Your new website just went live so you’re now enjoying the fruits of your labor and admiring the exceptional job you and your team did on design and development. The project is finally over and it is time to settle back and wait for your website traffic to climb to new heights.

Reality check! I repeat – it is time for a reality check. You’re about half done with your quest for internet dominance. The research, website design, build out, and on-page SEO are all only part of your ongoing battle for visitors and conversions. Link building is not only necessary – it’s critical! It is the only way to maximize your website traffic and get the most ROI out of your web design project.

Why Do We Need to Worry About Link Building?

Consider the internet like the homecoming queen contest. To win the crown (or page one ranking), you need to be pretty, have some depth, and have a lot of votes by your peers. A website is no different. It needs to be functional, have unique content, and it needs to have links pointing to it from other websites so Google and Bing know it is of value. The links represent votes and these votes help provide a method by which the search engines and their algorithms can score authority. Without incoming links, it will be impossible to win over the search engines. We SEOs call this off-page SEO.

Why Do We Wait for Link Building Until After Go-Live?

In an early blog post, titled Ten Steps to Quality Link Building and Strong Organic SEO, I discuss the need for a structured link building plan and map of your keyword to page strategy. This is critical because you need to build links into your home page, but also pages and posts. If you’ve followed my website design plan (my previous blog posts), each page of your website will have a specific keyword focus. You’ll need this list and the final page URLs before you can start link building and this list isn’t finalized until after go-live.

How on Earth Can We Find Linking Building Opportunities?

There are a lot of ways, although not all links are as beneficial as others. We SEOs talk a lot about “do follow” links and page authority and PR rank. Most regular people don’t get our SEO babble and they don’t need to get it. What they need is basic link building and a decent list of link building opportunities.

Link building opportunities include, but are not limited to the following:

You’re probably feeling a little overwhelmed right now, but you don’t need to be. Link building is not so much difficult, as it is time consuming. When I first started link building, I spent hours every Friday working on this task. It was painful. Back then there were not a ton of helpful bloggers or SEO consultants giving out free advice. I had to research opportunities and find potential links by turning myself into Nancy Drew. Nancy Drew surfed the internet for websites related to our keywords, watched our competition, and did a whole lot of random queries.

These days link building is much easier. There are lots and lots of sources of information and lists of link building opportunities for generic and/or industry specific links. Liking you as much as I do, I’m going to give you a jump-start and provide a slew of websites to get you started.

Link Building 101

Don’t forget about the anchor text when link building.  Anchor text is the text used to identify the link.  You don’t want to use “click here” because it isn’t descriptive for the user or the search engines.  Use words that relate to the destination page and make sure you have a good mix of phrases or terms.

Did I miss any great link building opportunities?  Okay I’m sure I did, because this list can really be endless.  If you have a great link I missed, please leave a comment and tell us about it.

At Web Savvy Marketing we work on a good mix of web design projects and straight SEO consulting.  Our website design clients typically select us because our process is integrated with full search engine optimization.  The funny part is that they’re always surprised when we don’t launch the new website the minute they email their last bit of content.  We don’t launch immediately because there is still a lot of SEO work to perform.   And while we start the web design project with SEO, much of it cannot be performed until the last minute.

Why Does Website Launch Wait for SEO?

When we kick off the project and I, the resident SEO geek, perform my research and competitive analysis, I have a plan in mind for SEO.  I know what keywords I want to target and what pages I want us to write.  Then development really starts and you, the naive and unprepared client, realizes writing strong web content isn’t as easy as you think.  It’s painful plain and simple. We, the team, end up making compromises on keywords and content and we shift focus and modify our sitemap.  It happens every time.  As your SEO consultant, I stretch you as far as I can take you and attempt to reach as many keywords as possible.  You, the client, put me back in my box and reset my expectations with what your team can support.

You may think I should scale back, but I’ll disagree.  My job is to stretch your imagination and reach you beyond what you think is possible.  When you fight and cannot support it, then we’ll adjust.  I won’t accept limitations until they are true limitations.  And I’d rather stretch and reach more than what was expected then not reach at all.

Once we modify the sitemap, pages, and keywords, my SEO strategy needs to be adjusted.  I’m used to this and have no problem with it at all.  I’ve learned this is the natural progression because I’m firm on pushing you to your limits.  I just need to wait until this occurs before I put a large block of my time or my staff’s time into your on-page SEO.

When the Design Dust Settles, SEO Cleans Up

Once the last website content is loaded and we know our final page count and site structure, me and my team move in to pretty everything up.  When I say “pretty”, I mean we fancy up your content and make it page one worthy.

1.  Optimize Page Text and Headers for Keywords and Phrases

This really starts at the launch of the project, but as I stated above, these keyword focus can change some over the course of development.  Taking a step back and revisiting your targeted keywords at launch makes sure you have pages to support your keywords and more importantly, your copy supports the keyword.

I go through page by page and make sure your content uses the keyword or phrase we selected and that it is used in a natural way that is easy to read.  I also go through and double-check headers (H1 tags) and subheaders (H2, H3, H4 tags) to make sure they support the keyword and phrase for SEO and readability.

Subheaders are very important because they help break up content for the readers and for the search engines.  They provide natural breaks within the page and help point out areas of interest for those of us that scan web pages and blog posts.  I am one of those scanners, so I make sure every client website has a good mix of subheaders.

2.  Review and Update Alt Tags Images, Anchor Text for Links and Files, and Bold Text References

Alt tag refers to an alternative tag for an image. Search engines, and users with some disabilities, cannot read text in images.  The alt tag is simply used to describe the image in the event it cannot be read.  You want the alt tag to be relevant to the image and include keywords if applicable.  But you must do so only if the keyword is relevant to the image itself.

Anchor text is the clickable text that users will see as a result of a link. Good on-page SEO includes the use of keyword rich hyperlinks, however, this should only be used if it represents value to the reader.

On-page SEO best practices also includes formatting file names.  Using short and descriptive filenames with matching alt text is preferred.  These should not be full, keyword stuffed sentences.  They are best when they’re short, but descriptive.

Bold or strong text is also believed to influence search engines.  I will use this if it can both support the focusing of readers on important points and is keyword rich.  Due to usability concerns, I will not bold words just for the sake of on-page SEO.

3.  Create Page Specific Meta Titles and Descriptions

When you’re launching a new website or relaunching an existing website, it is critical that every page has a unique and hand crafted meta title and description.  Your meta title should be less than sixty characters and your description less than 160 characters.  Both should include the page’s keyword and both should provide text that sells.  The search engines will use your description (if they like it) for the search engine results page.  It is the first thing your future visitor sees about your website, so you need to make it good.  It needs to closely relate to the page and it needs to be worthy of someone clicking through to the website.

I typically create our meta titles and descriptions in Excel and do so for the entire sitemap.  Once this process is done I have my assistant, Jen, input them into WordPress.  We use two people, because Jen will always find mistakes.  When you sit and write 200 meta titles and 200 meta descriptions, you will make mistakes.  The second set of eyes helps greatly in making sure your meta is correct and without spelling or grammatical errors.

4.  Optimize Blog Entries

Blog entry optimization is important and yet it is the one item I many times almost forget.  Clients throw blog posts at me right before go-live and due to this, I frequently catch myself backtracking to make sure these are optimized.

Optimizing a blog post works the same as with the other pages, however you need to remember the value of the internal link.  Blog posts typically support the cornerstone content pages and their keywords.  What the heck is a cornerstone content page?  It is a page that is used to target higher volume and more competitive keywords.  The blog posts then support these pages by providing keyword rich inbound links.

Meta descriptions and post excerpts should be reviewed as well.  Many times these are displayed when the post is shared on social networks like Facebook or LinkedIn.  You want to make sure the intro text is descriptive and entices someone to click through to the actual post.

5.  Create Deep Links

Deep links.  For me this is where I call uncle and grab my assistant Jen.  I’ve worked on the web design and SEO of the website for weeks and I’m usually starting to get fatigued.  Jen, being the perky and WordPress savvy person that she is, takes a fresh look at the content and goes page by page to input hyperlinks to other pages.  This process helps both the user and the search engines understand what pages are most important.

It’s a Wrap

Well kind of.  You’re done with on-page SEO for now, but we’ve not yet discussed the really geeky side of SEO.  This comes in another blog post and another day.  We’ll end this post with the reminder that you’re website and content is optimized for on-page SEO, which is the land of search engine optimization, is a huge part of the battle.

On Saturday morning I was drinking my coffee, surfing the web, and reading blog posts. Yes I am an SEO (aka nerd) and this is what we do on a Saturday morning. As I explored the web I happen to run across a blog post on Bing’s Webmaster Center blog. I’ll be honest, I don’t even know how I got there but I did and I was happy I did. I started reading a blog post from Duane Forrester. Then I found another and another and I was impressed. I was impressed with Duane and with Bing. It was good content, transparent, and written in a way the average person could digest. All things I love and appreciate.

I’ve been blogging for a very long time. I like blogs and I recognize good blogs when I see them. Google’s blog posts are one of the reasons why I’ve been such a Google fan. I like to know the rules and what is expected of me as an SEO consultant.

Duane’s posts are good and while they are not currently receiving the retweets and likes they should, if he keeps blogging at Webmaster Center, they will in due time.

Recent Bing Webmaster Center blog posts I found of interest were:

• You love links. We love links. Build for the right reasons.
• How To Build Quality Content
• Keyword research: a wise investment of time
• The Power of Local – why small, local businesses matter so much
• Social and Search: A Small Business Primer

All four are things I blog about and care about. I try to get others to read and care about them too. They are elements of good white hat SEO and the big part of what makes the internet awesome.

But why have the SEOs and internet marketers not been tweeting, liking, and sharing this content? I think they are like me and we’ve kind of gotten lazy. We’re getting much to reliant on Google, Danny Sullivan, and Matt McGee. All sources I love, but we need to broaden our horizons a little more and our horizons need to include a little more Bing.

While I am publically apologizing to Bing, I do think Bing still has a huge uphill battle. Bing is still recovering from the MSN flop and still trying to position itself as a true competitor to Google. But it can and I think it will. Competition is good and I welcome it.

Now I just need to get my fellow SEO consultants to pay a little more attention to the underdog.  Goliath (I mean Google), as much as I love it, needs the competition.  In the end, that competition will be good for SEOs, search quality, and the ultimate users.

But keyword research doesn’t have to be some big crazy formula.  I read a lot of SEO articles and blog posts and the internet is full of great content and advice for performing elaborate keyword research.  While this works, the activity of keyword research doesn’t have to be so convoluted that the average person can’t do it. It just needs to be a methodical.

I’ve worked with or developed both large and small websites.  Some have 20 keywords and some have 2,000 keywords.  Regardless of the volume of keywords or web pages, my process remains the same because it is scalable.  More importantly, it is a process that the average person can perform.

Fifteen Steps to Developing a Targeted List of Keywords

1. Write down keywords and/or phrases you would use to search the internet for your products or services.
2. Now go to Google and input those terms into the search box.  Look at the bottom of the page of search results and review what Google is suggesting as “related” search terms.  Write down those words too.  You can also look to your left on the page to see if Google is suggesting “something different”.
3. Your next step should be a visit to Google’s Insights for Search, which shows related terms and trends for a given search term or word.  Input your top keywords and document anything of interest.
4. Now consider your existing website.  Go to your Google Analytics account (if you have it) and review your keyword traffic for the last year.  Don’t just look at high volume traffic, but also consider the lower volume traffic that you’re not doing very well on from a search standpoint.  Document any keywords that you would like to score well on in search.
5. Next you should head over to Google Webmaster Tools and look at your Search Queries.  Similar to that of the Analytics data, don’t just look at keywords your performing well on.  Look at everything and document any words or phrases that you should score on.
6. Now visit your competitors’ websites and write down any keywords and/or phrases your competitors are targeting.  If you’re not sure what these are, look at their page titles, sitemap, and actual page URLs.  Note this will only work if your competitors have a good SEO strategy.
7. By now you have a fairly long list of keywords.  We need to see how these fit into the real world of search.  If I’ve learned anything over the last nine years of SEO work, it’s that I don’t know what people search on.  I can only make assumptions and then validate my thoughts against actual search volumes.  I validate my suspected keyword list in Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool.  To do this, all you have to do is input your list of potential keywords into the box and let it rip.  You can either go broad with results or narrow it down to exact.  Just make sure you stay consistent.
8. As I pull my keyword volumes, I put them into an Excel spreadsheet and I create one very large list.  I don’t pay much attention to volume at this point, because I don’t want to get distracted.  I just keep loading up the list with keywords, volumes, and competitiveness.
9. Now that I have my list of potential keywords and volumes, I set is aside.  I walk away and move onto something else, because at this point I’m fairly burned out on keyword research.  When my mind has cleared, I return to revisit my list.  If the list is really long, I remove any keywords on the list that are below a certain level of volume.  If I have thousands of keywords, my pain threshold may by 500 searches per month.  If it is a small list, this may be reduced to 50.  It is very relative and based on the industry and target market.
10. The next step is to score each word for relevance.  You need to look at each work and think about it’s relevance to your actual products or services.  You can give this a high, medium, and low or you can use a number scale.  Whatever works is fine, just make sure it clearly shows which words are important and which words are irrelevant or less important.
11. Once I’ve scored my list of relevance, I create a weighted score for each keyword.  I typically take the relevance score and multiply this by the actual volume.  You don’t have to get overly fancy; you just need to be able to see a combination of relevance and traffic volumes.
12. Now I start ditching keywords.  I’d like to say I don’t, but I do.  I’ve been going this for so many years, I can just “see” issues or anomalies.  I see trends and I can see if something is just not right.  Maybe the keyword has other unrelated meanings (you can check this my Googling it) and the traffic volumes are distorted.  In other cases, it could be it is so broad it just doesn’t work.  This is where I start overriding my client’s wishes and I do so because my instincts tell me to do it and they’ve hired me because of my experience.  So far no one has fired me for this practice.
13. Now I take a step back and I look at the list.  What keywords have strong volumes, are closely matched to the client’s offering, and are not polluted with excessive targeting by competitors.  I view this as “picking your battles”, which is similar to what I do with my kids.  You can only win in so many places, so you have to target what is important.  This comes back to my gut.
14. Now I pick three really competitive words with good volumes that I believe we can win on with effort.  Long-term effort and not overnight effort.  These are our big boys and the words we will hammer until we win. Note that the number of three could be 100 if your website is much larger.  Again, this process is varied based on industry, geography, and target market.
15. Next I pick about seventeen secondary keywords.  These are long tail or less competitive words that are still good, but not necessarily the biggies.  These phrases we’ll be able to win on quicker, but they won’t have as high of volumes as the three we just picked.  Just as I mentioned above, this number varies.  It may be seventeen or it may be 2,000.
16. Finally I go through the list to see what is left.  I try and assign these to blog posts, tags, or categories.  Wherever possible, I provide clients with suggestions on possible titles for blog posts so we are capturing the keywords.

Okay I had 16 steps.  I tried really hard to stay at fifteen, but it didn’t quite work.

Now What?

So you have your list of keywords.  Now what?  Now you have to take a step back and look at that list and decide if you can create web pages to support the keywords.  If you compete in any level of ca ompetitive environment, you’ll need to have only one or two keywords focused per page.  In other words, for every keyword you need a page of content.  And not only do you need web content, you need to be able to weave those pages (aka keywords) into a sitemap that makes logical sense.

If this is your first go around at this process, you probably don’t have a list that can easily be whipped into a logical sitemap.  That is okay.  Just revisit the last three steps and adjust.

This is Your Plan of Attack

You have a list, which means you have the start of a plan.  This list and your future sitemap should be the basis for all internet marketing activity.  From your company or personal profiles on social networks to your inbound links on press releases, you need to consult this list.

And remember, you need to revisit your list and this process, because people change and search traffic trends shift.  Remember Web 2.0?  Well no one talks about it anymore and it has morphed into social media.  If you browse my website you’ll see references to Web 2.0 have gone away and social media is all over my website.

The important point is that you have a list of keywords and the start of a real plan. Congratulations!  You’re off to a great start.

Google is far from forty and has a memory like an elephant. Good SEO only makes this elephant stronger.

My SEO Efforts Will Outlive Me

This concept has been overly apparent to me this last year. As I left my prior life and launched my own company I knew I could easily reinvent myself. I did and while much of me transferred from ERP Rebecca to WordPress Rebecca or SEO Rebecca, Google still sees all three. I realize I should stop whining, but I can’t. I love Google, but the elephant memory is exhausting. I spent a lot of time marketing ERP Rebecca with good old fashion SEO and looking back now I feel like I did it a little too well.

If you Google Rebecca Gill you’ll see references to Web Savvy Marketing and a bunch of social media profiles for me on pages one and two of the search results. You’ll also see my former employer at the bottom of page one and references to “ERP Rebecca Gill” and “TGI Rebecca Gill” in the suggested searches from Google. Both are me, but the old me.

In reality, my former employer’s website only has a few references to me left on it and they’re really old press releases. But in the eyes of Google, the company website is still page one worthy for my name. I suspect this is because Google still sees a lot of inbound links to their website that reference me within the page content. This was accomplished through blogging, press releases, articles in publications and so on. Well it all sounded good at the time, but ERP Rebecca will just not go away. In fact, lately I feel like ERP Rebecca will haunt me until the day I die. All thanks to Google.

Will the Real Rebecca Please Stand Up?

You’re probably wondering if I’ve just done a lousy job marketing the new Rebecca. No I haven’t. My efforts working on new Rebecca haven’t been in the works as long as the old Rebecca, but I’ve done well. It’s just that Google doesn’t forget.

Google Rebecca Gill SEO or Rebecca Gill WordPress and you’ll see there are a lot of references to the new me. A lot. But that elephant just won’t let go what it was taught years ago.

What’s the SEO Take Away?

While this conclusion is not completely scientific, it does have merit. Google places significant value on on-page SEO for providing short-term search results. However, off-page SEO significantly influences Google for providing search results with longevity.

If Google didn’t place so much value on inbound links, my old employer would no longer show up for my name because they have virtually no content with references it.  In addition, Google would not suggest users replace their generic searches for Rebecca Gill with ones that include ERP or TGI. Again this is not scientific in nature, but it does provide a little insight into how the search engine results work over a long period of time.

My Personal Take Away: Be careful what and for who you optimize because if you’re good at SEO, it will haunt you forever.

My Reality Check as a Future Accountant

My college years were self-funded. I lived off waiting tables and I paid tuition via grants and loans. My 30+ hour work weeks were spent waiting tables. My days as a server did more than just bring in money. They taught me about sales, marketing, and why I’d make a horrible accountant. I said a horrible accountant, because I’m a pretty good SEO.

One customer in particular was a Senior Vice President at Merrill Lynch. He was my regular and would even being in his family to meet me when they were in town. While he certainly helped fund my college years and I’m thankful for him generosity, I’m much more thankful for his honesty. He point blank told me I’d make a horrible accountant. He literally laughed when I told him accounting was my major and he said I was going into sales whether I liked it or not. He was right. If you read through my bio you’ll see I’ve spent most my years in some form of sales and marketing. It is who I am and it is pointless to run away from your core stengths.

Enter SEO

Sales and marketing aside, I do have slight tendencies towards OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and I’m a somewhat anal-retentive clean freak. This is one of the reasons why I gravitated towards accounting. It balanced and it had rules. I like rules even if I don’t like people telling me what to do. Enter in SEO. I like SEO. Actually I love SEO. I’ve loved SEO from the moment I figured out what the heck it was some ten years ago. I do so because it has rules. I can ignore the rules if I choose, but then I won’t rank well with the search engines. I like cause and effect. SEO is all about cause and effect.

Oh Marketing Sherpa I wish you and SEO were around twenty years ago. You would have saved me from those horrible ACC 500 level classes that made me sleep. You would have let me find my passion well before I shelled out tens of thousands of dollars for a degree I never use. You would have saved me and liberated me from a world of numbers. I hate numbers. Oops. I hate numbers that don’t exist within search traffic estimates and Google Analytics reports and Facebook likes.

Are You an OCD Personality?

Before you launch into SEO you need to ask yourself one question: Are you OCD type personality? You need to be. The good SEOs are because we like structure and a plan and the idea of cause and effect. If you are more the “loosey goosey” type, you are my hero but you will stink at being an SEO. Your time will be better spent being creative, then in teaching yourself a skill-set that is outside that of your core strengths.

To all of my fellow OCD SEOs out there, I solute you. We are a strange and unique bunch of geeks. More importantly, we are a group who has followed our passion, embraced our core strengths, and we are usually happy people. And that, my friends, is the true level of success.

The Case of Harry, the DIY SEO

Over the last week I’ve been talking with a guy named Harry about his blog and upcoming website launch. Harry was connected with me via a mutual acquaintance, so I’ve been reviewing Harry’s activities and giving him free advice. This is something I typically do not do, but I like our mutual business partner and I believe in Harry’s project.

Harry has an ultra secret website project and he has been blogging in an attempt to drive initial traffic and drive interest in the big reveal. Harry knows his competition and he has an idea what he’d search for if he were a potential visitor to his future website. Harry even put those words into Google to figure out the highest volumes.

Harry, like many others I speak with, thinks he is fairly well prepared. After all, he has his 80 or so keywords in hand, he’s blogging regularly, and he is considering keyword density within his posts. Heck he’s even content tagging and sharing his posts via Facebook and Twitter. He is making progress with inbound traffic, yet none of it is actually coming through his blog posts. By why would this be the case you ask? He’s doing everything right isn’t he? No, not really.

Harry’s intentions are excellent. And as a person, I think Harry is pretty darn cool. He is trying really hard to read up and SEO topics and learn from SEO experts. Harry is the average wannabe SEO expert. Although in Harry’s case, he is actually spending a significant amount of time trying to learn SEO and he has picked up a lot of information on SEO basics.

But that is the dangerous part. Harry cannot tell good SEO from bad SEO or white hat SEO from black hat SEO. He can’t tell real SEO advice from regurgitated old SEO advice. He doesn’t know an H1 tag from a meta description or an alt tag from cornerstone content. He doesn’t know about keyword mapping or XML sitemaps. Harry knows how to blog and blog very well.

His intentions are good and he is putting in a lot of sweat and tears into the process, but he is trying to catch up and compete with SEO consultants (or entire in house teams) who have a decade or so of SEO experience. He is also trying to compete with heavy hitting websites.

I looked up the competitors Harry gave me and they’re heavy hitters. I mean they have huge traffic volumes, thousands or inbound links, and in some case millions of indexed pages in Google. Harry has a huge uphill battle. He is not only competing against an experienced SEO consultant and his in house teams of minions, his competitors already have a ton of inbound links, indexed pages, and web traffic.

So can he compete? Yes he can. He has a different value proposition, he is unique, and he has a business plan. The problem is he does not have an SEO plan. He has a list of highly sought after keywords and that just isn’t the same thing as an SEO plan. It isn’t a strategic, methodical plan to compete keyword to keyword with the big boys. It is a valiant effort, but at this point it is an effort in futility.

The Case of Rebecca, the SEO Consultant

I’ve been doing SEO and website design for about eight years. In the earlier years I made a lot of mistakes. Thankfully my industry was as new to SEO as I was and my competition was still trying to figure out SEO just like I was at the time. I muddled through, read a lot, and performed a whole lot of trial and error stuff on my own website. Then I read more, talked to some experts, and worked on some more websites.

Then shazam! I finally felt like I had it together. I didn’t just know some stuff about SEO, I actually had a very detailed project plan for building SEO friendly websites and performing ongoing search engine optimization. I really knew my SEO and better yet, I knew my SEO stuff worked. I had gone against the big boys and I had won. I had bruises and war wounds to prove it. I also had Google Analytics data to prove that I knew what I was talking about. I went to battle and I came out alive and stronger than when I went in.

Remember – my battle and my SEO journey was eight years in the making. And remember, I made a lot of mistakes along the way. While I’m confident now, I wasn’t eight, five, or even three years ago. I wasn’t until I started looking at the SEO of other SEO consultants. And then I knew I had it and I wasn’t just claiming to have SEO knowledge. I started to see SEO everywhere I went on the internet.

But What About Harry and His SEO Efforts?

I’ve tried to get Harry to take a step back. I’ve tried to teach Harry some best practices over the last week. Unfortunately, I just can’t cram eight years of SEO experience into a few emails over the course of a week. Harry, smart as he is, can only digest so much. And I, giving free advice to a peep, can only allocate so much time.

I don’t know what the future holds for Harry and his website. I know his project has some fabulous potential, but I’m currently not involved in his website project. It has been in the works for a while and I just met Harry a week or so ago. It is hard to take my 90+ step website development plan and force it on Harry and his team midstream. I would personally suggest the entire group take a time out and sit down so they can reflect and consider the ultimate goal. That goal is to go head to head with the big daddy of their industry and make an impact.

So how does Harry make an impact? To do that, they need a thorough, well crafted, and completely integrated website design, SEO, and social media plan. SEO doesn’t come before or after design, it is part of the entire process from initial thought straight through to the website’s end. It is a living and breathing plan that matures with the website, the website visitors, and the industry in which is competes.

SEO is a journey and not a destination. I’ve chosen to take this journey and dedicate my professional life to it. I believe in SEO and I truly believe with all my heart that SEO is a journey worth taking.

July 27, 2011 – Author Update on Barry the DIY SEO: Last week I met with Harry in person.  I also spoke with his team and we discussed their project and the need for SEO from start to finish.  I am now actively involved in the project and it is a massive one.  Harry is ultra cool and a mix of artist, technical guy, and good old fashion brainiac all wrapped into one.  He is my new SEO BFF and is great at jumping into ideas I present.  If our relationship continues as it has over the last week, Harry will have an awesome website that will drive substantial traffic.  Their concept for it is amazing and they simply needed a professional SEO consultant to step in and allow Harry to focus his priorities where they are really needed.

In our conversation he provides obscure long-tail keywords to illustrate his SEO tactics are working. He also tells me he lacks traffic and real revenue resulting from all the time he has allocated to his SEO research and implementation efforts. He finally informs me that he cannot allocate a large budget to SEO. Hmm, I think we have encountered a conundrum.

Why is this the case? Is the small business owner really SEO savvy or is he lost in a web of SEO confusion? I’d say both. He knows enough to make him dangerous. I generally see very old SEO practices being used and many times black hat SEO tactics. Duplicate content and multiple URLs are popular trends, as are bolded words and keyword stuffing. While duplicate content, bolded words, and keyword stuffing top the list of most used tactics for the do-it-yourselfer, the bigger issue and much more difficult problems reside in the website’s architecture.

The website – typically designed and written by the small business owner – is dated and is riddled with structural issues. Content is difficult to locate, duplicated, and irrelevant to the user or keyword focus. There is no hierarchy or silos to content, the website domain is set to expire, the website lacks permanent redirects, there is no sitemap.xml file, and the in-house SEO (business owner) has never heard of Google Webmaster Tools or Google Analytics. Those examples are real and all are from a prospective client’s website I reviewed this week.

So what should the do-it-yourself SEO worry about? A lot. I do think it is important to mention that the do-it-yourself approach only works if you have little competition. Real SEO is done by an SEO expert who not only is immersed in SEO each day, he spends hours per week educating himself on the latest trends and algorithm changes. Since this is impossible for the small business owner, it is also impossible to expect tangible results from haphazard SEO efforts.

To Achieve Solid SEO Results, You Need to Open Up Your Website and Look Under the Covers

The following ten questions are just a sampling of architectural SEO elements. If you manage your own website and you are a SEO do-it-yourselfer, you need to know what these questions mean and the answers to each. If you don’t, you need professional assistance from an SEO consultant.

1. Have you ever done a keyword analysis?
2. Does your website have a clearly defined structure for assembling pages and/or blog posts?
3. Can you easily locate all the content available?
4. Did you include keyword usage within the meta data and unique to each page or post?
5. Do you have a robot.txt file?
6. Do you have a sitemap.xml file and has it been submitted to Google Webmaster Tools?
7. Are you using Google Analytics and do you know what your current website traffic look likes and how your visitors utilize your website?
8. How long has your domain been registered and how long until it expires?
9. Does your website have permanent redirects in place?
10. Does your website have multiple H1 tags per page?

Most likely you cannot answer these questions and you’re still hesitant to spend money on professional SEO help. I encounter this frequently and I’m asked to “justify” the cost of my SEO consulting services. When I’m asked this I think about my accountant. I have an accountant to do my personal and business taxes, even though I have an accounting degree. But I don’t specialize in accounting and I have no desire to do so. I don’t know the latest tax regulations or the ins and outs of the tax code. I don’t want to know it, which is the reason I never pursued the professional once I left college. I can no more accurately assemble my business taxes than the small business owner can perform his own SEO. My time is better spent on what I can do well, and for me, that’s WordPress web design and organic SEO.

I’ve justified the cost of my accountant (accounting degree and all), so it is really up to you to justify the cost of SEO services. And just like taxes, doing SEO wrong can be worse than not doing SEO at all.

This weekend I looked back at SEO related statistics for a B2B website I launched in November of 2009. A full year has passed and I wanted to see the progress this company made over a twelve-month period. After launching the new WordPress website, the client retained me to work on their internet marketing efforts. It helped free up time for the client, it gave their internet marketing a cohesiveness it would not have had otherwise, and it gave me time to nurture my new baby. I believe it was a good year for SEO and Google Analytics agrees with me.

The Data Doesn’t Lie

I decided to dig into Google Analytics and pull data for December 1st, 2009 through November 30th, 2010. What fun to review your work and reflect. Okay I have to qualify that, as it was partially my work. The client did a tremendous job following my suggestions and coming up with some of their own. They were a content machine, which helped facilitated my SEO consulting efforts. Without the collaboration, the growth you will see would not be possible.

The data shows there was substantial growth across organic search engine traffic, referrals, and direct traffic. I’d want to see a growth in all three areas because it shows we built branding along with organic search traffic from Google. What I love most is there was no pay per click activity after December. Since organic SEO traffic grew rapidly, I was able to talk the client into ditching his PPC campaign.

The Formula for SEO Magic

At this point you’re probably wondering how we did it. It wasn’t magic or SEO voodoo. We didn’t participate in any link schemes or comment spamming or even paid links or advertising banners. We simply focused on providing quality content, while also letting organic SEO and visitor personas lead the way. We tried to consider what our visitors would perceive as valuable content and we tried to make sure we looked at all personas (or visitor types) that came to the website.

While this list won’t cover everything we did, it will hit the SEO highlights:

• We performed a complete keyword discovery prior to website launch
• We selected three critical keywords, ten high additional high traffic keywords, and a bunch of long-tail keywords
• The website and blog were mapped based on visitor personas and keywords
• New WordPress website design and blog
• We focused on one keyword per page
• Each page had a unique and optimized title and meta description
• We included deep internal links through pages and blog posts
• We included keyword rich links that pointed outside the website and kept them to no more than three or so per page or post
• We performed an inbound linking campaign with very targeted pages and keywords

From a content perspective, we made sure we had a diverse set of “things” being added to the website each week. Due to this Google went from spidering the website occasionally to indexing new blog posts and pages within an hour.

Our keyword rich content included the following types of distribution:

• Two to three blog posts per week
• Monthly press releases
• Bi-weekly webinars
• Polls
• YouTube videos
• Industry reports
• White papers
• Podcasts
• An industry directory with rating system
• Weekly newsletters

A Plug for Social Media

The interesting point to our efforts was the use of social media, which is not always embraced by B2B companies. Of the top five sources of website referrals, four were social media websites. And even more interesting is that Facebook was third on the list.

Neither Facebook nor Twitter had a huge number of “likes” or “followers”, yet both drove a substantial amount of traffic over the year. I’ve previously blogged about social media being conflicting and that you cannot judge your social media success through simple metrics such as likes and followers. This client is a perfect example of why this is the case.

What About Conversions and Revenue?

Now if I were reading this blog post, I’d be asking about conversions, new customers, and revenue. So let me qualify the growth by stating the client had a great year in 2010. The company added significant headcount and came close to doubling revenue.

Whenever we would have our monthly call, we’d talk about traffic and then I would ask about leads, new customers, and sales. I wanted to make sure the client was getting the right traffic. Although I will admit, as an SEO consultant, your first instinct is to get caught up in traffic numbers. You have to deflate your head long enough to ask the client if the traffic is producing value.

The Take Away for Marketers

I want to clearly state that this SEO case study is a best-case scenario. The client and I were in complete sync, we knew each other going in, and there was a strong level of trust. I had worked in his industry and I could run on my own without supervision. This type of freedom in SEO is not the norm. An SEO consultant needs monitoring and the client needs to be involved.

Industry experience aside, the real take away is the content. Without the content, I could not have spun my SEO magic. I had to have content to market and without it, the project would have flopped. I would have had to write the blog posts, which would have distracted me from other tasks and it would have stifled the creativity and momentum.

What’s Your Magic Formula?

I believe in organic SEO and while I don’t consider it voodoo, I absolutely believe it can do magic when you have good content and the SEO project is executed properly. This client is a perfect example of that magic.

If you’re an SEO consultant, I’d love to hear your thoughts on my formula.  SEO is a moving target and I know there is always something new to learn.  Leave a comment below with your thoughts or send me a tweet on Twitter at @WebSavvyMrkting.

As we discuss a custom bar and bamboo flooring (I’m a bit high maintenance I’m told), it reminds me of my SEO clients. Like myself, they themselves have a pain threshold. While we both share budget constraints, their SEO pain threshold is also associated with internal resources, project timing, return on investment, and anticipated payback period.

Similar to my long list of remodeling desires, the small business owner can quickly run through his wants. He wants to meet his marketing goals and this typically means increased website traffic, better branding, additional leads, better conversions and engagement, and at the end of the day, he wants an increase in revenue and profit. Unfortunately, he also usually lacks internal marketing resources and internet marketing expertise. He doesn’t have a clue what an H1 tag is, an alt tag, meta, or how to improve his inbound links.

Measuring Your Threshold of SEO Pain

So if the small business owner doesn’t know SEO and doesn’t have an internal resource that is a tech-savvy do-it-yourself type of girl, what’s he to do? He is going to have to hire someone to fill the role in-house or he is going to have to outsource this task to a seasoned professional. But before he runs to Google and starts searching for an SEO consultant, he needs to ask himself a few questions and formulate some concrete answers.

1. What are the most important internet marketing goals that need to be achieved?
2. What is the timeframe for achieving these goals? Is this a firm, must have date or it is a desirable date?
3. What internal resources are available to allocate to this project?
4. Do the available internal resources have the technical and marketing aptitude for accomplishing the goals?
5. What is the available budget for this project?
6. What is the required payback period for the project? How soon is ROI expected?

Before you even begin to search for available SEO consulting firms, you need to have a firm grasp of your pain threshold. We search experts come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some of us are big and fat and require $300 or more per hour. Some of us are small and lean and only require $100 per hour. Some are even smaller than that, but I would not recommend searching the bargain basement with this type of project.

The key to launching internet marketing project successfully is to know your pain threshold and your expectations. More importantly, it is to make sure they align and are in sync. Once you have a solid grasp on your needs and wants, you will quickly be able to decide which type of SEO firm is within your project scope and budget.  This will not only speed the search for right SEO expert, it will help the small business owner find a suitable fit.

As your web designer, I will do everything in my power to design an SEO friendly website that is built around your target keywords. I identify the keywords, prioritize the keywords, and try my best to guide your content to help support those keywords. But that process, as long as it may sometimes feel, is only the beginning to a solid SEO campaign. The real work comes after the website is launched and if you do not hire me or another SEO consultant to help in these efforts, the due diligence of this effort falls back on you.

So now what? You’ve got your cool new website (if done by me this would be based on the WordPress website design platform) and you wonder what’s next. I’ll tell you the same thing I tell the students over at JuJuQ and the same thing I tell me website clients. You get building. Not house building like my friend Rick does, but link building, like all the WordPress geeks I know do.

Ten Steps to Quality Link Building and Strong Organic SEO

1. Plan Out and Separate Your Content into Keyword-Rich Pages

Any good project needs a plan. SEO and linking building do too, so this means start your plan with the right keywords. You want to target keywords that will result in a positive experience for website visitors and this means you want keywords that are relevant to what your website will offer in content, the products you sell, or your service offering. Remember I’m an organic girl, so we need to focus on quality. Organic SEO begets quality content; or really, the other way around.

Offer misleading keywords or irrelevant keywords (aka black hat SEO) and your visitors will simply bounce on arrival. This will not only defeat the effort to gain quality traffic and it will ultimately produce negative results with Google because it will inflate your bounce rate per keyword.

To avoid this I suggest starting with a sitemap that matches up individual keywords to individual pages. Once you’ve defined it, stay on task and stay focused in both writing quality content and building inbound links.

2. Limit Your Targeted Keywords to One or Two Per Page

One page cannot gain you oodles of traffic for ten different high volume keywords. It can do so for one or two, so stay focused. If you are not targeting a long-tail (longer keyword terms that are offer lower volume) keyword, then pick only one, or at most, two terms to target per page. This will make your sitemap to keyword relationship manageable and it will be the most effective in generating traffic.

3. Check Out Your Competition

Before you stop planning, visit your top competitors. Look at their website structure, page URLs, on page content, etc. You can also utilize resources like Google’s Keyword Tool, SpyFu, Keyword Spy, Complete.com, or Alexa to gain insight on their target words and their traffic. You will find new keywords and new inspiration for your website.

4. Make Each and Every Link Count

Having a link isn’t enough. It needs to be keyword rich. In step one I said to make a plan, now that you have this plan and page to keyword reference sheet, just use it for link building. For example, if you have a Linkedin account and you are adding a link to your website on your profile, don’t just use the standard “My Company”. Use your keywords and link to a specific page. That takes an average inbound link and makes it a great inbound link.

5. Never Engage in Link Farming and Avoid Paid Links

You may have received emails or read ads promising the world with inbound link farming or paid link promotions. They sound to good to be true and they are, so ignore them at all costs. When I say ignore, I mean run and run fast. Google will not reward you for paying for inbound links, so don’t waste your time or money working to obtain them.

6. Promote Your Inbound Links Through a Press Release, Blog Entry, White Paper, Article, Event or Social Media Site

Not all people read press releases and white papers, but search engines certainly can and will. If you have something meaningful to announce, then consider a press release. Remember to embed your press releases with quality links that are keyword rich and point to specific pages within your website. I, particularly, pay for few press release services. I tend to rely on free services, although I do admit I regularly pay $12 for one service that allows three keyword rich links. Some of my favorite press release websites are PR Inside, PRLog, OnlinePRNews, OpenPR, 1888PressRelease, PitchEngine, and MyPRGenie.

Blogs are another great way to increase your inbound links. As a matter of fact, blogs are the best way to get links. If you are a good blogger, you will quickly gain regular readers and people who ”follow” your postings through RSS feeds and other publishing methods. These readers will also encourage other people to read your entries. Google looks positively on blog entries and their associated links. If you’re lucky, you’ll realize you love blogging and it will be both a benefit to your website and an enjoyable task and outlet for you at the same time.

Once your blog post is released, you can promote it or post it on other websites such as industry forums, blog directories, or social media websites like Facebook and Twitter.

7. Always Include the “http://” in Your Link

If your link isn’t embedded in keyword rich text, always include the http:// in the inbound link’s URL. If you forget, the link you provide might get picked up as an inbound link or it may not. Therefore, it’s always a good practice to include the full address of your URL, and this also means the http://. This is a simple point, but an important one. As a rule, I believe in both keyword rich links and URL based links. A little variety is good for the Google soul.

8. List your Website in a Directory

Another way to increase your inbound link efforts is to merely to promote it as much as you can. A great way to do that is to utilize a directory. While you typically can’t submit individual pages, you can list your main site. Think of a directory as online yellow pages.

First and foremost, focus on DMOZ. This is a free service, however each submission is reviewed by a human, so proceed with caution. Take the time to make sure you are applying you link to the correct directory location. If you do not, you will be rejected. And do not give up if you are not quickly listed. It takes time and it may take a few requests before you are officially in DMOZ.

9. Establish an RSS Feed, Sitemap.XML File and a Strong Ping List

Make sure you have an active RSS feed for your blog posts. The RSS feed will automatically be updated each time you release a new blog post. This feed can be connected to Facebook and other social media sites to automatically update your page or profile with each new post. That equates to new inbound links each time and you do not have to touch anything beside your blog post.

You also need to make sure you have a sitemap.xml file that includes content for your entire website. Once set up, this sitemap will automatically update each time a post is added or a page updated. This will literally “reach out a touch” the search engines and nudge them in a way to inform them that you have new content available. This is critical for keeping the search engines up to date on your fresh content. It will also help get your blog posts into Google’s blog listing, which provides current content to other bloggers to read, review, and comment upon. Just make sure you use your keywords within your blog titles so the effort is not wasted.

Finally consider a ping list. By utilizing a ping service, it allows you to automatically notify blog directories that your blog has been updated. Once you establish your ping list, whenever you write a new blog post, the blog directories on your ping list will automatically be notified of the change. The bigger your ping list, the higher the chances of receiving traffic from those sources. If you use WordPress, for example, you can modify your ping list in your Dashboard settings. This is a great timesaver as it will help spread the word about your new posts effortlessly. All you have to do is maintain a healthy ping list.

10. Stay White Hat, Organic, and Don’t Give Up on Your Effort for Quality Inbound Links and SEO Driven Traffic

To maintain your credibility with the search engines and to obtain page one ranking, stay on top of the SERP (search engine results page) and continue building your inbound links. It is an ongoing process, so remember that you’ll need to continue your link-building efforts or you’ll fall off page one. Just because you land on page one, it doesn’t mean you’ll stay there. Good organic SEO takes work and it does not happen overnight.

One reason I like organic SEO is because I believe in the concept of a strong work ethic that is driven by good intentions. That, in itself, is the basis for organic SEO. It takes commitment and steady work, but as many website owners already know, the reasons for engaging in SEO are compelling. Cultivating inbound links is a proven methodology for attracting free, long-term traffic.

This week I was preparing my slide deck for a webinar I’m presenting on Tuesday for my friends over at Lurn. The webinar is titled “Ten Best Practices for Writing Headlines, Descriptions and Meta Data That Get Traffic”. The preparation for this webinar reminded me of wrapping paper and my ultimate love for Christmas. Yes you read that correctly, in my mind I think of titles and meta as wrapping paper.

Here is why. Line up two presents of equal size and cost. One is wrapped in a brown paper bag (earth day was this week so let’s recycle) and the other is wrapped in beautiful shiny paper with perfect corners and exquisite ribbon to match. Which one do you want to open? Unless you have mental issues, you’re going for the one I wrapped. That would be the pretty one. Blog entries and website pages are the same. Visitors and search engines lunge at the page or post that is wrapped perfectly. This means well-written content that is accompanied by a fabulous title, concise meta description, and relevant keywords (if you are targeting search engines other than Google). These three elements are the teasers that make you want more. Just like the perfectly wrapped present.

Unfortunately, blogger and “wanna be” webmasters are a dime a dozen these days and everyone thinks they are the next great publisher of content on the Internet. They are not. I am thankful the folks over at Lurn feel the same as I do and they are trying desperately to education these up and coming Internet moguls with some good old fashion SEO expertise. Once you get past Lurn’s glitzy landing pages, you’ll see they have great content on SEO and Internet marketing. So much so that I wish they’d been around seven years ago when I entered into the world of SEO and website design. This isn’t a push for Lurn, it is an education. I 100% believe they provide great content for the SEO newbie. Below is a list of best practices I’ll be discussing Tuesday. Lurn believes in these just as I do, which is why I believe in Lurn.

Ten Best Practices for Writing Headlines, Descriptions and Meta Data That Get Traffic

1. Write an eye-catching, well-written headline
2. Use your headline, descriptions, and tags to gain traction
3. Use your keywords in the title
4. Build keywords into your alt tags
5. Include headlines and descriptions that will resonate with those readers
6. Include information you want your visitors to see when they see your link in search engines
7. Watch your character limit
8. Don’t overdo it
9. Utilize the H1 tag so it helps both the reader and the search engine
10. Pick the right header for the job

So my SEO friends, I will leave you with this thought. When crafting your next blog entry or web page, ask yourself this – is your wrapping job good enough to give to your mother (aka Google)? If you aren’t pleased to attach your name to it, rewrap it and make sure the presentation is as good as the page content itself.

I’ve talked to a lot of prospects and clients who have ongoing pay per click campaigns. When I say ongoing, I mean they’ve been spending hundreds to thousands of dollars per month for years. They’ve been doing it for so long, it is part of their annual marketing budget and they cannot envision a world without PPC. I believe the pay per click campaign hype is an enabler for avoiding SEO.

Here is my stance on pay per click – I’ll manage it for you and optimize it to your heart’s content, but I’m also going to do whatever I can to detox you from your addiction to PPC. I believe in organic search engine optimization. I’ve made it truly work for companies and I believe in the power it has for energizing a company’s web presence. As an SEO consultant, if I’m doing my job, you won’t need PPC. Or at least you’ll need very little of it. If you have good content that is related to your product and service offering, you will receive traffic. If you cannot produce enough good content to drive traffic, you’ll probably also struggle keeping visitors once they reach your website via PPC activity.

So now what? How do I drag you out of the black hole of PPC? As much as I’d like to do so, I don’t do it kicking and screaming. I help you build solid content and present it in a way Google and other search engines will like and reward. Once your organic traffic is up, we cancel your PPC keywords one by one until you no longer need them. While I don’t whip you into a PPC rehab program, I do try my best to manage your withdrawal symptoms with good old fashion organic traffic.

Back in my early days of SEO (search engine optimization) I was overwhelmed by the over abundance of SEO information on the Internet. I didn’t know whom to believe and I definitely didn’t know who was really credible. After all, SEO consultants tend to be compared to lawyers and used car salesmen. There are a lot of consultants that claim to be SEO gurus, but when it boils down to it, they are not.

Once you know what good SEO is, bad SEO is like a neon sign. It just jumps out at you and almost bites your nose off. That was the thought I had this week. It was nonstop bolded words, repeated words without benefit, or hidden tiny text at the bottom of the website that was there for search engine spiders. Not only are search engines smarter than these tactics, these practices don’t work and they look horrible to visitors that actually do land on your website.

Good SEO just flows and it is designed around strong content. If you have strong content, you don’t need all the tricks that bad SEO consultants try and play. It doesn’t work and it is does much more harm than good.

If it looks like SEO, it’s bad SEO. If you employ an SEO consultant and you can “see” his or her work on your website, it’s bad SEO. Run and run quickly my friend.

One of my all-time favorite tv shows is The Twilight Zone. I particularly like Rod Serling’s memorable opening narration:

“There is a sixth dimension, beyond that which is known to newbies. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, and it lies between the pit of newbies gullibility and the sunlight of their naiveté. This is the dimension of smoke and mirrors. It is a dimension known as SEO Scams and Newbies Realm of Gullibility.”

Okay, so I took a little poetic license with Mr. Serling’s classic narration. But I did it to make a point, and the point is, everyday thousands of naive and gullible newbies are targeted, and ripped-off by common SEO scams – mostly scams that have been around since the advent of the Internet. You may even have been a victim yourself.

The question is, why do these seemingly obvious scams continue to thrive year after year after year? My guess is, because most of the victims are newbies who have entered the newbies realm of gullibility.

Hopefully, this article will prevent other newbies from entering this undesirable realm, and being unnecessarily victimized. Anyway, following are some of the most common SEO scams:

1. E-Mail Solicitations

First of all, legitimate companies, SEO or otherwise don’t send out e-mail solicitations without permission. And unless you signed up to receive e-mail solicitations from a particular company, delete all spam immediately. Don’t open it, and don’t send these scam artists your hard-earned money!

I always delete all spam – except when I’m doing research for articles like this one. On those occasions, I find opening e-mail spam extremely useful, because I can pass on what I learn to my readers.

Anyway, if you’ve registered a new domain recently, you’ve probably been solicited by SEO scam artists, looking to steal your hard-earned money. See if any of these e-mail solicitations look familiar:

“I just looked at your website and we can help you get better search engine placement.”

I had to laugh when I received this solicitation, because I had just registered a new domain, and hadn’t even built my website yet. The only thing I had up was a generic “This website is coming soon” placeholder. Obviously, there was no way they could have looked at my website.

Here’s another e-mail solicitation I received recently:

“We have performed a free analysis of your website, and we can help you get better search engine placement”.

Again, how could they have performed an analysis of a website I haven’t even built yet? Answer: They couldn’t.

Here’s another one:

“I was just browsing your website, and realized that despite having a good design, your site was not ranking on any of the search engines for most of the keywords pertaining to your domain.”

Despite having a good design? It’s a freakin’ generic placeholder you scamming idiots!

This next e-mail solicitation I received doesn’t even bother wasting time with false pretenses. It goes right for the jugular (i.e. your wallet) immediately:

“Website Listing Service”

Annual Website Search Engine Listing.

From Nov. 1, 2009 thru Nov. 1 2010

Amount Due: $65

At first glance, this solicitation appears to be a bill for some sort of “annual website search engine listing.” But if you scroll down like I did and read the fine print at the bottom of the letter, you’ll see this:

“This is not a bill. This is a solicitation. You are under no obligation to pay the amount stated above unless you accept this offer.”

I can’t emphasize this point enough: Legitimate SEO companies don’t send out e-mail solicitations without permission. And unless you signed up to receive e-mail solicitations from a particular company, delete all spam immediately. Don’t open it, and don’t send these scam artists your hard-earned money!

2. “We’ll Submit Your Website to 2500 Search Engines “

First of all, there aren’t 2500 search engines out there – at least not 2500 that actually matter. There are really only three search engines that matter.

The three search engines are:

• Google
• Yahoo
• Bing (Formerly MSN Live)

And the reason they’re the only three that matter is because they’re the only ones that can send you any significant traffic. And that’s not my opinion, that’s a fact!

According to The Nielson Company, 66.1% of searchers in this country use Google. 16.6% use Yahoo! and 8.8% use Bing (formerly Microsoft Live).

The point is, since there are really only three search engines that can send you any significant traffic, paying anyone to submit your website to 2500 search engines is really a waste of time and money. The three aforementioned search engines will eventually find your website on their own.

However, if you want to submit to them you can easily do so yourself. There’s no need to pay anyone to do it for you.

3. “Achieve Top 10 Search Engine Rankings Guaranteed!”

No legitimate SEO company will guarantee you a top 10 search engine ranking. Why? Because they can’t. A website’s ranking is determined by a variety of factors within a search engine’s algorithms. SEO companies have zero control over the constantly evolving algorithms of search engines.

And since SEO companies don’t have any control over those algorithms, it only stands to reason that they can’t legitimately guarantee you a top 10 ranking, right?

Now it is possible for you to get a top 10 ranking for certain long-tail keyword phrases that are less popular – keywords that aren’t heavily searched?

Yes, that’s very possible. But again, no one can guarantee you a top 10 ranking for those types of keywords either.

And even if you do manage to get into the top 10 for certain keywords, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to stay there. Because the search engines are constantly changing their algorithms to thwart cheaters.

For example, you can be on page one today and just as easily be on page one hundred tomorrow. It can happen just that quickly. Don’t believe me? Do some research on Google’s infamous Florida Update.

4. “Generate 10,000 to 1,000,000 Visitors to your Website Guaranteed!”

This SEO scam is called a Guaranteed Traffic Program. And yes, you’ll receive plenty of traffic, but they won’t hang around on your website for any length of time, and they won’t buy anything.

Why? Because the traffic is poor quality. It’s garbage. It isn’t targeted. In fact, in many cases, it’s not even humans that actually visit your site through these programs.

I discovered first-hand that when you purchase guaranteed traffic credits, it’s actually bots clicking through to your site, and then immediately clicking out. While doing research for this article, I actually tested a guaranteed traffic program.

And the numbers don’t lie. When I checked my raw data logs, I discovered that all of those thousands of visitors I received only stayed on my site for about five seconds. Don’t waste your money with guaranteed traffic programs.

5. Avoid SEO Contracts That Hold You Hostage

This particular SEO scam struck close to home recently, when my sister became a victim. Here’s how it works: Unethical SEO companies coerce you into signing a contract that commits you to using their service for 12 months or more. My sister got reeled in, because they told her that they needed to optimize her website’s coding every month to keep up with the search engines algorithm changes.

Can you believe that? What a load of bull crap! Anyway, she didn’t know any better, so she entered the newbies realm of gullibility, and signed a 12 month contract.

Unfortunately, when she finally got around to telling me about it, since she had already signed the contract, there really wasn’t anything that I could do to extricate her from the situation. And since her SEO contract is also tied into her hosting, they’re holding a huge hammer over her head.

In addition to that, they have all kinds of penalty clauses built in, in the event she tries to terminate her contract early. The good news is, next time, she’ll check with her big brother first, before she signs anything.

In fairness to legitimate SEO companies, I want to make something perfectly clear. Not every SEO company that has you sign a contract is unethical. And there are legitimate reasons for contracts.

For example, if you are implementing a link-building program, that obviously has to be monitored over time. Or perhaps your SEO company is managing your pay-per-click program. Again, this is something that has to be monitored over time.

That being said, caveat emptor! Personally, I have a problem with even legitimate SEO companies holding people hostage with long-term contracts.

Seriously, what do they need to hold you hostage for anyway? Now I don’t have a problem with a month-to-month contract. That way, if you’re not happy with the results you’re getting after a month or two, you can simply walk away without penalty.

So there you have it. The most common SEO scams rampant on the Internet today. Hopefully, you’ll heed the advice in this article, and walk away from these schemes, whenever they rear their ugly heads.

But should you choose to ignore the advice in this article, you can’t say that you weren’t warned!