Please do not get me wrong…I am just as frustrated as the rest of you with Google and their Panda and Penguin updates, their “Holier than Thou“ attitude when it comes to SEO for small business and the SEO industry as a whole. But can we blame them? Honestly?
So in defense of Google and the Panda Penguin updates you have to look at the industry as a whole. When you have an industry this wide open, you are bound to get some “quacks” out there that claim to be SEO experts and actually do more harm than good. The automobile industry has fought this for decades and now it’s our turn in Search Engine Marketing world. So buckle up partners…this ride is only going to get worse for some of us!
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In 2013, more than half the staff in the average office will have heard of PPC, or pay-per-click, even if they don’t quite know what it is – but not long ago, only those who worked in digital marketing knew anything about it. Following the exponential growth of the digital marketing industry over the last decade, pay-per-click advertising is no longer a niche marketing medium. As we have moved towards a digital economy, few stragglers remain. Nearly all large, medium-sized and indeed many small companies, either having led the way or dragged kicking and screaming, have moved with the times.
Today you’ll rarely find an organization of medium or above size with a stake in the digital economy without the core components of a digital marketing function – typically a social media manager, a web analyst, an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) manager and a PPC, or paid search manager. If the company also does email marketing, you can add another head to that. The functions are occasionally combined – in really small companies, it may all fall to one person – but as anybody who has managed PPC campaigns on a large scale knows, it’s a full-time job.
Google AdWords is still by far the largest pay-per-click network, although Yahoo and Microsoft combined forces in 2010 to launch their own PPC platform, AdCenter, via Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
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SEO IS NOT DEAD!
But it is changing, by the minute.
SEO is not dead - Not yet anyway!
As with most Google Algorithm updates, the flurry of the “SEO is dead” posts, articles, tweets and rants have begun on Twitter, Facebook and 1,000’s of Blogs all over the Internet. And as usual, they are dead wrong. Although the fact remains that SEO (search engine optimization) is an ever moving and fluid entity, it is for all intents and purposes alive and well. The latest Google Algorithm has indeed changed the landscape of SEO and honestly, maybe even more than any other single update in the history of Google. But that’s okay. Relax, take a deep breath and know that SEO is alive and well.
SO WHAT HAPPENED?
Over optimization happened. Google has touted for years, “Build good content and you WILL rank well on your own”. Guess what? That was not necessarily true. In late 2011 and early 2012, several key SEO industry executives took a look at a couple of websites, both of which were on the same topic and about the same domain age and size. One site ranked in the top three on Google and the other was on Page 5 for the same keyword. The problem is that the first website was about 20 pages deep and was NOT developing and promoting content on their website on a regular basis. The second site was in fact developing great content on a regular basis, promoting that content via social media and yet they still ranked on page 5. So the SEO execs drilled down a little deeper and did a link profile for both the sites. Guess what they found? That’s right; site #1 had a whole bunch of suspect links running back to their site. In other words, it was obvious that the site had been “over optimized” and the links coming to it were of low quality. This goes against everything that Google has promised webmasters for years.
Okay…so what happened next? We are not 100% sure, but the indication is that these high level SEO’s took this data directly to Google and showed them the results of the study. Regardless of how this happened, there is no doubt that it DID affect the last round of Algorithm updates. Sites that had a lot of backlinks but no content generation and promotion tools were dropped (in fact are still dropping) in the rankings. Sites that had good SEO links, a content generation method and good content marketing efforts did not suffer at all, in fact some climbed in the rankings.
HOW DO I MOVE FORWARD
Well if you have not picked up on it yet, you need to develop good quality content, and share it through social media and social bookmarking sites. That means blogging about your industry, products and services and your company. Next, you need to get the word out as far and long as you can for each and every post using social media. Social media is the best place to share this content because if you are developing great content others will share it with their friends. If you have good enough content it might even go “viral”, which is SEO gold! That combined with a good solid SEO program and good on-site SEO and you will find yourself ranking better in no time.
INFOGRAPHIC OF THE NEW SEO:
The New SEO
Note that the “sweet spot” to rank well is much smaller on the new way of ranking. Why is that? Because the formula to rank has added a much more complex ranking factor in addition to the other already complex ranking factors of social signals, on-page SEO and Link-Building. Now you have to do it all and do it all well in order to rank high in Google. Don’t worry, it’s not as hard as it sounds and we can help you!
If you found this article helpful and you enjoyed it, please take a minute and share it through any of the social media share buttons located throughout the site. We love our social media friends and the shares we get and we certainly will return the favor when and where possible. You can also comment in the comments section below and regular commenters receive “Do-Follow” link status to help you with your SEO program!
click-finders.com offers a full range of Internet Marketing services including Affordable SEO Services, PPC Management, Social Media, Inbound Marketing, Affiliate Marketing and more. Contact us through www.click-finders.com, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and our Organic SEO Blog to learn more about Organic Search Engine Optimization and even request a FREE SEO Website Analysis.
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Getting to the top of Google
Ranking Number 1 on Google is the goal of every website owner that ever considered, dreamed about or implemented an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy. The benefits can far outweigh the cost or effort. Companies have literally been transformed overnight because of this achievement. Check this post out if you have ever wondered What Organic Search Engine Optimization Can Do For Your Business. That article is filled with data and statistics that can blow your mind, they are staggering to say the least. So let’s assume that you are convinced. You are ready. You want the fame and fortune that can come from the claiming the #1 spot on Google for your best keyword. What exactly is it going to take to get there? A lot of hard work, a little luck and some patience. But if you do it right….this is what you can expect to see one day:
Position #1 out of 171 Million Results
HAVE GREAT CONTENT ON YOUR WEBSITE
I know, I know….you are tired of hearing this. However, don’t discard this as another content is king post, it’s not. Bottom line is this, people visit sites and send their friends to websites and LINK to websites that have great content. If you don’t have great content, now is the time to develop a new content development strategy. This may include redoing, updating or revising your “on page” content or it may include installing and building a business blog and the beginning of content generation in that form. Blogs are wonderful tools for developing fresh, unique content on a regular basis. If you don’t have a blog and are not posting on it on a regular basis, you will lose in the search engine to someone who is. WordPress is a 100% FREE platform that is SEO friendly and more importantly, user friendly.
HAVE GOOD ON SITE TECHNICAL SEO
Make sure your site is coded properly and that you are “search engine friendly”. Here are a few things you should look at and make sure that you are 100% optimized for:
- HTML Meta Tags – Meta tags like <title>, <Meta description=”XXX”/>, <Meta keywords=”XXX”/> are all still very important and you should definitely be using your best keywords in these tags properly and often.
- On Page Content – Use your keywords in your on page content.
- Image ALT Tags – Make sure every image has <alt> tag descriptions with your chosen keywords.
- URL Structure – Make sure your URL structure is clean and concise. That your URL’s don’t use random character strings and that you do not have any broken links on your site.
LINKBUILDING
Assuming that you have great content and that your website is properly formatted, that still may not be enough to rank you on Page 1 of Google, never less position number 1. You may have to perform some website promotion, otherwise known as link building. When another website links to your site, Google sees that as a “virtual vote” from another webmaster and considers this the highest possible compliment. So promote your site and get as many industry related and relevant websites as you can to link back to you. Remember, quality of links is better than quantity. You can literally outrank a competitor that has 10,000 low quality links if you have 500 high quality, industry related and highly relevant links from high PR and trusted sites. Most people choose to outsource this particular function. Finding, cultivating and tracking quality backlinks can be very time consuming and monotonous. Finding a quality SEO service provider that offers Affordable SEO Services will save you a lot of time and a lot of mistakes and potential Google penalties.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Don’t like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Pintrest? Think they are for younger website owners or teenagers and there is no place for your business on these social media sites? Think again my friend. Google and Bing have both proclaimed loudly that they are using social media signals to help rank websites. What does that mean? It means, the more Facebook “likes” you have, the more Tweets you have with links to your website, the more YouTube views and “likes” you have the better your rankings will be. This is compounded to the “Nth” degree with Google+.
PATIENCE
Lastly, you do need to have some patience. If you just launched a brand new website you can pretty much forget about ranking on page one of Google anytime soon, unless you are ranking for a very long tail keyword or a keyword that has ZERO competition, meaning it will have few (if any) searches for it and thus useless to you and your business. It takes time to build trust and authority with the search engines, in some cases it may take a few years to rank for a highly competitive keyword, and that’s with the help of some good Professional SEO Services. So patience is a MUST. If you push too hard or get sucked into “black hat” techniques in hopes of speeding up the process, you may very well find yourself in the Google penalty box or worse, removed from the index altogether.
Follow these steps and you will be well on your way to some top rankings on Google, Yahoo and Bing! If you did just launch a website and HAVE to be on page one tomorrow, then you need Google Adwords and you will need to be running a Google Adwords PPC (Pay Per Click) Campaign. Our suggestion would be to split your marketing dollars on Adwords and SEO, that way you don’t get stuck on 100% Adwords for the life of your website.
If you found this article helpful and you enjoyed it, please take a minute and share it through any of the social media share buttons located throughout the site. We love our social media friends and the shares we get and we certainly will return the favor when and where possible. You can also comment in the comments section below and regular commenters receive “Do-Follow” link status to help you with your SEO program!
Click-finders.com offers a full range of Internet Marketing services including Affordable SEO Services, PPC Management, Social Media, Inbound Marketing, Affiliate Marketing and more. Contact us through www.click-finders.com, Twitter, Facebook and our Organic SEO Blog to learn more about Organic Search Engine Optimization and even request a FREE SEO Website Analysis.
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- Bad SEO’s are everywhere…
I know that we have posted a few recent images that cover the difference between “Paid results” and “Organic results” so I apologize right now for another. However, this topic is just too important not cover, even if it means I have to post another “Paid vs Organic” search result image yet again. Besides, this is an entirely different take on the subject that covers SEO Advertisers. But wait, aren’t they the guys that are supposed to know the difference between the two (paid vs organic)? Yep….you bethcha! We as Search Engine Optimization Professionals absolutely should know the difference. So why then, is there the need to cover this topic yet again? The reason for this blog post is to educate the general public about the difference. I received a call this week from a potential client who found us on the first page of Google (just like they are supposed to). After the initial introductions and pleasantries, we started getting down to the brass tacks of the conversation and I was asked, “if you are such a good SEO agency, why is XYZ firm at the top of the page and not you?”. The potential client was referring to a firm that was listed in the paid search results (the very top three on the page). Here’s another example of Paid vs Organic search results for those that do not know the difference:
Organic vs Paid Search
I used this particular example because it happens to be the exact search that the potential client used when searching for an SEO Agency to help him with his SEO program. Affordable SEO Services Company is a term that click-finders.com happens to rank #1 for out of 150,000,000 possible results. Pretty impressive huh? Anyway, after a few minutes of conversation, I explained to the caller that those top three results in the slightly shaded box are actually “paid ads” and that he should consider that strongly before making a final decision.
“As much as I hate to admit it, there are hundreds if not thousands of so called ‘SEO Agencies’ out there that take advantage of unsuspecting and uneducated business owners.”
So why then use Google Adwords to promote an “SEO Company”? Because there are just too many people out there that don’t know the difference between SEO and Paid Search. They type in a search term and click the top result and don’t think another thing about it unless they did not find what they are looking for, in which case they simply perform another search. An unscrupulous company might be one who then sets up a Google Adwords account and posts an ad for SEO Services and then just takes the money and does nothing for their customers. Or they charge a large amount of money and open an Adwords account for their new client and actually show them the results they got them.
Either way I think you really have to ask yourself if you want to hire a company to help you get to the top of the “organic search results” that has to have an Adword account and pay Google in order for you to find them. I would tread cautiously for sure and treat suspect any company that uses Paid Search to advertise for Organic SEO Services.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this article please share it with any of the multiple social media share widgets on this blog (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Social Bookmarking). Also, please feel free to comment below. I openly welcome any and all feedback, especially from other internet professionals!
Click-finders.com is a full service internet marketing company that offers a full range of services including Affordable SEO Services, PPC Adword Campaigns, Social Media Marketing, Web Development and more! Contact us today for a FREE no obligation SEO Analysis of your website and find out today, what it’s going to take to rank high in the search engines!
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