5 Ways to Separate the Good SEO Providers from the Bad

How do you separate the Good SEO providers from the bad?

Well, here to 5 ways to find the “right” SEO Company for your online business to rank better in an “ethical” and “acceptable” way so that Google Panda and Penguin updates won’t penalize your site.

 

5 Ways to Separate the Good SEO Providers from the Bad Ones:

 

1. Meta Tags –

Do Meta affect your SEO efforts? In 2009, Google made is clear that Meta title, keywords, and description alone will NOT impact your site’s engine rankings.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is years behind the curve. If you find such SEO company, do us a favor – simply move on and STOP wasting your time!

 

2. Buying Low-Quality Links in Bulks –

Many online businesses, especially the newer ones have fall into this trap and the reasoning makes sense – search engines like Google determine your site’s authority based on both the quality and the quantity of links coming from other website to yours.

For a startup business with brochure-like sites, getting link from other websites can be a challenge. So why not purchase them, right? Well, you’re right and you can easily get hundreds of links for just $10 or more, and your problem is solved.

Taking these SEO shortcuts used to work very well until Google released an update known to many as “Penguin” which punish sites having low-quality backlinks (links that you buy in bulk for rankings only ) to their sites.

Not surprisingly, a lot of small business were blacklisted and dropped off from search engine rankings. So, this old school method of influencing rankings must be avoided at all cost.

 

3. Search Engine Submission Service –

In early days, you had to manually submit your site on search engines for indexing so that they could appear on Google search result pages (SERPs). Otherwise, Google simply would NOT know that your site was there.

With this information, many SEO companies promised to submit to 1000s of search engines for a small deal to lure inexperienced internet users. This makes us laugh because in reality, your site will immediately gets indexed on major search engine once you link to it on any of your existing sites.

The simplest thing you could do to index your site on search engine was to tweet a link to the new site. Google will see that link on Twitter, follow it back to your site, and then index your site’s content.

So the thought of submitting your site on thousands of search engines is silly!

I mean how many search engines do you know besides Google, Yahoo, and Bing?

Most of these search engines that require manual submission are so small that the result far outweighs the effort you’ll put. Our recommendation – focus you SEO efforts on something else and useful.

 

4. SEO Company That Guarantees #1 Ranking

No well-established SEO company can make this prediction in their sales pitch or marketing materials. Let’s say, what if you want to rank number 1 for the term “weight loss” or “insurance?” These are intensely competitive keywords and top brand spend millions to hold on to their top rankings.

So, how can any SEO company guarantee you a #1 ranking WITHOUT even knowing about your requirements?

A good SEO company will try to analyze your market, discuss your SEO goals with you, and tell you exactly what is possible and what’s NOT according to your budget and scope.

If you ask for my advice, I would NOT trust any SEO company that makes blank promises WITHOUT considering your special case first.

 

5. Keyword Stuffing

Well, this SEO tactic used to work very well few years back. If you wanted to rank for “weight loss,” all you have to do was insert this keyword at least 20 times on your home page (about 8 to 10% of all words), and lo, you would rank 1^st in Google page.

Your content may read awful, redundant, and even artificial. But who cares, right?

Well, here’s the bad news I want to share with you guys – Google has become smart and caught on this “unethical” way of getting rankings for your keywords. It’s OKAY to target keywords several times on your articles or pages, including in the headers, title, and in the content.

But it should also read natural and written for humans!

By “keyword stuffing” not only you risk irritating your loyal readers, but you’ll also be suspended, and even banned (if you don’t heed Google directions) at worst.

So you want to find a GENUINE SEO company? Guess what, you are at the right place. We would like to show you some concrete results, reports, testimonials, and case studies. Let’s talk …

Top 5 Things Most SEO Consultants Hate

Over several years, as an SEO consultant, I have faced some of the “top 5 toughest challenges” in the industry and our clients.

I bet you have faced similar experiences from your clients in the past, but let me be the first to list my “top 5 challenges” I, as a SEO consultant, face more than once.

These challenges do annoy us, as lot of people has wrong information about the specific role of SEO consultant. Other times, these challenges also help push us to offer out best services.

So, here are my top 5 challenges I face as an SEO consultant:

1.  Urge for “Quick” Fixes

Most of my clients, usually “savvy business owners,” want a quick win. They are strangely driven by the idea of “quick fixes” regarding their SEO, even though totally understand the benefits of getting it “right.”

Often, my clients are evaluated on quarterly or annual results.

I try to convince my clients by presenting a “fact-based report” that clearly shows them “double revenue” through organic search by thinking long-term, probably on a 24 to 36-month time frame, but I still see their hesitations.

They want “quick results.”

In fact, they prefer quick turnaround within 12 months.

Often, we get emails from desperate clients before board meetings. They try to break down our organic traffic goal into a 12-month figure, and they draw pretty convincing graphs, but then find that the traffic we receive is nowhere what we discussed in our “initial agreement.”

It is important that business understand that organic search is important, however, it can’t be rushed.

On the other hand, quick fixes may yield small victories; however, it won’t be “sustainable” and “long-lasting.”

2. They (Competitors) are doing it, why not me? …

One of the toughest questions that we often face is, “They (Competitors) are doing it … why can’t I?”

There are plenty of sites that avoid Google’s guidelines, or exploit “loopholes” in the search engine giant’s algorithms. They perform exact match domain, use shady link-building schemes, or try to rank on duplicate content, etc.

As an SEO consultant, I often get “red-faced” at Google and their lack of response at such sites that use crooked and under-handed tricks to game search engine rankings.

Personally, I think, Google’s haven’t become quite good at filtering out “low-quality” sites. Whenever I report “low-quality” sites, nothing ever happens.

That’s when I feel sorry for my clients!

While their competitors use “shady” SEO tactics, nobody stops or penalize them, not even Google.

On the other hand, my clients use white-hat SEO methods, adopt best SEO practices, not to mention follow Google’s guidelines all the time, only to find them outranked by those “poor-quality” sites.

Isn’t it frustrating? Have you run into the same situation?

3.  SEO will or can “fix everything,” including a poor product

Contrary to popular belief that SEO can fix everything, I am sorry to inform you that SEO isn’t the answer for everything.

That means if your product, service, or customer care is “average” or simply not “awesome,” then it’s time you spend your time fixing that problem before giving a call to the SEO guy in order to get your more free traffic.

SEO can only amplify your business profits if you have a “great offer.”

That means, if you have an offer than can help solve people’s problems, offer something of value to people, surely SEO can help you connect with the “right” people and help them along the way, while you make TONS of profit from it too.

4. It’s “Easy” to Write Content

Sorry to say, but content isn’t easy. Unless you decide to fill your page with white space and stuff keywords.

Now and then, I often hear my clients say that they have a “good writer/ copywriter as their staff.” But not surprisingly, I rarely, if ever, come across writers who have a good knowledge of SEO.

Whenever I’ve depended on these “inside experts,” mostly I have been disappointed and ended teaching them how to do what is needed on the page. Not only that cuts into my SEO budget, but I also waste time I could have spent on other SEO job.

5.  “IT Managers” Fixes it ALL

It astonishes me when my family member calls me whenever they have issues with their PC, mobile phones, scanner, or when their site stops running. Sometimes they will even call me up to look at their cable connection, TV or satellite dish!

They assume just because I am an “IT Consultant,” I can fix everything!

Same story repeats itself at work. Clients don’t know the difference between a web designer, and a web developer, a SEO expert, and an Internet Marketers. They think, “If he/she is an IT consultant, he/she must be able to fix everything that operates on electricity.”

Well, it doesn’t work like that!

As an SEO consultant, we have a specific job to do – optimize your site, perform off-page optimization, and giving you insights and current SEO tactics to help improve your site’s traffic / conversion rate.

If you want a great website design, hire a professional web designer! Similarly, if you need a web application developed, get a help from a web developer.

There you have it. I have listed my top 5 challenges in the SEO industry. How about you? Have you run into similar experience? Comment below!

Changing SEO Paradigm, Are You Aligned?

The SEO technique for online marketing is undergoing a rapid paradigm shift. But are you ready for the change?

SEO is definitely one of the popular and cost-effective ways to market your business online. It starts with a creation/ development of a user-friendly website, followed by site optimization to rank higher in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing!

For all possible keyword terms your potential customers are searching for, your website need to rank among the top 3 or 4 in order to see higher return on investment (ROI).

Traditionally, many Internet Marketers (IMs) and SEO gurus used SEO techniques to help them rank a site higher for the largest number of “targeted” keywords.

However, after the recent Panda and Penguin updates (algorithmic changes) by Google and other major search engines, the traditional SEO approach to ONLINE promotion is rapidly undergoing a paradigm shift.

So, unless you decide to adapt yourself to this SEO paradigm shift, it’s likely that you will lag behind in the ever important “1^st page rankings” on Google and other major search engines like Yahoo and Bing!

 

1. On-page SEO vs. Off-page SEO

The traditional method of SEO has always been putting maximum importance on external SEO (off-page SEO). Internal SEO (on-page SEO), on the other hand, receives little or no attention at all.

In fact, on-page SEO receives only 20% of the whole optimization process, while off-page SEO (external SEO) gets 80%.

On-page SEO refers to “site optimization,” “efficient” site/ navigation design, and publishing “high quality” and “original” content.

On the other hand, off-page SEO means making your site popular through internet using several SEO techniques, like building backlinks, submitting articles to article directories along with a backlink, blog commenting, forum posting, distributing press releases, and social networking.

It’s true that the significance of off-page SEO cannot be taken for granted, nonetheless, the recent updates in Google and other search engine algorithms seems to be in favor of on-page SEO.

Many smart SEO companies have been swift in noticing this shift, and quickly refocusing their SEO strategies in order to align themselves to the search engine’s expectations.

As search engine algorithms continue to become “smarter,” the need for external SEO will start to reduce, while on-page SEO will continue to grow.

SEO firms sensitive to this rapid SEO paradigm shift will be able to adjust their SEO strategies so that they’ll continue to dominate the Google search rankings.

 

2. Search Engine “Dislikes” Black Hat SEO

In initial stages of search engines, many so-called “SEO gurus” used “black hat SEO” techniques.

Black hat SEO techniques were very effective while search engines were still in its early stages. However, after recent algorithm updates, Google and other major search engines are soon catching up with these “unethical” SEO tactics.

Black Hat SEO tactics refers to SEO techniques like building MASSIVE “low quality” backlinks, keyword stuffing (without real content), using duplicate content, aggressive article, blog, and forum marketing, and press release circulation.

However, with the evolution of smart technology, search engines now have the ability to quickly identify sites that are aggressively spending their time employing “unethical” SEO practices.

No wonder, these sites are experiencing a sudden demise in its rankings for all keywords they originally ranked for.

Plus, these same sites have been black listed and penalized by search engines.

So you see it’s not an easy game “tricking” Google or any other major search engines.

 

3. High Quality/ Relevant Content

Do you know what search engine robot/ spiders are looking for? They aren’t looking for websites that use the “best” SEO tactics.

They are looking for sites that contain the most “relevant content” that addresses a searcher’s query.

Surprised? Don’t be!

With the recent search engine algorithm updates, the main objective of Google and other search engines have shifted to provide the BEST answers (search results) to searchers query.

Hence, it would not be unfair to conclude that search engines is likely give priority to site (high rankings among its competition) when they offer the “BEST” information for a reader’s query.

 

Good Old PR is NOW Back

Social media networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest have been proactive in getting rid of “fake” accounts designed to “mislead” search engines.

Likewise, articles directories have recently received a crushing blow from search engines in terms of rankings, thereby crushing the impact of article marketing in BOOSTING site’s popularity.

The decline of these traditional SEO methods is now replaced by the rise of good old ways of maintaining public relations to promote a website.

The new game changers in SEO are genuine social networking accounts, press releases, and blogs, active participation on online discussion forums, and shares and links in electronic as well as digital media.

A site that attracts more mentions/ shares/ buzz through various media channels other than its genuine online reputation is more likely benefit from SEO over time.

This means that search engine robot/ spiders now LOVE sites the frequently receives mentions as well as links on wide variety of online and offline platforms.

Hiring an SEO Consultant? Do you need to Burn a Hole in your Pocket?

There are several ways you can outsource SEO without burning hole in your pocket.

While MANY small business owners have a “wrong impression” that HIRING an SEO consultant could be an “expensive business,” but this sort of thinking is far from TRUTH.

In fact, any money you spend on SEO or Internet Marketing (IM) MUST be seen as an “investment.” Just like with every investment, you must also expect to see a clear return on investment (ROI).

You can outsource your SEO yet still lose PLENTY of money if you:

1. HIRE the wrong SEO firm, or
2. When you target wrong keywords to rank for, or
3. When there ISN’T a clear vision what to achieve through it

Listen, when it comes to succeeding in SEO, you need to HAVE a long-term plan that targets SPECIFIC goals!

On the other hand, hiring a trusted SEO consultant and setting clear goals to achieve online as well as having a proper MONITORING system in place, will give you high ROI than the investment you will make.

With that said, let me show you how to properly HIRE an SEO consultant so that you DON’T have to burn a hole in your pocket!

 

1. Find a dependable SEO consultant

Any SEO campaign’s success depends upon its outsourcer.

You need to know and understand what to look for BEFORE you even consider HIRING a good SEO consultant so that you will NOT only make good buying decision, but also get some great results (high rankings) too.

If you don’t, NOT only you’ll just pour money into nothing, but it’s likely you’ll start to lose faith in SEO.

If the SEO methods are cheap or even unethical, you might as well get PENALTY for that.

Further, while selecting an SEO consultant, DON’T be tempted to fall for cheap SEO offers as these companies often submit your links to “link farms,” “low-quality” article directories and forums, and PROMISE 1^st page Google rankings.

Instead of BELIEVING everything they say, ask them to:

1. Show examples of their past SEO success stories (reports), and MOST importantly,
2. Ask them to submit their proposal “customized to your project needs.”

 

2. SEO Isn’t Just About SEO

When we talk about outsourcing SEO, we also mean outsourcing your business’s online presence too.

So you should not only expect an SEO consultant to optimize your site for search engines. Optimizing a site/ page is just part of an overall SEO / Internet Marketing campaign.

Your SEO consultant MUST also be capable of looking after your Social Media marketing (SMM), Email marketing, PPC campaigns, etc, and offer you recommendations of how these technologies can benefit you business.

All these variety of actions will help you get a good ROI from outsourcing SEO.

 

3. Set Measureable Targets

The GREAT thing about Internet is that everything is “easily measurable.”

In other words, your SEO campaign can have precise targets, not general ones!

So, before you sign a contract with a SEO consultant, make sure you AGREE with the firm that will NOT only execute your SEO campaign, but DELIVER it too.

Once the project completes, what would be the deliverables? A better Google rankings, more Facebook fans, MORE traffic?

 

4. Agree on a Detailed Action Plan with Intermediate Targets

A good SEO campaign often spans across a long period of time (number of months), not for a week or two.

On this duration, there needs to be a detail action plan along with milestones as well as intermediate targets –actions to be executed and expected results.

The BEST way to know all the actions needed to execute is to ask your SEO consultant to perform an SEO audit before starting the project.

You may have to spend a reasonable amount of ONE-TIME fee for this; however, the outcome of this audit could result into a LIST OF ACTIONS that can be translated into a detailed SEO plan for each month.

 

5. Keep Your Budget Low, Think Long Term

You may have a fixed budget for your SEO campaign. But as you’ve already realized, a good SEO results (ROI) may take a while, probably few months or even a year.

So, if your business depends on the internet, then we highly recommend that you LOWER your monthly budget and spread it across number of months.

Let’s say, if your budget is $10,000 for SEO campaign. You can make an agreement with your SEO consultant to spend $500 each month over 20 months, instead of spending $2000 for 5 straight months.

Of course, there are several other factors to consider, so it would be better you discuss this with your SEO consultant before signing the contract.

How to Penguin Proof My Site

If your site/blog has been hit by recent Penguin or Panda updates, certainly you know its impact on the web. SEO continues to change right in front of our eyes. As a result, whole industry has been turned upside down once again.

Further, Google is shuffling its search engine algorithms and sites are rising and falling in search rankings. So, what should I do now? How to Penguin proof my sites?

It’s been almost 10 years since the last “Boston” update – the biggest algorithm update in Google’s history. Ever since, Google has continued to increase their update frequency.

 

So, what actually happens in a big algorithm update? You will find that:

1. SEOs and Webmasters are scared to death into link submission
2. Spammy sites are dropped
3. Search engine result looks better
4. High relevant and fresh content pops up in SERPs

So you see? The updates will be there, frequently as Google are trying to give us a better search results. So instead of fighting with Google, I think, we need to join them. Let us provide them better content so that they pass it on their visitors and create a win-win situation.

The next big thing in Google would be … trust! In other words, legitimacy and trust will be key ingredients to proof your site from Penguin and Panda updates. Now, we must be earning the trust of Google by being trustworthy.

 

Here are 7 ways to Penguin proof your site:

It “pays” to establish yourself, your company, and your site by becoming as trustworthy as possible. The benefits are more than just SEO. So how do you earn trust from Google? Let’s learn these 7 ways to Penguin proof your site, NOW.

 

1. Stay out of Bad Neighborhoods

– Don’t use forum profiles, spam blog comments, paid link traffics, and link farms just to make quick sales. It only works for the short term. Plus, your main domain SHOULD never be involved in “black hat SEO” methods to rank at the top of the SERPs.

You must treat your site as a “golden” goose – never put it at risk without a very good reason!

 

2. Don’t Host Your Site on Cheap Web Hosting Services

– It is not a very GOOD idea to use multiple domains having the same WHOIS data for the same IP, particularly if they are linking to your site. This move may look smarter, but it’s still a trick and many sites have been dropped off because of this stupid little mistake.

 

3. Help/Contribute the Community Positively

– No matter which niche you’re in, ask yourself these questions – are you helping other members of your community? Are you contributing to your community? If there were no way to monetize your site, would you still feel comfortable you are doing something positive?

If not, you MUST do some soul searching! Don’t just focus on making money. Instead, focus on what you are interested in, help others, and then money will follow … automatically.

 

4. Don’t be a Jerk

– Don’t attack and demean others. Stay positive with your message. Even though you are right about something, you still look like a jerk when arguing about it. Anger and resentment turns people off.

Look, in this hyper connection virtual world, you actions could be known within minutes, not even hours. So how long do you think it would take for Google to start using that to attack your site with Penguin or Panda updates!

 

5. Push Yourself to be Better

– Strive to be better at what you do. Seek knowledge, try new things, and expand your base for growth and improvement. The better you become in your field, more authority you will gain over it.

In this information age, we have all knowledge at our fingertips. So why not use it for our advantage, to push us to the next level?

 

6. Bonus Tip: Enhance Interactivity in Your Community

– Unless you’re a celebrity or an industry tycoon, you will have to engage in some kind of conversation with your audience. Folks like Steve Wozniak, Pete Cashmore, Linux Torvalds, and Rand Fishkin all have one thing in common: you ask them a question and they’ll start a conversation with you. If you send them an email, you will get a prompt response! What a way to build community?

On the other hand, those who ignore their visitors, readers, and fans often get forgotten soon. But those who engage with them not only show their respect to their audience, they’ll also likely get some good suggestions as well as some viewpoints.

The moral of the story: reach out and start a conversation with your target audience!

 

Summary of How to Penguin Proof My Site

Remember the famous saying from US President John F Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.” So would you do me a favor?

Follow these 5 simple yet effective steps in order to become more genuine and establish you and your business as a house-hold figure in your niche. Prevent your site being attacked by “any” Penguin or Panda attack.

5 Ways you know for Sure that Your SEO is not working

The Internet is plagued with blogs, articles, advice, how-to tips, online courses, and all types of things, including SEO. While few of them give really insightful advice, others rather like to portray SEO as something mystical dark art. And there are others that use ‘Black Hat’ to influence search engine rankings.

But the truth is that SEO isn’t a rocket science. It just requires a bit of time, effort, and creativity to come up with an SEO campaign that works. As a professional SEO consultant, we have been always promoting as well as practicing White hat (ethical) techniques of SEO, which Google recommends and loves.

After receiving SEO service from a consultant, make sure you monitor these 5 points to ensure you are getting what you’ve paid for.

1. Your Site’s Current Performance

– First of all, it always pays to assess your current situation. You need to know the level of traffic your site gets, number of times your sites is served, number of times and where and what do people click on your site, amount of time spend on your site, and most importantly, the conversion rate you get.

You can either assess each question separately or make changes accordingly. For instance, if people are coming to your site but leaving rather quickly (high bounce rate), then it’s because the content was not relevant to what they were looking for or simply not good enough (quality) to keep them on your site for long.

What is Bounce rate? Well, the site’s bounce rate is a crucial metric for website owners. It indicates the percentage of visitors that left your site after landing on your site.

Bounce rate can happen for several reasons, including:

1. Your site visitor click on the “Back” button on the browser
2. Visitor clicks on your ads
3. Visitor clicks on your external links
4. Visitor typed new URL
5. Visitor closes his/her browser

So if your intention is to make money online through ads, then having high bounce rate is “acceptable.” However, if you want to build audience and traffic to your site, then your site needs to have a bounce rate between 40 to 70%, which is normal. If your content is exceptional, then your site may bounce rate lower than 40%.

See, there is lot of competition going over the internet. It always pays to provide fresh, unique, and engaging content for educational purpose. If you are able to do this, I can guarantee that your site will have a low bounce rate, have a great chance of converting regular visitors, and increase sales as a result.

2. You optimize your site for wrong keywords

– If you’re in a “weight loss” market, simply targeting the word weight loss won’t cut. The competition for this keyword is “strong” and simply depending upon your SEO skills in order to save few bucks and not taking help from a professional SEO consultant won’t get your site rank higher in search engines.

So after 3 or 6 months, your site’s ranking hasn’t change a bit, it’s time you analyze keywords you had targeted at the beginning. Most likely, you would have targeted keywords having “strong” competition. SEO rankings, just like everything else in life, take a lot of time to achieve.

You need to first rank for low competitive keywords – long tail keywords and other variation of your main keyword s- before targeting your main keywords as your site’s ranking increases.

To find profitable keywords, make sure you drill down your services to its “nth degree” to come up with keywords having low competition but high search volume. For this, you can send out a questionnaire to your current visitors (readers or customers) and ask them how they would search for your products and services online.

Next, use those keyword phrases to see if they will generate traffic to your site. If yes, build your site around those key phrases. But be careful not to use too specific targeted keyword that has little or no traffic.

3. Using Poor Link Building Strategies

– If you have great content and you market them very well, it’s said that you don’t need to really build any backlinks at all to drive traffic to your site. All those hard work you put to build your brand will pay you later by generating enough high quality natural links referring back to your site, which will ultimately lead to a boost in rankings for your chosen keywords.

If you can get even a single high quality link from a related link, it will have far more value than, let’s say, building 100 weak (non contextual) links. So, focus on building quality links, not high quantity links.

Likewise, Google is also quick to penalize sites that are overly optimized. Ensure that you’re using wide variety of relevant (similar) keyword phrases as anchor text that points back to your website.

4. Not Being Socially Active

– For an effective SEO campaign, social presence is very crucial. If your visitors read your article and find them intriguing, they’ll share your content with their pals via social media.

As your content gets more shares, search engines such as Google will eventually notice it as something good: people are enjoying because it must be highly relevant to their search terms. In future, search engines will give more priority to this piece of content over others as they know it is relevant, informative, and interesting.

Make sure you become active on social networks, interact with others, share people’s content, and so on. Then when you have something to share of your own, ask people to share (tweet, re-tweet, stumble, or like) with their friends.

5. Inconsistency With Your SEO campaigns

– Look at every pop stars, entrepreneurs, and sports icon. They all get to the top being consistent in life. They always strive to be better, work harder than their competitors, and provide more value to their customers.

Similarly, making your blog popular isn’t different. You need to consistently offer people great service while letting the search engines know that you are ranking higher because of fresh and relevant content and citations.

The biggest mistake you can make with your SEO campaign is switch off once your website reaches top of the search engines thinking that the job is done. No, it’s not! In fact, it couldn’t be further from the truth.

See, when your site reaches to the top, everyone is there looking to outrank you and take your position away from you. The only way you can maintain the top position in search engines is to continuously make your site stand out from the rest.

People are in hurry and they want the best information, products, and services quickly. No one has time to trawl through pages after pages to find out what they are searching for. That is why you want to make sure you get maximum return from you online investment by taking your SEO campaigns very seriously.

Like any other plan, you need to do careful research, and design your site and craft content accordingly, implement new SEO strategies as well as test them consistently to figure out what works and what doesn’t to make your that your SEO is working for you.

How and When Should You Hire an SEO Consultant?

“Should you hire an SEO consultant or do-it-yourself (DIY)?” is an ongoing discussion on most online marketing forums today.

The main question perhaps isn’t that you can afford to hire an SEO consultant, but MORE of if you can afford not to do so?

Listen …

1. SEO must be seen as something as an “investment” to your business, NOT a cost for your business
2. It must be seen as an “important” online marketing campaign to BOOST your site’s authority, search engine rankings, and popularity

With that said, instead of relying on your own SEO skills, its high time you find a professional help from a SEO consultant when you smell any of these critical situation on your site.

 

Top 3 reasons “WHEN” you must hire a SEO consultant:

 

1. Google “banned” or “penalized” your site

You have been employing “unethical” SEO, or “black hat” SEO, WITHOUT knowing about it, in order to BOOST your site rankings, but violates search engine guidelines.

This penalization can have “serious” implications on your online lead generation and revenue.

This is when you MUST bring aboard a “professional” SEO consultant right away.

 

2. Your Clients CAN’T Find You Online

If your client’s CAN’T find you online by your business name, then there’s a MAJOR problem in the SEO department. You need to get guidance from an SEO consultant to OPTIMIZE your site, right away!

Just call an expert SEO consultant who can LOOK AT all aspects of the SEO strategies, including both on- and off-page optimization.

 

3. You DON’T Get Lead Generation through Your Website

Your site is not optimized properly for your “income-generating” keywords, relevant to your products and services.

Or, you may have “optimized your site” and perhaps you see TRAFFIC coming to your site, BUT you are NOT getting conversions!

For most online businesses, their website is the main source of income, but NO leads are generated directly through the site, that’s when you need to get a help of an SEO expert.

Let them figure out the problem and address it immediately to get your site ranking for your major keywords, and quickly.

Well, now that you know WHEN to hire an SEO consultant to optimize, bring MORE traffic, and surge up your website rankings, you may want to learn HOW TO hire an SEO consultant.

 

5 Ways to Hire a Professional SEO consultant:

 

1. Figure out Your SEO goals Before Hiring an SEO Consultant

Be clear of what you want to accomplish through your SEO campaign.

Ask these questions:

1. Am I looking to rank for LONG-TAIL keywords?
2. Or, am I looking to rank for specific and BETTER keywords?

If you aren’t clear, realistic, and specific in your goals, it becomes VERY difficult to DETERMINE whether you are heading

Plus, it also becomes “easier” for someone (your potential SEO consultant) to take your money, keep asking for more, or simply RUN away you’re your cash as your SEO goals aren’t clear.

Sometimes, you also find out that you really DIDN’T require the help of an SEO expert to accomplish some goals so that’s why …

 

2. Learn the BASICS of SEO Yourself

Although you’re hiring an SEO consultant for some expert work, nonetheless, it doesn’t mean you should NOT be aware of it.

1. Learn the basics of SEO as it will help you evaluate and work with a good SEO consultant
2. Try to do a little bit of SEO yourself (just don’t spend the whole day on it, though) so that when you hire someone, you’ll have made a more WELL-INFORMED decision

 

3. Ask for their (SEO Consultant) Referrals and Case Studies

Figure out if their traffic has increased over the months by inserting those sites on Website Grader or using FREE services like Compete so that you are clear that you aren’t hiring an SEO consultant “blindly.”

 

4. Interview Your Potential SEO Consultant

Ask them questions in order to learn …

1. How long they have been in SEO business
2. How frequently are they available for communications (by phone, email, or in person)
3. Who are their “ideal” client (industry, company size, etc)

Use the answers you get from these questions in order to determine whether they are fit for your business goals and watch out for signs that scream you run away!

 

5. Compare Metrics

Keep on learning more about your potential SEO consultant.

In other words, learn how many customers have they work within the past and what significant results did they achieve in terms of keyword rankings, inbound links, and organic traffic?

Most importantly, ask for a regular reporting which must include:

1. Growth in inbound links
2. Keyword rankings
3. Organic traffic

Well, there you have it! Simple yet effective tips on when and how to hire a SEO consultant? Over to you! When do you think is the “right” time to hire an SEO consultant and how do you go about it?

PLEASE COMMENT BELOW …

What to Do When Your Ranking Drops

GOOGLE released it 4^th Penguin update, dubbed as Penguin 2.0, aimed at dropping site’s search engine rankings, particularly those who violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by employing the so-called “black hat SEO” like creating duplicate content, keyword stuffing, building link schemes, cloaking, and others.

Google changes its search algorithm more than 500 times every year, but most of them are only slight alterations with “major” update occurring only after few months. Nonetheless, SEMs must be aware of these updates as it will help explain the shifts in search engine rankings as well as site’s organic traffic.

According to Matt Cutts, Google’s renowned engineer, these major updates, for example, only affects 2.3% of all English queries as well as non-English that is thought to impact more webmasters and SEMs than its previous version – i.e. the Penguin 1.0 update.

These update has been rolled out specifically to punish sites that use “manipulative” SEO techniques to rank higher in search engines.

Similarly, before Penguin update, Google had also released Panda updates – a series of algorithm updates that was designed to drop the rankings of sites offering poor user experience with low quality content so that only higher quality and genuine sites ranked top in the search results.

So, if your site’s ranking have dropped abruptly, then PR agency Punch Communications came up with 3 working solutions they recommend every webmaster follow, including you:

1. Check Google Webmaster Tool –

Login to your site’s Google Webmaster tool account to find if you have received any warning messages from Google informing you of low quality backlinks.

If you haven’t received any messages, keep checking your inbox for the next few days to see if spam activity is highlighted in any new messages. If you get a warning message, then follow the next step … quickly.

2. Manually audit backlink sources –

Use Google Webmaster tools to download the list of the links pointing to site, review the sources, and if you suspect any poor quality sites linking back to your site, immediately contact the webmaster and ask them to remove the link(s).

Poor quality links are visible only in the code, or points from irrelevant sites, or comes from sites that haven’t been updated in years. If your attempt to contact the website owner fails constantly, use Google’s Disavow tool to weed out any bad effects those links are imposing on your site’s search ranking.

3. Use Link Type tool to audit backlink sources –

To understand the breakdown of link types pointing from different forums, directories, and blogs, you can use backlink profile checking tool such as Link Type.

Trolling blogs and forums to comments on topics, posts, and thread just to receive link back to your site can be seen as spam-based SEO tactic. Similarly, having tens or hundreds of links from article directories, particularly from irrelevant directories will be considered “spammy.”

Matt Cutts, the head of search spam department at Google, says “The next Penguin update will be even deeper than its previous version, meaning webmasters and SEOs must act really fast to take preventive measures and also comply with Google’s guidelines.”

You can perform above three activities starting from today, which basically means the business is one day closer to regain their search engine visibility for all strategic keywords.

You can check out several Help videos at Google Webmaster center to learn what Penguin 2.0 will bring in more detail and what new changes all webmasters can expect in coming months with respect to Google search results.

Don’t be surprised when you see people tweeting on the new Penguin 2.0 update, and Webmasters discussing which type of spam got targeted in their site through this new update.

According to Cutts, SEO isn’t only about search engine optimization but it’s a search “experience” optimization of your website that covers everything … both directly and indirectly.

Our best suggestion to you is just go with the flow and at least respect what the world’s biggest search engine firm is asking you (the webmaster) to do – follow Google guidelines – so that you will always keep smiling out whenever next Google update pops up.

What Makes for Good Quality Content?

CONTENT is the most important component of every successful website. If you have always wanted to rank “better” on Google search engine results, or “boost” site’s traffic, or generate more leads and increase sales, then you require content.

There are different types of content that people come to your site to read, including articles, images, videos, Infographics, etc. However, if you want to build a profitable site on a particular niche that will generate passive income for you 24/7, the most favorable type of content you SHOULD always publish on your blog/site are “written content.”

In this guide, we’ll be showing you several methodologies we have been using for couple of years to craft hundreds of informative, engaging, and high quality articles.

 “High Quality” Content – What is it, anyway?

The first thing you MUST do is understand what really makes content a high quality content. You can either create your own content or have them written by professional writer by outsourcing them; but no matter which path you choose, there are certain factors that define content as “high quality content.”

Here are several components that make a “high quality” content:

1. Having a “specific” reason –

It is very important that your content serve a particular purpose, otherwise you will only be wasting your time, effort, and money creating them. Remember, you’re doing a business, and all business has to generate enough dough/profit to SURVIVE. Knowing the “why” part of your content will help you do that.

Generally speaking, there are 2 types of content:

a. Content that generates money/profit for you –

These types of contents (blogs or articles) convince your readers to convert into regular customers, or submit email address, or buy something from affiliate offers you’re promoting. They could be sales pages, product reviews, squeeze pages, and so on.

Likewise, if you’re main monetization method is through Google Adsense, you may want to create articles that are written around high CPC keywords so that you will make the most money.

While creating your content, understanding the “why” part will assist you how to create it so that people will perform your intended actions (submit emails, click on buy button) when they’re reading your articles.

b. Content that sets you as an authority figure in your niche –

The first type of content above will often make people leave your site. This will result into pages having “high bounce rate” as well as “low time” on your website. Guess what? Google dislikes that!

That’s why, you require creating the second type of content that are engaging, informative, and helpful (tip-based) to keep people coming back on your site. Include videos, Infographics, images, and interlink your articles so that it will really lower the bounce rate and increase the time on site.

Remember: When people stay longer on your website, Google assigns more value to your site’s content just because people are staying on your site, reading your articles, and that’s an indication of high quality content.

In short, the major objective of this type of content is to make both people as well as Google fall in LOVE with your site.

2. 100% Unique, Conversational Style, Correct Grammar and Spelling

Your articles, blogs, and pages needs to be 100% original. While most readers really don’t care about them as long as they find it useful, however, Google do care! Copying others work and spinning articles will only put you work in jeopardy.

Web audience, not like the scholarly audience, expects content that are conversational in tone. So, before you publish anything on your site, make sure to sound like you are having a conversation with your reader by using the word “you” very often and in every article. Write as if you are talking to your close friend. Not only you will gain their trust, but also give them reason to give you their money, too.

Likewise, use standard yet correct grammar. Internet isn’t a place to show off your grammar skills though. Make sure your content is highly readable by anyone, even a 10 year boy.

3. SEO-optimized and Related Content –

To increase the website rank, you need to create content that are correctly optimized for search engines, but don’t go overboard with it as it can also get your site penalized.

Remember to perform these basic “on-page SEO” tips:

Insert keyword in the title, in description, in header tags (h1, h2, and h3), image “alt” tag, in first and last paragraph and throughout the content, and link to internal and high PR external sites.

While inserting keyword, make sure it sounds natural while reading. In other words, avoid “keyword stuffing” though as they will get your site banned.

4. Well-Structured and Scannable Content

Writing an essay and writing for web is very different too. Web readers are usually in hurry and if you write using huge block of text in paragraphs, they will likely leave the page without even reading them. That’s why you need to write short chunks of scannable content.

Scannable content are high effective as they are easy to read and pleasing to eyes as well. Here’s how you can make your content well-structured as well as “scan able.”

1. Use short paragraphs (3 to 4 sentences at max) and simple sentences
2. Use sub-headings to assist readers grasp the key points of each section of the article
3. Use bullet points to make it easier to scan the content
4. Use italic, bold, and underline main key points
5. Use high quality visuals – images and videos – to make your content highly readable
6. Make it short and to the point. Avoid using fluffy words and content.

Well there you have it – we just gave you 4 basic components that make a quality content. How about you? What other components do you use to make your content highly readable, useful, and engaging? Please share your ideas in the comment section below.

8 Signs of a SEO Scam

The SEO industry is booming at the moment with hundreds of online companies offering their services to company in a bid to boost their online visibility. Most SEO companies are legitimate and will use the right methods to promote a business. However, there are some who utilise illegal methods that are not only accepted by search engine companies but also could scam the clients that they hire. But when there are so many SEO firms to choose from, it can be a little difficult to separate the good from the bad. So, what can someone do to spot a possible SEO scam?

1. Don’t accept any guarantees for 1^st place on Google

Whilst SEO companies are entitled to show what they can do for companies, no-one can guarantee that they will end up being ranked as the very 1^st site on Google. The only company that knows where a site will be listed is Google making it impossible for SEO companies to know where a site will be placed. It’s important to ignore anyone who makes these outlandish promises and focus on working with those who look to meet the aims to help improve the ranking of the business.

2. Be wary of cheap SEO firms

It’s easy to be enticed by firms who offer a cheap price to get the job done and meet all the demands of their clients. However, cheap is not always cheerful. SEO is something that needs to be done right and it will cost a little bit to ensure that all the links and content is ready to get a good ranking on a search engine. If someone proposes that they can get the job done for a handful of dollars, then it will be too good to be true and the job might be done badly or use dodgy black hat tactics. Therefore, it’s better to spend a little more and get everything taken care of rather than cut corners and end up with nothing.

3. Don’t trust offers that look to get things done in 1 day or 2

Whilst speed is a factor that can boost business, SEO companies do need time to deliver quality to their clients. If a service looks to get the job done in 24 or 48 hours, then the SEO firm is using shady methods. Most websites won’t be ranked within two or three days by search engines so always ignore any short time frames that some companies claim in their adverts. It also means that the firm is using black hat techniques to try and rank the site and will likely put no or little thought into selecting the keywords hurting the chances of getting a good SERP ranking.  So, always focus on getting a top quality job done over an extended period rather than relying on a quick fix that may leave the website needing more work in the future.

4. Avoid any free trial offers

All SEO companies will charge a fee for their services no matter how low or small. There will be the odd one or two companies that will offer a free trial to possible clients provided they are given full access to a site. These companies will often ask for the admin email and password to try and get into the site which should automatically raise some suspicion within the client. Avoid these companies at all costs as they are likely not to do any work on a site and could expose a site to scam techniques and potential hackers.

5. Avoid having someone place too many links onto a site

In the SEO world, there is a lot of emphasis put on link building to boost the network and traffic to the site. Whilst having a good number of links will do a site justice in the long run, having too many could hamper the chances of landing a top page ranking. Some of the links will be completely unnecessary and lead to completely irrelevant  sites e.g. a basketball team may have a couple of links leading to sites about frogs. Not only has that but a site that has too many links increases their chances of having links to an unsafe or fraudulent site that may contain pornography or malware. Having these bad links will often not be accepted by search engines and could even see a site lose their rankings as programmes such as Google Penguin penalise websites who have poor quality links.

6. Forget about submitting a site to thousands of search engines

When companies are looking to rank their websites on search engines, they often look towards the major sites such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Many SEO companies state they will rank a company on as many engines as they physically can. This can be a problem a placing them on unknown search engines may not generate much attention to the site and may mean that the client is wasting their money and losing possible space on more visible sites.

7. Never trust a firm who refuses to reveal their techniques

When working with clients, most good SEO companies will keep their customers informed about how they are boosting their traffic.  If a company refuses to let people know what is going on, it means they are probably using black hat SEO tactics which should be avoided at all costs especially as it could mean that the site is refused to be picked up by search engines and not ranked at all.

8. Ignore any threats from SEO Firms

It’s only natural that some working relationships won’t work out between firms and clients. If the dispute turns ugly, it might mean that a SEO firm will threaten that a site will lose all their rankings. Once a site has been ranked by Google, it will stay listed on a search engine regardless of who is optimizing the pages. It means that either the designers are bluffing or they have been using dodgy tactics to get the job done in the first place.

All in a short Summary…

Whilst some companies may offer astounding results, they often come with big penalties. Search engines have zero tolerance for black hat SEO techniques and can refuse to list sites that use these techniques. Rather than cutting corners with costs and time, it’s better to go with a SEO firm who is able to do a quality job for the right price and ensure that the company has a solid online presence which can generate traffic and make their website stand out on SERP’s against other rivals firms in their respective industry.