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Selecting An SEO – Musing On An Endeavor To Trademark SEO

Marseille Marc — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 05:42:19 +0000

There’s been a story brewing for quite some time about the attempt by Jason Gambert to trademark the term “SEO”. Gambert claims that the words “search engine optimization” have no real linguistic English value beyond being a process;. So, he’s trying to trademark “SEO” as a service, basically claiming that “SEO” itself is Net lingo and has no “Official English linguistic value.” In his blog, Gambert claims that “I am helping the search engine marketing community establish an approved SEO process, which can be sold as an ‘SEO service.’” He goes on to explain that other industries have standards and guidelines and, as these industries are recognised as services, it means that there is a way for consumers to identify practitioners with credible offerings. Now, although we can jump on the “fry Gambert” bandwagon and I think that his idea is nothing more than a revenue/copyright ploy, I’m going to leave that to the rest of cyberspace. Instead, Gambert’s comments do raise an age old question that I would like to discuss: Do we need SEO standards? It’s true that other areas of web development have standards: HTML has validation; w3c produces reams of standards on CSS and XHTML; there are standards for ECMAScript (most commonly JavaScript); but do these really create security amongst web designers and developers? The SEO industry really does have its share of cheats and con artists. We’ve all heard stories of small business owners getting hoodwinked by SEO scams. Shouldn’t we, as responsible professionals, do something to remove the black-hatters from our field? Perhaps we should, but is a body of standards the best way to go about it? I’m not convinced that standards will separate the expert from the swindler. Indeed, SEO was effectively started by scam artists – how else would you describe someone distributing spam to a forum in order to increase their own SERP? Whom would the community trust as members of a body that certifies a person or company is following SEO standards? Never mind that, who would we trust to create those standards in the first place? Yes, there are respected seo professionals, but as a whole the industry is young enough to still be a little rough around the edges. Some might argue that this is exactly why we need standards – but consider what would happen if someone tried to create them and enforce them. You’d more than likely get a mess that’s even worse than what Gambert is trying to pull. Would a body of standards prevent people who don’t do due diligence from getting scammed? No. Will it prevent those who carry the SEO trademark from scamming others? No. Gambert’s trademark claim should be invalidated as the cheap swindle it is and the industry should promote the ideals of SEO experts and educate consumers on what to look for in them; something that I will cover now. What to Look for in an SEO Expert Here’s the paradox: Bad SEO works, and works quickly, but will ultimately get you banned from the search engines. So, from a consumer’s point of view, poor (or black hat) SEO appears to give them results that they need. They pay. Then the expert is gone, just in time for the customer’s rankings to start falling like a blind roofer. Like all things in life, nothing worth having ever comes easy; and quality SEO is no different. When looking for an SEO expert, this is rule number one: Always ensure that the expert is prepared to offer a medium-to-long term relationship. If you are looking for SEO Testimonials or SEO Testimonials on success or even SEO Testimonials articles – Then you are at the right place.

Your Search Engine Optimization Strategy: Make Love, Not War

Marseille Marc — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:03:37 +0000

When it comes to search engine optimization strategy, there are essentially two camps – those who view search engines as adversaries to be conquered at any cost and those who regard search engines as partners in their online marketing efforts. Long-time readers of my articles probably already have a good idea of which camp I fall into; on the other hand, I believe both approaches can be effective optimization methods. Adversarial Optimization Methods Service providers who have this “adversarial” philosophy will tell their prospects that the formulation of a search engine optimization strategy is much like a high-stakes game of chess. It’s an “us vs. them,” “winner-take-all,” and “every man for himself” mentality. It’s also rooted mainly in technology – under this philosophy, success is defined as unraveling the latest search engine algorithm to find new optimization methods and exploiting its technical aspects for immediate benefit. The underlying premise of this search engine optimization strategy is that you must use optimization methods that trick the search engines into showing a website predominantly in the results since the site isn’t currently offering attributes that the search engines consider valuable. The primary benefits of this approach are that it doesn’t require much work on the part of the client and that results can be realized more rapidly. These qualities both stem from the fact that there isn’t a large amount of additional content needed, nor are there a lot of wholesale changes to make to the website when using such optimization methods. While this is not the methodology that I recommend, it is a valid – albeit potentially volatile – search engine optimization strategy. Partnership Optimization Methods Those who view search engines as partners have a very dissimilar search engine optimization strategy. These service providers hold the idea that the attributes and optimization methods that give a website high rankings in search engines are, by and large, the same ones that make the site more valuable to website visitors and potential customers. This theory makes sense. Every search engine needs to return results that their users find to be the most relevant and useful. If search engine R&D people operated in a vacuum, they would probably find their market share rapidly diminished while they lamented about how “people are stupid”. This means that each of the major search engines spend never-ending research dollars to determine exactly what it is that search engine users find valuable, and each has a high stake in the results of the research. No search engine marketing or web design firm has the resources or incentive to conduct studies of this magnitude. It is, therefore, highly advantageous to use the findings of these studies, deduced from common algorithm traits of multiple search engines, to improve your search engine optimization strategy and website. If you are looking for SEO Testimonials or SEO Testimonials of Success or even SEO Testimonials articles – you have come to the right place.

Website Inspectors – How Can They Improve SEO Rankings

Marseille Marc — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:03:35 +0000

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 client’s 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. If you are looking for professional link building or seo target marketing or even seo solutions – you have come to the right place.

SEO – Internet Business Opportunity

Marseille Marc — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:22:59 +0000

Web search engine optimization is necessary for internet businesses that desire good ranking in the search engines and relatively free advertising. By obtaining top ranking through web search engine optimization a business will benefit from increased, targeted traffic that results from their website being displayed in the search engine results requested by prospects that are searching for what they have to offer. Many website owners that realize the vast benefits of web search engine optimization desire to have their websites optimized for the purpose of attracting traffic from the search engines. Though web search engine optimization can be vital to a website’s performance, few website owners know how to achieve top ranking. Because of this gap between desire and skill, many website operators seek professional web search engine optimization services to boost their search engine rankings. If you have the knowledge and skill to achieve top ranking in the search engines, or if you are willing to develop the skill, then offering web search engine optimization services through your internet business may be for you. Before taking that plunge it is important to realize that offering web search engine optimization services requires a commitment to ongoing education and experimentation. The rules of the game change frequently and if you don’t stay abreast of the changes in the search engines’ behavior, you can get left behind in the seo industry pretty quickly. Web search engine optimization is not a skill that you learn once. Ongoing professional development is definitely a necessity. There are a couple of things to consider if you are going to offer web search engine optimization as a service. First, obtaining top ranking is not a one time deal. A lot of inexperienced website owners think if they pay big bucks to get their website optimized once, that it should stay in the top rankings. This is not usually the case. Not only are new websites with various web search engine optimization techniques launched daily, but the search engines’ rules change frequently as well. As new websites are launched, existing websites are optimized and search engine rules change a top ranking website will decline in rank if the web search engine optimization is not constantly monitored and maintained. If you don’t clearly convey the importance of monitoring and maintenance to your web search engine optimization clients, they are likely to be disappointed with your services and disappointed customers have a way of ruining your credibility and reputation. Ongoing monitoring and maintenance should be a part of your web search engine optimization services. If you are looking for SEO Testimonials or SEO Testimonials of Success or even SEO Testimonials articles – you have come to the right place.

Catching The Spiders With SEO Software

Marseille Marc — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:22:58 +0000

SEO software does what exactly? SEO software frequently starts from the following assumption: – look at the page that ranks number 1 in Google, – do exactly the same + a bit better, – and you will be number 1 SEO software will then examine “all” the SEO parameters that it finds out about the number 1 site in Google. Then this SE software will automate the process in mimicking this for your site. SEO is more than a software-approach! SEO is the art of ranking number 1 in any search engine for any keyword. Spiders rank a web site number one because spiders “think” that this site deserves to be number one. Of course the spider cannot think: there needs to be a programmer who programs the spider to find out which site is best. Now if you are smart enough to feed the spider exactly what the programmer thinks is important, you will have the knowledge to rank number 1. This is exactly what SEO software does: it claims to know and tackle “all” the parameters that make a web site ranking number 1. Pitfalls of a software-approach to SEO Suppose you find all the parameters needed to rank a web site number 1. You manage to get all this parameters onto your site and you even manage to be rank number 1. Now if your site is really deserving to be ranked number 1, all is fine. But if surfers start complaining that you are not, the search engine will be blamed! It won’t take long until Google finds out that “somebody broke the code” of the spiders. The spiders will be updated to give quality results to the visitors! This means you need to get an upgrade of your SEO software approach… : you are running after the facts in stead of above the facts. How to be ranked number 1? You rank number 1 because you deserve it. In spider logic this still means: – your page talks about the keyword you are optimizing for – you page has lots of incoming links about the keyword you are optimizing for. This is what ranking number 1 should be about. But my SEO software is really up to date, or is it not? Your software can only be up to date AFTER the spiders’ software is updated. Unless you write the spiders yourself, you will always be a bit later. You cannot be acquainted with all the parameters the spider takes into account, unless again you are writing the spider software yourself. A number of the parameters you cannot influence: age of the web site is one of them. Suppose the spider needs to choose between 2 websites: the oldest one and the seo mimic: which one to choose? The oldest one would be the easiest bet, and you cannot change the age of your web site can you? If you are looking for seo testimonials or professional link building or even seo target marketing – you have come to the right place.

Search Engine Optimization – A Thinking Process

Marseille Marc — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:34:19 +0000

seo is a thought process of using specific search marketing tools and principles for creating a successful business. Of all the internet marketing techniques around, search engine optimization or SEO is the most important to the success of your online business. In the search engine marketing world, there has been considerable debate recently on how critical on-going SEO is. Improved search engine rank is highly unlikely to occur without a comprehensive SEO optimization strategy. My belief is that SEO optimization is the most important component to promoting your web site. SEO Optimization is the art and science of tweaking your web presence to maximize your Search Engine Rankings to drive customers to your website. To achieve a higher position websites use the strategy of SEO optimization and content is written such that it is key word dense. As those in the business of SEO optimization have discovered, keywords and keyword phrases that seemed to work yesterday may not work today. There are common sense SEO optimization techniques you can do for both on-page and off-page search engine optimization that can help you get a good start. By reading case studies on SEO optimization, you’ll learn how link popularity and optimized content like press releases can affect your positioning. Many webmasters know that the wording within a website address is important when it comes to getting your Web Site SEO Keywords right. For maximum impact, integrate your primary SEO keywords into all marketing and promotions activities. Include your SEO keywords in the headline and sub-headline. An alternate angle to look at the price of SEO is to look at it from an investment standpoint. Free services do not do as well with SEO Optimization as your own domain name. Remember the SEO keywords rule: SEO is possible if your keyword phrase has less than 5 million results in Google. Selection of the proper SEO keywords is critical to the success of the entire SEO process. Once the level of competition is understood, appropriate strategies are decided upon to reach first page ranking for up to 8 major SEO keywords. SEO keywords are the most difficult to achieve high ranking on because you are competing against all the top experts. Unfortunately the more SEO keywords you have on your page the more traffic you are likely to draw but it is likely to be just surfers not real buyers. Analyse and select the SEO keywords that will bring more visitors and increase the popularity of your website. Before the introduction of SEO tools, SEO process was rather difficult. For anyone wanting to do a bit of their own Search Engine Optimisation, there is an abundance of free online SEO tools available on the internet. When you are working hard to climb the search engine ranking ladder, what could be better than a collection of quick and easy online SEO tools. Many websites offer many types of SEO tools. But just take heed: Many SEO tool vendors sell software which has been outdated and rendered useless by improving search technology. If you are looking for SEO Testimonials or SEO Testimonials of Success or even SEO Testimonials articles – you have come to the right place.

Expert SEO: Outsource To Professionals or Given To Bob

Marseille Marc — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:20:39 +0000

We are often asked if professional SEO (search engine optimization) can be done effectively utilizing in-house talent. Despite our obvious self-interests on the subject, our answer is always a qualified “yes”– you can attain professional SEO results using existing talent. On the other hand, for every company we have known that has met with great in-house SEO success, we know of numerous more that have seen their in-house efforts fail. We have also discovered the companies that have succeeded share some common traits. If your company is considering doing SEO in-house, there are some critical questions that you should address before you proceed. Do I have the proper resources at my disposal to achieve professional SEO results? search engine optimization takes time, and your internal seo expert will require to have a great deal of it at his or her disposal – especially at the project’s outset when target audiences, keyphrases, and optimization schemes are first being established. Even after the initial optimization effort, the nature of SEO will require this person to spend ample time keeping up with industry trends, monitoring campaign progress, performing A/B testing, and expanding the campaign as new product and service areas are added. Perhaps even more important than time, achieving professional SEO results requires a unique set of aptitudes. The person responsible for your internal SEO initiative must possess the ability to learn hurriedly and to look at your website from a macro-perspective, marrying together the needs of sales, marketing, and IT. He or she can not be an aggressive risk taker, as this is often a surefire way to get your website penalized and potentially removed from the major search engines. These gifted people exist in many companies, but given the unique attributes that these individuals possess, their time is often already spent in other crucial areas of the business. Without enough time to invest in the project or the right type of person to execute it, an internal SEO initiative is likely doomed to fail. • Do I know which departments of my company should be involved, and will they work with an insider? As mentioned above, professional SEO, by necessity, involves marketing, sales, and IT. The SEO expert must work with marketing to find out what types of offers and initiatives are working offline to help translate them effectively online. He or she must work with sales to classify the types of leads that are most valuable so that you can target the right people in the keyphrase selection process. And, finally, your SEO expert will need to work with IT to determine any technical limitations to the SEO recommendations, learn of any past initiatives based on a technical approach, and get the final optimization schemes implemented on the website. Sadly, in many businesses, these departments have a somewhat adversarial relationship. However, it is the duty of the SEO specialist to act as a project manager and coordinate the efforts of all three departments if you are going to get the most out of your campaign. No professional SEO project can be completed in a vacuum. For whatever reason, it is often easier for an outsider to get adversarial departments on the same page, in the same way that a marriage counselor might convince a woman of her undying love for her husband while the husband is still grimacing from a well-placed knee in the parking lot. • Will someone be held accountable for the results?This may seem like a small thought, but it can have a tremendous impact on the success of the campaign. If you have added this responsibility to some poor soul’s job explanation with the direction that he or she should “do the best you can,” you’ll be lucky to make any headway at all (especially if the person is not enthusiastic about SEO). Whether SEO is done in-house or outsourced, someone will have to take responsibility for showing progress, explaining setbacks, and continually improving results. Without this accountability, it is very common to see an initiative fade as the buck is passed. If you are looking for SEO Testimonials or SEO testimonials of success or even SEO Testimonials articles – you have come to the right place.

The Alarming Link – Leprechaun Repellent And Definite SEO Companies

Marseille Marc — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:20:38 +0000

When researching SEO companies, it is tempting to choose any company willing to offer guaranteed SEO services. It is human nature – people love a guarantee. This holds especially true for purchases where the buyer is purchasing something outside of his or her area of comfort. When companies first consider pursuing search engine optimization (SEO) as a potential marketing channel, particularly when there is an ongoing cost involved, they get a sense of comfort from purchasing “guaranteed SEO.” Unfortunately, with many SEO companies, this confidence in the guarantee is ill-placed. A lot of questionable SEO companies offer what I like to refer to as a “leprechaun repellent” guarantee. In other words, it’s a guarantee that is easily attainable – if you purchase such services and are not subsequently harassed by a pesky leprechaun, the guarantee has been met. How can you complain? The truth is that SEO companies do not control the major search engines, and any firm that claims to have a “special relationship” that gives it sway over the natural search engine results is simply counting on your ignorance. Fortunately, this does not mean that guaranteed SEO is impossible, especially when the guarantee has to do with aggregate results and the methods used to achieve them. What follows is a partial list of some of the more popular types of guaranteed SEO out there – some of them roughly as useful as leprechaun repellent, and some of them actually meaningful. Questionable Guarantees The “Leprechaun Repellent” Keyphrases Guarantee Many SEO companies boast that they will achieve a certain number of top rankings in the organic results of major search engines. This type of guaranteed SEO can be tempting, especially to those who are investigating seo companies for the first time. After all, high rankings are what it’s all about, right? Isn’t that the goal? The answer is an emphatic “No.” Quality SEO companies will point out that the real goal is to bring high quality traffic to your site. It’s quite simple to guarantee top positions if you choose non-competitive or obscure phrases – for example, “leprechaun repellent.” Want proof? Enter “leprechaun repellent into your favorite search engine. You will almost certainly find this article dominating the results (caveat – if you are reading this article immediately after its release, the search engines may not have indexed it yet. Wait a week and try again.). If you are looking for SEO Testimonials or SEO Testimonials of Success or even SEO Testimonials articles – you have come to the right place.

7 SEO Tactics

Marseille Marc — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:20:37 +0000

Search engine optimization refers to the technique of making your web pages search engine friendly so that search engines are more easy to understand and analyze your website. Consequently, your site has a better chance to gain high search engine ranking. However, please be reminded that high search engine ranking is not your only objective, and your objective should be website traffic and conversion. The following advice helps you to achieve the objectives. 1. Make Sure Your Site Will Not Be Penalized Webmasters realize the importance of attaining top search engine rankings. Hence, they perform many search engine optimization activities on their sites. However, improper implementation of search engine optimization can get your site heavily penalized by search engines. To avoid your website being penalized, webmasters must not commit to the following practices: – Use of hidden texts or hidden links on web pages. – Use of cloaking – Excessive automated queries to search engines like Google Web pages loaded with irrelevant words – Keyword stuffing – Multiple pages, sub-domains, domains with substantially duplicate content 2. Select Correct Keyword Phrases Correct keyword phrases allow you to drive targeted visitors to your website. Therefore, this step determines whether your search engine optimization effort can improve business result or not. Do not restrict yourself and be open minded in this area. You may think that most of the search is coming from 1 word keyword. However, it is wrong. Most people uses 2-5 words keyword phrases because they are more descriptive and yield precise results from search engines. In addition, think creatively and perform linguistics research can help you generate useful keyword phrases. 3. Optimize Title and Meta Tags According to internet marketing Articles, One of the important steps in search engine optimization is to optimize Title tag in your web page. Pages with the keywords appearing in the title tag are often assumed to be more relevant to the search query than others. Remember, title tag is the most important location of a web page after the main content of the body tag. Almost all search engines give importance to this tag. Some search engines also give importance to the presence of the keyword in the meta description and keyword tag. Currently, it does not applicable to Google though. 4. Optimize Website Content All search engines place emphasis on your body text content. The main content of your web page should contain the keyword a considerable number of times to make the search engine spiders feel that the content is relevant to the search query. The first two paragraphs are extremely important in search engine optimization. To prevent your site from being regarded as “over optimization”, you should not stuff keywords heavily in your body content. We suggest that you should present the keywords in a natural way. Apart from this, your website copy should have at least 200-250 words. 5. Ensure Clean Coding To allow search engines to index and analyze your website correctly, you must check correctness of HTML coding manually. Webmasters may build webpages from WYSIWYG HTML editors such as Microsoft Frontpage 2003, but these HTML editors may leave some duplicated or unnecessary tags in your copy especially when you edit the pages very often during web design phase. In addition, search engines are not good at understanding Java Applet and Flash. If you have Flash or Java applet navigation menu, make sure to duplicate somewhere and include HTML links as well. Please also check whether your website has broken links. They may stop search engine spiders to crawl other web pages in your website, it may result in loss of hundreds or thousands website traffic per month, and waste your search engine optimization effort. 6. Link Building In case you have a little bit knowledge about search engine optimization, you likely know that link popularity is very important to attaining high search engine ranking in major search engines such as Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc.. Yes, search engines use link analysis to determine search engine rankings. The phiolosophy is that if an inbound link points to your site, your site must have some value. Therefore, the inbound link is regarded as a “positive vote” to your website. The more inbound link you have, the higher is your link popularity. This can boost your search engine ranking. However, quality of links (link reputation) is also important. If you can get an inbound link from a high popularity website, your site will get more benefit. There are many methods to perform link building including seeking one-way link, reciprocal links, 3-way links, etc. Because link popularity and link reputation are of great importance to search engine positions, many search engine optimizers spend most of their time in link building. 7. Optimize Dynamic Website Content Search engines are not good at understanding dynamically generated web pages. Therefore, I suggest you should change your dynamic URL to static URL. If it is not possible, you should consider using some advanced search engine optimization techniques such as Mod-Rewrite to optimize website. If you are looking for SEO Testimonials or SEO testimonials of success or even SEO Testimonials articles – you have come to the right place.

Selecting a Search Engine Optimization Company

Marseille Marc — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:15:41 +0000

A Search Engine Optimization Company can be an invaluable asset in your Internet marketing campaign. They specialize in knowing how to raise your search engine positions, monitoring those positions on the regular basis, and adjusting their strategies to account for undesirable results in any given month. Since this takes a lot of time, effort, and specialized knowledge, it can be in your best interest to go to an outside source rather than try to maintain high search engine positions on your own. However, like every business, there are good companies and there are lemons. Knowing the right questions to ask and the criteria to look for will help you in choosing an affordable, effective search engine optimization company. When looking at different companies, begin by considering the approach they employ to raise your search engine positions. Steer clear of companies that use cloaked, doorway, or bridge pages to raise your positions. These techniques violate most search engine policy, and in the worst case scenario, will only get your website severely penalized, if not removed entirely from a search engine’s index. A cloaked page is a page that is created which is invisible to the regular visitor to your website. The cloaked page is coded to detect a search engine spider and divert them to this special page, which is set-up to artificially boost your search engine position. Doorway or bridge pages utilize the same concept, but often reside on an entirely different server. Google, one of the largest and most important search engine on the Internet, will remove your website from their index if they detect you have cloaked pages. Never, never employ any company that uses this technique! Another important element is to get a guarantee that the company you hire will not work with your competitors while they are working for you. Obviously, this would seriously compromise the effectiveness of the search engine optimization campaign. Be aware that some companies will use the success they achieve for your website to sell their services to your competitors. So get your guarantee in writing, and make sure it is legally binding. Of course, one of the most important factors you want to check out is the company’s track record of results. However, don’t take the company’s word for it. They will undoubtedly be slanting their results in order to sell their services to you. To go beyond their simple statement of success, ask them a few pertinent questions, and verify their answers. If you are looking for SEO Testimonials or SEO testimonials of success or even SEO Testimonials articles – you have come to the right place.