Archive for May, 2009

The SEO Rip-off Search Engine Optimization

Posted on May 19th, 2009 in SEO | Comments Off

SEO
Sonu Seo asked:


I decided to write this article as a result of many e-mails. It seems more and more people are victims of bad SEO. The main complaint is that they are paying entirely too much for little or no results. In addition, many are in the grip of bad SEO practices. If you plan to rent a pro SEO in the future, I suggest you use this article as a set of guidelines.

Before going to any person or business Seo Services , proceed as follows:

A) Learn how to set up and tested an SEO firm before you negotiate.

Do they have a strong client list under their belt?

Are they published?

B) Consider their portfolios.

What kind of results have they produced?

Contact a few of their customers. Are they satisfied with the work done?

C) To review and confirm their methods?

How are they going to optimize your site to access your keywords?

Did they use organic methods? Some individuals or companies use doorway pages, hide text in the background, use the re-orients the blacklist and other methods. Stay away from these values.

D) Get at least three different proposals for SEO.

Look carefully each. Are there any similarities? Proposals will help you to see which companies are honest and who are trying to sell you something you do not need.

What is the cost? The cheapest is not always the best, however, the highest price may not be attached to a comprehensive and viable course of action. Try to find to find a person or organization that will give you what you want in your SEO budget.

E) of the contract, contract, contract.

Get everything in writing. Search on the document carefully. Make sure it covers everything you mentioned, including methods of achieving your desired results. Have copies signed by the two sides. If employment is a big, you may want to consult a lawyer.

F) Clearly state the terms of payment.

While most SEO shall do no work for free or agree to a salary scale for results, many SEO professionals will not shy away from a more performance series of incentives. I am not a strong supporter prepaid contracts .. Most SEO professionals will abide by the 50% front, 50% on completion norm. Make sure that all the financial terms are clearly set out in your contract that the real work. This will protect all parties involved in a case where the expectations are not met.

In all, try to do your best to educate you on SEO. Have a basic knowledge of the terminology and SEO Expert SEO methodology. Anyone offering SEO should not have a problem explaining how they intend to achieve results. If they fail earn your trust or raise a red flag for whatever reason, keep searching. You will eventually find someone who will help you achieve your goals for a fair price. Happy hunting.



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What is the SEO opinion of interstitial ads?

Posted on May 19th, 2009 in SEO | 1 Comment »

SEO
Matty B asked:


Does anyone have any facts or guidance on the SEO impact of using interstitial ads? They appear on a number of “big budget” sites like top-tier newspapers, magazines and video sites yet my guess is that Google and others would take a less favorable view of small sites using these ads. They are quite admittedly annoying, but can be profitable and beneficial in some situations.

Does anyone have any first-hand experience working with these ads and the results (good, bad or non-existent) from the various search engines?

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What are Backlinks?

Posted on May 18th, 2009 in backlinks | Comments Off

backlinks
Jonathan Marino asked:


Backlinks are one of the most important aspects you need to consider when you’re trying to build a higher ranking in the search engines. The search engines can perhaps find and index your site without backlinks, but without backing backlinks the search engines will never suggest your site to any of their visitors. Backlinks are essential for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because they help to judge the popularity and importance of the website based on their backlinks to other sites. Search engines use a number of standard criteria to rate sites on the web and backlinking is high on the list. Backlinks are links that are directed towards your website. The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website.

Backlinks are really just links to your site from another website. These links will direct users to your site whenever they click on it. Backlinks are not as of important as keyword sphere in MSN’s point of perspective. Backlinks are basically incoming links to a particular website or web page. The more the number of backlinks a website or a web page possess, the more popular or important the website is.

Search engines consider one link on your site as one vote for you. Thus, with increased number of links, you get high number of votes and with more number of votes, your site rises in importance. Search engines, particularly Google use the number of incoming links as one measurement of the importance or ranking of the page. Other search engines tend to place less emphasis on the backlinks and more on other factors such as page content. Search engines can recognize quality link when they see one.

Google only updates PR every three months at best and during this time millions of new web pages are born that start off without any PR at all. When assessing your backlinks and you come across a page that appears to have a PR0 that has linked to you remember to check the PR of the home page because the subpage may have been created after the last Page Rank update and consequently won’t show any numbers on the green PR bar. Google also gives new websites a waiting period of three to four months before giving it any kind of Page Rank. This is referred to as the “sandbox effect”. Google search engine gives a lot of weight to backlinks that your site receives and the keywords that are used as anchor text in that link. Thats why Google’s Page Rank exists, to collect the votes (links) for your site and give a score (the Page Rank score).

Links from other sites would need to be something that is relevant to you site. The absolute best type of links are backlinks or one way links to your website. Linking to suspicious places is something else that you must avoid. While it is true that search engines do not punish you if you have backlinks from such places because it is supposed that you have no control over what bad guys link to, if you enter a link exchange program with the so called bad neighbors and you link to them, this can be disastrous to your SEO efforts. Link building (otherwise known as backlinks) are critical to driving guaranteed website traffic to you. Suddenly, you can get great surges in traffic and hopefully in revenue, if you have monetised your site.



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SEO Myths and Facts

Posted on May 15th, 2009 in SEO | Comments Off

SEO
SEO Sapien asked:


In the decade or so since the search engine was first invented, the field of Search Engine Optimization has evolved. Some obsolete information and old wives’ tales still persist, and these can damage your standings.

The myths and obsolete techniques fall into a few broad categories:

- Keyword density: There are many number of magic formulas touted on the internet, claiming that if you reach the perfect number of keyword instances per page, your rankings will go up. While you do need to have the keyword somewhere in your text in order to have your stated keywords considered relevant, artificially inflating the number of instances is a bad plan. First, it simply decreases the quality of your content. Second, the search engines may begin classifying your site as too spammy, and actually downgrade your rating.

- Tags and META: Loading keywords into your page headers and the meta data of your site is also an old trick that’s now likely to get you classified as spammy. Only keywords that are relevant to your content and specific to what your users are searching for should be included.

- Links: Some fraudulent SEO services, and some outdated pieces of advice, will associate your website with link exchange systems and link farms. Since the search engines keep track of these farms and exchanges, and using them is considered trickery, being part of them can actually significantly downgrade your rating.

- Submission to search engines: Once upon a time, submitting your site to search engines was a long and arduous process, which was nonetheless necessary to get a good place in the rankings. These days, search engine submission is generally not needed at all, since the engines automatically search for new sites. If they don’t find yours quickly, manual submission is quite easy and there are a few top search engines that have most of the market share.

Conversely, there are a few relevant and current strategies for climbing the ranks of search results. (It should come as no surprise that these are broader and more difficult or time-consuming to implement than the myths would suggest.)

- Unique content: Consistently offering high quality content that is valuable to your users, unique on the web, and from original sources is by far the best way to attract users - and search engines - to your site. If your site consists of copy, providing a unique value in information filtering, commentary and analysis, or other user-friendly services.

- Voice of authority: Along with unique content, offering an authoritative voice is a good way to increase your links and therefore your page ranking. Either become an authority yourself or offer interviews, quotes, or guest content by noted authorities in your field. If well-respected people and organizations recommend or reference your site, your popularity will rise.

- Professional networking for link sharing: As a web master, blogger, marketer, or business owner, professional contacts matter for a wide range of activities. Additionally, you may ask these people to link their sites with yours, or to provide expert and authoritative content for your site.

- Crawler files: Having a robots.txt file that is updated, accurate, and properly configured can make your site easier to catalogue correctly. Building the site’s architecture in a crawler-friendly manner can give your site a slight edge that may be worth pursuing. Do remember that search engine developers are concerned with their users and serving them appropriate content. They’re smart enough to outwit most technical tricks.



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Free Ways To Get Quality Backlinks For Search Engine Optimization

Posted on May 14th, 2009 in backlinks | Comments Off

backlinks
Leon Edward asked:


One of the best places to get free reviews is through social networking sites. On social networking sites, people talk about each other all the time. Social networking sites are going to take a bit more work to get reviews because you’re going to have to participate and make your presence known before you can ask other people to review. Another way to do this is to have something to review other than you or your website with a bunch of backlinks.

If you are just trying to sell a product or are trying to get a site link as StumbleUpon.com, along with a review, this will give you some backlinks to your main site. You can also send reviews to places that are always looking for new product reviews - you can even do this with products that you are not selling.

If you become one of the first people to review a product, this is going to put your site at the top of the list, which will generate good traffic and help with your advertising. If your product is unique, this may give you a product review.

If your product could fit in an envelope, you might think about mass mailing it to several webmasters in your particular niche and requesting that they reviewed. Even better, you could offer that they become sellers of your product as long as they provide you a backlink, like Craigslist.

There are also sites that review websites as their main focus. You can submit your website for a review and get a backlink. The only problem with this is that you are not guaranteed that you are going to get a positive review. For example, if your layout is less than stellar, they will probably say that. This means that you might get one-way backlink, but it might not be in your favor, so be careful there. This is a risk you are going to take when you submit to website domain review sites, so make sure you trust that your own website is truly of good quality.

You can also utilize bloggers as part of the process for reviews. However, you are likely going to have to review the bloggers website, too. There are several ways to do this, but most likely you will have to do an even exchange. However, this is still a great way to generate some pre-backlinks. To do this, you establish your own blog under your domain so that you can do some social networking within blog communities.

If you are new to the Internet, it might seem like it is a very large task to get free unforced backlinks to your site. Natural backlinks are very important to give you a solid reputation with search engines, but as with inexperienced jobseekers, you, too, are not going to have the qualifications to attract someone who is interested in you. Nonetheless, the Catch-22 of that is that you are going to have to get those qualifications (in this case, backlinks) to establish the working reputation you need.

What do you do, then, Say that you were in a very tight job market and that market was only looking for experienced people; however, you do not have those qualifications. You might get the qualifications by volunteering or doing an internship. This is similar to what you are going to have to do to get some truly valuable backlinks that will count towards your reputation. You’ll have to do some legwork and seek out backlinks just as you would job or volunteer opportunities if you were a newbie in the job market looking for experience.

Spotting a Backlink Lead

Search engines will ignore backlinks that look like spam. In fact, this has become such a problem for search engines and blog communities alike that most automatically put the attribute rel=nofollow in their templates to keep commentators from spamming just to try to get backlinks.

Unfortunately, this also stops people who are genuinely marketing their products via commentary. To this end, many communities have found that switching back to dofollow from nofollow as the attribute is best, then, someone in that site specifically takes care of the spam. This means that those commentators who contribute significantly to the community have their backlinks. These sites are called dofollow sites, as compared to nofollow sites.

Where You Get Started

Even though you know people are willing to give you a head start in the backlink market, though, this doesn not actually tell you where to go. These people do not want to advertise that they are willing to give backlinks and therefore attract spammers. Therefore, you are going to have to do some research and find out which websites will give you proper credit as long as you do the work on your end. This will help keep you from wasting valuable time on people who do not want to give you the time of day.

Just as you would not go to an employer who is not hiring anyway, thus wasting your time, you want to focus on websites that are already ready to work with you. These will give you backlinks for just a small amount of effort. These websites have established a dofollow attribute back into their community forums and websites.

However, if you have to actually go to every referral and ask them whether or not they are legitimate dofollow sites, it is going to take you forever. However, with the Internet, you can network your way into multiple referrals in a fraction of the time. One of the great ways to do this is through forums and bulletin boards. These places will give you information on websites that allow legitimate commentary or contribution to a community, along with backlinks. These places often post lists of sites and forums that accept legitimate backlinks, and they can provide you with an instant marketing contact referral list as well.

If you check out some SEO forums online, it should save you some time.



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