My Web SEO

Archive for July, 2010

SEO Companies The Good The Bad And The Downright Dirty

This article was borne from an experience I had recently within an online SEO Forum. The poster asked a question on how to help his client get page one listings in Google and also what to put in his monthly SEO report. When I replied that he should never have taken this client on in the first place when he had no knowledge about SEO the poster retorted abusively and chastised myself for not giving him the advice that he required. This got myself thinking: How many charlatan SEO or Web Design companies are out there ripping clients off with promises of Page One listings or exuberant prices for no return.

I did some research before I decided to write this article and I was surprised and saddened by the number of companies that I came across on the Internet in a very short time frame that either offer dubious SEO practices or promises of high rankings so cheap that professional optimization companies may as well gather their hat and coat and call it a night.

The intense marketing spiel that underhand firms adopt informs you to only pay them a few hundred bucks and hey presto the view from the top of the Search Engines was yours for the taking. Now I have been in the business long enough to know when something doesn’t smell right. But what about the ordinary client who is only interested in getting their product sold or their service found on the Internet? How are they supposed to tell which SEO firm is transparent and which are as dirty as an mucky puddle?

Thus I have mustered up some thought indicators that I feel you should be aware of before any relationship with an SEO Company is worthy of consideration. They are as follows:

Cost! There is a saying that rings true here You only get what you pay for!. If a firm is offering something so sought after as ‘Page One in Google’ for an unbelievable price then that is normally what it is: unbelievable! I’m not saying they won’t get you on Page One but it will be for such an obscure keyword phrase that generates no traffic whatsoever to your site your money will be wasted.

Blinding you with Science! Please forget about companies who claim they have analyzed Google’s or any other Search Engine’s algorithm and have cracked the technology and are willing to let you in on the benefits for a small fee virtually gaining your site those prized possessions overnight. The words Scam spring to my mind among a few others which I shall regress in saying.

Reputation! Ask around amongst friends business associates online help forums like Yahoo! Answers or Google Answers for advice before you settle upon contacting an SEO Company. Professional SEO companies that are worth their salt mainly get a high percentage of their business from referrals. Look at the SEO companies site; do they have a testimonial page again though be thorough as testimonials can be duped are there contact numbers or a web address? Go one further and call that company ask them about the service they received. Were they satisfied? Was it worth the money? Dig a little then dig some more.

Future Provisions! Just what are you getting for your money? Does the company have a proactive approach by embracing new marketing techniques and technologies or are they just concerned about your meta keyword tag and advising that you need an extra gazillion pages on your site to be able to rank better. Will they report back to you at the end of each month with details about what they have undertaken to help rank your site better?

Trust your Instinct! A professional SEO Company will always ask you questions to help understand more about your business and the market your in not just to help build an online profile about your company but to assess what service suits your requirements. SEO or Web Design companies that offer onepricefitsall models have no conceptions or experience of the varying techniques required to help successfully promote a company online drive its targeted traffic to their site and help boost their positions within the Search Engines.

Complacency has no room when you are trying to source a company who will deliver an increased return of investment for your site. Hopefully I’ll never have the experience again of having to reply to an online post about what a company needs to do in order to rank their clients site.

About the writer:  Paul Steven is a partner in North South Media a leading Scottish based Internet Marketing Company.

4 Critical Web Design Elements For The Success Of A Website

Web design is perhaps the most important aspect of a website. It has a direct effect on the appeal and popularity of a website and it actually determines how successful the website is going to be. A website that is poorly designed will most likely be a failure no matter how much marketing you do to promote it. Even if your website attracts visitors it must have the appeal to make them stay. Website owners should learn as much as possible about web design so that they can create winning websites that are a pleasure for the visitor and a financial success for the owner.

Basically web design refers to the development of web pages to make up a website. Each web page should present information that is relevant to the theme of the website. In the past web design only involved the development of the content and appearance of a website but as the Internet has become more popular and the competition between websites has become more intense web developers began to delve into other design concerns to create a more effective formula for online success. The design concerns of a noncommercial website are varied and are mostly dependent on the objectives of its owner. On the other hand commercial websites have a fixed set of design concerns and issues that are paramount to having a successful website.

Content refers to the information text graphics videos pictures audio etc. that is presented in a website. Having engaging and useful content will make your website more enjoyable and worthwhile to visit. You should make sure that your content is relevant to the theme of your website. If you’re selling car wash products through your website you should only provide information about car washing car washing products and how your car wash products benefit the visitor. Going off topic of the main theme is definitely detrimental and will drive your visitors away in disgust. It is important that the information is wellwritten and interesting so that it can compel your visitors to take action.

Usability of a website determines how easy it is for your visitors to find information and navigate about the site. If your website has an easytouse interface and a convenient navigation setup your visitors will actually enjoy going through your website. Internet users do not like to spend too much time trying to figure out how to get the information they want. Ideally they wish to be able to get the information they are looking for in just one or two clicks. You can make the information in your website more easily accessible with good navigation.

Appearance of your website is important. The graphics and the written content on your website should complement each other so that there will be a certain sense of consistency throughout your website. If your website has a consistent theme it will look more professional and appealing to your visitors. The layout of graphics and text on a webpage is somewhat of a science. There have been many studies on what works and what will cause visitors to leave. For example there are specific areas on a website that people naturally look within the first moments of seeing your website. If these key areas are appealing then a visitor has a much higher probability of staying. If these areas are trashy then the visitor is likely to make a quick exit.

Visibility of a website is required in order to draw adequate visitor traffic. In order to be successful you will have to improve or boost the visibility of your website to gain the traffic you need. This can be achieved through online marketing strategies such as paid advertising and search engine optimization. You can actually improve your search engine visibility by using keywords and key phrases relevant to your topic in your design and content. Submitting articles to article directories and creating backlinks links from other websites to your website is another way to promote the visibility of your website.

Having a good web design will not only bring more traffic to your website; it will also make sure that your visitors will stay for a longer time to explore it. If your visitors feel comfortable and compelled enough they may just buy something from you. You will only stand to gain if you spend more time and effort to create a welldesigned website.

About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;This article provided by Woody Longacre. Internet Web Design. We invite you to visit the Web Hosting Goods Store for Web Hosting and Domain Registration.

Site Update Providers And The Benefits Of Site Update Service

One of the most important things that a web master or owner needs to consider is to do site updates. This gives a site an opportunity to become more authoritative in the eyes of major search engines. Thus this will increase the chance for your siteyour products or servicesto have a higher conversion rate or in other words sales and profit.

Doing site updates can be an effort and timeconsuming tasks and that is one of the reasons why a number of site owners often set aside this important task. However many site owner today are tapping the services that outsourcing companies are offering. These companies are giving site update services such as in web design and other search engine optimization tasks.

Talking about Search Engine Optimization it is a very essential technique for site promotion since most of the searches are done through search engines. It can be done in various ways but basically these ways are divided into two parts: on page and offpage optimization. Both are effective ways to optimize a site so that it ranks higher in search engines when a search engine user does his query.

When we discuss onpage optimization it is about doing optimization on the site itself by doing some important things like putting some necessary elements on site so that it performs better when search engines crawl the site to retrieve information for indexing.

Below are some onpage optimization techniques you need to do:

• Keywords For Contentyou put not just a content in your site but rather a content that bears competitive keywords. Do a keyword research for you to determine keywords that are relevant to your site and at the same time competitive enough to rank higher when a search query is done in search engines.

• Title amp; Meta tagsoptimize your content by playing with its meta tags. Put completive keywords on site meta tags and most importantly on its title. Search engine spider is definitely crawling the title and meta tags for search engine indexing so it is essential that you provide competitive keywords so that your web site will have an opportunity to rank higher during search.
• Building Linkssearch engine spider crawls or follows site through links. So having more relevant links on your site is a great way for it to be crawled essentially which in return do increase website traffic.

For offpage optimization you can consider these some techniques:

• Article Submissionthe main purpose of submitting articles and the other offpage optimization strategies is to be able to build more links or backlinks. By doing submission of articles to article directories allows you to weave inbound links by putting links on the articles that point to your site. You can also do article submission on blogs because it also gives the same benefits.

• Directory Submissionby submitting your urland all the necessary informationyou increase the website’s internet presence. There are search engine that are indexing sites based on directory submission.
• Joining Forumby participating in online forums you are injecting more reputation for your site because by this process other online business people notice you that you are alive you are there and this is a plus for product promotion.

• Posting Commentposting comment also a way of weaving inbound links because you can include your url as your comment signature. Aside from that you are also building a good reputation online most especially when you post a comment that is really with sense. With that other site owner and blogger will eventually notice you and will follow your site in a regular basis.

Your site need regular updates so that it can have the necessary optimization. You can do this own your own if you got enough time to do it. Else you can hire a site update service company and there are lots of them available in the Internet.

About the writer:  Roy Van Rivero is a web content writer and search engine optimizer who has been working in the Internet providing site update services to a number of clients from different parts of the world. More information about the services his team is offering here: http://siteupdateservice.com/