Most webmasters today hardly have enough time to manage their web business and like to outsource most things which can be outsourced effectively. Outsourcing a web design or a service like SEO saves precious time and money when done correctly. The challenge most webmasters face today is finding the correct outsourcing partner. One who is well qualified to carry out the job, has the necessary references of past work experience and is also affordable. This article is an attempt to guide webmasters to correctly outsource SEO services.

The SEO Outsourcing checklist:

1. Does the SEO Company/Professional you are hiring have a pre-formed plan for how they plan to execute your project?

2. Are they professionally qualified and do they have any third party certification which can be verified by you?

3. Do they have a website where you can examine their credentials, prices, testimonials, SEO package details?

4. Do they have contact details on their website like a phone number and physical address (not a P.O box)?

5. What are their hourly rates and how many hours are they committing to your project?

6. Have they clearly specified all applicable charges upfront – for example, link subscription charges, post ranking maintenance charges etc.?

7. And most importantly, do they practise ethical white hat SEO? This is very important unless you want your site to get banned.

These are some of the pertinent questions you should ask when it comes to outsourcing you project. Most professional and reputed SEO’s / SEO firms will fulfill all the above requirements.

In addition to the above, you should ask your provider if your SEO service includes the following:

1. Site Visitor Usability and SE Indexability Analysis:

a. How user friendly is your website?

b. How Search Engine friendly is your website?

c. Does it have a clear navigation menu?

d. Does it have a Sitemap?

e. Is Important information easily accessible to the visitor?

f. Is there Javascript on your site? Does it contain Framed pages? etc.

2. Log file Analysis:

a. How much time are your visitors spending on your site?

b. Are they leaving in less than 10 seconds and why?

c. What are the pages they are viewing most?

d. Which keywords are visitors using to find your site?

e. Which Search Engines and other sites are referring the most visitors?

f. What are error pages are your visitors coming across? etc.

3. Keyword Analysis:

a. Are you using the right keywords for your site?

b. What is the search volume of your chosen keywords?

c. What is the KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) of your keywords?

d. How many keywords are you targeting for your entire site and what is your keyword sitemap (which keywords will be used on which page)?

e. Are you using synonyms and other keyword variants?

4. SEO Analysis:

a. Preliminary assessment report and competition analysis which should contain relevant information about who are your competitors, why they are ranking better than you and other details about your site like link popularity, Authority links, Trustrank links etc.

b. On page factors on your site that need to be changed or added, for example – meta tags, robots.txt, link anchor text, alt text etc.

c. Copywriting content for SEO

d. ILQ (incoming link quality) analysis

e. Creating additional content pages and rearranging existing pages if needed

5. Final Analysis and Recommendations Report:

a. To recommend step by step changes and actions needed from above 4 reports

b. Form a clear Action plan for executing recommended changes and a road map and timeline for it.

6. Follow up with Monthly Progress Reports and Ranking change reports:

a. Monthly progress reports should mention the details of the activity the SEO has carried out in the previous month for the client, the number of hours spent, links exchanged, links bought etc.

b. Ranking reports should indicate previous month rankings compared to past months for all keywords and the top pages.

7. Project Completion:

a. Finally, after desired rankings have been achieved, the SEO Company or SEO professional hired should provide a post-SEO recommendation Report for maintaining necessary rankings which should include the details of actions the webmaster needs to take to keep rankings intact, for example – paid link subscriptions that need to be paid monthly, article writing and distribution that needs to be done etc. If you have agreed to sign up for a post-SEO maintenance plan, this would be a good time to sign a fresh contract for a preset period – say 6 months or 1 year.

b. If the project was outsourced through a freelancers site like Elance.com, Guru.com, Scriptlance.com, Getafreelancer.com etc. make sure that you leave a truthful and accurate rating for the SEO company or freelancer you hired. This will help other webmasters evaluate them in the future.

c. All payment related transactions should be sorted out and payments due to the SEO firm, if any, should be made promptly.

Adhering to the above 7 steps and using them at the pre-bidding stage will ensure that you and your SEO company are on the same page, and they can then give you a more accurate quote for your job. This will provide you a complete SEO Solution.

We estimate that carrying out a full SEO job (including reporting) for a website, takes between 50-100 man hours of work for normal small business websites, 100-200 hours of work for a mid sized site and 200-300 hours of work for a large business site (depending on the keywords, quantum of work, type of site, backlinks, current rankings etc). These hours are generally spread over 3 – 6 months as achieving sustainable rankings takes time. If you are unsure about the number of hours that may be needed for your site, it is better to consult with a professional SEO firm beforehand. Most Search Engine Optimization companies will gladly give you a free estimate on the number of hours of work needed for optimizing your site and getting top ten rankings. Once you know that your site, for example, needs between 50-75 hours of SEO work, make sure that you mention this fact in your pre-bid stage as well. This will help avoid any misunderstanding later.

Most amateurs quote ridiculously low prices for SEO jobs on the freelance sites as A) they are not sure of the quantum of work involved, B) they are not qualified to carry it out, C) their definition of SEO is changing a few meta tags and other basic on page SEO factors, and/or D) they may still be in school/college freelancing part time for some extra pocket money. As a result – they muck up their client’s site and also waste their precious time. They can also get your site banned by trying black hat tactics as they do not have a reputation to protect.

The following should raise red flags:

- those who charge less than $20/hour

- promise to complete your job in 15/30 days

- estimate less than 50 hours of work

- have no website/blog

- cannot provide you references of real people (past clients).

- have no qualification/certification

- do not provide their telephone number and address

- cannot show you the top rankings they have achieved

One thing webmasters must remember is “if you pay peanuts, you will only get monkeys”. So, it always pays to hire a professional SEO Company for your important business website.

Author: Ameet Arurkar
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Smart cooker

I know you see it all the time on the Net these days, but you
still don’t know what the heck it is. RSS, RSS, what in the
world is RSS and what can it do for me?

RSS which is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication has also
stood for Rich Site Summary. Regardless, it is an XML based
form of delivering content to the masses. One of the main
reasons why it has become so popular is the fact that it is
free (reminds of the reason why MySQL and PHP is so popular as
well).

It makes it a very simple way to create a site with loads of
content without a huge knowledge of web design or html. And no,
you don’t have to set up huge partnerships with big content
sites, you can just grab their information via an RSS feed and
you are up and running. Content worthy of the search engines.
RSS has been around for a few years, but it just started
getting popular in the last couple of years. There have always
been ways to deliver fresh, new content to your visitors
through the use of javascripts, but RSS is much easier which is
why it is catching on like wildfire.

Don’t expect it to go anywhere anytime soon. RSS is here to
stay. Long ago, people have realized that content was king, but
getting to everyone was always the problem. Enter RSS

Need More Information on the History of RSS?
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rssVersionHistory

HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN RSS FEED FOR FREE

It really isn’t that hard to create a feed manually. If you
have a basic knowledge of HTML, then this should be a breeze
for you. It seems complicated at first, but I found some great
tutorials that can help you.

How to Create an RSS Feed

[http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/website/view.cgi?dbs=Article&key=1059503386]

Make RSS Feeds

http://www.make-rss-feeds.com/making-an-rss-feed.htm

Now if you would rather use software or scripts to create your
own RSS feed, then you can try out these options on our RSS
Feed Creation Software Page

RSS FEED SOFTWARE FOR CREATING YOUR OWN FEEDS

Now if you would rather not create the feed manually, there are
some tools to help you create your feeds. Gotta love software
automation.

Here are some of the more popular picks

FEEDFORALL: feed creation tool that allows webmasters to
create, edit and publish RSS feeds. http://feedforall.com

LISTGARDEN RSS FEED GENERATOR PROGRAM

Creates and maintains RSS feeds

Produces both XML and optional human-readable companion HTML

Open source (FREE)

Requires no knowledge of XML or the RSS data format
http://softwaregarden.com/products/listgarden/

RSS BUILDER is an easy to use FREE service to create RSS feeds
for your web site. It provides a simple interface that lets you
add topics, links and content, and then publish the RSS (v2.0)
feed to your web server with one click!
http://rss.icerocket.com/

HOW TO DISPLAY RSS FEEDS ON YOUR SITE

Whether you have every intention of creating your own RSS
feeds, it is a great way to keep fresh content on your site, by
grabbing other RSS feeds.

But how can you display other feeds on your site? Simple….

CARP (CACHING RSS PARSER)

RSS feeds on your webpages

Free and Paid Version Available

http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/

FREE RSS TO JAVASCRIPT SERVICE

Converts any RSS feed into a Javascript code to paste on your
site. [http://www.rss-to-javascript.com/]

RSSlib – this library allows you to add RSS content to your
site (PHP or ASP). http://www.2rss.com/software.php

This is just a quick primer on how RSS works but it will help
you to understand just how useful it is to you and to your
content. Have fun with it.

The above article can be reprinted as long as the resource box below is included. Please do not plagiarize.

Author: Donesia Muhammad
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: US Dollar credit card

As a business director, owner or senior manager you may have never heard of a writing guru. However if you or your business has anything to do with an online presence, then you need to get up to speed asap before you miss the boat.

Just as business gurus are no strangers to conventional off line business, a writing guru is key to achieving exponential internet seo (search engine optimisation) natural organic growth.

Many offline businesses fail miserably when making the transition from off-line business to on-line business. Utilising the writing content skills of a conventional sales and marketing writer and proofreading specialist are usually two of the first mistakes made.

It is critical to understand internet seo, what it is, what it isn’t, what it’s for and what it isn’t for before even contemplating writing content for your new online business.

For a number of years internet seo companies and just about every individual tech guru I have ever employed basked in the glory of what conventional business gurus call the Voodoo and black magic of internet seo.

It suited them all to maintain an aura of mystic and elitism about SEO, because it enabled them to charge higher fees and dictate the terms of their retainers.

In reality once you crunch through the waffle and bull**it and employ a number of these seo specialists, it becomes clear and apparent that internet seo is not half as difficult as some specialists would have you believe.

Now it is fair to state that there are obviously a number of very professional and successful seo tech gurus in the online marketplace. The problem is finding them.

As the international business guru my full time occupation is a business growth consultant. I assist many businesses from multiple business sectors and have provided my business support, advice, training and consultation services in 42 different countries.

For the past few years I have been heavily involved in producing alternative complimentary revenue generation streams for offline businesses by placing them online.

This means that I have personally dealt with many web design companies, web developers, programmers and search engine optimisation specialists. When I tell you that I have had to fire 6 major seo companies in the last 2 years it should give you an indication of how poor the service offered by some of the major players is.

All of the seo companies I fired were dismissed because they failed to achieve more that what we could achieve ourselves in-house. They all made lots of promises but all failed to deliver more value than cost.

Whenever I enter a new business that has a desire to make the transition to an online presence, virtually every business owner states that he or she want to achieve first place on Google. I know this is not just something I have come across, as many other business gurus tell me they receive the same feedback.

So Google first position on page one is the bench mark that most business owners have in their minds. Frequently when dealing with most seo companies they will inform you that this mind-set is pre-programmed for failure.

All six of the seo companies I fired insisted when they signed up for their monthly retainer fees,that to achieve a first position listing on Google is a 9 to 18 month task for any new web site. Numerous reasons were given for this, but after you learn about internet seo and how it works, you soon realise this is factually incorrect.

In my experience employing a proven internet seo writing guru can get you high rankings in a relatively short time frame. The problem is finding a proven internet seo writing guru is very difficult because they are frequently snatched up by the larger seo companies.

However with the proliferation of businesses expanding on the internet it is becoming more common place to source a writing guru to produce all your online writing content and internet seo proofreading at a very realistic seo price.

This article is only focussed on natural organic growth positioning from producing written articles for organic search engine positioning.

Writing guru top 5 seo secrets by the international business guru describes how retaining the services of a writing guru to promote your online sales & marketing, or internet seo can help grow your business exponentially at a great seo price.

Business gurus are actively promoting a writing guru for writing content to slay online business competitors at great writing rates. A tech guru doesn’t have the internet seo proofreading skills to succeed.

The following top 5 seo secrets are just some areas for consideration.

#1 What Business Clients Want

Most clients want first page Google positioning at a reasonable seo price. Any professional internet seo writing guru or tech guru will advise you that prospective customers are 4 to 6 times more likely to buy from a company who feature on the left hand natural organic growth side of the search engine page than from companies featuring on the right hand side as PPC or sponsored links.

The first top 5 seo secrets from the international business guru is to employ a proven writing guru who understands how to achieve this by producing clever writing content and keen key word/phrase proofreading skills. A select number of business gurus will be able to point you towards a skilled writing guru who charges reasonable writing rates for your online writing marketing and writing media.

#2 Internet Seo

If you want your business to explode with sales on the internet, then the two most common methods are internet seo sometimes called natural organic growth positioning, which shows up on the left hand side of your screen when you type in a key word or phrase. The second is pay per click, known as PPC, or sponsored links. These typically appear on the right hand side of your screen and sometimes above the organic growth positions.

Natural organic growth positioning requires someone like an internet seo writing guru to write an article about you or your business. All search engines proclaim they exist first and foremost as information directories.

They like to provide informative articles for their online customers. Always check your writing content and proofreading and ensure your tech guru sources all your online writing marketing and writing media at a competitive seo price because the international business guru advises writing rates can vary significantly.

Business gurus advise the idea, is to write an article that is so credible that all the search engines recognise its value to their customers and it places high on the organic growth positioning.

#3 Writing Content

The international business guru suggests the success of writing marketing or writing media articles for internet seo comes down to the quality of the writing content.

Sometimes a writing guru will team up with a tech guru to ensure absolute top quality information is included in the article and that the proofreading is quality as well. Many business gurus foolishly maintain a blinkered approach to the seo price and writing rates when they should be focussing on the quality of the writing content.

#4 Tech Guru Proofreading

One of the top 5 seo secrets that all seo business gurus should be aware of the differences required by a writing guru for proofreading internet seo writing content. Writing internet seo content is very different to conventional business writing marketing or writing media. For example the international business guru states that one of the top 5 seo secrets is that an online writing guru may deliberately instruct the tech guru to allow some key word or key phrase spelling mistakes to remain in the article.

Although this flies in the face of conventional offline marketing, any skilled writing guru will have researched the online search phrases and if enough people key in a search word, or phrase which they spell incorrectly, then the writer will want to capture those search readers.

This is just one of the top 5 seo secrets that dictates a proven writing guru can command good writing rates without charging their clients an extortionate seo price,

#5 Writing Rates

This is the greatest one of the top 5 seo secrets, for which the international business guru advises the following. When you consider internet seo, writing content, writing marketing, writing media, proofreading and writing rates, you will never find a consistency from one writing guru to another.

When considering seo price, it’s best to focus on the quality of the article produced for you and the position or positions it has attained in the natural organic growth positioning.

Author: Dr Mark Yates
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Import duty tariff

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, or Search Engine Optimization is the art (and science) of bringing a web site to the top of Google and other major search engines for specific keywords that you want to target.

Since being on the first page and in the #1 position for your keywords always means more traffic to your web site, it is easy to see why there is such a high demand for effective SEO services today.

So, what does it take for your web site to rise to the top of Google? A lot of that is dependent upon the specific industry your business is in. For example, it would be fairly easy to rank #1 in Google if you had a unique service or product that nobody else had in Branson. But if you are wanting to rank well for a keyword like “branson tickets”, it would be much more complicated, due to the sheer number of other web sites that are also trying to compete for that keyword.

Just like any other “battle”, the more contestants you have playing, the tougher the competition is going to be. And SEO is definitely a battle – make no mistake about it. The modern-day SEO arena is home to some of the most ferocious Internet and Web-based marketing tactics known to man.

The reason for this highly-competitive force is the nature Internet marketing itself. Most businesses have embraced the Internet and World Wide Web as their primary channel for marketing, advertising, and information distribution channels. More and more businesses are trying to gain popularity and showcase what they have to offer to the entire world – not just the locals.

And it makes sense. The more people you can reach on the Web, the more customers and clients your business will attract altogether.

But still, there are a large number of web sites that only use minimal SEO tactics. And it’s almost shocking when you analyze a web site and clearly see that even text-book SEO elements have been neglected or omitted entirely. These are the same web sites for the businesses that are struggling to make ends meet, especially in the economic turmoil we are facing at the moment.

And what about the web sites for those businesses that are actually being prolific, in spite of the economy? Those web sites are the ones that have implemented professional SEO services to gain a better position in the search engines. And they are thriving!

It’s a well known fact that if your web site is not listed on the first page of Google, you are missing out on about 70% of all traffic on the Web today. That’s a pretty big number. But it’s very true. If your business is going to be successful on the Web, then you need to invest in a SEO campaign that can bring you all the way to the top.

And when you consider the cost of traditional advertising methods vs. SEO / SEM, you can clearly see that not only is SEO more affordable, it’s also more effective. By investing in quality SEO, you’ll see a much larger return on investment than you would with radio, TV, or yellow page advertisements. Plus, all of the traditional advertising methods restrict you to the local or regional market.

An effective SEO campaign will allow you to reach people from all over the world. Now that’s powerful!
You really need to have your web site optimized for the search engines by a qualified SEO professional who can deliver the search engine optimization services you need to stay ahead of the competition.

Here are a few tips to consider while you are seeking the right SEO professional to help your web site get a better rank in Google:

1. Find an SEO professional who is familiar with the market you are in. By understanding the competitive nature of your specific industry, your SEO professional will be better equipped to provide you with effective SEO services.

2. Ask to see examples of previous SEO campaigns that were a success. It is best if they have previously successful SEO campaigns that were for your particular market / web sites related to yours specifically. That way, you’ll know they fully understand how to compete with the other sites in your arena.

3. Find out how long it will take before you begin to see some results and improved search engine rankings for your web site. All quality SEO work takes time. It can be weeks or even months before you start to see your web site climbing up in the search engine results. It’s better to have an accurate time estimate before you start so that there are not any surprises later on down the road.

4. Ask the SEO professional what exactly will take place during the SEO campaign. Often times, many search engine optimization “experts” will be cryptic and try to avoid this question. And often, it is indicative of an inexperienced “wanna be”. Any good SEO professional worth his salt will be able to tell you exactly what will occur during your SEO process.

5. Avoid any SEO professional who claims to give you “x” amount of links for “x” amount of dollars. For example, if he tells you something like “I can give you 500 links for $500…”, then it is probably not going to be very effective SEO. All true SEO experts know that it’s the quality, not the quantity of links that matters the most.

6. Ask to be kept up-to-date during your entire SEO campaign. That way, you’ll be able to keep up on what is really going on, what work is being performed, how many hours are being invested, etc.

7. Find out ( before the SEO campaign begins ) what it is going to take to maintain the higher search engine position after you have reached it. All good SEO experts know that getting to the top of Google is only half the battle. Once you are there, it will require some attention and a little on-going work to insure that your Branson web site stays up there.

8. Make it very clear in the beginning that you do not want any “black hat” SEO techniques used during the process of your SEO campaign. Black hat SEO is the practice of implementing questionable SEO practices in the eyes of Google and it will certainly get your web site banned from the Google index!

Remember: always ask questions and stay informed. By keeping these tips in mind, you’ll have better chances of finding the right SEO professional to provide you with a very successful and effective SEO campaign.

Here at Digital Spiral Web Design, we specialize in affordable and effective SEO services for web site owners. We know what it takes to have success when competing with other business web sites in the search engines.

Already, we have launched several successful SEO campaigns and have achieved over 100 first-page placements in Google! We have the SEO knowledge and experience required to provide you with the best SEO services for your web site.

Author: Cole Pannell
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Duty on LCD/Plasma TV

As their name suggests, website inspectors examine flaws in websites in order for clients to obtain higher search engine rankings. Website inspectors carry out full SEO (search engine optimization) evaluation of websites and report suggested changes that should be made in order to make a website more search engine friendly.

Website inspectors perform in-depth SEO website analysis of website HTML code, including META tags and Alt image tags, along with SEO analysis of website design, keyword text weight, download time and other SEO features. Website inspectors then produce a detailed SEO report consisting of manually generated META tags, alt tags and suggest other website alterations.

There are a number of differences between website inspectors and other SEO companies. Most SEO companies only evaluate and report on general website HTML code and limited website design features. By contrast, website inspectors will offer detailed evaluations and SEO reports of HTML code, and all aspects of website design from textual relevance to aesthetic design. Website inspectors will offer a comprehensive SEO report consisting of workable alterations that should be made to a website in order to significantly improve search engine rankings for the long-term. General SEO companies, by contrast, will only focus on what is wrong with a website without offering many good suggestions to improve search engine rankings.

Most general SEO companies will provide customers with “cookie cutter” style SEO reports. This is to say that the vast number of SEO companies will evaluate a website using automated, report generating software and send their client a print out of a generic SEO report. Such SEO reports will provide irrelevant information to the clients website and will not provide any solid suggestions as to alterations that should be made in order to improve search engine rankings. By contrast, a website inspectors company will treat each website as a unique piece of material. A good website inspectors SEO company will refrain from using any automated software to analyse a website or to generate an SEO report.

Promoting user-friendly SEO reports and ethical, ‘white hat’ SEO practices is key to the ethos of website inspectors SEO companies. All good website inspectors SEO companies will refrain from using the out-dated practice of automated website submissions. Most generic SEO companies continue to use automated submission software although they know by now that such software submits websites to unorthodox, unethical sources such as FFA pages and link farms. Top search engines regard submissions to such sources as ’spamming’ and will ultimately result in websites being placed in the Google Sandbox for extensive periods of time, if not banned from search engine rankings entirely. Website inspectors SEO companies will only promote the ethical use of manual website submissions to discriminative sources.

Another consideration is that website inspectors SEO companies will alter their services to suit their clients needs. Good website inspectors SEO companies now offer on-site or on-page SEO website designs and SEO implementations in order to save clients a lot of time and hassle. Website inspectors offering on-site SEO website design will ask clients for access to website files in order to improve website features directly, so as to improve search engine rankings. Onsite SEO web design is a firm favourite of website inspectors clients who have limited website design and SEO implementation knowledge in order to promote their website in search engine rankings. Website inspectors SEO companies are seeing a great rise in clients opting for onsite SEO web design as they know that all onsite SEO web design implementations are performed by professionals who are well aware of effective and ethical SEO practices.

With all of these factors in mind, it is strongly recommended that clients seeking good SEO in order to improve website rankings look for website inspectors SEO companies if they wish to see long-term, positive search engine rankings. With comprehensive SEO reports and the option of onsite SEO web design at hand by SEO professionals, website inspectors are the way to go for anyone looking for strong and successful search engine rankings.

Author: Victoria Powell
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital Camera Information

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

If you followed this post over from Blogging For Noobs, then you know this mornings story.  The summation is I found a potential spamback link in my comments at the Celebrity Rumors and decided to follow it with due diligence before allowing it.  it was a spamback, but it had links to a wealth of good sites worthy of showing you.  Here they are.

While not the most important thing in a theme, the color scheme is certainly the first thing noticed by a visitor to your blog. This handy little color scheme picker will help you come up with an appropriate scheme quickly and easily.

I also found this three part series on usefull css code snippets. Part 1, 2, 3.

This is a nice graphically based use of rounded css corners complete with free graphics and code. The size they give you could easily work as a background image for your blog page.

This Web 2.0 Generator link page had a lot of great links for theme builders as well as just general bloggers.

Sadish Bala had some interesting links and advice of his own on his blog.

Emily Robbins hasn’t updated her blog, How To Blog, in along enough that I consider it abandoned, but that doesn’t stop the old stuff from being worth reading.

Design Disease has some great themes of their own for free.

I also found a really nice site, Web Designer Wall, with some recent articles on using large image backgrounds.

My limited programming knowledge didn’t make the next site very useful to me, but the more I am learning about Wordpress code, Devlounge’s article on how to write a wordpress plugin is where I am going to start reading.

The least utilized option in Wordpress, the custom field, is also quite possibly the most powerful function of the entire platform. I have been writing up my own tutorials on this option for several days now and thought I would share with you a few of the other great posts on the subject.

The Top 5 Uses for Wordpress Custom Fields  by  Oak Innovations Blog

For the vast majority of bloggers, this incredibly usefull, and versatile piece of functionality goes unused. At the moment you may be thinking that the reason you don’t use it, is that you have no use for it. This may very well be true but, its also likely that no one has really explained what’s possible.

Learn how to use Wordpress Custom Fields | Kriesi.at – new media design

WordPress gives an author the ability to add extra data to each written post and page. This data is called meta-data and is stored in custom fields.

WordPress Custom Fields Contest

If you are a wordpress blogger, how many times have you used the often overlooked feature called Custom Fields. It is sitting below this post page as I type and though I look at it everyday, I never got around to using it. Technosailor is organizing the WordPress Custom Fields Contest to bring forth the usefulness of this feature and its possible applications.

Jazz Up Your Site: 28 Ways To Use WordPress Custom Fields | Performancing.com

Reasons To Use Custom Fields

You create a custom field, then choose on a post by post basis what information you will add. That information can be manipulated by custom WP/PHP code to present additional textual or visual content when a visitor views a post page. To summarize:

1. Add metadata for reporting or other purposes.
2. Add visually cohesive elements to your site.
3. Manipulate information and control its display programmatically.
4. Make global changes across all your posts with a single code change, instead of manually updating each post.

The lists below show some ways that WP custom fields can be used to provide more textual and visual info to your site visitors. If you decide to change something, say a border or background or even placement on the post page, without custom fields you would have to make changes manually to each and every post. If you have hundreds of posts, you’d have a daunting task. With custom fields, you have structure and homogeneity through custom handler code.

redswish – a web design blog » The power of Wordpress Custom Fields

I can’t believe I’ve been playing with Wordpress for so long and never explored the Custom Fields feature. A website I’ve been working recently has required me to push the boundaries of Wordpress, or more appropriately my understanding and knowledge of it. In doing so I’ve bravely slipped deeper into the Advanced Options and lived to tell the tale – the tale of the Custom Fields…

WordPress Custom Fields; laying text over your lead graphic

WordPress Custom Fields; laying text over your lead graphic

For WordPress users, there are certain scenarios when the typical reverse chronological presentation of content is just not enough. I have experimented with different methods of presenting content on 5thirtyone.com each time a redesign is uploaded – from the text-centric to the image heavy version in use right now. With hundreds of WordPress driven blogs being published on a daily basis, it’s difficult to stand out; even more so if you stick to the standard two-column blog layout.

The undersigned » Blog Archive » WordPress how-to: Custom Fields

WordPress how-to: Custom Fields

Most WordPress users have seen the custom fields section when they write a new post or create a page – but what is it exactly?

Post 12 of 100 of Brad’s Tiny World Scribefire Challenge.

In the early days of web design one of the few interactive things you could do with your readers was set up a guest book. At first this was next to impossible because almost anyone and everyone who had a website was operating on free sites like Geocities, Angelfire, or Tripod. There was no cgo access unless you paid for it, so there was no interaction beyond the simple mail form. Eventually most of them had heard the call for interaction and offered up ready made guest books. By that time it was really too late to do anything about it, blogging had been invented and was taking quick hold on sites like LiveJournal and Blogger. The world of interactivity was upon the average website owner, and we went from simple users to publishers.

The advent of blogging with threaded post and comments we respond to or at the very least should be responding to left behind the old guest book format. Users could now interact with authors directly over on subject specific ideas. Simply put the guest book was stiff, bereft of use, pushing up digital daisies, had run down the curtained screen saver, had emptied the recycle bin with ccleaner, overwritten multiple times with randomized ones and zeroes, and joined auto-starting background midi files as things Skippy should never put on a site. The guest book was and ex-webpage! That was until I figured out a use for it.

I know you are thinking this guy is ought of his bloody mind. Well I might be, but never the less I know how to make the guest book useful once again. Every blogger gets comment like ‘this is nice’ and ‘I like the post’. For those of us kind bloggers using a dofollow system this is annoying crap. However with a nofollow guest book and a move comments plugin we can preserve those comments, because some of them actually mean what they say and could give a damn about the backlink, and keep our blogs from being fodder for spammers.  The second plugin you will want if you wish to keep dofollow status is a conditional plugin that allows for conditional nofollow noindex posts and pages.

Once you have your plugin installed you can start by creating the guest book. If you are a nofollow blog the process is pretty simple, just create called guest book add a few lines of text and stick the post link in your menu. Alternately if your theme allows for comments on pages you can make it a page and it should automatically go into your navigation structure. Assuming you are a kind dofollow blogger honoring your readers comments, you are going to need to do a few things differently for the guest book to work like it should and not screw up the rest of your blog.

After activating the plugins the next thing you will want to do is make a copy of your single.php and rename it guestbook_template.php. This is the file we will edit.  Top the top of this file you will want to add the following code:

<?php
/*
Template Name: guestbook
*/
?>

Once this page is uploaded create a new page using the guestbook page template.  Say a few words of kind warning about the kind of comments that should go in posts and the kind that belong here.  Set the page to nofollow and noindex and you are ready to go.  Move your comments at will and enjoy your new found guest book.

Post 8 of 100 of Brad’s Tiny World Scribefire Challenge.