Quality Content is the Heart of any good SEO program!
At click-finders, we like to think that the entire process of online promotions – with SEO related activities being the majority of our core work – is like the working machinery of a clock tower (or any time piece for that matter): the gears move all the time and the machinery is forever in motion, whether you see the gears turning or not. Of course, all websites can’t afford to be as nonchalant as actual clock towers are, can they? When lively hoods and jobs depend on sales and when the website is counted on for all of, or a portion of those sales, then it hurts when no one visits that website. In addition to that, when your content isn’t shared on Twitter and Facebook, not only does it sting a bit personally, it’s also a possible indication of website activity, which us why the major search engines like Google and Bing are placing more and more emphasis on social signals. That’s why internet marketing – including SEO – isn’t a one off marketing method anymore; there are many aspects and tools that must be employed successfully in order to win in the game of SEO. The problem is everyone wants it today! They want the success and benefits of good SEO Services without doing the work. You’ll be forgiven to think “short-term” and “instant” because that’s how we’ve all been spoiled and pampered in today’s fast paced, “got to have it now” society. In fact, be careful if you think that way with SEO because you are sure to be disappointed (best case scenario) and financially hurt (worst case scenario) if you fall into the trap of a disreputable SEO who promises one thing and delivers another.
“There are no magic tricks to ranking well. No secrets that I can share that will have you on the top of Google tomorrow for a competitive keyword. There is hard work, technical aspects, ups and downs and a commitment to this marketing method that you have never experienced before. But if you do it well, the payoff can change your business forever!”
Start with your own content
First of all, are you building content on your website? Is it industry related to the products and services you are offering? If you are, then let’s assume that all of the individual pieces of the content you produce are like individual products. If your blog posts, articles, whitepapers, reports, and social media content were to have a price tag, what would they be worth? Would you look at your own content as something you would actually pay for? Is it so valuable to your potential visitors that they would pay for it? If not, you may want to rethink your content strategy.
Be in the mindset that every post, article, or report could have made you money if you sold those pieces individually (complete with copyrights). Only, you don’t charge for such information. You give it away for your readers for free on your blog or perhaps as a digital download.
It’s this kind of information that’s shared, commented on, and linked to in today’s internet world. Do you see the SEO part kicking in? All those social signals pointing to your site, the numerous natural inbound links, the natural referral traffic – all this increases your opportunities to rank well while giving tremendous value to your readers.
Social Media
Recently, we published a post on the possible ROI of Twitter [What is the ROI for 10,000 Tweets on Twitter]. If we wanted to, we could spend countless man-hours analyzing the impact of our social media efforts on our business. You could do the same for your own business. But we would be missing the point entirely: Social Media isn’t like advertising on mass media. Don’t get us wrong, measure your efforts and ROI, but don’t lose sight of the fact that social media is about sharing, not selling. Social media is about being “social”; it’s about the strength of your core network. It’s about the unhindered word going out when your brand, products, and services are discussed. And when you do it really well, even “you” as a person will be discussed. Somehow, somewhere, all of this tends to come together and mean something for you, your brand, and your ROI.
The work is a never-ending cycle and is certainly resource-intensive; it takes patience and resolve. It needs you to be committed and relentless. But if you are, the rewards are limitless. Are you ready to succeed in internet marketing and SEO?
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.
Credit for image [Table of Elements for SEO] – http://searchengineland.com/seotable
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"I eat SPAM for breakfast"
March 2012 – Google rolls out the latest algorithm update, Panda 3.4. The number 3.4 is still in question as Google has only announced it as a Panda “refresh”. According to Google, only about 1.6% of search results were significantly affected, still that’s a lot of sites. Google also sent the update announcement via Twitter this time with a link to Blogger instead of just using their traditional media stream Blogger only. Not sure why they chose this route to deliver the news, but it still got the word out pretty effectively. You can read the entire Google update post here. The curious thing is how dramatic the affects have been in this update for some sites. Although they claim only about 1.6% we suspect it is actually much higher. Our testing and current results are showing a significant hit with any site that is not actively publishing fresh content via a blog on a regular and frequent basis and sites that are “over SEO’d”. What defines “over SEO’d”? Any site that has an unbalanced link profile with a heavy load of links only to the Home Page. Sites that are publishing a blog with fresh content rolling out regularly have seen a boost in rankings or have not been affected at all. Of course by publishing a blog the site generates fresh content and a naturally diversified backlink profile and that is what Google is looking for as far as we can tell.
Panda Refresh Announcement
SO WHAT’S CHANGED?
Well if you took the time to click over to the official blog post, you can see that they are pretty vague in the specifics of the update. However, we have seen some significant indicators and several other well-known and established SEO news sites (Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land and Search Engine News)are reporting the same indicators in their “Panda Refresh reviews”. Here’s what we are seeing:
- Diversified backlink profiles are winning – Having links from High PR sites as well as PR0 sites are more important than ever
- Diversified anchor text is winning – Varying your anchor text and not locking onto one keyword
- Having a mix of No-Follow and Do-Follow links is winning
- Solid Blog Commenting – Commenting on relevant blogs and linking back to your own. Linking out to other blogs and relevant resources from your own blog is winning
- Content Generation and Promotion – Having a blog that is active in your niche community. Sharing good content and attracting readers and commenters is winning
- Social Media – Tying it all together with Social Media promotion, interaction and engagement with your fans is definitely winning
- Diversified Link Profile – Making sure that the in-bound links to your site don’t just land on your Home Page, but link to relative content (landing pages, blog articles, etc.) and are as evenly distributed as possible is winning!
We’ve all been waiting for it, the day when 50 quality, industry related links outranks 10,000 spammy, forum profile links. That day is here. If you are already doing the above listed items on your website, then you most likely have already seen the benefit of your work, if not, chances are you have seen your rankings drop and in some cases significantly. Don’t panic, re-read this post and go to work. In no time at all you can be right back where you were or even higher in the rankings.
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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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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It’s the same I suppose, across all industries, not just SEO Services. You work hard for each and every sale. You make contact, build trust, present your ideas/solutions, negotiate pricing and then get the contract signed. Anyone want to guess what comes next? That’s right…the very next question is “how long before I start to see results?” Or, “why am I not seeing results sooner?” Now we, like any reputable SEO company out there would, do a pretty good job of explaining the process of SEO and estimating time frames for ranking results during the sales process. However, that still does not stop the questions or comments about why and exactly how long it is taking to start seeing results. So in the spirit of sharing some “tid-bits” of information I have learned over the years, the following article is all about the question “why am I not seeing results yet?”
“In a perfect world, you would be able to place your order for SEO on Monday and by the time you came into the office on Tuesday, you would be ranked number #1. Oh wait, that’s PPC!”
So let’s take a look at the SEO paradigm and break it down a little so we can understand what goes into an SEO package (if done properly) and what three factors play a role in the deliverables of any good SEO Services program.
Pick any two
In the above graphic, please note the four tiers of the SEO Triangle (more on each of these in a later post). They are the basic building blocks of any successful SEO program. The problem is that they all take time, money and energy to create good quality (or better yet…GREAT Quality) results. So if we agree that we have to have great quality results, that we want those results as quickly as possible and that we want to pay only what we absolutely have to and not a penny more…how do we decide what happens next?
“When it comes right down to it, you cannot have all of the above three triangle points (Quality, Speed and Low Cost). I tell my clients who don’t understand this that they can pick any two. Here’s what I mean by that…”
Pick any two! That’s right, you can only have two out of the three items on the triangle (Quality, Cost and Time). Which ones do you want? They invariably look at me like I have lost my mind, but after a quick explanation they understand and then make their selections and we go to work. Here is how I break it down;
Option 1 – I Want High Quality and I Want it Fast
Easy enough. If you don’t care what the cost is or have an unlimited budget, we can go as fast as possible (while still maintaining a natural look to Google) and get right to work to accelerate your SEO program. Again, your price is likely to be very high for this work. There is also an element of risk with any “accelerated” SEO program because Google may flag too much activity as un-natural and penalize your site for that activity. Only go this route with an experienced SEO that knows where the edge of the envelope is so you don’t fall off!
Option 2 – I Want it Fast and I Do Not Want to Pay a Lot
This is where most people get into trouble. There are a lot of SEO’s out there who promise you fast results like “top of Google in 30 days”. The bad part is that some people actually fall for this stuff. Let me explain one scenario that I have seen over and over again. Let’s say you own a web site that sells baby products like diapers, clothes, feeding bottles and more. Maybe you built the site yourself or had someone else build it, either way, the site has never been optimized for search engines. What these low level (I hesitate to call them scammers) SEO’s do is promise you top of Google in 30 days for only $250.00 or your money back! Or worse, no charge until you are on top and then it’s $250.00/month while you stay there. Let’s face it folks, anyone can get a web site to rank for “Tallahassee Baby Supplies by Joan, Inc.” in less than 30 days but how much traffic is that going to bring you? Is that a keyword that Google has indexed and shown as having “X” amount of traffic per month? I highly doubt it.
Option 3 – I Want High Quality and Low Cost
You can have a high quality SEO program at a very affordable rate if you don’t care that it takes 5 years to rank well for your keywords. Again, an effective SEO program does require a lot of effort and expense. The longer you allow for results the more the work can be spread out over a greater period of time and thus you have a lower monthly out lay. Please note that in the end, you may actually end up spending more for the final product.
“You get what you pay for. I grew up hearing my dad say that over and over. I learned that lesson at a very early age and it has served me well over the years. When I do get the occasional urge to try and skimp somewhere, it almost always comes back and bites me.”
Pick your SEO Services firm carefully. Make sure you ask the kind of questions that will give you the comfort level you need. A little bit of research on your part will go a long way and empower you to be able to ask some of these questions. In the end, people usually do business with people they trust. If your SEO Services vendor has not yet earned that trust, then why would you give them your business?
One last thought on cost…most SEO Firms will evaluate each customer individually and are capable of building custom plans that allow even the smallest of businesses to begin an SEO Program regardless of pricing shown on their web site or printed materials. If you think you cannot afford SEO, ask your SEO Vendor for a custom “starter plan”. If they are reputable, know what they are doing, they should be able to craft a plan that you can afford that will deliver some benefit to your SEO program. From there you can grow your business and therefore the SEO can EARN more business from you once you start to grow.
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