SEO Is A Numbers Game, Do You Play To Win?
April 29, 2008
SEO is as much a numbers game as anything else. Good basic SEO will only get you so far in the search rankings. We believe almost anyone with enough time and resources can obtain the first page of results for any search query. However, most companies do not have unlimited funds or staff for such an undertaking. There are still many opportunities to reach the coveted first page of results.
Any successful SEO provider knows that if you go where the crowds aren’t you will be successful. That why so much effort goes into Keyword research. Keyword search, after all, is a Billion dollar industry. You can look for long tail or obscure keywords to be successful. This places you in a less crowded environment.
The huge benefit here is that using long tail search you have less sites competing. The biggest benefit is that your visitor is now highly targeted. A god example would be the search for “increased website traffic Tucson” There is no doubt that the person using this search query wants more traffic to their website and that it has a Tucson customer base.
Do you plat the numbers?
Geo-targeted websites for the cleaning and services related businesses.
April 29, 2008
Tucson SEO Solutions is excited to announce that we are offering affordable websites that are specifically built for the house cleaning, cleaning services, and other service related businesses that have a local customer base, such as Tucson.
These websites meet the unique demands of lead generation required by all service industries. We have chosen to use the open source platform, WordPress to build these sites.
The choice of WordPress allows us to include the following with our websites.
The actual website that specifically designed to generate leads using the features and benefits presentation that includes a “call to action.” We also include all aspects of good basic Geo-Targeted SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. This is the process of creating high search ranking and website traffic.
We also provide Search Engine Marketing which is designed to provide search engine and visitor traffic.
We are able provide all of these services and create winning websites all for about the price of most design services.
We invite you to visit the Web Sites For Service Providers
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
With SEO or any service you get what you pay for!
April 28, 2008
This is an example of an ad that we sometimes run in the free classifieds.
Tucson SEO Solutions offers assistance for Tucson website owners.
Our Search Engine Optimization is for small service and retail providers like you!
One of the keys with Internet marketing is effective use of Keywords.
This must be done right or all other efforts are wasted…
If Tucson is where your market is located…
Then you need to use Tucson in all that you do.
This process is known as Geo-Targeted SEO.
We use only ethical SEO methods and we get quality results that are verifiable!
For more info or and appointment do call 520-777-6479
or go to www.tucsonseosolutions.com.
When considering an SEO provider you should ask them this.
Is your website ranked on the first page of Google for the searches
“Tucson SEO” or related searches?
If they can not show you their SEO website is on the first page of results then you should try a company likes ours.
We talk the talk, and walk the walk.
And we actually have an SEO website that is ranked on the first page of search results for our service and by our location.
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
We have previously written in the past we use Craigslist locally a lot to market our services. We have very little competition locally. However, we see lots of ads placed from across the country. Most often these folks don’t have an SEO web site to link to in their ads nor do they provide a phone number to call.
They usually ask you to email them you domain name and they’ll get back to you. We from time to time contact them to see if they actually know anything about SEO. What we usually discover is they got lucky with a keyword phrase in a Title Tag and have landed on the first page of results.
We ran into a gentleman from the 206 area code that had done this using “Affordable Nike Drivers.” He landed in the #1 position, but that was it. That was the extent of his SEO experience and knowledge. But that didn’t stop him from offering his SEO services for $400.00. He pointed to his #1 position as proof of his skills. To the unknowing small business owner this would be impressive.
This is another classic example of you get what you pay for. This also shows the downside of using Craigslist to see professional services. Just about everyone using Craigslist is looking for a bargain ourselves included. So it is more difficult to acquire leads from potential clients who are willing to pay for results. Craigslist for us is more about branding for us then lead generation and sales.
We often find when attending networking events that we encounter someone who has seen us on Craigslist. This was a much more valuable tool for link building before they implemented their “No Follow Policy.”
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
Get on the first page of Google Today… Really
April 27, 2008
Get on Google’s First Search Engine Results Page today. It sounds like some kind of SEO gimmick I know, but it’s true. Using websites like Craigslist and MSN , is where this begins and both are free. Free classified ads websites rule the SERP’s when used correctly. They allow you to post just about anything. However, they all have different rules so make sure you are aware of them.
Craigslist allows you to use HTML and place links in your ads to your website. These are great for driving some traffic to your website, but they no longer pass link juice. However, the same does not hold true for MSN. You can use Anchor text links on MSN but it has to be copied from somewhere else. You can not directly place HTML in MSN ads as you can on Craigslist.
The key to how all this works is in using your keyword phrases in your titles and in your content. A little basic SEO goes a long way here. What we are talking about here is using basic SEO techniques on another website to drive traffic to your website.
This works extremely well for long tail keyword phrases and for local websites. We have used this technique for the term “affordable nike drivers.” Recently, within 2 days we were able to acquire the first 5 results on Google’s first page for this search term. This was an experiment and a learning lesson for a “would be rookie SEO” in the 206 zip code! (This is a story for another day) We did this several months ago.
This method can also be used for branding purposes. This is accomplished by placing your business name in the forefront of your ads or in your ad comments. This assures your company name will appear in the snippet field of each search result, if done properly. Since around 47% or so of searchers use the snippet when deciding whether to visit your site, you business name needs to be there. My business is XYZ and we provide XYZ.
While these methods will drive traffic to your website, the real secret here is not about the traffic that is produced. No, it was about denying my competition access to Google’s first page of results! Think about it, for every place you have taken up with your free classified ad or social media comment, you have removed your competition from the first page of search results.
Also remember this, 89% or so of web searchers never go beyond the first page of results, those sites that are bumped from the first page are now less competitive. Some have suggested to me that this is not fair. While they are entitled to there opinion I would strongly disagree.
Tucson SEO Solutions has used this technique almost daily for over a year for the search term “Tucson SEO.” There are days when we have able to acquire 9 out of 10 positions for this search. Usually, we hold down 3 or 4 positions. It just depends how busy we have become. When we placed 9 out of 10 we were not a very busy SEO company and we spent a lot of time branding ourselves.
Give it a try if you like, just please do follow the rules on each site and be ready for immediate search results. Do a search for “affordable nike drivers” and you see what we mean.
Did we mention that we have never spent a penny on marketing online. We have spent hundreds on printed materials for expos but never a penny on line. This will soon change when we spend $5.00 to sign-up for AdWords so that we can use the website optimizer tool.
What we have written about here we offer as training that is included with our website design and redesign services but in greater detail and it covers many more optioins.
Do you need assistance marketing your website?
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
SEOQuake Rocks Our Little SEO World
April 27, 2008
SEOQuake has rocked my little SEO world for several months now. SEO Quake is one of those great little tools that is free and makes the website consultants life much easier. We Internet consultants do a lot of research, but this work can be very time consuming without the right tools. Well, for me SEO Quake is one of those tools and it free.
We recommend this software to all of our clients as it is so easy to use. It’s a free FireFox download. It provides a wealth of competitive analysis information along with search results. Just turn it on and do a keyword search for your targeted words. Along with the search results it will provide you with information about how many links a website has. Then you can click on that link and can get more detailed information on who is linking to your competitors.
I can’t remember where I came across this software. Some blogger did me a big favor by posting a review, so it’s now time to share this tool with you. SEOQuake collects SEO relevant information about any website that you are visiting and then displays them in a toolbar. It collects linking information from all the major search engines. It provides a websites source code in one click.
The wealth of information at your fingertips is amazing. It also includes a line through feature to indicate if a website is using “no follow” on it’s links. If you are blogging for links this will save you buckets of time.
Another great feature is revealed when you do a Google search. Under every search result it provides a dozen or so links that provide easy access to each websites details. It shows the sites PR, the age of the site, and many other valuable features… And did I say that it’s Free
All these great tools are useless unless you know how to apply them. Are you ready to get your website headed in the right direction?
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
SEO - Search Engine Optimization Is A Numbers Game!
April 26, 2008
SEO is as much a numbers game as anything else. Good basic SEO will only get you so far in the search rankings. We believe almost anyone with enough time and resources can obtain the first page of results for any search query. However, most companies do not have unlimited funds or staff for such an undertaking. There are still many opportunities to reach the coveted first page of results.
Any successful SEO provider knows that if you go where the crowds aren’t you will be successful. That why so much effort goes into Keyword research. Keyword search, after all, is a Billion dollar industry. You can look for long tail or obscure keywords to be successful. This places you in a less crowded environment.
The huge benefit here is that using long tail search you have less sites competing for the keyword phrase that you have chosen. The biggest benefit is that your visitor is now highly targeted. A good example would be the search for “increased website traffic Tucson” There is no doubt that the person using this search query wants more traffic to their website and that it has a Tucson customer base.
It just so happens that almost any day, if you did the search for “increased website traffic Tucson” you would find Tucson SEO Solutions in the #1 and #2 positions. We believe that you should practice what you preach or as we like to say if your going to talk the talk you have to walk the walk.
Many an SEO expert will read this and scoff, that’s not a competitive search and they are correct. However, it is the service that we provide and in our location. We should be at the top if we are any good at what we do. I am often amazed when I see companies offering SEO services and they can’t obtain first page rankings for themselves! This isn’t as uncommon as you might expect. We developed our keyword to reflect what we do and by our location. If you have a local business with a website you should be doing the same.
Do you need assistance developing your keywords to reflect your business and location?
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
Squidoo.com Was A Waste Of My Time
April 26, 2008
Social Media is all the rage in the Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Industries. Last year, 2007, saw Facebook go from almost a has been to a hot property. MySpace still is one of the busiest website destinations in the world. Yet, very little is written about ROI or return on investment and these websites.
Recently, I read an article from a respected industry leader on a website known as Squidoo. This site allows you to create one page websites, or lens, as they call them. The article went on to explain how you could use this website to affect your websites search ranking. It also explained how you could use this site to drive traffic to your website.
The truth here folks is that this story, was just that, a story, that lacked substance. I compared my lens to the one outlined in the article. My lens had about 20 times the content, as this lens, and they both covered search engine optimization. This lens and article looked as if it was a paid for project and lacked much substance.
However, It seemed like a great idea, and I was determined to expand my social media experience beyond blogging. So over two weeks I worked on creating a useful lens about SEO. Yes, I am guilty of recreating the wheel, but it is my business and I wanted to have a bigger voice.
Yet, for all my effort and about 40 hours of work over two weeks the site did not live up to expectations. It produced about 15 visitors and none of those actually visited this website. Each lens article, about a dozen of them, included links to this site, but no one bothered to visit. Two visitors rated the lens 5 out of a possible 5 and one left a positive comment. We have since seen a trickle of interest occasionally.
That is not what I call good ROI. I have mostly stopped using the site, as my time is getting more precious everyday. What I saw was a lot of spam. I am sure that someone is making money on this project, but it was a wasted effort for me. What it did do is inspire me to tackle FaceBook… More on this another Day.
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
Websites Are Like NASCAR!
April 26, 2008
Websites, NASCAR, and Tucson SEO
We have been thinking recently about how we market our local website traffic consulting service, beyond our website. We thought that perhaps clever or creative text ads on free classifieds sites might be an interesting option.
The plain old “this is what I do, straight forward ads” haven’t done much. It couldn’t hurt we concurred. So now, it was time, to become creative, clever, or both. Then it dawned on me that websites and race cars have a lot in common.
Race car teams put a lot of time, training and effort into their high performance machine. They pay lots of attention to the smallest detail and are constantly fine tuning the engine and suspension. These two must work in harmony for the team to become a champion. Successful websites are no different in that they also require many pieces of the machine and team to be in harmony.
Websites must have many parts in balance, as well. They must fulfill the ever changing needs of the search engines through effective optimization of the source code and content. The other part of this website team is the user experience. Every thing must work and it should work effortlessly. Your site should be a well oiled machine that converts visitors into customers.
So SEO then becomes like the racing teams pit boss making adjustments and fine tuning the website to produce peak performance. However, you must be able to adapt to the changing environment to become a champion. During a race the team many use multiple types of tires often adjusting and changing thought the race.
A successful website team is no different. We who practice SEO have had to make sometimes drastic changes within the last year. We have had to adjust to how Google is currently handling website links. Managing a website requires the same attention to detail as a NASCAR racing team, if you want to be successful.
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
Think Of Your Website As A Car Salesperson
April 26, 2008
Think Of your website as a car salesperson.
Salespeople sell that’s there job. Well, a website is on different it’s all about selling. It makes no difference whether you are peddling products, services, or ideas. You must actively be selling to succeed in website marketing. Just throwing facts and descriptions on your website is wasted effort. It must be so because you are reading this!
We tell this story every time we talk to a perspective client. Imagine that you are going to visit a new showroom. When you encounter the salesperson they will do several things during your visit. When they start their presentation they will explain the features of the vehicle. They then will explain the benefits of those features. Finally, they will ask you for the sale.
This is basic sales 101. It is know in the industry as the features and benefits presentation. You know when you go to the car dealer this is what you will encounter. The salespersons job is to sell. You as a website owner need to be selling. Sadly, very few websites sell. This is because most websites are created without input from sales marketers. How many website have you visited that do a complete sales presentation? Does your website sell?
We offer solutions that incorporate all the elements of a good sales presentation on existing websites as part of our SEO services. We also instruct are website design and redesign clients on how to write their content to sell.
We will not provide our service to websites that are not willing to make the necessary changes with the entire site. Our belief is this “Why bring traffic to a broken website.” Your website needs to be more than just information. You have to actively bring your visitor to a buying decision.
We view are clients as partners rather than customers. SEO and web design should be a collaborative process. We know that when they succeed we all succeed.
Is your website broken? Do you actively sell or do you just provide information and hope for the sale?
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
Websites Are Like Apple Pies
April 26, 2008
Apple pies and websites, what do they have in common?
Today, we are looking at the correlation between websites and apple pies. It seems that software advances have made building a website like baking a pie, in that it can be done in an evening.
However, motivation alone does not make a good pie or a useful website. When making a good apple pie you need all the basic ingredients and the knowledge of how to mix them properly. Websites also require some basics such as layout, navigation, and fresh quality content and that’s just to keep your visitors happy.
Getting the website to work with the search engines to acquire traffic through high search rankings is a whole other proposition. Many an attractive site has withered along the Internet super highway due to lack of traffic.
Just like that apple pie sitting on the baker’s shelf, it will never sell if hungry customers can’t find it. However, even the best looking pie, if the flavor isn’t there, will be rejected and never eaten again, let alone repurchased. A website can suffer a similar fate, if it fails to meet or exceed the visitor’s expectations. You may have all the right ingredients but fail the taste taste.
If you’ve ever watched the Food Channel then you know exactly what we mean. Give five chefs the same ingredients and someone will always produce a super pie, some pies will be ok, and others will disappoint.
We here at Tucson SEO Solutions specialize in creating tasty highly trafficked websites that deliver results.
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
Website Are Like High Maintenence Girlfriends
April 26, 2008
I have recently suggested that successful websites are like a high maintenance girlfriend. From my perspective this is so true. A high maintenance woman or man demands a lot of attention, and especially attention to detail. A website that acquires high search engine rankings and traffic requires similar attention and needs lots of it to continue to stay productive.
A high maintenance woman or man requires daily attention, as well, to maintain a successful relationship. If you are willing to pay the price a relationship with a high maintenance person can be very rewarding and seldom dull. (Voice of experience here)
A successful website is no different. It demands your time and effort that goes way beyond checking emails or traffic stats The point here is that if you want a successful relation with your website you have to be prepared to pay the price in time, or hire someone to do it for you.
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
Slow Loading Pages - Are they costing you business?
April 26, 2008
Does your website load quickly? Many a potential customer will never reach your website because of slow loading pages. We have all experienced this. You do your Google search and you see a promising website. You then click onto that link and wait and wait some more. Then you simply give up and try another site.
A slow loading website will drive potential visitors away long before your website ever opens. You have about two seconds to accomplish this. I call it the Google effect. Web surfers are so used to Google providing search results instantly. They then expect this quickness from all websites all the time.
The problem isn’t limited to small business websites that may have been home built. They actually often load very quickly because they don’t have many people visiting at the same time or they are loaded with a lot of graphics. Retail e-commerce sites are notoriously slow loading for a variety of reasons. There are literally Billions of dollars lost annually due to slow loading pages.
A general rule of thumb is that you have about two seconds maybe three for your site to open. If it takes any longer your potential visitors leave quickly to try another option. The more web savvy your visitor the quicker they leave. Imagine if your website is slow loading for a cable connection, and then imagine how slow the process is for DSL, dial-up service, or for someone using a notebook and using a Wi-Fi connection.
The moral of this story is, don’t loose your visitor before they actually see your website. We will discuss slow loading pages in depth another day.
This problem may require a bit of website redesign to resolve.
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
WordPress Developers Needed
April 26, 2008
We are recruiting for dependable WordPress developers to work as sub-contractors on a regular basis. The two main requirements are experience and dependability. We prefer Tucson based vendors.
Experience doesn’t do us much good if you are not dependable. We work on tight schedules and require that you be able to perform as required. We have a no excuses policy. If you are given a project and you can not successfully complete it on time you will not be given a second opportunity.
We currently have more projects in the pipeline than we have available WordPress developers. You can work as much as you can realistically handle. We do not work on an hourly rate and all projects are provided based on an agreed upon bid. You will receive payment two weeks after the work has been placed onto the customer’s web host and they have signed off on the project. The two week wait is to cover any bugs that migght need to be addressed.
We operate on an under promise and over deliver process. That means that we exceed the customer’s expectations. If we tell the client the project will take 8 weeks we will deliver the project in 6 weeks. So we need realistic time estimates from our developers. If you tell us that you can have the work done in 3 weeks and it takes you longer. It will be the last project that you will work on. Our clients are not paying for excuses.
We are about to launch a national campaign going after the cleaning services industry and other services industries. We will be producing very clean and straight forward websites that sell. Our focus is not so much on the look and feel, but making sure that the content sells. We are marketers first and developers second.
We have recently acquired over 20 domain names that we plan on developing. We are currently looking to develop at least one new website per month for the remainder of this year for ourselves. We have begun marketing the Phoenix market.
We have a 5 year growth plan with visions of entering the top 100 markets. We only offer services to local website using Geo-targeting SEO (not GIS). We also offer service for niche product websites. We will consider small E-commerce sites where we can easily use WordPress plugins.
All website will include 6-10 plugins each. The most time consuming aspect of these sites might be the header. We prefer to use horizontial navigation bars with drop down menu’s. For SEO purposes we have the blog excerpts loop onto the corresponding pages.
We have a five year and exit plan. Then it’s early retirement for us. There is a tremendous opportunity for the right highly motivated individuals.
Grad students will be given first consideration, but if you are highly skilled and motivated that will not be a problem.
If you are interested we will need the following.
A resume delivered in the body of an email and not as an attachment. Pay attention to this requirement over 90% of respondents send attachments. We figure that they can not follow basic instructions then you have eliminated yourselves.
If you have done paid work before we will need the links to that work and reference contact information.
If you haven’t done paid work we will need links to what you have done and someway to verify that this is your work.
A real big plus will be if you have developed WordPress websites. Please do not call, if we are interested we will contact you for an appointment.
We are not interested in using any other CMS.
We also will not outsource outside of the US and Canada.
Thanks, for your time and consideration.
Organic search results are our speciality!
April 26, 2008
We specialize in organic search results for local and niche product or service websites. We are not interested in working on large e-commerce sites, nor do we offer Pay Per Click management. In fact, we are the anti-PPC SEO Company. Our goal is achieve the highest possible natural search engine results across multiple keyword phrase searches.
SEO is all a numbers game and we only work where the numbers are in our favor. Think of it this way, let’s say your websites sells blue widgets. You might be competing with thousands of other sites to get the search engines attention. However, if you website features blue widgets in Tucson, or Arizona, the numbers become very favorable for obtaining high search rankings. You are now only like to have a dozen or so competitors per geographic region. The website site that optimizes locally goes to the first page of results and quickly. It’s all about the numbers and we play where the numbers are in our clients favor.
Welcome To Tucson SEO Solutions
April 25, 2008
Welcome to Tucson SEO Solutions.
This website has been a work in progress for the last year. We have recently re-launched this website after nearly a year of dreaming and planning. Previously, we had used a self built Office Live website.
While the website software left a lot to be desired it was free. Yep, the domain name, the website and hosting were all free. We were able to leverage this website to grow our small business beyond merely providing SEO services.
We noted early on that every website that we looked at had serious design and marketing flaws. With this in mind, we decided, never to SEO a broken website. This posed unique challenges as we (the owners) are marketers and not web designers.
We knew we wanted to build and rebuild broken websites so that they were best able to convert their new website traffic. With this in mind, it has been a nine month journey full of obstacles putting our design team together. Finding honest, ethical, and trustworthy designers and editors has been way harder than we had ever anticipated.
We, now have a solid team in place that shares the same vision. This vision is to develop websites that are affordable, that sell, and create customers out of visitors. We simply apply simple basic Geo-Targeted SEO, basic sales 101, proof reading (not the blog), open source CMS, and marketing training to produce tremendous results.
We fully understand how difficult it is to obtain high search ranking in competitive fields. That is why we focus on the local small business owner and niche national players. We play the numbers game, and we play to win.
We never take on a client that we do not believe has a reasonably good chance to obtain first page results over multiple keyword searches (think long tail here.)
We invite you to do some verifying of what we say. Do a Google search for “Tucson house cleaning service.” This is our first website, www.yourfreshstart.us and it has held the #1 or #2 position for this search since April 2007.
We learned SEO out of necessity to market our own website and now we share our experiences with you. We encourage you to comment and thank you for visiting, and if you really like us we would ask that you link to us. This blog is about empowering the small business owner to leverage the web to grow their business.
Geo-targeting SEO is catching on slowly
April 25, 2008
Geo- targeting is slow getting the attention that it deserves. We have offered this service since this business opened. Tucson SEO Solutions business model is based on location of the websites market. Like many small business owners their market is local. So they have much less competition than those that play on a national or international stage on the Internet.
Since search engine optimization is a numbers game the website that uses Geo-targeting vastly improves their odds of success. Having less competition offers you the opportunity to reach high search rankings, if you optimize your web site. There is a very good chance that your competition has not optimized their web sites. Almost any web site can be optimized, but usually this is the arena of the larger serious players. When the small business owner optimizes his web site he usually goes to the front the line.
Many web designers only think of GIS software when they here the words Geo-targeting. GIS is the acronym for geographic information software. This software is used on information and on e-commerce sites to assist you in finding information by city.
When we apply Geo-targeting in the optimization process, we are asking the search engines to index your website by a geographic area and by your products or services. So if your website provides carpet cleaning services and you live in Tucson, then we would optimize your website for carpet cleaning in Tucson.
This is a simplest form of optimization available today. It is also the most overlooked aspect of the SEO industry. When you optimize your website by the location that you actually serve you place your business in a winning situation. You can finally use the leverage the Internet to grow your business.
Before you begin any optimization program you need to evaluate your website to make sure that everything works. It doesn’t do much good to bring traffic to a broken website.
How Do You Create Content On A Static Website?
April 25, 2008
This is a question that we hear often at our SEO and website training seminars. A static website is a site that was not created to be updated. These sites suffer in the search rankings because they have nothing new to offer the search engines. You see, search engines like fresh content.
It is much easier to obtain and maintain high search rankings if you update your website on a regular basis. The easiest way to provide fresh content is to place a blog on your website. However, many small business website owners don’t want anything to do with a blog. They either do not understand what a blog is or does or they are unwilling to manage a blog. Blogs do require time to implement.
One solution is already available to website owners who use a newsletter to market their business. Let’s say you have a monthly newsletter and you write the articles for this newsletter over a one month period and then email this your readers.
What we suggest is that you place these articles on your website as they are written. Then pull these articles into your newsletter when you are ready to email them. Then you start the process all over again. Depending on how you have your web hosting set up this could be a simple or a very difficult process.
Most quality web hosts allow you to readily edit your web pages through a file manager. Whenever, you are editing websites files first copy them into a text edit such as notepad, in case you experience a problem when saving your files. Once you have saved your updates then visit your website to view the changes. You may need to refresh your browser first. If you experience a problem you will have a saved copy in notepad to copy back into your file manager.
Some web host companies require that you use an FTP client to load your updated files. If this is the case then this process is best left to an experienced webmaster.
Paid Links Our Point Of View
April 25, 2008
Paid Links from my point of view: From the very beginning of my SEO career when I was only managing my own websites, I have held this belief. That paid links are a fundamentally flawed aspect of SEO. I saw this as corrupting the system of free organic search results. It also placed small websites at a distinct disadvantage because of financial constraints. It set up a situation where you could buy your way to the top of the search results through the purchase of links.
The practice of selling links became its own billion dollar industry. This situation grew worse with the sprouting up of link farms and networks. Any in-bound link would be considered a positive vote for your website. The search engines caught onto the practice and made it known that this practice was no longer acceptable.(Think Google 2003)
The selling of links however, never abated. It merely morphed from link farms into a different selling model. Directories of all shorts began is spring up by the thousands offering links for sale and for free. Then just about all websites that had any kind of Page Rank also offered links for sale. Many SEO blogs sole purpose was to obtain high Page Rank so as to sell links based on that rank. That was their business model. Google finally said that they had had enough of this in mid 2007.
Google gave the SEO community months of warning that this was no longer an acceptable practice. They finally took action and downgraded many website for selling links. However, the punishment was more of a warning. They reduced the PR of thousands of sites for links. However, most stated it did not have any short term effect on their search rankings or website visitors this happened back in October 2007.
There was a huge uproar from the SEO subculture. Months later many blogs reported that as much as 75% of surveyed webmasters were still buying links. Yes, old habits die hard. Since we never were part of this situation we were unaffected. Yet, the practice continues.
However, we have not been totally immune from the effects of this process. It has become very difficult to obtain useful links from other industry blogs. We focused our link building around making comments on SEO/SEM industry blogs that allows you to collect a link when you made a comment. These sites are very hard to find these days.
Google has required blogs to make there links “no follow links.” This means the link is created in a way that denies the search engines the right to follow that link. Thus the link is no longer of any value for SEO purposes. It still will allow visitors to be linked to another site, but not the search engines.
We believe that if a person takes the time to comment that they should be rewarded with a link that assist them in marketing their website in the search results. However, we depend on Google to provide the website traffic that we depend on to grow our business. So we will abide by their rules although we believe that they are a bit outdated.
Our response is going to be to develop a master list that includes websites that allow there links to be followed, or that use what is know as “do follow links.” If you are interested stayed tuned… This should be going up soon.
Portfolio: Envirosystems LLC
April 7, 2008
Tucson SEO Solutions was hired by Envirosystems LLC to create a website using an open source content managment system to provide a clean website with easy to update pages. Visit Envirosystems LLC
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