Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Search Engine Marketing (SEM) firm information and services! So you spent a fortune on getting your web site developed and no one is coming to it... Chances are, we can help! I'm Joe Rinehart and have been conducting e-commerce on the Internet since 1993. I've had several peers tell me I shouldn't give all my SEO secrets out without getting paid something for what I've learned over the past almost two decades. My logic is: I wish to share with the e-commerce community some tips that could prove very valuable for the sole purpose to build credibility for our SEO firm in a very competitive and relatively young industry and also stimulate some ideals or comments from the SEO business industry too. The information within these pages is how I've interrupted not only Googles patent, but search engines, generally speaking. I hope to spill my SEO guts through SEO articles with the goal that some readers may learn the potential complexities of SEO, learn where the best SEO tools are, about seo web design, using seo technology, and consider retaining me to help guide your long term goals. Normally, I hate to tell people "website coming soon" and such messages because that itself can effect Google, but I'm compelled to work as fast as I can to get as much information that I can to help guide my potential clients alone. I have decided to work this project live-time on-line working from the format of an outline so I can get the information up as fast as possible for the benefit of our SEO company clients and those that may need the help! Having said that, please keep in mind this site is still currently being developed and my available free time is very limited these days! Make sure your website is one of the top sites listed when people do a search! According to Google SEO is an abbreviation for "search engine optimizer". While this site is not designed to serve as a comprehensive resource of all the Seo knowledge available, we hope to offer valuable information within this SEO company site to both prove the integrity of our services and to also help those small businesses that are on a budget ;)
Does the site qualify for Search engine optimization? Some of the first things I rule out is when considering a new client for SEO includes:
1. Is the site using Frames?
2. Is the Site using a splash page and or is completely embedded with Macromedia Flash eye candy? Flash is great, but Google and other engines can't index the text within graphics is the bottom line!
3. Is the site heavily burdened with Java?
These mistakes are often made by the most experienced and qualified graphics artists or programmers. Geeks and Graphic artists There are basically two types of people producing web sites which include Technical Geeks, and Graphics artists. The technical geeks often win placement on the engines because they have a tendency to use a lot of text based content where the Graphics artists often are so concerned about "pretty" that they either lack the text content or place it within the images they are producing, or worse yet, stopping the search engine crawlers dead in their tracks from getting past frames, java, Flash splash pages, or a 100% image or Flash based site. Flash is great for ok banners and such, or a dedicated eye candy page that might be for show only. What is needed is a balanced blend of text and graphics for the most effective SEO!I happen to be a Technical FreeBSD UNIX geek. I am not a Graphic artist. It is very important for geeks like me to employ qualified artists to visually enhance our content rich pages! It is not my intent to offend the qualified graphics arts industry, but simply point out the facts that they too may become educated with the technical knowledge of how the directories and search engines work. It seems that many graphics artists fear introducing me to their clients because of various fears. One of the first things I try to make clear when working with a graphically oriented web master is I'm not interested in taking their clients or jobs away from them! What most often happens is I'm contacted my the principal of a company that needs SEO help and he'll introduce me to their web master. The bottom line is that Graphics artists need to work with and learn from the technical geeks to "do good" for their clients and it will follow them throughout their careers! With disclosures being common within the Internet production industry, that should solve the fear of a conflict of interest ever being an issue ;) SEO firm submission services business models I'd also like to address all the different models I've seen selling "Directory submission services" as they are all over the place ranging from in-depth to $14.95 monthly directory submissions by SEO firms or companies. There is a lot more to effective SEO than directory submission! Just remember, you get what you pay for! If you should see an SEO expert or firm competing based on price, I'd suggest you seriously consider what level of service and results you should expect from such a company! In a perfect World, the best case is starting out with a new website domain project; The first question I'd want to know is what is the business trying to achieve? What are the key buzzwords that a client is wanting to master on the engines? Once this is known, it's a matter of making sure that string is within the URL or address bar, the title, the description, as a keyword, and also in the content of the page. Domain name or URL - If you have the chance to choose the domain for your web site this could be a great opportunity. If you company is named ABC, Inc.then maybe ABCinc.com isn't the best name to use if one is to assume no one is searching for ABC inc. So if ABC Inc is in the business of of selling widgets, the maybe a domain like ABCwidgets.com would help better. I use a site called domaintools.com which has built-in software facilities to help pick available names. Of course, there are other resources as well often with domain registrars themselves. Title - The strings you want to promote have a very heavy weight factor when they are within the titles. Having said that you want to have titles written in such a manner that they pertain to the content of the page itself and be coherent to the reader. It is the title that is used as the hypertext in Googles search results, assuming it's not listed in DMOZ.org which Google will pull from if it exists. Description - The descriptions should contain the target strings but yet also written in such a fashion to use as many buzzwords as possible and still being coherent to the reader. This is also used in Googles search results assuming the page isn't listed in DMOZ.org. Keywords - I use them as an opportunity to steer Google. It seems that Google does put less weight these days with all the keyword abuse that they have experienced in the past. However you aren't penalized for using them to my knowledge if they indeed exist in the page itself! So that's my rule, use a few, an don't go crazy. Maybe limited them to under 14-15 at most. Content - H1 H2 H3 Headers are more important to have the string you are trying to promote than on the content of the page itself... but make sure it's on the page itself, and even in an ALT TAG if possible, as it's just about adding up the points. There should never be a beautiful image without a descriptive ALT tag for it. Frankly, I hold the belief that if one codes with a blind user or thinks in terms of handicap accessibility, you'll be right on target to reach your goals and in such a manner that it's helpful to our Handicapped Veterans and anyone else limited to a speech synthesis card! Go test the page - I used several sites and find that I can't agree 100% with any one of them, but I still like to refer them as a good guideline to operate by. For instance spidertest.com will say use less than 9 words in a title, but I can show you where domaintools.com has site titles listed with a %100 SEO score and of course, I know this to be true from personal experience ;) But, that shouldn't stop you from testing the site for recommendations and that's all part of tweaking, in my mind. Googles Patent Factors Domain Name Service (DNS) - The name of a domain can influence the placement of a Google search. If you have the opportunity to choose a domain name before you start developing your web site you might consider using popular keyword searched strings to be included within the domain name. The Length of a domain registration - prepay for your domain up to 10 years! Don't go over 10 years just because Network Solutions will allow you to get locked into their service for 99 years. If your domain name can't be registered longer than 1-5 years, then it's time to think about moving to a new registrar! 1and1 (1&1) web hosting is an example which will only allow you to pre-pay for your domain SEO year in advance. Whois your domains administrative and technical contacts - The Admin and Technical contacts of your domain registration can make a difference if they are associated with known spam domains or host spam sites. I recommend using your web master as the administrative contact, using a knowledgeable and experienced Technical contact who would be responsible for your DNS management and of course, the Owner should be the just that. Whois is monitored for Physical changes - Use a valid physical address for the Owner! This is why I don't recommend the popular trend in "registry privacy" services which ironically usually cost extra to hide who your domain is registered to. Make sure that the address of the owner is associated with the primary address of the business. Google integrates it's GIS mapping facilities to a large degree to determine if a searcher is looking for a gas station in Cleveland verses New York. It also uses the name servers and other combined resources to determine the ranking of a search. If the name servers are associated with known business that supports spam operations, then expect it to have a seriously negative impact on your placement! Quality of your web hosting provider - There are a number of reasons why where your web site is hosted can make a difference with Google which include:
- 1. How many virtual web sites a hosting company has can effect the your ranking because what if another site hosted in the same server IP space spams? It will have an impact! Consider a dedicated server, IP, or at minimum a web hosting company that doesn't have thousands of domains attached to the same IP space. A medium size hosting company that is managing their own servers and IP space is the path to go, as opposed to a web hosting company reselling on of the big boys infrastructure, or is so small that they change their DNS and hosting servers every time a backbone competitor offers a lower wholesale price. Just a little food for thought from an SEO expert that developed his own ISP network infrastructure from the ground up and chooses his commercial clients carefully ;)
- 2. The stability of your hosting company moving from one network IP space to another and the number of changes over a period of time can make a difference.
- 3. Speed of your network hosting can also have an impact if it causes timeouts with the crawlers.
So what good is a cheap hosting company, if they have tens of thousands of domains on their servers and any one of them can impact your efforts? It's really all about quality of service in the end, isn't it? Discovery dates of documents - Google logs the date of discovery of a document. If your are cutting and pasting someone elses content... well, they'll win...talk about built in copyright infringement penalties ;) External links - Links from peers are seen as an important factor. Web sites must have more than one page - This is a simple statement that a one page site has less of a chance of success than a content rich site. This may also be related to Flash sites where the entire site is produced within a single file. Document changes out of the scope of the key terms - Keyword spamming would be the first thing that pops in my mind. If a document becomes out of date don't think about redirecting it unless it's to new related content. If it is a dead document, even though it might have had great page rank, consider a 410 error if it has been indeed deleted and not moved to a new location. It's not worth playing games in an attempt to continue enjoying capitalizing on a page which no longer exists by changing it to contain unrelated content. New Documents - Growth of sites with new documents have value. Google indexes the date of creation. Do NOT consider cutting and pasting third party content as it is already been indexed and Google just don't like duplicate content. Be creative and work on new and original content as you will be rewarded. Frequency of document changes - Google monitors changes to pages. It is very wise to schdule tim to update your pages whenever related content is available. Outbound links - Contrary to traditional marketing which would argue that once you get a surfer to your site you should never offer a link away, engines love links to related valuable content! However, If you are writing a site about dog food, you'd not want to link to a cat food site. Any links must be related to the content of that page. Click Through Rates - Google watches when people click through the items of their searches. As you place higher you'll also enjoy higher click throughs assuming your title and descriptions are appealing to the reader. User Behavior - Google measures how long a user may stay at a site, if the page is bookmarked, user favorites, cache, and temp files of monitored users. My theory of how they achieve this is through partners like Alexa. Keyword Behavior - All keywords must exist within the page! using too many keywords within the META TAGS that don't exist on the page is also known as keyword spamming and this can do damage. I argue with those that say the keyword meta tags no longer are used or have value at all, but rather, they do have a value if used properly. They just don't have the weight they used to, but that's no reason to not use any at all!
Other logical SEO assumptions that may not be within the patent Ok, if everyone agrees that Google is largely designed to NOT promote spam or other bogus sites then wouldn't one assume that they would also check if the domains email server is using postmaster and abuse email addresses as required by the Internet RFC's? Now I might be off-base since this is not mentioned within Googles patent, but I'd suggest it doesn't cost anything to implement and would do nothing to hurt any potential ranking ;) So you have a site prepared, now what? Automated Submissions - Ok, so there really is a lot of labor to this stuff which makes automation a moot point... However, I'm comfortable using the word because once most of it is in place there are software programs that exist that will automate the submissions to various directories and engines. Just beware of the ramifications of getting listed with sites with non-existant or poor page rank like the hundreds of thousands of FFA sites out there. Only consider using any automated software that you can control who you want a listing from. Manual Page Rank submissions - This is the best way to fly. It takes a little time, but it well worth the effort. Once I have the free ones out of the way, then I move toward the pay for inclusion sites, largely based on how high their page rank is. Page rank linkage - The bottom line is here page rank counts! work for obtaining it which is mostly determined by how many sites with a page rank higher that yours is linking to you. Reciprocal linkage - Reciprocal links are great for the most part, but just as you want to be concerned about linking out to sites with no related content, the same is true for incoming links. There are exceptions Statistical Reports - Statistics are important to monitor on a regular basis s you are shooting for ownership of a particular string. The referral stats will help steer you in the right direction toward keyword discovery and what people are using to find your site. Blogs - Blogs are great tools for several reasons but the labor factor can add up. Write articles related to your site and watch the traffic grow. Be also aware of other sites out there that are automating comments within your blog which are designed to get their sites listed higher due to the related content linkage as often they have poor page rank. RSS feeds - These are valued informational resources according to Googles Patent. Press releases - Using sites like prweb.com and many others offer the opportunity to get your news releases and the URL's within them linked to your site. There are many out there that offer a limited degree of free and almost all offer enhanced services related to SEO for additional fees. USENET news - Read the RFCs or group rules first as some are free to post commercial plugs and others are taboo. Don't get busted spamming to these groups as that can degrade a lot of your hard work. However, there are many groups open to commercial news and certainly postings related to their purpose. Research whioch ones are reated to your industry, or region, and find those that allow articles of information or news releases. SEM For pay options - Google and Yahoo come to mind. I usually don't recommend the for pay options until a basic minimum level is reached. The bottom line is when the SEM money runs out, you'd better have your SEO together to continue the gains SEM should bring in the end. Our approach to ethical SEO services We will review, make suggestions, and re-review if necessary, then automate the submission necessary for electronic marketing using the the popular search engines annually. Yea, there goes that word automation again;) Our service is largely retainer based in which we teach you or your team to think SEO when you are developing your new web pages. As you complete the basics, we'll review and keep you moving forward with new suggestions for improvement. We start out the first year suggesting traditional, some may suggest even primitive methods of search engine manipulation. However, the fact is, there are several fundamental things at minimum that need to be attended to, if any reasonable expectation is achieved! You do not need to be a hosting client of config.com to utilize our SEO services. If you manage a hosting company, we are not concerned with your trying to take your clients away, unless you allow known spam sites and activities... Call us, and let's see how we might help your clients if you do not provide SEO-SEM services. An example of our ability to be seen is with our own company electronic marketing efforts are demonstrated within our Expertise page. Guaranteed service! We will guarantee satisfaction upon completion of your first year or your money back, provided email documented recommendations were performed, by the client! Best 'net regards, Joe Rinehart, Expert Search Engine Optimizer |
