Is Social Media Worth The Effort?

June 10, 2008

It all depends what you want to accomplish. I spend a fair amount of time on SEO related forums. Social Media is the buzz topic there everywhere. That is especially true when the topic of social bookmarking is concerned.

The vast majority of the responders agree social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us is the best way to drive traffic and create backlinks. Some website like Digg can produce 100’s of thousands of visitors in a short amount of time. This is known as the Digg effect. There have been numerous reports of servers crashing due to Digg induced traffic spikes. However, everything that I have read reports dismal results for converting visitors into customers.

So I wondered if every white paper that I have read on this topic states that social media visitors are poor at converting into customers, then why all this buzz. Then I realized that many of the people who visit these forums have websites designed to create traffic only. They often highly target a specific high volume keyword. They make their money through AdSense and affiliate marketing programs.

These sites want you to exit their website by clicking on a text link. This is their only reason for existing. So all they focus on is creating traffic. Their ROI is based on you leaving their website because they often have nothing to sell themselves.

We have ventured into the social media fray ourselves. Whenever we post an article to our blog we use social media sites to create traffic. We use Sphinn, Technorati, Stumble, and Digg. We started the process a month ago and we have seen a five fold increase in traffic. However, this has not lead to one sales call, lead, or email inquiry. It has not been a total loss as we have acquired lots of links through the process. So for us the ROI is measured in links.

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Got More Time Then Money: Try Aboutus.org

May 29, 2008

We have deleted this article about this website.

Please read the spam email that they sent us below.

Then please read our follow up on this website at:

http://tucsonseosolutions.com/aboutusorg-write-about-them-and-they-spam-your-blog

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A 12 Step Program For Link Buyers - Sellers Anonymous

May 21, 2008

This is my personal favorite post.  This was created as a response to the uproar during over Google’s decision to move against websites that participated in the lucrative trading  of links. This practice for many seems as if it were an addiction.

The SEO subculture was a buzz and people were openly discussing how hard to was to give up the easy way of buying your way to the top of search rankings. It seems often like the cry of addiction. Businesses were struggling with how to give up this patterned  behavior.

So we came up this little 12 Step Program.

1. We admitted we were powerless over links that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than or ourselves, (Google) could restore us to our SEO sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of Google as we understood their SEO logic.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, our links, and our hats.

5. Admitted to Google, to ourselves and to another SEO being the exact nature of our link buying and selling.

6. Were entirely ready to have Google remove all these defects of character and SEO practices.

7. Humbly asked Google to remove our Page Rank.

8. Made a list of all websites and clients we had harmed by buying and selling links and become willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to Google and our clients wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10.Continued to take link inventory and when we were wrong in our SEO practices promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, Google , and the universe, as we understood them to be, praying only for knowledge of Google’s will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of Google, we will carry this message to all SEO’ers, Black Hat and White, and to practice these linking principles in all our SEO affairs.

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Blogging For Links, Profit, And For Continuing Education

May 16, 2008

It is the opinion of Tucson SEO Solutions that the blog is the single most important marketing tool available. This business was built on the expertise gleaned from scouring the SEO/SEM blogging community.

I often tell the tale of cleaning houses during the day as a one person cleaning service. Then studying SEO and SEM and for 8 to 10 hours a day every day for four straight months. I visited thousands of websites along the way. It was so easy back then (18 months ago) when we started website marketing. Back then, blogging for links was easy, time consuming, but easy. That was before “No Follow’ ruined the legitimate white hat practice of blogging for links.

By the time our house cleaning website launched in January 2007 we had already gathered 1400 industry specific links. We combined the power of these links with our new knowledge of Page Titles, Page Descriptions, Geo-targeted SEO and fresh content into a winning combination.

That website landed on the first page of Google several times over within three days of launching! It has been there ever since. Its eco friendly house cleaning tips blog
Has been first page ranked for nearly as long.

The blog is essential for providing fresh content for the static website that the search engines crave. The blogs, when used frequently can help your website obtain and maintain high search rankings.

When you blog you can:

Still acquire links
Learn a whole lot
Share with others
Profit in many different ways
Obtain and maintain high search ranking
And maybe even have some fun!

We simply would not be here today, if it where not for blogs. It still blows me away when I visit a website marketing business website that doesn’t have a blog. We believe so much in blogs that they are standard issue on every website that we build. We also include training to use the software as an effective marketing tool. We believe a blog is useless if the website owner doesn’t know how to use it effectively.

We simply will not build a website that doesn’t include a blog. We feel that strongly about the subject. It is too powerful a tool to be missing, especially if you have a static website. The blog also provides a vehicle for your customers to interact beyond normal business channels.

Many of website visitors to a service website will be doing research for a future purchase. The blog allows you to educate this group, share your expertise, and experiences. When done properly the blog can communicate a certain level of trust.

Trust is critical when the businesses service requires coming to or entering someone’s home. Dependability, reliability, and safety are paramount to this group. Again, the blogs can easily allow you to address different segments of your customer base.

We, often refer to blogs as stages, or sounding boards. If you love what you do your blog readers will easily see this; and the bonds of trust can begin to be established.

The blog also is a great tool when used to create inbound links. That is why we are working on our own “Do Follow Blog Lists.” The list has turned out to be a great link building tool for us. When we visit SEO/SEM sites to verify their linking status, we leave a comment, pick up a link, and let the owners know that they are on our list.

It still blows me away when I visit SEO sites that haven’t implemented a blog on the own site. But then we clearly understand, that we are hear today because others blogged, we read, learned, and applied what we had learned. The rest they say is history.

The only real drawback is that they require lots of time and attention to be successful.

If you have found this blog useful, educational, or entertaining we would kindly ask you to link to us… Thanks, so very much!

Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.

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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.

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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.

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