a process;. So, he’s trying to trademark “SEO” as a service, basically claiming that “SEO” itself is Net lingo and has no “Official English linguistic value.”

In his blog, Gambert claims that “I am helping the search engine marketing community establish an approved SEO process, which can be sold as an ‘SEO service.’” He goes on to explain that other industries have standards and guidelines and, as these industries are recognised as services, it means that there is a way for consumers to identify practitioners with credible offerings.

Now, although we can jump on the “fry Gambert” bandwagon and I think that his idea is nothing more than a revenue/copyright ploy, I’m going to leave that to the rest of cyberspace. Instead, Gambert’s comments do raise an age old question that I would like to discuss: Do we need SEO standards?

It’s true that other areas of web development have standards: HTML has validation; w3c produces reams of standards on CSS and XHTML; there are standards for ECMAScript (most commonly JavaScript); but do these really create security amongst web designers and developers?

The SEO industry really does have its share of cheats and con artists. We’ve all heard stories of small business owners getting hoodwinked by SEO scams. Shouldn’t we, as responsible professionals, do something to remove the black-hatters from our field?

Perhaps we should, but is a body of standards the best way to go about it? I’m not convinced that standards will separate the expert from the swindler. Indeed, SEO was effectively started by scam artists – how else would you describe someone distributing spam to a forum in order to increase their own SERP?

Whom would the community trust as members of a body that certifies a person or company is following SEO standards? Never mind that, who would we trust to create those standards in the first place?

Yes, there are respected SEO professionals, but as a whole the industry is young enough to still be a little rough around the edges. Some might argue that this is exactly why we need standards – but consider what would happen if someone tried to create them and enforce them. You’d more than likely get a mess that’s even worse than what Gambert is trying to pull.

Would a body of standards prevent people who don’t do due diligence from getting scammed? No. Will it prevent those who carry the SEO trademark from scamming others? No. Gambert’s trademark claim should be invalidated as the cheap swindle it is and the industry should promote the ideals of SEO experts and educate consumers on what to look for in them; something that I will cover now.

What to Look for in an SEO Expert

Here’s the paradox: Bad SEO works, and works quickly, but will ultimately get you banned from the search engines. So, from a consumer’s point of view, poor (or black hat) SEO appears to give them results that they need. They pay. Then the expert is gone, just in time for the customer’s rankings to start falling like a blind roofer.

Like all things in life, nothing worth having ever comes easy; and quality SEO is no different. When looking for an SEO expert, this is rule number one:

Always ensure that the expert is prepared to offer a medium-to-long term relationship.

SEO is not a one-stop shop. It is not an overnight fix. It requires time to follow your keywords; to establish links and drive traffic from forums, blogs and article sites; to manage on-the-page metatags, titles and internal links; and manage off-the-page anchor text optimisation.
All of this requires the expert to be on hand to compete and monitor the optimisation process. If they are unwilling to offer this, they may be a fly-by-night “expert”.

Does the expert know what they are doing?

This may seem like a very vague and expansive question, especially as consumers may not know what they are expecting of their expert. However, it is a pertinent question nonetheless. You and your SEO expert should look for three things before even attempting to optimise your site:

Are your customers searching for your products and/or services online?

This should be very easy for your expert to determine by putting the appropriate keywords in Wordtracker. It’s not just about whether people are searching for your kind of offerings online, though; it’s also about how many people are searching. If too few people are looking for you online, SEO on this area would be a waste of money – and your expert should advise you of this.

Are your competitors showing up for the terms that you want to target?

This could indicate that your competitors have found it worth their while to spend money on SEO. That doesn’t automatically mean that you will as well, however. Your expert should be able to advise you of the benefits that his/her services will offer.

What effect would an increase in targeted traffic to your web site have on my business?

This is really the most important question. If your web site effectively converts traffic into sales already, then you can expect SEO that increases your traffic to also increase your sales. If it doesn’t, more traffic is not going to translate into more sales.

If, between you and your expert, you can answer these questions positively, then it should be worth continuing with SEO.

What kind of SEO services do you want?

Do you want someone who specialises in on-the-page? Who specialises in content writing? Article submission? Do you want someone that knows all areas of SEO, or maybe someone who’s new to the field (and therefore cheaper)? Do you want to spend money on an AdWords or a PayPerClick campaign?

Fleshing out your requirements and their potential return on investment is the next step with your expert. There’s no hard and fast list of questions that you need to ask next, but there are a few that you should always check with your new hire, to paraphrase Jon Rognerud, writing for Entrepreneur.com:

What ranking guarantees do you provide? No honest, reputable SEO will make any kind of ranking guarantee. If you see anything like “#1 position for your keywords in six weeks!” run the other way.

Are you going to change my web site? The answer to this had better be “yes;” SEO is based on site content and structure.

How do you handle linking? Honest SEOs will explain their approach in great detail and let you see what they do. If they get evasive or claim that they use proprietary software or techniques, they might be engaging in black hat and/or spammy practices.

What are your other services and what is your pricing model? This should be clearly explained, not “sold.” Sure, SEO may be the company’s main service, but it may also do web analytics, pay-per-click, e-mail marketing, social media optimization, and more.

Who are some of your competitors? An honest firm will tell you who their competitors are and provide details.

What are your qualifications? Though no certifications are required for SEO, some things can help, like the Google Advertising Professional program. You may also want to consider time in business, though that’s no guarantee of expertise. Does the firm specialize in certain market segments? This would also be a good time to ask for customer references, just as you would for any contractor.

What kind of traffic results can I expect to see, how soon, and how much will they cost? Don’t judge them on price alone. Some scammy SEO companies will set up a pay-per-click campaign without their clients’ knowledge; the client pays fees every month, and the minute they stop paying, their traffic disappears.

Ideally, you and your SEO form a partnership. They should keep you apprised of what they’re doing and the effects, with weekly, monthly, and quarterly reports. With patience, planning, cooperation, and a lot of research, getting an SEO for your site could be an excellent decision. Good luck!

DM

Author: Danny Wareham
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Cellphone news

I frequent many SEO and Web Marketing forums on a daily basis and every so often there is a debate about the SEO industry and ethics. After being involved in a number of these debates, it has become really obvious that the main problems are the facts that no two SEO companies are alike and there is no unified methodology. It’s very hard to make statements about the industry as a whole because it’s debatable what exactly ‘SEO’ is. Mix in the fact that most SEO companies keep their methodology and campaign strategies secret and we have a situation where every company is totally different with very different results.

Fact 1 : There is no unified SEO methodology. SEO is actually defined by wikipedia as a process of improving traffic from SERPs to a site. Of course, HOW they do that is the real question and causes the debates.

Fact 2 : The effectiveness of an SEO campaign depends on the site structure, site content, keywords, methodology used, and how popular the site is. A site cannot just rank for any random keyword. SEO is also not voodoo. It is logic, problem solving, and Web marketing mixed together. If your site provides no value to users, it probably won’t rank.

Fact 3 : Some ‘SEOs’ do search engine optimization and some do search engine manipulation. Of course, it is all marketed as SEO. Unethical optimization provides results at any cost and is always short term (usually ends in a banned domain name). Ethical optimization opens up the site to the search engines and provides long term benefits.

Fact 4 : Most SEO companies get paid whether or not your site gets any rankings. Unfortunately, this is the case with the industry. Most SEO companies implement A, B, and C and move on to the next client. Hopefully, the site ranks. If it doesn’t, they always have more clients.

Fact 5 : Most SEO companies use both ethical and unethical inbound linking strategies.To maximize profits, it is very common for SEO companies to buy bulk links from India, links on spam/scraper web sites, or sell large directory submission packages. It is also common for SEO companies to place huge amounts of the contract into inbound linking to make up for the poor quality of the site optimization.

I don’t think it is fair to characterize the industry as a whole without figuring out what is wrong with it and how SEO companies can overcome it. So how exactly do we determine what is good and bad about the industry? I have now been involved with the Web for over 10 years and, specifically, with the SEO industry for almost 4 years and I’ve seen the inner workings of major SEO companies and worked with clients who had been burned by their previous SEO campaigns. Combined with numerous Web postings and forum debates talking about the same basic problems, I’ve compiled a list of the most common issues.

Problem 1: Responsibility for Results

It’s no secret that the vast majority of SEO companies take no responsibility for results. It is a fact that no SEO company can guarantee results (and if they do, they are lying to you). It is also a fact that the client is taking a risk by spending money with an SEO company that basically says ‘We’ll do what we can’. SEO companies simply guarantee they’ll do the work to ‘optimize’ the site, but without full disclosure of their methodology, what exactly is the client paying for? No other industry sells a product with no guarantees and no specific list of work that will be completed. Of course, SEO work is basically the sales of information and keeping the specifics of a methodology is important, but the combination of secrecy and no responsibility for results really makes SEO campaigns risky. So, how can an SEO company reduce the risk for the client and provide the best grade of service?

Answer 1: Incentive Based Pricing

The only real way to reduce the financial risk of the client is to share the risk. Through incentive-based pricing, the SEO company can charge a certain percentage of the total contract (say 70%) to cover their intellectual property and time while placing the rest of the contract price (remaining 30%) in incentives for success. Of course, incentives and their percentage of the contract would be totally relative depending on the campaign. This first step into sharing in the risk provides both reassurance to the client that the company believes in its methodology and places some of the financial burden of the campaign on the SEO company. At the moment, however, very few SEO companies are willing to share in the risk and charge the same price whether the client gets top rankings or no rankings at all (or possibly even lower rankings).

Problem 2: Unethical Optimization

Unfortunately, unethical (or blackhat) optimization is still very prominent on the Web. It’s also unfortunate that ‘SEO’ has been mistakenly confused with ‘Blackhat SEO’. This is still the biggest problem for SEO companies. Saying that all SEO companies deal in blackhat optimization is like saying everyone who emails is a spammer. Blackhat optimization is not optimization at all…it is search engine manipulation. Because there is so much money tied to top rankings, there will always be a market for unethical SEO and search engine spam. Until companies realize what is ethical and unethical and stop supporting those blackhat SEO companies, they will continue to thrive. This makes the industry as a whole look bad and does not reflect the ethics of good SEO companies. Blackhat provides fast, short term results, but is never a good option in the long run.

Answer 2: Ethical Optimization

There is no quick and easy solution to blackhat optimization’s stain on the SEO industry. I would suggest that all marketing departments research optimization techniques and educate themselves on what techniques are unethical. No SEO company is going to say they do unethical optimization. It’s also not a good idea to immediately trust a company or product based simply on their rankings. Unethical optimization DOES provide rankings…just not for the long run.

It would also be helpful if the major search engines would be more open and accessible to SEO companies. Currently, the major search engines and SEO companies do not deal with each other and have formed a sort of love-hate relationship. Because of this, many ethical SEOs have slowly moved into dark territory. Ethical optimization seeks to make sites more easily accessible to the engines and help to improve the engine’s search results. The problem is that the search engines mainly clump all SEO companies together the same way as uninformed users do: search engine manipulation. This is just not the case. Search engines do not want to reveal what they consider unethical because it would basically be providing a list of holes in their algorithms that blackhat SEOs would be able to manipulate further, but a defined list of ‘what not to do’ would provide a definitive list for businesses looking for an SEO company.

Basic Rules of Ethical Optimization

Any campaign that does not abide by the following rules is dealing in unethical optimization techniques and should be avoided.

1.) What the user sees and what the search engine sees should be exactly the same. Do not hide anything.

2.) Your keywords (and the resulting optimization) should exactly reflect the content of the page.Keywords should always reflect what your site is about.

3.) Do not build out pages exclusively for search engines. The site should always cater to both audiences (users and search engines). Catering to only users is why optimization is necessary. Catering only to search engines is optimization gone too far into blackhat.

4.) Do not participate in manipulative inbound linking schemes like link farms, bulk links, triangle linking, or any other unethical manipulation of your Google PageRank or link authority. Inbound links should be relevant to the content of your site and you should always know who is linking to you and where your links come from.

Problem 3: Assembly Line / Software SEO

With the growth of the SEO industry has also come the automation of SEO. The absolute first thing any prospective SEO client should know is that all effective SEO campaigns are custom. There is no checklist of items that will work exactly the same on every site. If the SEO company claims there is, then they are not doing full optimization and the campaign is minimal. A good optimization campaign optimizes the site architecture, text content, and code of the site. Assembly line SEO does not take into consideration the unique needs/design of the site and may even deal in blackhat optimization. SEO software especially should be looked at closely. There are really only two things SEO software could do that would work for any site: doorway pages (showing engines one thing and users a different thing; which is unethical) or a system of pages build exclusively for search engines (often called info or information pages and linked in an out of the way part of the page). Doorway pages are 100% unethical and info pages are deep in the gray area. Neither of those two methods address the architecture of the site, proper keyword analysis, or effective text content. The following links are examples of automated SEO software freely available on the Web. All links contain ‘nofollow’ to prevent the sites from getting inbound link credit from our site. These sites are NOT recommended by TreeHouse SEM.

http://doorwaypagemaker.com/ – Doorway page system; UNETHICAL

http://www.doorway-wizard.com/ – Doorway page system; UNETHICAL

Answer 3: Custom Campaign and Assessment

‘SEO Software’ may be cheap and affordable, but you get what you pay for. Any campaign that is going to slap on additional pages are simply sell you links is NOT an effective SEO campaign. Any SEO effort that simply has you add a few ‘optimized’ pages to your site is not going to be optimal. If you wanted to convert a street car into a race car, you don’t simply add racing strips to it. Don’t think that dumping a few pages on your site targeted to some random keywords is the same as a real SEO campaign.

If your SEO company will not sit down and talk about the layout, architecture, and aim of your site, then it is not providing a top-end service. Remember that the vast majority of ‘SEO software’ either is for building doorway/landing pages or simply providing you with data about your site (data that is already free to everyone on the Web). Good SEO campaigns take into account both the user and the search engines…not one or the other. An SEO company should have a commanding understanding of user experience and search engine optimization and use these in combination to create a campaign that will provide the best ROI. The end goal should always be leads/sales. Bringing in piles of non-targeted traffic often leads to extremely high turn over rates and very low lead conversion.

Conclusion

Do your research. Find out what you want from an optimization campaign and then ask the right questions. Make sure that the sales representative you talk to knows what they are selling. If they do not, they are definitely not the person to get information from. A lot of SEO companies use hard sale tactics and the reps are less than knowledgeable about what they are selling. Ask the following questions and see what they have to say.

1.) How do you assess keywords? If an SEO company simply optimizes for whatever keywords are sent to them by the client, the SEO campaign starts off on very shaky ground. Keyword analysis should be performed that takes into account the number of searches in all the major search engines and the relative competition for those terms. The site should also be compared to the keywords to see if they support each other.

2.) Do you plan on building out pages specifically to house keywords? Landing pages and doorway pages are not effective long term SEO options. SEO companies like them because they do not have to touch the rest of the site and it’s very easy to simply add band aids instead of performing surgery.

3.) Will my SEO campaign also help improve the user experience of the site? Proper architecture and usability goes hand in hand with SEO and helps increase ROI. You should want to bring in new traffic and convert it.

4.) Does my revenue model affect my keyword selection and the optimization as a whole? Any SEO company that does not optimize based on the target audience is NOT providing the most effective campaign. An ecommerce site marketing to comparative shoppers will want to optimize heavily for product names and model numbers. An online magazine wanting to bring in recurring traffic will want to optimize for article topics and specific themes. Local companies will want to optimize for geo-targeted keywords.

5.) I want to optimize my site, but do not want to change any of the existing content or layout…how would you go about this? Any SEO company that says they will simply add on landing pages or hide text is selling blackhat. This goes back to the earlier analogy. You are really saying that you have a car that you want to modify to be very fast, but do not want to modify the engine and the mechanic simply adds racking stripes and charges you full price.

Author: Steve Devries
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Wordpress plugin Guest Blogger

Both pay-per-click and SEO are targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of search engine results as possible. Marketing and SEO are different, yet very, very similar. SEO are considered as the main factors in enhancing the traffic of one’s website. The concepts of good SEO are hardly a secret. The people who least understands issues with URL structure and SEO are the very people who create them: web developers, programmers, and software developers.

Many long-time SEOs are now looking at the big picture and working with usability analysts. Some SEO are scam artists. I find it interesting that so many newcomers are given the wrong impression that there is one almighty answer to doing well in search engines. SEO are specialized techniques used to optimize your web site, to be Search engine friendly and increase your chances of placing well in searches. But SEO can also be the most profitable methods of driving leads because any leads you receive from SEO are free leads.

There are a large number of companies that adopt a fast and unethical approach to SEO known as Black Hat SEO. They employ unethical techniques that are against search engine policies. The best results from SEO are rarely achieved overnight. Black hat SEO are the techniques used to fool the search engines in order to bring in more traffic to websites. Website owners who unknowingly utilize black hat techniques of SEO are more vulnerable to changes in search engine algorithms and faced being banned.

Most hardcover books on the subject of SEO are best viewed as a vehicle to help the beginner understand the process of search engine optimization. This is because the principles behind SEO are not easy. They are very informative and most webmasters are involved in SEO and using it. White hat and black hat SEO are two opposing views of how to do search engine optimization. In a nutshell, SEO are methods that aim to improve the position or rank of a website in the listings produced by search engines. The benefits of SEO are almost unlimited.

Watch out for SEO Tools and software that is outdated and totally useless. Always research before you buy any SEO software because the search engine Algorithms are constantly changing thereby improving their search technologies to provide the most relevant results for their users. SEO tools for Google, MSN and Yahoo are numerous. SEO tools for press release optimization were also launched by PRWeb at the end of June called SEO Wizard. Search engine optimization is not easy, but with the right SEO tools, your website promotion task just got a lot easier. Blogs are one of the best SEO tools around and some like WordPress are free. Google Sitemaps’ are a powerful SEO tools which you can get free by visiting my website.

MSN has launched a suite of SEO tools to go with their Pay Per Click product Adcenter. There are many SEO tools available on the internet, some are better then others, and some are not. Header tags, proper Keyword density, proper text formatting fonts, start text key-phrase as whole phrases, alt image tag text, links pointing to your site and each page and your domain name itself are some things to pay attention too. Many specialized SEO tools can help you determine the popularity and the competitiveness of your possible keywords and can help improve your search engine ranking particularly in Google.

Writing fresh content for SEO plays a large role in keeping visitors on a web site. Let’s talk unique web page content and SEO content strategy. Finding a good SEO content writer is easier than you think. Just run a Google search or checkout elance.com. What is good SEO Content? It is unique, quality information that your visitors can use and is helpful to them. RSS feeds are an invaluable tool in the SEO content toolbox. If you scrape SEO content and end up scraping a couple spam pages, you may get noticed even more because someone is investigating the other spam pages.

The primary factor that will determine whether your SEO content is “good enough” is the content provided by competing websites. You need unique content that nobody has in order for it to pass duplicate content filters. Thats why it is important to get your content articles indexed before you submit them to the search engines. I think nowadays though search engine algorithms can trace back the content and see who published it first, so at least make sure you publish it to your website or blog before submitting it to article directories.

To strengthen the theme of your web site, you need keyword rich SEO content. SEO content writing tips content writer’s main aim is to create a new written piece which is original, simple, informative and also to the point. Write specific targeted SEO content for the independent pages. Unique SEO content remains king. Showing your visitors you can really write unique, compelling content, your traffic will grow very fast. Earlier it was just content writing but now it is widely known as SEO content writing. However there are some strict rules enforced on SEO content. Once you have visitors, your SEO content should be converting them into customers. With effective SEO content on your website, half of your search engine rank optimization work is done.

Ethical search engine optimization is a must or you will get banned. Its not if, its when. Search engine optimization was and still is fascinating to me. Search Engine Optimization is a crucial part in a websites success. The objective of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to achieve high natural search engine placement for relevant keywords or keyword phrases. Hiring an ethical search engine optimization company to rank well in the natural results is essential to long term success.

Your white hat Search engine optimization (SEO) campaign will provide you with a long term increase in targeted traffic and qualified visitors to your Web Site. Visit my site often and add it to your favorites as I update you with the latest news and rumors in the search engine optimization industry everyday. The effects of bad search engine optimization are devastating and very depressing. Each website is unique in its own way and hence your (SEO) plans differ from website to website.

My site has some tips on how to perform search engine optimization (also know as SEO) on your website. I have a free, comprehensive guide to the practice of search engine optimization for those unfamiliar with the subject if you send me an email. There’s a lot of hype out there about search engine optimization (SEO) services. Some are good and some are bad. Read through Googles terms of service as they have some information on their site about it.

Too often, visual design and SEO are perceived as a mutual sacrifice. Pay-per-click and SEO are targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of search engine results as possible. Pay-per-click cost money, but the clicks from SEO cost you nothing. SEO are considered as the main factors in enhancing the traffic of one’s website. Both, PPC and SEO are important. The truth is, the most rewarding part of SEO are often the slowest to reward. PR and SEO are based mostly on editorial credibility and relevance, not a direct payment for exposure.

SEO are specialized techniques used to optimize your web site, to be Search engine friendly and increase your chances of placing well in searches. There are a large number of companies that adopt a fast and unethical approach to SEO known as Black Hat SEO. The main components of on-page SEO are optimization of the title tag, the headline tag, the body text and the Meta tags. Companies interested in SEO are occasionally not very happy with how their website looks. Programmers with an understanding of SEO are in high demand. As a matter of fact, sites with excellent Search Engine Optimization are making giant leaps in rankings and getting a major boost in free traffic with Googles new update.

Great web usability and SEO are wasted if folks who visit your web can’t tell that you are worthy of their trust. Those who specialize in SEO are in the unique position of understanding the web in a way that no traditional marketing agency can hope to. White hat and black hat SEO are two opposing views of how to do search engine optimization so if you use one, choose with great care. The second most important aspect for high SEO is the headers. Use H1, H2, H3, H4 headers.

Many of the techniques that can be used for SEO are banned by the various search engines. The benefits of SEO are almost unlimited. Bad techniques of SEO are a strict ‘NO’ – Like same color text as the background and Doorway pages can get your website banned. The five forces of SEO are relevant Keywords, unique Content, clean Code, relevant Links and proper use of Technology. Designing for users and designing for SEO are not mutually exclusive goals. There will be compromise. White hat SEO are techniques that follow precisely the rules and guidelines provided by search engines stand a better chance of receiving traffic and higher rankings than black hat techniques.

For this reason it is important to try to stay updated as far as new SEO are concerned. The off-page elements of website promotion and SEO are just as important. The majority of issues with SEO is very basic and just takes time to be picked up on search engines. Web design and SEO are two very different disciplines, but a certain degree of collaboration is required. It’s easy to see why effective SEO are now very much in demand. Black hat SEO is techniques used to trick or manipulate search engines for higher rankings.

If done properly, the results of your SEO efforts are very impressive. Those who practice what some refer to as “ethical” and “correct” SEO are called White Hat SEO’s. The most important for SEO is to follow the rules and you wont have anything to worry about.

Author: Patricia Tuley
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Guest blogger