Download our free paper Secrets of a Working Web Site.
Getting Professional SEO (or search engine optimization) help is an essential part of getting quality web traffic today. With billions of web pages out there, don’t expect your site to magically draw the traffic you want.
Rule #1 is simple. Build quality highways on the Web to your site.
I recently surveyed 30 small businesses near me to see if they had Web sites on the Web. Of the 30 small businesses near me, only 11 had Web sites. I found 19 of these businesses, or 63%, had no site. A Web site is essential for almost business today. Over half were losing dramatic market share without that site.
If you ask these businesses without Web sites if they had a site, they would probably tell you they did. Search those 19 businesses without sites using their business name on Google and a listing for them would pop up. The listing would show their business name, address, phone number, email address, and maybe a photo and a small map with directions. So they thought they had a Web site. Not really. They had a listing; but that’s not a Web site. Phone companies and others create directories on the Web. Your listing may be a part of one or more directories. For those companies without a Web site, you will still see their listings on such directories as citysearch, yellowpages, local.yahoo, superpages, and dexknows. These are often paid for by the business. These listings won’t help you much in getting a good position on the search engine results page (SERP). Sure, if they search on the company name you might get your site,but few people search the Web on your company name unless your company name is well branded. If you are a new or small business, the branding just isn’t there.
How do your customers search the Web? Here are some typical categories of searchers:
- Informational search: The searcher is trying to get information to solve a particular problem.
- Comparison Shop: The searcher is moving to a purchase decision on a product or service and is comparing features and prices.
- Shopping: The searcher is planning to make an online purchase.
It is very important to know what your target user wants (not necessary needs) and target that.
Rule 2: Social Shares are the New Links
As we move in the social networks, we use share, follow, rate, and review to point others to content you value on the Web. The search engines are watching this, and the optimization and result pages reflect what we have validated as valuable content to us. When we created a PAC Web site, we encouraged people in our community to go to their Facebook and Twitter accounts and post a link it. By the next morning, Google was already picking up many of these and forcing the PAC site high in the search result pages.
Rule 3: Keep Your Web Site Pages Fresh
The search engines are putting more and more emphasis on the freshness of your site pages. Blogs are important to the success of a site, but postings must be added frequently to see quality optimization of your Web site. Social networks must have a lot of ongoing involvement, leading users to your site.
Rule 4: Choose whoever you wish to help you optimize your site carefully.
NO ONE can guarantee you a top spot, as this company is trying to do, in the search results. To quote Matt Cutts, the Google Hero:
Some SEO firms say they can rank people in first place. Can they guarantee this?
Not on Google. No one can guarantee this, not even Google, since our ranking algorithms are often updated. I’ve seen scams where the “#1 placement” is really buying ads. I’ve seen scams where the “keywords” that they sell are really for people who have scumware hidden in their browser. I’ve seen stuff where the guaranteed keywords are 5-6 word phrases that only have nine results, and no one would ever really type that really long, specific phrase. I’ve seen situations where the guarantee is that they’ll try to get a #1 spot, and if they don’t, then they’ll try again. Cold calling and cold emailing is a bad sign in the first place, frankly. So I’d be skeptical of that in the extreme, and read the fine print carefully.
If the web site is for Widget Corporation, searching on that phrase in this local area might return you the top spot of the first page. That is unlikely to help you much, however, unless your corporate name is well branded. Also there are plenty of SEO companies using black-hat techniques (banned techniques) top-position themselves well in the search engines. The NY Times reported JC Penney did this last Christmas and got banner sales. That third-party company they used violated the rules that Google requires. Right now if you search Google for skinny jeans or hundreds of other important keyword phrases, you won’t find JC Penney in your listings. They’ve been penalized, at least for now. Your SEO company had better play by the rules – we do.
Also, remember that SEO today is vastly different that a few years ago. Reciprocal links (swapping links to boost your pagerank) is out. Doesn’t help. Also, buying links to your site in most directories is out. That doesn’t help, either. Publishing articles in article directories on the web doesn’t work much now. What does work? You’ll find a few clues in the blog on this website. For one thing, blogs and social networking are VERY important. Why not let us help you with your SEO strategy?
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