Gridlock - SEO News

How To: Real Estate or Architecture Layout

2010-01-17T09:08:00.001-08:00

Awesome how to from Grafpedia:

Create a simple layout for architecture or real estate | Grafpedia

how to, diy, web design, layout, web development, real estate, architecture

Sheer SEO: Web-based Rank Reports

2010-01-14T15:38:00.001-08:00

I have been using Sheer SEO's web-based seo software for a while now and I have to say it is a lifesaver. I have been searching for the best ranking software for a long, long time now and it's all just really slow, sluggish applications that take forever to set up. Sheer SEO's rank reports are done without you even logging in, all you need to do to see them is login. You can also have a professional account that will allow you to set up sub-accounts for your clients if you are an seo professional. They will have their own login and password and they can login to see their rank reports any time they feel like it. Best of all, it's fast and you don't need to open a whole new ram-heavy application to check rankings. Definitely worth checking out!

seo, ranking, seo software, ranking reports, ranking software, software, website, seo

BaseKit: An Easier Way To Design Web Sites

2010-01-12T10:43:00.001-08:00

BaseKit is a new web app that allows web designers to create beautiful websites from designs they did in Photoshop or by using BaseKit's pre-built site packs in their web site showcase. Turn your Photoshop design into a clean web site within seconds. It supports point and click, drag and drop features for adding content. It is a simple, easy way to design clean, dynamic websites. Go check it out: BaseKit and be sure to follow BaseKit on Twitter: @basekit

basekit, web design, websites, cms, css, html, new site, web app

15 Free, Beautiful Templates

2010-01-09T08:47:00.001-08:00

This is a great list with some stunning templates from Visionwidget:

15 Brilliant Free High Quality X-HTML/CSS Templates All You Need

web design, css, x-html, templates

Online Resources for Graphic Designers

2010-01-08T14:02:00.001-08:00

Six Revisions posed a question a while ago to it's readers asking what the best online resources for graphic designers were. The resulting comment section is an almost endless list of fantastic resources for graphic designers. Go check it out: Best Online Resource for Graphic Designers?

graphic design, graphic designers, resources, web sites, design

seeklogo: Vector Logo Search

2010-01-07T13:12:00.001-08:00

If you've ever designed a logo, you know that it can be hard sometimes to come up with any kind of inspiration. Sometimes when you need to get one done in a short period of time and you're stuck for ideas, you look elsewhere. seeklogo is a search engine for vector logos and they boast over 200,000 of them. I'm definitely bookmarking this site.

seeklogo, graphic design, graphics, vector logos, logos, search engine

SEO for Wordpress

2009-12-28T07:53:00.001-08:00

I use Wordpress for most of my blogs, which is a fair amount. It is far better than Blogger in so many ways, though I do use Blogger for this one being as the Google search engine seems to like Blogger blogs better than Wordpress blogs, which is no surprise as Blogger is owned by Google. We have struggled with how to make a Wordpress blog more search engine friendly an have found some winning combinations. MakeUseOf.com recently posted a piece about some plugins for Wordpress that can help you with this:

First up is SEO Friendly Images – as you can imagine, it helps you automatically optimize your images so search engines can see them. Search engines are not real people and they cannot see images. To index images they rely on Alt Image Tags which in plain English means Alternate Image Tags. You tag them and the search engines read them. Now if you have a blog with thousands of posts already what do you do? You install SEO Friendly Images as a plug-in, activate it and rock and roll! Let’s check it out.

Read the rest: 3 Wordpress Plug-Ins To Automate & Improve Your Blog SEO

seo, search engine optimization, sem, search engine marketing, search, search engines, wordpress plugins, wordpress add-ons, blogs, blogging

Favicon Generator

2009-12-18T10:25:00.000-08:00

New from Dagon Design: Favicon generator. Using a favicon is a great way to brand your web site. When users bookmark your site, your favicon shows up in their bookmarks and they continue to see your logo or whatever it is you use for a favicon, even when they're not on your site. It promotes brand recognition and loyalty and Dagon Design has created a great way to create a favicon online with this tool.

favicon, generator, web design, branding, web evelopment, marketing, optimization

Check Your Web Site's Mobile Friendliness

2009-12-18T08:49:00.000-08:00

W3C has a page called mobileOK Checker which checks your web site for mobile friendliness. It takes a look at things like page size, load time, CSS, markup, etc to make sure that your web site will perform well on mobile phones. If your site passes, it is deemed mobileOK.

w3c, mobile web, validation, checker, web development, web design, optimization

More on Google and Speed

2009-12-16T14:22:00.001-08:00

Google has not made it a secret it wants the web to be faster, and with a lot of news out there popping up recently it is becoming quite clear that a speedy web is one of Google's highest priorities. Mashable asked recently if Google should rank web sites based on speed, and I say yes. Web sites that take a long time to load are, in my opinion, a sign of disrespect for your end user's time. Watching animated loading progress bars on flash sites is an absolute guarantee that I will leave. We live in an age where, if you can't find what you're looking for here, you can get it in an infinite amount of other places almost instantly. Why, when this is the case, would anyone choose to stick around on the site that takes the longest to load? There are no exceptions. Whenever I argue this point, people say to me, "but what about Coca-Cola or say, Molson Canadian? they have flash sites and features that take a while to load and they seem to be doing O.K." and to those people I ask, do you think that every single person who has ever visited molsoncanadian.com has stuck around to see the Flash features load? I doubt it. Even if just one person is turned away, for a small company, that could be everything. Here's a great piece about a site that can help you speed up your web pages: WebPageTest: Test Your Web Site's Speed

google, speed, web speed, site speed, site performance, web development, web design, seo, molson canadian, coca cola

Google Wants to Speed Up The Web

2009-12-16T10:33:00.001-08:00

Very interesting, changing the entire http protocol:

Google is apparently in the early stages of a research project that appears to aim as high as perhaps replacing the HTTP protocol, the fundamental technology that essentially makes the World Wide Web possible.

In a somewhat obscure post on the Chromium blog, the development branch of their Chrome (Chrome) browser, Google (Google) reveals they’ve been working on a new protocol dubbed SPDY for “SPeeDY” for its goal of making the web faster.

While HTTP is an “elegantly simple protocol” that has powered the web since 1996, the tone of Google’s post is almost patronizing, as if HTTP were our doddering old uncle that’s had his day and needs to be put out to pasture. Then again, Google’s hubris is perhaps warranted as one of the only companies with enough clout and resources to indeed spur on the “evolution of websites and browsers” with an entirely new protocol designed to speed up the communication between web servers and clients.

Read the rest: Google’s Plan to Make the Web Twice as Fast

google, web, web site, http, protocol, chrome, mashable

Mockingbird: Mockup Collaboration on the Web

2009-12-15T16:13:00.001-08:00

Mockingbird is a new site that allows you to create mockups of your web projects to preview and share online. It allows you to plan your projects faster, show your clients what your ideas are before going full-speed ahead, collaborate with everyone working on the project and create an amazing web application.

mockingbird, new site, web site, web development, mockup, collaboration, web design

Find Out What Is Catching Your Web Vistitor's Attention

2009-12-14T12:05:00.000-08:00

Feng-GUI will create a heatmap from any image file you upload that indicates where a user's attention might be focused. This is a totaly invaluable tool for web site owners, as you want to make sure your visitors are looking where you want them to. Go check it out: Feng-GUI.com

Technorati Tags: heatmap, feng-gui, image, seo, marketing, web design, web development

How to Write Retweetable Tweets

2009-12-07T10:04:00.000-08:00

This is an exceptional article looking at something I hadn't paid much attention to before. It's about formatting your tweets to get the most retweets out of them. It includes things that should be a no-brainer but, admittedly, I'd never even thought of, like keeping them short enough so that a user can retweet without editing the original tweet to fit 140 characters. Brilliant!

You’ve heard about “sticky content.” Back in the days of Web 1.0 it was what made folks stick around on your website. The idea was they would stay a while, read every word and then buy whatever you were selling. (This turned out to be a fallacy, but that’s a different post.) Microblogging demands that you create a different kind of content. Let’s call it “slippery.” That means 140-character bursts that are so compelling they slip away immediately and are repeated by those following you. And as everyone knows, the more you are retweeted, the more followers you get, as your bon mots are passed along from one person to another.

If you’re using Twitter (Twitter) for business as a way to promote your brand, products or services, it’s even more important that you write retweetable tweets. “Me, me, me” never works. People care about how you can provide value, so how can you be interesting or provocative, and stand out in the increasingly cluttered Twittersphere? Here are five simple ways to make your 140-character pronouncements highly retweetable.
1. Always Include a Link

Link to a blog post, a news article, a video, or a photo – something that expands on what you’re saying. In other words, learn to tell the whole story by pointing with a link to an important missing piece. You’ll want to use a URL shortener like bit.ly (bit.ly) or ow.ly so you don’t use up too many characters.

Read the rest: 5 Ways to Write Retweetable Tweets

Technorati Tags: twitter, tweet, retweet, follow, how to, seo, marketing, traffic, social media

Get the Most out of Your Tweets

2009-12-04T07:56:00.001-08:00

Fantastic article over at Mashable about tweeting, must read:

It doesn’t take much skill to tweet — you simply type what you want to say in under 140 characters. But while the barrier to entry is extremely low, tweeting well is something else entirely. I’m sure we all follow people who consistently offer enriching and insightful posts, and about whom we think, “Wow. They really know how to tweet.” We have also likely come across people on Twitter (Twitter) about whom we have felt the exact opposite.

If we consider tweeting to be something of an art form, then what are the characteristics that make for “good art” on Twitter? It is probably too early to identify them all, but a two-thousand-five-hundred year old text, the Tao te Ching, offers what I believe is some useful guidance. Below are the top four lessons that I think are most relevant.

1. Show Versus Tell

“The person of superior integrity does not insist upon his integrity; For this reason, he has integrity.” – Tao te Ching

Telling people how knowledgeable we are about a subject or bragging about our achievements via Twitter is generally a sign that we are out of alignment with the tao, which is often defined as “the flow” or “the natural way.” If a person is tweeting about how successful, smart, and knowledgeable he is about a subject, we can be pretty sure he’s not as wise as he claims.

Another, more tao-friendly approach, is to show more than tell. Rather than using Twitter to try to tell people who we are or what we know, focus instead on providing people good, quality information related to a subject matter. We can show knowledge through actions. People then feel a connection to us, and may even be impressed by us, not because we tell them that they should be, but because it shows through our tweets.

Read the rest: The Tao of Tweeting

Technorati Tags: twitter, tweeting, tweet, social networking, social network, social media, seo

Google's Speed Problem

2009-12-03T09:20:00.000-08:00

Google has launched a new tool called Google Site Performance to help you speed up your slow web site. I'm all for it, if there's anything I can't stand more than auto-loading music, it's slow-loading sites.

Google is obsessed with speed and efficiency. What other company would care so much about performance that it would create a super-minimalist homepage, build its own Web-centric operating system and also revamp its search algorithms?

Now Google is bringing its obsession with speed to the masses by launching a new tool to help Web site owners improve the loading time of their sites. Google Site Performance, now available as part of Webmaster Tools Labs, analyzes your Web site and provides data on the average load time, graphs out how your site has improved or slowed down over time, generates reports on specific pages, and, best of all, offers suggestions for speeding up your Web site.

Is Your Site Slow? Google Launches Tool to Help You Fix That

Technorati Tags: google, website, web site performance, website performance, speed, google site performance, search engine optimization, seo

Professional Twitter Profiles

2009-12-02T14:07:00.000-08:00

Great article about creating a professional Twitter Presence:

Define Your Purpose

Before you go changing anything around on your twitter profile to make it more professional you must decide what the purpose of the account is.

Is your purpose to connect with friends and family?
Is your purpose to share important updates to customers of your store or online business?
Is your purpose to attract potential clients and to give them an understanding of why they should choose your product or service?

If your purpose is only to connect with friends and family then you don’t really need to have a professional presence in my opinion.

But if your purpose is business related then the following steps will help you create a professional presence on twitter.

Sometimes people will have a personal and a business-related purpose for using twitter. In those cases I recommend having a personal twitter account and a separate business related account on twitter.
1. Get a custom background

To create a professional presence on twitter you want to have your own unique background. The default background is used by millions of people and you want to set yourself apart.

There are many websites that will help you create a customized background for your twitter account. And the best part is that most of them are free.

To create a custom background for my twitter account I used Twitbacks.com.

7 Ways To Create A Professional Twitter Presence

Technorati Tags: twitter, profile, seo, traffic, marketing, social media, social networking

Cross Browser Testing Made Easy

2009-12-01T13:52:00.000-08:00

Browsera is an all-in-one, web-based tool for testing web sites for errors, complications, and layout issues. Unlike other similar tools, it does more than just take screenshots of various browsers; it provides an in-depth assessment of problematic areas in need of attention.

Browsera is a program that has features similar to previously mentioned browser comparison sites like BrowserShots and IETester. Browsera kicks things up a notch, not only showing you what your site will look like to users with assorted browsers, but identifying and flagging problematic areas, making less dirty work for you.

Browsera is free with registration for use on up to 25 pages per month, which should be plenty for your weekend tinkering. If you need more, the service offers additional tiered pricing levels ranging from $49 a month to $499 a month as users and page views increase. The service currently runs its tests against the following browsers:

Windows: Firefox 2.0.0.20, 3.0.12, 3.5.0; Internet Explorer 6.0.3790.3959, 7.0.5730.13, 8.0.6001.18702; Mac: Safari 3.2.1 (5525.27.1), 4.0.3 (5531.9)

Read the rest: Browsera Simultaneously Tests Your Site In Different Browsers - Webapps - Lifehacker

Technorati Tags: seo, web design, cross-browser testing, browsera, new site, web site

Free Wood Textures for Your Graphic Designs

2009-11-24T13:18:00.000-08:00

Here are 10 high quality wooden textures that you can use in your design projects free of charge. Each texture file is extremely large-scale at 3,872px x 2,592px so that you can use them in many types of projects, large or small.
Preview

Here is a preview of them. Click on their title or image to go to their Flickr pages where you can download various sizes. Alternatively, you may wish to browse the Six Revisions Grungy Wood texture set on Flickr.

Read the rest here: 10 Free and High-Res Grungy Wood Textures

Technorati Tags: textures, graphic design, web design, free

Download Free Photoshop Textures

2009-11-04T13:14:00.001-08:00

Super exciting article for designers:

Top 10 Sites To Download Free Photoshop Textures

Textures are indispensable if you do any kind of design compositions. Not only do they provide an environment or background that you can use in your designs, a skilled designer can use them to set the overall feel and mood of the composition as well. If you have a decent camera, you can mostly create the textures you want using a photo of the desired object and some Photoshop magic. Here are some sites you can look up to find free Photoshop textures in case you are feeling lazy or don’t have the appropriate resources to create your own textures. The sites are in no particular order.
Amazing Textures

Amazing Textures list various free Photoshop textures nicely sorted into different categories. You can find textures representing wood, bricks, glass, metal, fabric and many more. You can browse the site as it is, however if you want to download higher resolution images you would have to register with the site. The registration is free.

Technorati Tags: photoshop, textures, free, download, seo, search engine optimization, marketing, traffic, web design, graphic design

Six Revisions on Talking to Your Clients

2009-11-03T09:49:00.000-08:00

A fantastic article from Six Revisions:

We know all too well the common and frustrating design scenarios clients present us with, such as wanting us to stretch images disproportionally, cramming as much information as possible in a small space so that you need a magnifying glass to read the text, or brushing off design best practices. Yet we seem to always have the same flat rebuttals to throw back, and furthermore, we repeat them time and time again.

I’d like to share with you two quotes that have helped me deal with getting my ideas across to clients.
"Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I might remember. Involve me and I will understand."

- Chinese Proverb
"You only need three guiding principles: show up, tell the truth and be on time."

- Brian Matt, Founder/CEO, Altitude, Inc.
I’ve come to realize that in order to drive the point home, you have to evolve your method of communication. From the two quotes above, I have narrowed down four key points that we should always keep in mind when briefing and dealing clients.
Be Honest, Brief and Direct

Be Honest, Brief and Direct

Your relationship with a client can be compared to any other relationship: if there is no trust, you will not be able to communicate effectively. I urge you to let clients know before signing a contract that–as a professional designer–you have boundaries, that you will be very candid in your responses, and most importantly, that you are offering design consulting as a service, not as a thoughtless product factory.
Say something like this:

"I don’t believe this will be effective to reach your goal, it will actually hinder it – I’ll tell you why, and then show you how we can improve on your concept."
Instead of humoring your client like this:

"Um… yeah that won’t be a problem, I’m sure I can get it to work…oops, no it didn’t work, let’s go back and maybe try something else?"

You grab their attention by stating your point first, elaborating on it briefly, and then summing it up with a positive note. By doing this, you get your main concern or idea across without wasting your breath on details or redoing a mock-up because you were too passive.

Identify a problem and present alternative solutions and ideas.

Read the rest: How to Get Your Ideas Across to Clients

Technorati Tags: client, seo, design, search engine optimization, marketing, traffic

Link Development: What Everybody Ought to Know

2009-10-30T12:11:00.000-07:00

by Carrie Haggerty

Link development is of the most important components of search engine optimization, yet often one of the most confusing. What is link development? Simply put, it is the act of requesting or securing inbound links to your site. The higher your link popularity (more times your link is found on other sites) generally the higher click through rates from these sites and higher your traffic. There are some key elements everyone should know before taking on a linking campaign. Hopefully, the following hints can make your next link development campaign more successful and you will gain the traffic you are looking for.

Choosing your anchor text

Before you start on any linking campaign, you should first do a detailed keyword analysis to find out what your top which keywords would be in your benefit. There are a number of tools out there that can help you with your keywords analysis:

Wordtracker - A small fee is required but it does give you a great idea of what keywords would be beneficial for all of your successful SEO campaigns.

Keyword Discovery - Another great source for your keyword analysis.

Google Adwords Tool - This is by far one of the most beneficial tools. It is free to use and it gives you a great look at the approximate search volume for all keywords. You do not have to be an adwords subscriber in order to use it.

After you have selected your keywords and you know what the best ones are for your site, write out a few text links using those keywords in your anchor text. What is anchor text? Anchor text is the visible part of your link for example:

Check out this article: What everyone needs to know about link development.

The bold italicized is what you would consider to be your anchor text. A better example of using your selected keywords would to be re-phrase it to look like this:

Check out this article: Link Development: What everyone needs to know.

Choosing Your Link Partners

When you are searching for some good quality sites to link from remember the home page PR is not necessarily carried throughout the site. Look to where the potential link will be put, generally you will find a links page or a resources page. While on the page take an assessment, is the PR good? Does the page have over 50 links currently on the page or will it have the potential to exceed that number of links? When you're looking for reciprocal links you always want to find a site that is directly related to yours, and I will often look for a page with a good PR and very few links outside of the links page and offer to the same this way it benefits both you and your link partner.

A few other hints will help in your quest to find good quality link partners:

Check to make sure the page is actually indexed by the search engines, it won’t help you if the SE’s can’t find the page you are listed on.

Do the links have a rel=”nofollow” attribute? These are more and more common especially now on forums and blogs, if you use the firefox browser you can find a tool to help you recognize these link so you know where you can stay away.

Of course the above is all related to finding link partners. The best method for link development is finding places to add your link where it is simply a one way link pointing back to your site. Some great methods for this are, finding good directories to include your link, you can find many free resources throughout the internet, find really well organized directories that potential clients would actually use.

Great method number two, is writing a blog and articles, this topic has been beaten to death, but still today it is essential for one way linking techniques. Find a number of sites that publish articles in your niche and submit often. It just doesn’t stop at one back link per site, if people are reading your articles, then they can be linking to them, re-publishing and getting you more links that you would originally thought it could.

Whether you are finding link partners or doing one-way link campaigns you must arm yourself with the right tools and information to make your campaign very successful, find your own way, we all link differently but just don’t forget to get your inbound links!

Contact Carrie for a professional link development campaign done right: carrie@abalone.ca

Technorati Tags: link development, seo, search engine optimization, marketing, traffic, optimization, search, carrie haggerty, abalone designs

10 SEO Tricks You Can Easily Do Yourself

2009-10-26T11:02:00.001-07:00

To supplement my recent announcement that SEO is easy, here is a list of some quick, easy SEO tips to help your site leap to the top of the search engines.

1. Change your page titles. I come across a great many web sites that have titles like "Home Page" or the Business name. Your page title should be the main, singular keyword phrase you want to reach number one on Google for, followed by your business' name and perhaps, if it is not too long, a repeat of the main keyword phrase once again (or a secondary one).

2. Make sure your main keyword phrase, as well as any supplementary ones that you want to rank number one for, show up in the text on your front page. If you do not have any text on your front page, add some. The keywords should be in context, readable and user friendly. They should not be in a list format of any kind, unless it supplements paragraph style text in an extremely user-friendly manner.

3. If you serve a specific geographic region, specify that in titles, description tags, keyword tags, body text, and on your contact page.

4. Ask anyone you know that has a web site, to link to your site. Allow them to use any anchor text (the clickable text of a link) they desire. This makes the linking look more natural.

5. Write an FAQ about your industry, not about your business. If it answers a lot of questions, and answers them well, it can become link bait, meaning people will link to it just because it is so informative. You may also be able to get a link from Wikipedia to this FAQ on the page for your industry in the external links section.

6. Start a newsletter. You can use many different platforms to run and distribute your newsletter, including http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/ , http://www.phplist.com/ or http://www.constantcontact.com/ and always post your newsletters to your blog as well. This way, people on your mailing list will get the blog post in their inbox, and it could become very good link bait.

7. Add your business to Google Local here http://www.google.com/local/add

8. Submit your web site to DMOZ here http://www.dmoz.org/add.html - please note that this is not nearly as important as it used to be, being as DMOZ has not been adding links to their directory on a consistent basis for some time. They don't seem to have enough editors to do so but then, they never seem to accept applications from new editors so I don't see this getting any better. Still, on the off chance you get your link added, it is a good idea to submit here.

9. Add a page about your business to http://www.aboutus.org/

10. And finally, if you think your business is what Wikipedia calls "notable" or worthy of having it's own page, then create a page about your business. This is probably the best possible link you can get on the internet.

Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimization, tricks, tips, marketing, blog, blogging, wikipedia, dmoz

7 Things Your SEO Should Never Do

2009-10-22T14:53:00.001-07:00

Here's a quick list of some simple things that should tell you not to work with an SEO. We'll do it countdown style, from least important (though still important) to lockup-your-credit-cards most important.

#7 - An SEO should never require you to link to their web site. This should be entirely up to you. If they offer freebies in exchange for a link on your site, you may want to perk up and pay attention. This is usually an indication that their site is not doing so well. And if their site isn't doing so well, yours probably won't either. Feel free to link to your SEO if you want to though, it will not harm your site.

#6 - Your SEO should never install a link exchange script of any kind on your site. This is fairly old news, but you'd be surprised how many people I've seen still get talked into this. Under no circumstances should you have this on your site. Google is a smart search engine. They can figure out that you are doing this for marketing purposes.

#5 - A good SEO would never add a links page to your site. There is nothing wrong with having a page dedicated to links with supplementary information, or business partners, or things that you endorse, but stay away from pages that serve the sole purpose of posting reciprocal links. This worked a long time ago when the big thing in SEO was reciprocal linking, but it just isn't the case anymore. Any SEO stuck in that era should probably re-educate themselves or find another career.

#4 - Your SEO should never tell you that social networking is not necessary. It is! For everyone! Especially if you have a new web site. SEO can take time to bring traffic to your site, and while you wait for your effective SEO campaign to take it's course, you can still get traffic to your site with a proper social networking campaign. Also, I've said it before and I'll say it again, social networking is going to put the search engines as we know it out of business. If you're not on those networks, you won't be able to compete.

#3 - A good internet marketer will never tell you that a blog is not necessary. Just as necessary as social networking, a blog that offers great reading material and information is going to supplement your web site with more marketing power than you would be able to imagine. I have worked with countless businesses that get more than half of their business from their blog readers. Even when they rank number one for their targeted keyword. A blog gives your company a transparency that nothing else can, outside of standing in front of your customer. It develops trust and makes it much easier for anyone to do business with you. When you offer good information, it also lets your audience know that you know what you're talking about and great blog posts are the best link bait.

#2 - Your SEO should never tell you to take your email address off your web site to avoid spam. Spam is an unfortunate fact of digital life. Get yourself a good spam filter - Gmail handles spam well. Never remove methods of contact from your site, because that can alienate users who prefer that method of contact.

#1 - The number one thing you should never hear from an SEO is that they can guarantee your rankings. Not even a Google employee can guarantee your rankings. The Google search engine is a massive mathematical algorithm that has been developed, tweaked, added to and changed over many, many years and is so complicated I doubt there is any one person that understands it's entirety. This algorithm is worked on daily, the way it handles search results and crawling changes daily. There is absolutely no way for any SEO to know how your site is going to be handled by the search engines, and there is no guarantee that a month into your SEO campaign, Google won't change their algorithm completely and everything you've been doing up to this point is now cause for penalization. The only thing an SEO can do, is base their campaign on what has worked in the past, and to continue to monitor search results so that they continue to understand patterns and what Google likes and dislikes. There is always an element of risk to SEO. An SEO company that guarantees your results, clearly just wants your money and will say anything to get it.

Outside of these things, use your common sense. Hire people who sound confident, who speak your language and not industry jargon. Most of all, hire an SEO company that ranks number one for their targeted keyword, because if they can't do it for themselves, they probably can't do it for you.

Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimization, google, rankings, traffic, marketing, promotion, marketing campaign, social networking, blogging, blog

What Your SEO is Not Telling You

2009-10-15T11:48:00.001-07:00

Most SEOs like to come off as some sort of Guru and take all the credit for their clients' successes. It's not always the case. Here is what your SEO is not telling you:

1. SEO is not hard. There is absolutely nothing difficult about SEO. In fact, search engine optimization doesn't really exist. At least, if you're doing it right it doesn't. The real search engines, the ones that count, ie. Google, Yahoo! and Bing reward good web sites. They don't reward optimized web sites. A web site that puts it's visitor's needs first, is a web site that is going to do well on the search engines. Really, all you need to do to experience success on the search engines, is put yourself in your web site visitor's shoes, figure out what they want (not what you think they want, but what they actually want) and deliver it better than anyone else. When you do that, you will experience an immense amount of traffic, not just from search engines, but from word of mouth, social media, and direct links from sites that have listed your web site as a great place to go.

2. It is not a calculable formula. SEO cannot be calculated. There isn't a specific number of keywords you have to list in your meta tags, there aren't a set number of outgoing links you can list on your site before you get penalized. There just simply is no way to calculate exactly what you need to do or not do on your site. Every single site is different and what works for one site, could be detrimental to another. Any marketing firm that offers you cookie-cutter packages for SEO has no idea what they're doing. An SEO never does the same thing for any two clients. Effective internet marketing is always customized to each individual web site or company.

3. It is not a set of exact steps. SEO cannot be done in an exact set of steps. As I mentioned in the previous point, every web site is different and requires different things in order to experience success on the search engines. A true marketing genius will exact his or her game plan to your web site's specific needs and not follow a checklist used for every single clients he or she has.

4. The effectiveness of your SEO campaign can only be measured one way. The only way to measure search engine optimization is checking to see if you rank high for the keywords you are targeting. If you are not climbing the rankings on Google, Yahoo! and Bing for your targeted keywords or key phrases, then your campaign isn't working. Period.

5. A number one ranking may not be all you need to get more visitors to your site. You need to make sure you're targeting the right keywords. Some SEOs will sell you a package that will get you ranking for keywords or key phrases that no one searches for. You can find yourself shelling out a lot of money, getting that number one ranking and having no more traffic to your site than before you shelled out that money. Make sure your SEO does keyword research and check the keywords they choose yourself with the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

6. You can do it yourself. Even if you barely know what a mouse is. Most SEOs would like you to think what we do is complicated, intricate and highly skilled. It's not. Really. Just get someone to install Wordpress for you, teach you the basics and you can run your own site, updates, SEO and all. It's not complicated, it's not scary, it is just a little time consuming.

If you want to learn how to manage your own web site, or you want to have Wordpress or other CMS software installed on your site so you can manage it yourself, give us a call at 604-244-7597 or email me at seo.courtney@gmail.com

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