Tuesday 27 August 2013

Selecting the Best Traffic for Your Humble Enterprise Desires

By Lisa Lim


SEO could benefit many companies who are planning to increase their online presence and drive more targeted traffic to their websites. Unfortunately the SEO industry is not famous for its transparency and this is confusing for companies that are asking just what precisely they are going to be getting in return for their investment.

The SEO industry in addition has attracted plenty of cowboys who employ "black-hat" techniques that go against the policies of Google and the other search websites. You need to ensure that your SEO will be done using ethical "White Hat" methods.

Businesses that accidentally employ an SEO that utilises these techniques may see short term results until Google reveals the footprints left behind by these systems, at which point they are going to see a detrimental effect on their search engine rankings. The black hat SEO offers quick fixes and is mostly long past by this point!

What's With all of the Hats?

The term "Black Hat" comes from the old western flicks, the bad guys always wore black hats! The good fellows wore white hats, you may hear ethical SEO called "White Hat" SEO. Remember the bad guys always got their just deserts!

What Should your SEO be Doing for Your Business?

It is important to know precisely what your SEO will be doing for you and how they'll provide you with measurable results. Be wary of any SEO who offers an assured ranking, it's not possible to promise a ranking with Google or any other search network site!

Any SEO who can guarantee results without even knowing which keywords you need to target is using this as a marketing ploy, how could they guarantee results if you needed to vie for keywords like "Apple", "Google" or "Facebook"? !

Without conducting keyword research it's not possible to tell how likely the successfulness of an SEO campaign will be and how long it's quite likely to take. SEO is a continual process of research, testing and analysis. It takes carefully thought out planning to identify the best keywords and to then put a solid strategy in place to rank for those keywords.

On-site and Off Site SEO

SEO takes into account factors that are both on-site and off-site. On-site SEO entails a study of your website. It may involve taking a look at many elements including the site structure, use of keywords, the sites content, page loading times and the HTML and CSS that the site is assembled with. Good on-site SEO benefits the end user and also helps to avoid any technical "Gotchas" that search engines do not like, for example duplicate content.

A good SEO will begin by analysing your website and recommending to improve an optimise the site for both users and search engines. Off site SEO involves creating relevant back-links from other sites to yours.

Each back-link is counted by the search engines as a vote for your internet site. Web sites are given an authority score called Page Rank. Every time a site links to you it shares a little bit of its page rank with you, links from high authority sites share more of this page rank than lower authority sites. Inbound links to a site are called back-links.

To Follow or to Nofollow...

Some links carry no authority at all, many links carry a nofollow attribute that tell the search sites not to add that link as a vote. Web-masters and blog owners might add this attribute themselves if they do not their link to be counted as a vote for the external site or it could be instantly added by the platform they are using to publish their articles, this is often true when a site offers its user to add comments or content and the webmaster has tiny control of what links get made by the sites contributors.

Links without the nofollow attribute are termed "dofollow" and pass page rank from your page to the linked page. In HTML there's no actual dofollow attribute, dofollow occurs by default lacking the presence of a nofollow attribute. You should never nofollow internal links as this will cause any page rank that would be passed to that link to just evaporate!

Where Did You Get Those Links?

You need to ask your SEO how they will create backlinks, a good SEO will try to build a varied backlink portfolio for you. This portfolio should ideally include high worth links that are found in bodies of text like blog content. These customarily carry the most page rank but also require the most work as the SEO will have to build connections with blog owners and often supply the content themselves.

Any good SEO will go looking for quality over. Quantity, anyone promising a big number of links is perhaps best avoided. The search sites like to see "Natural Links of Love", 1 or 2 top quality links will go a lot further than many substandard links.

Other linking systems include using quality business directories or commenting on blogs and forums as well as using social media and social bookmarking sites.

Link exchanges are best avoided as these 2 way links don't look like natural links. Search sites can see the Web as a series of connected nodes and easily detect outlandish patterns like this.

Your Business, Your Needs

Your SEO should talk with you about your business desires and goals and also attempt to understand as much as they can about your target market. If they do not do this then they are unlikely to choose keywords that will attract and convert the right audience for you business. They ought to conduct extensive key phrase research and be well placed to identify the keyphrases that will bring in more of the right traffic. Traffic is pointless if it doesn't convert!

Added Value

Your SEO should additionally be able to research your competition and tell you what keywords they are targeting and also how much time it's quite likely to take to contest for the self same keywords. They should additionally be able to think up alternative strategies if those keywords are much too competitive for your financial position or to bring in traffic while you work towards competing for the key keywords.

SEO requires time, it doesn't occur overnight. Your SEO will be able to give you a once a month report that shows how you are progressing through the search site results for your keywords. They should additionally be able to run PPC campaigns on your behalf and also create content and copy for your internet site.

Many SEO's will be in a position to promote you thru social media and advise you on other Internet marketing methods like building mail lists for email campaigns.

The Final Analysis

The rate for an SEO varies a great deal. Some agencies will charge over one thousand a month! A small business will be able to find a reasonable SEO for just about 300 a month, this depends on the service level needed but three hundred should buy you a good campaign targeting 5 keywords.

The first month is usually more expensive as this is the month the on-site SEO happens as well as the keyword and rival research.

Some SEO's provide a awfully inexpensive service, you get what you pay for and bear in mind that SEO takes a lot of time as it often involves plenty of research, analysis and content creation.

If the price appears too good to be true then it most likely is! Do not risk falling into the trap of black hat SEO techniques for a cheap price!




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