One thing I would like to bring to your attention is all those companies that say they will submit your site to over 70,000 search engines for x amount are actually harming your site.

Never use a site or seo company that say they will do it as its classed as spamming and will seriously harm your website and get get it penalised. I personally have never used them as I have found it easier to manually submit your site to the top search engines once you are fully happy with the content on your site.

But to be honest you dont even have to submit your site to the search engines to get it indexed, al you have to do is post the link on a couple of clean legit sites idealy ones you have already and the next time google crawls the 2nd site it will find the link to yours and crawls yours ect.

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Search Engine Optimization is a ballooning industry. There’s no doubt about that. Every business needs to ensure that their website and other online marketing efforts function as effectively as possible. So many entrepreneurs have seen visions of the tidal wave of money to be made in the industry, and they jumped right in although they can barely dog-paddle.You can learn the same basic info that most SEO firms will tell you just by searching for “SEO tips” on Google. Many of them are afraid to let you know that because they want to be viewed as professionals with insider information that can only be gained through years of experience. The only time that seems to be actually true is when using PERL script or other back end programming and development. Obviously, a programmer has skills that not everyone has. But SEO principles are not specialized, and they do not require someone with five or more years of experience to understand.

Having said that, you are more than likely better off hiring an SEO firm to do the work for you. No, I’m not sending mixed signals here. You need to be aware of the smooth talk and the BS some of them will use to impress you, but you probably still need someone’s help to do the actual work. That is, unless you are willing to hire someone on full-time to do it for you.

After many conversations with many “experts”, I have noticed two vital tools missing from nearly everyone’s approach. If I may be blunt, they are missing because the SEO firms aren’t true marketing firms and are too young to understand how to truly win long-term repeat business.

TWO THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW TO SUCCEED WITH SEO

There are two things you need to know to succeed: you must know the customer and you must know the search engines. You cannot complete a successful SEO campaign if you have not taken the time to know your target audience. It is sickening how many companies spout clichĂ©s like “find your target audience” without actually helping you find them. What might be even worse is that SEO experts have all read or spoken about the importance of inbound links for good rankings, yet so many of them never incorporate linking strategies for their clients.

A successful marketing company researches the client’s target audience until they know who they are, what they want, how they speak, and what they respond to. If your SEO service provider doesn’t know that much detail about your customers, how do they know which keywords your customers will use to search with on Google or Yahoo? Exactly - they don’t. Sure, keyword research tools exist to provide a list of related phrases which are extremely popular, but are they the phrases people will use when looking to buy? It’s more involved than simply pressing a few buttons and letting a computer program shoot out some answers.

Why are these crucial elements missing? Because SEO firms don’t believe you will spend the money to do a search engine optimization campaign the right way. Because most of their clients know very little about SEO, the firms cut out necessary elements to lower the price and gain clients.

THE COST OF NEGLECT

The unfortunate side effect is a half-brained campaign. No matter what they have done, Google will continue to shun your website as an authority because you lack the appropriate inbound links. To add to your future frustration, you will eventually realize that even though your traffic has increased even significantly, your conversion rate has not increased at the same rate. This is, of course, due to the fact that although your SEO firm drew more people to your site, they were not the right people.

The truth is that 98% of the time you get what you pay for. If you are large enough to pay for conventional marketing and advertising, you probably don’t skimp on the details. SEO is still a relatively new industry and the experts are still relatively insecure about their status. They may be willing to compromise to land a client. You do not want this. Why spend any money at all for the wrong thing or a poor quality thing? You might as well save your money or spend it elsewhere.

Anything worth doing is worth doing well. Somebody famous said that. They were right. Don’t waste your time or money on a half-hearted service. Ask questions. Get involved. Insist on well-laid plans and ideas, just like you would for a commercial spot during the Super Bowl. Everyone wants results yesterday, and almost no one wants to wait. But quality comes from thorough research and planning.

Don’t compromise the quality of your business.

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Search Engine Optimization/Marketing. The never ending pursuit of getting on that first page of Google. What does it really take to get there? How long will it take me to get there? This is my first post to this column but over time I hope to answer all these questions and more. For today I’ll give you some pointers on what to look for and what to run away from.

First of all the scams:

1. NO ONE can guarantee the number 1 spot on Google or any other search engine. If someone tells you they can what they are going to do is take your money (usually $200-$500) and put half of it in a pay per click account overture or Google adwords and pocket the other half. Same goes with someone who guarantees results in 48-72 hours.

2. Never use link networking or link farming sites. These will get you penalized or banned from the search engines. The reason is if you have had 10 inbound links to your site for two years and over night you have 1,000 inbound links this is going to appear unnatural to the search engines and considered spamming.

3. Run away as fast as you can if you hear anything similar to: no one will see the content, we hide content, we use cloaking software, we use layering, or anyone who even hints at deceiving the search engines in any way. This will get you banned. The search engines want to see what the average joe who goes to your site will see.

4. Re-direct and multiple domain names. Some SEO firms will use multiple domain names with spam content to get search engine traffic and then re-direct the traffic to your site. This technique was invented by people in the adult industry so that no matter what keywords you searched you would be re-directed to an adult site. You could punch in lawn chair and get re-directed to an adult site. As amusing as it was it got old when after you were on the 3rd page of results and you still hadn’t found some patio furniture.

5. We’ll submit you to 75,000 search engines. Another example of spamming. This will get you penalized or banned almost overnight.

These are some of the more popular scams though I’d be writing all night if I tried to cover them all. Basically if it sounds to good to be true or it promises results in less than a month don’t do it. If you have a question about an offer I will always be more than happy to help out.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become an essential weapon in the arsenal of every online business. Unfortunately, for most business owners and marketing managers (and even many webmasters), it’s also somewhat of an enigma. This is partly due to the fact that it’s such a new and rapidly changing field, and partly due to the fact that SEO practitioners tend to speak in a language all of their own which, without translation, is virtually impenetrable to the layperson. This glossary seeks to remedy that situation, explaining specialist SEO terms in plain English…

AdWords

See Sponsored Links .

algorithm

A complex mathematical formula used by search engines to assess the relevance and importance of websites and rank them accordingly in their search results. These algorithms are kept tightly under wraps as they are the key to the objectivity of search engines (i.e. the algorithm ensures relevant results, and relevant results bring more users, which in turn brings more advertising revenue).

article PR

The submitting of free reprint articles to many article submission sites and article distribution lists in order to increase your website’s search engine ranking and Google PageRank. (In this sense, the “PR” stands for PageRank.) Like traditional public relations, article PR also conveys a sense of authority because your articles are widely published. And because you’re proving your expertise and freely dispensing knowledge, your readers will trust you and will be more likely to remain loyal to you. (In this sense, the “PR” stands for Public Relations.)

article submission sites

Websites which act as repositories of free reprint articles. They are sites where authors can submit their articles free of charge, and where webmasters can find articles to use on their websites free of charge. Article submission sites generate revenue by selling advertising space on their websites. See also article PR .

backlink

A text link to your website from another website. See also link .

copy

The words used on your website.

copywriter

A professional writer who specializes in the writing of advertising copy (compelling, engaging words promoting a particular product or service). See also SEO copywriter and web copywriter .

crawl

Google finds pages on the World Wide Web and records their details in its index by sending out ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’. These spiders make their way from page to page and site to site by following text links. To a spider, a text link is like a door.

domain name

The virtual address of your website (normally in the form www.yourbusinessname.com). This is what people will type when they want to visit your site. It is also what you will use as the address in any text links back to your site.

ezine

An electronic magazine. Most publishers of ezines are desperate for content and gladly publish well written, helpful articles and give you full credit as author, including a link to your website.

Flash

A technology used to create animated web pages (and page elements).

free reprint article

An article written by you and made freely available to other webmasters to publish on their websites. See also article PR .

Google

The search engine with the greatest coverage of the World Wide Web, and which is responsible for most search engine-referred traffic. Of approximately 11.5 billion pages on the World Wide Web, it is estimated that Google has indexed around 8.8 billion. This is one reason why it takes so long to increase your ranking!

Google AdWords

See Sponsored Links .

Google PageRank

How Google scores a website’s importance. It gives all sites a mark out of 10. By downloading the Google Toolbar , you can view the PR of any site you visit.

Google Toolbar

A free tool you can download . It becomes part of your browser toolbar. It’s most useful features are it’s PageRank display (which allows you to view the PR of any site you visit) and it’s AutoFill function (when you’re filling out an online form, you can click AutoFill, and it enters all the standard information automatically, including Name, Address, Zip code/Postcode, Phone Number, Email Address, Business Name, Credit Card Number (password protected), etc.) Once you’ve downloaded and installed the toolbar, you may need to set up how you’d like it to look and work by clicking Options (setup is very easy). NOTE: Google does record some information (mostly regarding sites visited).

HTML

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the coding language used to create much of the information on the World Wide Web. Web browsers read the HTML code and display the page that code describes.

Internet

An interconnected network of computers around the world.

JavaScript

A programming language used to create dynamic website pages (e.g. interactivity).

keyword

A word which your customers search for and which you use frequently on your site in order to be relevant to those searches. This use known as targeting a keyword. Most websites actually target ‘keyword phrases’ because single keywords are too generic and it is very difficult to rank highly for them.

keyword density

A measure of the frequency of your keyword in relation to the total wordcount of the page. So if your page has 200 words, and your keyword phrase appears 10 times, its density is 5%.

keyword phrase

A phrase which your customers search for and which you use frequently on your site in order to be relevant to those searches.

link

A word or image on a web page which the reader can click to visit another page. There are normally visual cues to indicate to the reader that the word or image is a link.

link path

Using text links to connect a series of page (i.e. page 1 connects to page 2, page 2 connects to page 3, page 3 connects to page 4, and so on). Search engine ‘spiders’ and ‘robots’ use text links to jump from page to page as they gather information about it, so it’s a good idea to allow them traverse your entire site via text links.

link partner

A webmaster who is willing to put a link to your website on their website. Quite often link partners engage in reciprocal linking.

link popularity

The number of links to your website. Link popularity is the single most important factor in a high search engine ranking. Webmasters use a number of methods to increase their site’s link popularity including article PR, link exchange (link partners / reciprocal linking), link buying, and link directories.

link text

The part of a text link that is visible to the reader. When generating links to your own site, they are most effective (in terms of ranking) if they include your keyword.

meta tag

A short note within the header of the HTML of your web page which describes some aspect of that page. These meta tags are read by the search engines and used to help assess the relevance of a site to a particular search.

natural search results

The ‘real’ search results. The results that most users are looking for and which take up most of the window. For most searches, the search engine displays a long list of links to sites with content which is related to the word you searched for. These results are ranked according to how relevant and important they are.

organic search results

See natural search results .

PPC (Pay-Per-Click advertising)

See Sponsored Links .

PageRank

See Google PageRank .

rank

Your position in the search results that display when someone searches for a particular word at a search engine.

reciprocal link

A mutual agreement between two webmasters to exchange links (i.e. they both add a link to the other’s website on their own website). Most search engines (certainly Google) are sophisticated enough to detect reciprocal linking and they don’t view it very favorably because it is clearly a manufactured method of generating links. Websites with reciprocal links risk being penalized.

robot

See spider .

robots.txt file

A file which is used to inform the search engine spider which pages on a site should not be indexed. This file sits in your site’s root directory on the web server. (Alternatively, you can do a similar thing by placing tags in the header section of your HTML for search engine robots/spiders to read.

Sandbox

Many SEO experts believe that Google ‘sandboxes’ new websites. Whenever it detects a new website, it withholds its rightful ranking for a period while it determines whether your site is a genuine, credible, long term site. It does this to discourage the creation of SPAM websites (sites which serve no useful purpose other than to boost the ranking of some other site). Likewise, if Google detects a sudden increase (i.e. many hundreds or thousands) in the number of links back to your site, it may sandbox them for a period (or in fact penalize you by lowering your ranking or blacklisting your site altogether).

SEO

Search Engine Optimization. The art of making your website relevant and important so that it ranks high in the search results for a particular word.

SEO copywriter

A ‘copywriter’ who is not only proficient at web copy, but also experienced in writing copy which is optimized for search engines (and will therefore help you achieve a better search engine ranking for your website).

search engine

A search engine is an online tool which allows you to search for websites which contain a particular word or phrase. The most well known search engines are Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

site map

A single page which contains a list of text links to every page in the site (and every page contains a text link back to the site map). Think of your site map as being at the center of a spider-web.

SPAM

Generally refers to unwanted and unrequested email sent en-masse to private email addresses. Also used to refer to websites which appear high in search results without having any useful content. The creators of these sites set them up simply to cash in on their high ranking by selling advertising space, links to other sites, or by linking to other sites of their own and thereby increasing the ranking of those sites. The search engines are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and already have very efficient ways to detect SPAM websites and penalize them.

spider

Google finds pages on the World Wide Web and records their details in its index by sending out ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’. These spiders make their way from page to page and site to site by following text links.

Sponsored Links

Paid advertising which displays next to the natural search results. Customers can click on the ad to visit the advertiser’s website. This is how the search engines make their money. Advertisers set their ads up to display whenever someone searches for a word which is related to their product or service. These ads look similar to the natural search results, but are normally labeled “Sponsored Links”, and normally take up a smaller portion of the window. These ads work on a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) basis (i.e. the advertiser only pays when someone clicks on their ad).

submit

You can submit your domain name to the search engines so that their ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’ will crawl your site. You can also submit articles to ‘article submission sites’ in order to have them published on the Internet.

text link

A word on a web page which the reader can click to visit another page. Text links are normally blue and underlined. Text links are what ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’ use to jump from page to page and website to website.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator. The address of a particular page published on the Internet. Normally in the form http://www.yourbusinessname.com/AWebPage.htm.

web copy

See copy .

web copywriter

A ‘copywriter’ who understands the unique requirements of writing for an online medium.

webmaster

A person responsible for the management of a particular website.

wordcount

The number of words on a particular web page.

World Wide Web (WWW)

The vast array of documents published on the Internet. It is estimated that the World Wide Web now consists of approximately 11.5 billion pages.

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