I recently spoke with a very small company about marketing their website, which happens to be in a very competitive industry. The owner told me he was currently speaking with an internet marketing company in Chicago, and for the one time fee of $2,500, they would submit his website to the search engines (monthly), obtain 15 inbound links for him (total!), and “optimize” his meta tags.

Unfortunately, after letting the client know that it would be very costly and time consuming to rank on keywords such as the ones he wanted to target, he decided to go with the Chicago firm. I mentioned that it would be easier and most cost effective to rank on more tail terms (which would also provide him with excellent conversion rates), but this firm in Chicago convinced him that he would rank well on any keywords if he just gave them $2,500.

To me, this Chicago firm sounds shady. With only 15 inbound links and “optimized” meta tags, this small business won’t see many results, if any at all. They won’t rank well for the keywords they’re targeting. The owner remained convinced, however, that this was the way to go, since they promised him good rankings on tough keywords for a small price.

If you’re looking for an SEO firm, beware the ones that say by submitting your site to the search engines, you’ll rank well. If this is the majority of the work they’re doing for you, you’re getting ripped off. If they only promise you 15 inbound links, again, this is a ripoff.

And, as a reminder, optimized meta tags, while they may entice users to click on your website, don’t do much to help you rank in the search engines. Do your homework before hiring any SEO firm, and beware any company that pushes the importance of submitting your site to the search engines, and altering your meta tags. While these are important things, they make up about 5% of what you need to be doing to rank well.

Talk to several different companies, get quotes, and go with what seems the best. To be a little cliche, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

All companies have competition. Usually, the competition will play fair and not use dirty or underhanded tactics to try to get ahead. Sometimes, however, companies that cannot compete on service or quality or price will use guerilla marketing to trash the reputation of a company they’re competing with. When this happens, SEO or search engine optimization can be greatly beneficial.

Writing high quality articles or press releases, or just optimizing your website for your company’s name will help you get ahead in the days of dirty competition. It is important to rank well on your company’s name, and to outrank any false reports or reviews that may be out there.

I’m not trying to advocate censorship - everyone deserves a voice. You just want to be the loudest voice out there.

When it comes to ranking well in the search engines, one important factor is having original content on your website. If you’re an internet retailer and you’re using the manufacturer’s copy, you’re going to rank just as well as all the other companies out there that have that same copy.

If you develop original content for each product, Google (and Yahoo! and MSN for that matter) will reward you with higher rankings than the other websites with duplicate content.

Some SEO companies employ copywriters that can develop content for you. If you don’t have the time to develop the copy yourself, take them up on it. It’s worth the initial investment - it will more than pay for itself in the long run when you’re getting a lot more sales than the competition.

Do yourself a favor. Invest in developing original copy for your website. Yes, it’s time consuming, and yes, it’s expensive, but in the end, it’s worth it when you’re getting a lot of organic sales because potential clients find you.

This is just a quick gripe about how Ebay always seems to come up in Adwords, no matter what you search for. For instance, I googled myself, and for some reason, an Ebay ad came up saying I could be found on Ebay. Hmm. Really? I didn’t realize I was for sale!

My point is, be careful about the keywords you bid on. Be selective, and remember that the more specific the term is, the more likely you are to have a sale. Granted, you won’t get as much traffic, but I believe if you go for the more tail terms (see the previous post about head and tail terms), you’ll have more success with your conversion rates.

I was doing some research on a local Utah company’s backlink profile, and I noticed an interesting thing. Despite the fact that they had 20,000 inbound links, five of the links on the first page were from several interlinked sites that were of a very bigoted nature. I was quite surprised because this company is well established in the high-tech industry, and I knew they didn’t represent that. After doing some research into this, I figurured out that this company was hosting these websites, and that’s how they received these links.

I think it is important to track who is linking to your business. Websites that are bigots spouting off are one thing (they do leave a bad and unprofessional opinion), but if there were other more unsavory websites linking to you, that would be something to consider. In other words, make sure you don’t have porno sites linking to yours. Although inbound links are important, it’s more important to be choosy about who links to you. You want your business to be reflected in a professional manner.

As far as getting a link removed, I’m sure a simple request would do the trick. Or, if you’re a business in the hosting or web design industry, don’t put a link on every client’s website. Control as best as you can who is linking to you.

There are several important factors when considering an SEO company to help optimize your company’s website. There are many companies out there that do an excellent job, however, there are some that utilize some techniques that may not be ethical or even useful.

There are several steps you can take to help make sure you’re choosing an SEO company that will provide you with the results you are looking for. It’s just a matter of doing your homework. The first is to find out exactly what they offer in their packages. Do they include a portion of your monthly payment to fund your ppc campaign? If so, does it say, “Up To $100 deposited in AdWords” or something like that? If that is the case, be wary. This means that it is in their best interest to deposit as little as possible to contribute to their own bottom line. If there is a specified amount each month that will be used to fund the pay per click campaign, that is a better way to go.

Another tip - Don’t get locked into long contracts. If you sign a year long contract, you have to pay them whether you’re getting the results you want, or receiving the service you expected. If you have a month to month contract with an SEO firm, there is a very high incentive for them to provide you with high quality service and results. They want to keep you, so they’ll have to work hard every month.

One somewhat obvious thing to do is see how well they’ve optimized their own website. Are they ranking on competitive keywords? If they’re not able to rank their own website well, they’re probably not going to be able to do much for your website.

Another means of seeing what kind of a company your SEO firm is to take a look at their backlink profile. This is a good indicator of what type of SEO they practice. I found one firm that created fake SEO/design companies that said they were no longer accepting clients, but you could contact “X” firm (themselves-I guess they were trying to get relevant backlinks). Well, it wasn’t difficult to find out the “feeder” companies were fake because all of the “clients” listed didn’t have websites, and the company address was just a house (thanks Google Maps!), and their firm was the only referral the website gave. When firms practice techniques like this for their own SEO, what would they do for a client?

Once company I researched tried experimenting with developing backlink profiles. They submitted themselves as a product to Amazon.com, hoping for an amazon backlink. Instead of that, however, they just ended up looking dumb. They received no backlink, but they’re listed in Amazon. Come on! I think it’s pretty funny, but companies practicing techniques like that probably have done other dumb things. I think it’s a good indicator to stay away.

This is certainly not a complete list of things to look out for, but it’s a good start. When you’re investing money in marketing, you want to know that the firm you hired will work hard and provide good results. If a firm promises to have you ranking in the top spot, guaranteed - run. No reputable SEO company will guarantee results simply because there are no guarantees. SEO firms cannot control what Google, Yahoo or MSN do, nor can they control the amount of SEO your competitors are doing. It’s just a matter of staying on top of things, and constantly utilizing the most up-to-date methods to provide the best results for your marketing campaign.

If you have spent any time researching SEO or PPC you have probably come across the phrases “head terms” and “tail terms.”

In order to understand what this means imagine a graph that starts really high on the left, but falls steeply toward 0 as you go to the right. Imagine, however, that the graph just approaches 0, but never reaches it, for miles (yes, that’s a long piece of paper).

This is a pretty accurate depiction of search engine queries every month - there are a few really high-traffic keywords (iraq, plasma tv, etc.) and then an astoundingly high number of keywords (more specifically, phrases) which may only receive one search per month (”where can i find news about the war in iraq,” “plasma tv 32″ wall-mounted,” etc.)

Five years ago when I started getting involved with SEO everybody wanted to own the head - meaning they wanted to rank well on the high-traffic terms. It’s pretty easy to figure out why - without as much competition as you face today they were easy to own and would result in a ton of traffic.

In the past couple years, however, I have seen more people focus on the tail. There is a lot to like about targeted queries such as the ones that have low search volume - while the volume of searches per query is very low, often there are several similar queries which produce an impressive aggregated volume.

I think, however, that the importance of the tail terms may have been overemphasized in the past few years and we strongly recommend that you consider your business model before making a decision - and don’t be fooled, this is an important decision to make before even choosing an SEO. Some are much better at getting head terms while others focus on the tail.

Do a bit of research and as your potential SEO what they recommend - make sure to talk to a few companies and ask for specific referrals for both head and tail keywords. Figure out what you need in an SEO and then seek out the best overall fit.

In my last post, I mentioned how important SEO is for driving traffice to websites, and how at times, the organic results are more “trustworthy” than the paid listings. While some consumers may feel the organic results are better, PPC still plays an important role in internet marketing campaigns.

First of all, with PPC, you get immediate results, depending on how much money you are willing to spend on a per-click basis. It’s just a matter of outbidding the other companies looking to rank on the same keyword as you. This doesn’t always mean, however, you’ll get the best results if you pay the most amount of money. They key is finding out the ideal amount to bid for keywords that will result in the best ROI. If you’re an HR Outsourcing company bidding $5 per click on Human Resources, it might not get you the traffic you want. It may be people just looking for information about Human Resources, rather than a company to provide those services. Your money will probably be better invested in bidding on a keyword like “Human Resources Outsourcing.” There will probably be less traffic than more general terms, but the traffic will be more qualified. Another benefit is that the per-click costs will be lower than that of more generic “head” terms.

I would say that managing a good SEO campaign in conjunction with PPC is very beneficial. Once the SEO campaign is doing well, if the internet marketing budget is tight, it may be best to phase out parts of PPC to save money, since you don’t have to pay for each click when traffic gets to your website through the organic results. It can be good to rank on both organic and paid listings, though, because if people see your website in both the organic and paid results, they can’t ignore you. They know you’re important because you’re right there. We call this a “road block,” and it is very good for driving traffic to your website.

There are many things to consider, but there are advantages to both SEO and PPC. It’s just a matter of figuring out what is best for your company and your budget.

There are many ways to drive traffic to websites, but the most cost effective, in the long run, is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization allows websites to rank well on certain keywords that are being targeted. SEO is beneficial for anyone with a website needing more traffic. I first came into contact with it several years ago when my husband started marketing a local internet retail company. They had a limited budget, but needed to market the products they were selling online. The most cost-effective way of marketing was using SEO to drive traffic to the website. The results were not as immediate as PPC, however, in the long run it paid off because they didn’t have to worry about paying for each click in the organic results like they would with PPC.
Another benefit to SEO over PPC is people tend to trust the “natural” results more than the “paid” results. Whether this is logical or not doesn’t really matter - people just tend to believe that because these companies show up first in Google, Yahoo, or MSN, they must be more trustworthy. This isn’t to say don’t use PPC - pay per click has its many benefits, which I’ll discuss in another post.
The ROI with SEO has been proven time and again. Once the campaign has been around for several months, and websites are ranking well for targeted keywords, it’s a great investment that will continue to pay off. The key for website owners is patience - sometimes SEO can take months (or even years on very competitive terms) to see good results, but once those results are showing up, the traffic will only increase with time.