SEO Doesn’t Take Forever Or At Least Not For Me!
February 6, 2011
Welcome to the Google Places SEO blog at Tucson SEO Solutions.
SEO Doesn’t Take Forever Or At Least Not For Me!
This post was originally written back in early 2009.
I am tired of hearing that SEO takes a long time. I don’t believe this to be true, at least not for me. Now, I will agree if you are in a competitive market and you have 20 – 30 websites determined to be on the first page of Google for your targeted keywords you will have a difficult if not nearly impossible task on your hands. This is especially true if any of these sites are several years old and the keyword phrase appears in their url.
There is one thing to remember about SEO. The difficulty factor has very little to do with the number of search results that a particular search produces. Last year we created some Do Follow list of blogs and forums. At that time a Google search for “Do Follow List” Produced around 156 Million results. Yet, our page that targeted this search went to the first page in less than a month and stayed there.
Why was this possible? The fact is that even though 156 Million pages included these three words on a page it still was not a competitive search at that time. This was not a search that was competitive. People wrote about the subject and that was about it. Since then the search has become much more competitive with many sites offering lists and Do Follow search capabilities and tools.
Several months ago I created a new page on the website that targets Holistic SEO. This search produces about 390,000 results. We were able to land that page on the first page within three weeks. This is not a highly competitive search by volume.
Last Month I re-titled my blog to include the keyword phrase Phoenix SEO. This search for Phoenix SEO only produced 304,000 results at that time. However, there are perhaps 20 companies actively targeting this phrase. Yet, in less than three weeks we were a regular on the first page of Google for this search. My advantage here is I have a blog that is regularly updated. It is mostly competing against static pages. Thus I have a huge advantage and the blog has gone as high as # 2.
Then on April 2 I created another yet another page That targets Arizona SEO Solutions. This is another low volume low but competitive search. After less than two weeks that page ranks # 2 in Google searches. Google often ranks new pages well. Staying there has proven much harder because it is competitive. There are about 20 companies that are actively pursuing this search.
Now, I am no genius here. I don’t use any tricks and only I use good old basic SEO and basic ethical link building methods. I also pick my targets well. There is nothing automated here we manually acquire links . We earn links by adding value to other sites and by providing something worth linking too.
I shake my head when I read that SEO takes time. SEO takes a well planned and executed program. It’s that simple. You don’t rank well just because you want too, no, it has to be earned.
What say you?
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No I Dont Want To Help You
January 30, 2011
Welcome to the Google Places SEO blog at Tucson SEO Solutions.
No I Don’t Want To Help You
This was first posted in 2009.
Now, that’s a very odd tittle for me to use. I really do enjoy helping others in a variety of different ways. That is one big reason why I blog. I am an educator at heart and by training. Having said that I have had to say no a lot in this past month. It seems that some individuals think Tucson is a good spot to set up an SEO business. That’s ok with me. I relish the new competition and when I discover my new competition I generally welcome them.
However, I have been saying no a lot lately to these new competitors. They have been calling me on the phone and emailing me quit a bit lately. They want to be direct competitors of mine and they expect that I should not only welcome them but also assist them!
They all want my expertise and experience provided for free. They want to know everything about the market for SEO in Tucson. The best offer that I have received is an offer to lunch! Heck, I have even turned down a paid offers a few months back.
I was amazed when I got the first request, but the requests kept coming. I have had five such requests in the last month alone. I can not fathom where these men are coming from. They want explicit information about SEO and the market conditions in Tucson and they expect that I should be willing to meet their desires. Not only that, they expect this information for free!
All of these individuals start off their conversations by stating that they have noticed that am all over the internet for anything SEO related in Tucson. Of course this is true. But stroking me about how good I am, is only stating the obvious and doesn’t impress me. No ego boost is going to change my mind.
I got burnt early on by a web developer here in Tucson and I am extremely cautious. This person hired me do to a project for him with the understanding that I would get all of his SEO work. Problem is the work never arrived. I showed him the ropes and that was it. I was now competing with the person that I had helped. As the saying goes once bitten twice shy.
My response was very straight forward “I have no interest helping someone so they can compete with me.” Everyone who contacted me seemed shocked that the Big Dog of SEO in Tucson didn’t want to assist them and I didn’t care. The economy is tough all over and I am not going to assist someone who may later take bread off my table. So I have become every good at saying No.
Now, having said that I still offer loads of free advice on this blog and off. Last week a woman called requesting assistance on getting her website noticed. The site ended up being a very generic one page website. This person had no money for my services but I spent a very long time talking and educating this woman.
The site offers Christian music but the site had no real focus. I spent much of the discussion and providing resources. We also discussed defining her sites keywords. When I asked her to define what her sight was about she could not provide a good answer. I recommended that she do some research with people where she goes to fellowship with to provide her with input about the site and how they might search for her music.
Any website that wants to be successful has to define what their website was about (keywords). I pointed out that if she focused on the keywords “Christian music” that she would have a huge amount of competition. I also explained that she would need lots of time and resources to accomplish ranking well in this area. I further explained that she needed to do lots of research to find out how others would search for her music. I went on to explain that she would need to create an interactive website to be able to take better advantage of her music. I ended up recommending that she consider WordPress.
I really enjoy conversations like this. While I am not producing billable hours I am making a deposit in the bank of good will. I truly believe in what goes around comes around. This isn’t an isolated event. I will assist just about anyone who calls, who is sincere, but generally clueless about SEO and Internet Marketing. By the way, I have saved these folks tens of thousands of dollars in the process and that makes my days!
Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking with it!
What say you?
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If your business is located in the communities of Tucson, Yuma, Flagstaff, Tempe, Mesa , Chandler, Arizona or beyond and you need Google Places SEO solutions please call Tucson SEO at 520-505-6024 Now!
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
Link Building: Anchor Text Style V2
January 15, 2011
Welcome to the Google Places SEO blog at Tucson SEO Solutions.
Link Building: Anchor Text Style
Today, if your reading this now, this is way a old post but worth mentioning again. I have updated it to reflect what is going on now. While searching for resources for our “Do Follow List OF Lists” (no longer exists) my partner discovered a blog, http://www.affiliatewatcher.com. The blogger used an image of someone who was ranting about Do Follow Blogs. It has an eye-popping graphic of someone pulling out there hair, that I really liked.
Specifically, he was going off on blogs that have the “u comment i follow” logo on them. This logo was created by Randa Clay to indicate that the blog would pass link juice for any link resulting from commenting.
This person was ranting about how the blog owners should remove these logos if they are on longer relevant. When we are blogging for links we use SEOQuake which produces a line through links that are “No Follow.” So this doesn’t bother us much. There are lots of reason why this might be occurring. It could simply be the plugin is no longer working after an upgrade or hasn’t been set up correctly I’m also sure some of this is intentional, if not most.
What really got my attention was when he continues his rant about those people who don’t use their real names in the name field of the blogs comment section. He was calling it spam. This is where this story really begins. You see, link building is its most effective and powerful when it produces an anchor text with the link. The name field of blog comments creates that anchor text link. When the anchor text can not be aligned with the websites content, the search engines devalue the link. If I go to a blog and use Urban that link is almost useless in gaining higher search rankings.
When the anchor text matches the content you now have a very valuable link. So for example when we use “Tucson SEO” in the name field it doesn’t mean that we are spamming (too me.) Update 01/06/2011 It does now!
It merely means that we want the link to be given a keyword attribute that is related to our website. When I use the name Boris, the search engines cannot match the name with this websites content and the link is less useful. Now, each blog sets its own rules on the comment policy. You really have to pay attention here or the comment will be deleted. I delete a half dozen or so comments each day over this issue.
Like anything good it can be abused. This is a growing trend that you can expect to see more often. Getting links is becoming more difficult almost daily. Thus we are seeing an increase of keywords being used in the name field. I believe a perfect balance can be found by using the Keyword Luv plugin. It uses both a name and a keyword phrase when used properly. I really believed this at that time but I no longer do and I no longer use this plugin.
We use it here. That being said, every day I get comments that just include the keywords. Since these commenter’s cannot follow directions they will never get a link. I may use the comment but without a backlink included.
Many people have a real sense of community in the blogosphere. They grumble every time they see a keyword or keyword phrase used in the blog comments, just as this writer was doing. They believe that your real name should be used exclusively.
That’s ok, but it only creates problems and frustrations. I have tried to find a happy balance by using Keyword Luv, but most people still will not take advantage of it. They will never get links here. We also require a 20 word comment but that gets ignored as well. This has been changed to 150 characters.
These commenter’s fail to realize with the advent of “No Follow” and Google’s crusade against paid links it has made acquiring links much more difficult. This shrinks the opportunities to acquire links. So we in the SEO and SEM industries must make the best possible use of the links that we are acquiring.
That’s why you are seeing an increase in this practice. I believe in ethical link building and I promote leaving quality comments that follow a blogs comment policy. Yet, everyday people abuse this privilege here. This is why so many blogs go back to No Follow. Way to many people don’t care or they don’t pay enough attention.
Now, having said that, I am letting you know that we are working on a plugin that will eliminate drive by comments. This should help a whole lot of blogger’s! Stay tuned for this one is could potentially be huge. That plugin was completed in 2009.
All good things can get abused so lets make it a point not too abuse link building opportunities while they are still available.
What say you?
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If your business is located in the communities of Tucson, Yuma, Flagstaff, Tempe, Sedona, Wilcox, Arizona or beyond and you need Google Places SEO solutions please call Tucson SEO at 520-505-6024 Now!
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Websites That Work: Part 1
January 14, 2011
Welcome to the Google Places SEO blog at Tucson SEO Solutions.
Websites That Work: Part 1
Everyone who owns a website wants to increase traffic to their site. They rightly, or wrongly, believe that increased traffic will produce increased leads and business. However, most of these people never consider “is my website ready for prime time.”
I have been contacted by potential clients that stated “all I want is to increase traffic.” I explain in a short presentation why they might not benefit by just increasing visitors. If at that point they still only want more traffic I politely decline to do business with them.
All your marketing and optimization efforts may be wasted if your website is dysfunctional. Many of your visitors will abandon your website before they ever arrive if your pages are slow in loading. Slow loading pages are the kiss of death for any website.
This problem is often related to your images or graphics that are used. Another obstacle maybe related to the website hosting package that you purchased. You may not have enough bandwidth for your websites traffic.
Let’s first consider the slow loading page due to content. This is usually a result of a page that is loaded with animation, graphics, and images. All of these dramatically slow down the opening of a web page. Consider replacing them with keyword rich content.
Remember at this time, search engines can not read graphics or pictures. So you are better off replacing these with text that includes your keywords presented as keyword phrases (Two or more keywords combined.)
The other reason your pages are loading slowly is a lack of bandwidth. You might want to think of bandwidth as the road that leads to your website. When too much traffic tries to access your website at once it might not be wide enough to handle the volume. Lack of bandwidth slows down traffic to a crawl. You should consider upgrading your hosting plan. Usually, a few more dollars spent on more bandwidth will resolve this problem. If you share a server with other sites, a common practice your site may be slowed by demands placed on the server by other sites.
Remember, not everyone has a cable connection. So If your website is slow loading with cable just imagine how slow it is with broadband connection.
Are you ready to get up to speed?
What say you?
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If your business is located in the communities of Tucson, Yuma, Flagstaff, Tempe, Sedona , Flagstaff, Arizona or beyond and you need Google Places SEO solutions please call Tucson SEO at 520-505-6024 Now!
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Website 101 – Don’t Let Someone Else Register Your Domain Name!
January 5, 2011
Welcome to the Google Places SEO blog at Tucson SEO Solutions.
Website 101 – Don’t Let Someone Else Register
Your Domain Name!
A warning to the wise about picking a domain name and having it registered! One of my websites was down for four days. The registration had expired thus causing the website to be unavailable to the public. You can not make money when people can not find your website!
The problem started a year ago when we had our web designer register our domain. He registered it in his name. When we discovered this we requested that it be placed in our name. This was done very quickly, or so it appeared on the surface. However, our designer northstewart.com never created another account for our domain.
So even thou it appeared that we owned the website in the whois.org registry directory, he still had control of the domain in his account. You can not extend the registration of a website that is not in your account. This problem took four days to resolve.
The whois directory showed a company named Enom had registered the domain. This was incorrect; it was registered by one of their resellers, namecheap.com. So when we contacted them we could only leave a message and email their support.
This was a major hassle, but they stepped to the plate to resolved the problem for us, in part anyway. They got the site registry renewed; however, the web designer still controls the account. This is not a good situation for someone when they do not possess complete control over their domain.
I tell you this story to make you aware of the risks of turning such a simple task over to someone else. At one point in my relationship with this man, I considered him a friend. Since this was my first registration of a website I trusted someone else to handle the process. I have since registered 24 domains by myself and have found it a very simple process.
Update: We finally after two years were able to gain control of www.yourfreshstart.us and we are planning on selling that site.
Update 01 /01 2011: I never did sell that site and it does come in handy when I am making SEO training videos.
So be very cautious, this is your business… Beware, wolfs do come in sheep’s clothing.
What say you?
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Increase Website Traffic Phoenix Tucson
Local SEO Services Tucson Google Places Phoenix
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Google Places SEO Tucson Phoenix Mesa Scottsdale Glendale
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Geo-Targeted Geo-targeting SEO – Search Engine Optimization Services
If your business is located in the communities of Tucson, Yuma, Flagstaff, Tempe, Mesa , Chandler, New River, or Cave Creek, Arizona or beyond and you need Google Places SEO solutions please call Tucson SEO at 520-505-6024 Now!
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
