Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.
As a marketing strategy for increasing a site's relevance, SEO considers how search algorithms work and what people search for. SEO efforts may involve a site's coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site. Other, more noticeable efforts may include adding unique content to a site, ensuring that content is easily indexed by search engine robots, and making the site more appealing to users. Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that tend to harm search engine user experience. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques and may remove them from their indexes.
The initialism "SEO" can also refer to "search engine optimizers", a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.
History
Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit a page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a spider to "crawl" that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed.[1] The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own server, where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various information about the page, such as the words it contains and where these are located, as well as any weight for specific words and all links the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date.
Site owners started to recognize the value of having their sites highly ranked and visible in search engine results. According to industry analyst Danny Sullivan, the earliest known use of the phrase "search engine optimization" was a spam message posted on Usenet on July 26, 1997.[2]
Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta tag, or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta-tags provided a guide to each page's content. But using meta data to index pages was found to be less than reliable because the webmaster's account of keywords in the meta tag were not truly relevant to the site's actual keywords. Inaccurate, incomplete, and inconsistent data in meta tags caused pages to rank for irrelevant searches.[3] Web content providers also manipulated a number of attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines.[4]
By relying so much on factors exclusively within a webmaster's control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation. To provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their results pages showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters. Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate.
Graduate students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed "backrub", a search engine that relied on a mathematical algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages. The number calculated by the algorithm, PageRank, is a function of the quantity and strength of inbound links.[5] PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly surfs the web, and follows links from one page to another. In effect, this means that some links are stronger than others, as a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random surfer.
Google opens headquarters in Buenos Aires, Argentina
Google opens headquarters in Buenos Aires, Argentina
Page and Brin founded Google in 1998. Google attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.[6] Off-page factors such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis were considered, as well as on-page factors, to enable Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines that only considered on-page factors for their rankings. Although PageRank was more difficult to game, webmasters had already developed link building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine, and these methods proved similarly applicable to gaining PageRank. Many sites focused on exchanging, buying, and selling links, often on a massive scale. Some of these schemes, or link farms, involved the creation of thousands of sites for the sole purpose of link spamming.[7]
To reduce the impact of link schemes, as of 2007, search engines consider a wide range of undisclosed factors for their ranking algorithms. Google says it ranks sites using more than 200 different signals.[8] The three leading search engines, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Live Search, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Notable SEOs, such as Rand Fishkin, Barry Schwartz, Aaron Wall and Jill Whalen, have studied different approaches to search engine optimization, and have published their opinions in online forums and blogs.[9][10] SEO practitioners may also study patents held by various search engines to gain insight into the algorithms.[11]
Webmasters and search engines
By 1997 search engines recognized that some webmasters were making efforts to rank well in their search engines, and even manipulating the page rankings in search results. Early search engines, such as Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords.[12]
Due to the high marketing value of targeted search results, there is potential for an adversarial relationship between search engines and SEOs. In 2005, an annual conference, AIRWeb, Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web,[13] was created to discuss and minimize the damaging effects of aggressive web content providers.
SEO companies that employ overly aggressive techniques can get their client websites banned from the search results. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal profiled a company, Traffic Power, that allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients.[14] Wired magazine reported that the same company sued blogger Aaron Wall for writing about the ban.[15] Google's Matt Cutts later confirmed that Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its clients.[16]
Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry, and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences and seminars. In fact, with the advent of paid inclusion, some search engines now have a vested interest in the health of the optimization community. Major search engines provide information and guidelines to help with site optimization.[17][18][19] Google has a Sitemaps program[20] to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website. Yahoo! Site Explorer provides a way for webmasters to submit URLs, determine how many pages are in the Yahoo! index and view link information.[21]
Getting indexed
The leading search engines, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. Some search engines, notably Yahoo!, operate a paid submission service that guarantee crawling for either a set fee or cost per click.[22] Such programs usually guarantee inclusion in the database, but do not guarantee specific ranking within the search results.[23] Yahoo's paid inclusion program has drawn criticism from advertisers and competitors.[24] Two major directories, the Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory Project both require manual submission and human editorial review.[25] Google offers Google Webmaster Tools, for which an XML Sitemap feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that aren't discoverable by automatically following links.[26]
Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by the search engines. Distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled.[27]
Preventing indexing
Main article: Robots Exclusion Standard
To avoid undesirable content in the search indexes, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard robots.txt file in the root directory of the domain. Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine's database by using a meta tag specific to robots. When a search engine visits a site, the robots.txt located in the root directory is the first file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed, and will instruct the robot as to which pages are not to be crawled. As a search engine crawler may keep a cached copy of this file, it may on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not wish crawled. Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login specific pages such as shopping carts and user-specific content such as search results from internal searches. In March 2007, Google warned webmasters that they should prevent indexing of internal search results because those pages are considered search spam.[28]
White hat versus black hat
SEO techniques are classified by some into two broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design, and those techniques that search engines do not approve of and attempt to minimize the effect of, referred to as spamdexing. Some industry commentators classify these methods, and the practitioners who employ them, as either white hat SEO, or black hat SEO.[29] White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanantly once the search engines discover what they are doing.[30]
An SEO technique is considered white hat if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines[31][17][18][19] are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see.
White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility,[32] although the two are not identical.
Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking.
Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms, or by a manual site review.
One infamous example was the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany for use of deceptive practices.[33] Both companies, however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's list.[34]
As a marketing strategy
Eye tracking studies have shown that searchers scan a search results page from top to bottom and left to right (for left to right languages), looking for a relevant result. Placement at or near the top of the rankings therefore increases the number of searchers who will visit a site.[35] However, more search engine referrals does not guarantee more sales. SEO is not necessarily an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be much more effective, depending on the site operator's goals.[36]A successful Internet marketing campaign may drive organic search results to pages, but it also may involve the use of paid advertising on search engines and other pages, building high quality web pages to engage and persuade, addressing technical issues that may keep search engines from crawling and indexing those sites, setting up analytics programs to enable site owners to measure their successes, and improving a site's conversion rate.[37]
SEO may generate a return on investment. However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees of continued referrals. Due to this lack of guarantees and certainty, a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic can suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending visitors.[38] It is considered wise business practice for website operators to liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic.[39] A top ranked SEO blog Seomoz.org[40] has reported, "Search marketers, in a twist of irony, receive a very small share of their traffic from search engines." Instead, their main sources of traffic are links from other websites.[41]
International markets
A Baidu search results page
A Baidu search results page
The search engines' market shares vary from market to market, as does competition. In 2003, Danny Sullivan stated that Google represented about 75% of all searches.[42] In markets outside the United States, Google's share is often larger, and Google remains the dominant search engine worldwide as of 2007.[43] As of 2006, Google held about 40% of the market in the United States, but Google had an 85-90% market share in Germany.[44] While there were hundreds of SEO firms in the US at that time, there were only about five in Germany.[44]
In Russia the situation is reversed. Local search engine Yandex controls 50% of the paid advertising revenue, while Google has less than 9%.[45] In China, Baidu continues to lead in market share, although Google has been gaining share as of 2007.[46]
Successful search optimization for international markets may require professional translation of web pages, registration of a domain name with a top level domain in the target market, and web hosting that provides a local IP address. Otherwise, the fundamental elements of search optimization are essentially the same, regardless of language.[44]
Legal precedents
In 2002, SearchKing filed suit in an Oklahoma court against the search engine Google. SearchKing's claim was that Google's tactics to prevent spamdexing constituted an unfair business practice. In May 2003, the court pronounced a summary judgment in Google's favor.[47]
In March 2006, KinderStart.com, LLC filed a First Amendment complaint against Google and also attempted to include potential members of the class of plaintiffs in a class action.[48] The plaintiff's web site was removed from Google's index prior to the lawsuit and the amount of traffic to the site plummeted. On March 16, 2007 the United States District Court dismissed KinderStart's complaint without leave to amend, and partially granted Google's motion for Rule 11 sanctions against KinderStart's attorney, requiring him to pay part of Google's legal expenses.[49][50]
See also
* Exclusion standards: robots exclusion standard (robots.txt), meta elements, nofollow (link attribute)
* Related marketing topics: internet marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing, display advertising, web analytics
* Search marketing related topics: search engine marketing, social media optimization, paid inclusion, pay per click (PPC), Google bomb
* Search engine spam: spamdexing, web scraping, scraper site, link farm, Free For All link page
* Wikipedia pages: FAQs for Businesses, Wikipedia:Search engine optimization, Evaluating internet sources
* Linking: link popularity, link farm, nofollow, link exchange, reciprocal link, multiway linking, link exchange network, backlink
* Other: landing page, IP delivery, Landing page optimization, Human search engine, Stop words, Poison words
Major search engines
* Google
* Yahoo!
* Live Search by Microsoft, formerly MSN
* Ask.com, formerly Ask Jeeves
SEO organizations
* Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization
The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) is an industry organization for search engine marketing firms. A non-profit professional association, SEMPO was formed in 2003, to promote search engine marketing and provide educational resources to members and consumers.
Founding members
The organization was started by the following individuals who formed the original of Board of Directors:
* Barbara Coll (WebMama.com Inc)
* Dana Todd (SiteLab International Inc.)
* Kevin Lee (Did-It)
* Noel McMichael of (Marketleap, later acquired by Digital Impact)
* Christine Churchill (KeyRelevance)
* Fredrick Marckini (iProspect)
* Jessie Stricchiola (Alchemist Media)
* Brett Tabke of WebMasterWorld was added as a Board Member soon after the launch of the association.
Danny Sullivan (formerly from Search Engine Watch) was briefly on the founding Board of Directors, then served on the original Board of Advisors, along with Chris Sherman of Search Day, Dan Boberg from Overture, Chris LaSala from Google and Safa Rashtchy of Piper Jaffray.
Information and Activities
* Represents over 500 companies globally through initiatives to support a general mission of outreach and education, to expand and influence the growing search engine marketing (SEM) industry.
* Provides free information as a public service, such as research, case studies, "webinars" and learning materials for search engine marketing.
* Has an SEO/SEM Job Board which is open to the public. Only members can post jobs however.
* Launched new SEMPO Institute for search marketing training courses.
* A way to get involved with other members of the SEM community worldwide, and further the mission of the maturing search engine marketing industry.
* Committees include Research, Education, Global Working Groups, and Metrics/Standards are open to all members, are working on a large number of activities and issues.
* SEMPO's Annual State of the Search Market Survey is widely referenced by press and industry analysts, and is one of the largest research benchmarking studies of SEM in the North America market.
Please be Aware:
* SEMPO states on their site that "Membership in SEMPO is not a guarantee of a particular firm's capabilities, nor does it signify industry approval or disapproval of their practices."
* They also state "SEMPO is an industry organization designed to promote search engine marketing in general..."
* Further research on their website would indicate significant income may be derived from selling memberships and education about search engine marketing.
Notable SEOs
* Category:Search engine optimization consultants
Search engine representatives
* Dan Crow, Google
* Matt Cutts, Google
* Adam Lasnik, Google
* Jeremy Zawodny, Yahoo!
* Gary Price, Ask
For Any Enquiries :it_bussnes@yahoo.co.in
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
The SEO Learning Life-cycle
I think the idea of breaking SEO down to the white hat and black hat camps really misses where the real divisions are. I believe that the biggest differences between SEOs are in their levels of experience, their honesty, their creativity, and how aggressive we are.
After search engines stop ranking brands that you worked hard to build it is easy to lose a bit of respect for them, especially if they promote what they would otherwise call spam if it wasn't in their network, and they rank a few of your sites that are so bad that you are a bit embarrassed to admit you own them. With that, I present the the SEO Learning Life-cycle, and things we might say as we progress along it :)
The Newbie SEO
Here is a person new to the market.
* follow search engine guidelines
* you don't want to get banned for spamming
* spammers get banned forever, and will never rank!!!
* I have been creating 10 high quality articles a day
* the best site ranks at the top
* everything is overpriced, you can learn everything you need from forums
* the search engine representative said ____ so it must be true
* I make $3 to $30 a day off AdSense!
A Search Optimizer With a Few Rankings
The excitement of a few top rankings is just setting in! Google has yet to burn down any of your websites.
* list your site in directories and submit articles and trade links
* make sure you submit to my high PageRank directory!!!! submissions are now 50% off
* you can learn most everything you need from forums
* AdSense is a great business model...I love AdSense
* keep creating content and building links it is only a matter of time until it ranks
* BTW...here is another high PageRank directory you can submit to
A Person With Many Top Search Engine Rankings
At this level you can afford to go to many conferences. After attending a few of them, you no longer care about rankings, you want results. You start patterning your actions after those who are making money, not those who are giving the same speech they gave 6 years ago, and not those who are popular but can't figure how to make money from their popularity.
* wow most of these rankings amount to nothing
* search is not as good as people claim it to be
* I better start tracking results a bit better
* wow these few pages make a lot...maybe i should make a few more pages targeting these terms, and rewrite these other pages to make them more conversion oriented
The Arrogant (Semi)Professional SEO
Here you start getting full of yourself a bit prematurely, but are profitable enough to get away with it, and ignorant enough that you don't know any better. Google has not burned down any of your sites yet, and if they did you figure those sites deserved what they got because they are low quality.
The sites you care about are of high quality though, and they will grow almost every month until one of them gets toasted.
* I am a professional SEO. I know this stuff. These are the rules
* We are better than everyone. We have the best content
* We don't buy links because we are white hat SEOs
* People link to us because we have the best content, as do our clients
* We don't make much from our rankings, but that is because we chose not to, because we are ethical
The Seasoned Pragmatic SEO
At this stage you are making more in a month than most people make in a year, spend most of your time working on your own sites, rarely do client work, are rather selective with the client work you are willing to take on. If you do much client work you created a business model that sells a product or a bulk low value services.
Google has helped you build at least one 6 figure a year income stream, and has also probably burned down at least one of them. Even if you think it was unfair, unjust, or unreasonable they taught you the value of paranoia, anonymity, and make you become much more aggressive and much more quiet about the projects you are working on.
You likely have partners, and the questions you ask at this level are no longer black and white, but are colored in shades of gray, and often framed from the perspective of how others will react to what you are doing.
Quality content once again becomes a myth, after you see some of your best information go nowhere, and some of your worst referenced all over the web. The realization that creating garbage that strokes someone's ego is more important than the quality of your content smacks you in the face. You become results oriented. Your marketing is better targeted than ad agencies or public relations firms could dream of creating. Some of your marketing is so effective that your sites get penalized because you got too many links too quick.
* It doesn't look like spam if everyone is talking about me.
* If something didn't work before, it probably isn't going to work again, but here is a quick test site I don't mind losing. If it does work how do I scale this idea commercially?
* What can I bolt onto this thin affiliate site to get it links? Here is our first feature article: 43 ways to get and use a credit card without actually having it registered to your real name
* How do I add enough value (without harming the conversion rate) to get this to pass a hand check?
* Some of those links from _____ pack more of a punch than you would think, but if everyone has too much information to act on any of it I am best off if I don't say anything. :)
* Does this bought link look like a bought link?
* Wow I can't believe how many links yahoo are buying, is my brand strong enough to get away with that?
* If my brand is not strong enough to buy links, then I will buy a few high ranking websites, just like all the big players are doing.
* Wow I can't believe my friend just cloned my site. And so did Google! Attacked from every angle!
* Why is that spammy site ranking? How can I leverage that exploit on someone else's authoritative domain, or if I use it on my own site, how can I do it without looking as spammiy as that did?
Every in-house SEO program follows a typical life cycle that has for main phases: Courtship, Honeymoon, Reality and Synergy. The duration of time it takes to get from Courtship to Synergy varies with each company, and it can also very for each division within a company.
Today’s in-house article will give you an overview of the in-house SEO life cycle so that you can predict the road ahead, minimize the severity of the Reality Phase and sail into Synergy as soon as possible.
The four phases of an in-house SEO life cycle
Courtship Phase. Your company wants to find the best candidate to start up the in-house SEO program. For companies in this infancy phase, you are looking for the best SEO candidate for the job. In this phase many companies realize they can’t afford Michael Jordan, but you can hire a great SEO leader. Once your SEO is hired, set up all of the right introductions for when they start.
Honeymoon Phase. The SEO is in place and everyone wants to talk about SEO. Recommendations come from all directions, and getting priorities is a breeze. This phase seems to last about 3-6 months, depending on the company. The biggest advice here is to make the most of your honeymoon, read up to maximize the potential of this phase and to minimize the impact of the next phases.
In-house SEO Life Cycle
Reality Phase. This is when it starts to get challenging internally. The shape of the upside bell curve can vary significantly for this phase. It can be deep and wide, or shallow and narrow. It all depends on the company, culture, how well you prep for this phase and how you handle the bumps along the way.
After speaking with other SEOs, this phase seems to be the most challenging for the more traditional companies, where the website is not the primary revenue channel and management is competing for prioritization of their projects. Dotcoms on the other hand seem to barely experience this phase, if at all, likely because search engine traffic is a part of the business model and SEO is of interest to everyone.
To make your Reality Phase as short as possible, focus on educating the team and pre-selling ideas so that resistance and opposition is caught and addressed, before you pitch ideas in a meeting. Most importantly, during this phase you want to nurture the relationships you built in the Honeymoon Phase by transforming your acquaintances into friends—friends want to help each other succeed.
If you are finding yourself in the Reality Phase with no end in sight, focus on the human side of SEO, the art of getting people to want to help SEO. A great kick-start to get you on the right track with IT is to implement over-coffees and other tips from Duane Forrester with Sports Direct, LLC. If the challenge seems to be getting management’s attention and buy-in, let the numbers do the selling. Laura Forbes with Christian Science Monitor has an interesting approach for increasing visibility for SEO—she gets SEO to boost KPIs that management is monitoring; when these numbers start to slip, she knows its time to make the sell for SEO.
Synergy Phase. You figured out what works at your company. You have reached this phase when SEO and other departments operate with synergy. You’re operating like a well-oiled machine with an established process that keeps SEO in the loop, with ideas going back-and-forth between SEO and other departments. You’ll have a few bumps here and there, but overall, life as the in-house SEO is very nice. When you reach this phase, it’s easy to get caught up with the busy work and let your relationships become a lower priority. Just remember the relationships are what got you here and their absence can send you back.
Where is my SEO team in the in-house SEO life cycle? Synergy, and it’s a beautiful place when you get here!
Jessica Bowman is the Director of SEO for Business.com and an independent consultant and author of the SEM / SEO In-house Blog. The In House column appears periodically at Search Engine Land.
After search engines stop ranking brands that you worked hard to build it is easy to lose a bit of respect for them, especially if they promote what they would otherwise call spam if it wasn't in their network, and they rank a few of your sites that are so bad that you are a bit embarrassed to admit you own them. With that, I present the the SEO Learning Life-cycle, and things we might say as we progress along it :)
The Newbie SEO
Here is a person new to the market.
* follow search engine guidelines
* you don't want to get banned for spamming
* spammers get banned forever, and will never rank!!!
* I have been creating 10 high quality articles a day
* the best site ranks at the top
* everything is overpriced, you can learn everything you need from forums
* the search engine representative said ____ so it must be true
* I make $3 to $30 a day off AdSense!
A Search Optimizer With a Few Rankings
The excitement of a few top rankings is just setting in! Google has yet to burn down any of your websites.
* list your site in directories and submit articles and trade links
* make sure you submit to my high PageRank directory!!!! submissions are now 50% off
* you can learn most everything you need from forums
* AdSense is a great business model...I love AdSense
* keep creating content and building links it is only a matter of time until it ranks
* BTW...here is another high PageRank directory you can submit to
A Person With Many Top Search Engine Rankings
At this level you can afford to go to many conferences. After attending a few of them, you no longer care about rankings, you want results. You start patterning your actions after those who are making money, not those who are giving the same speech they gave 6 years ago, and not those who are popular but can't figure how to make money from their popularity.
* wow most of these rankings amount to nothing
* search is not as good as people claim it to be
* I better start tracking results a bit better
* wow these few pages make a lot...maybe i should make a few more pages targeting these terms, and rewrite these other pages to make them more conversion oriented
The Arrogant (Semi)Professional SEO
Here you start getting full of yourself a bit prematurely, but are profitable enough to get away with it, and ignorant enough that you don't know any better. Google has not burned down any of your sites yet, and if they did you figure those sites deserved what they got because they are low quality.
The sites you care about are of high quality though, and they will grow almost every month until one of them gets toasted.
* I am a professional SEO. I know this stuff. These are the rules
* We are better than everyone. We have the best content
* We don't buy links because we are white hat SEOs
* People link to us because we have the best content, as do our clients
* We don't make much from our rankings, but that is because we chose not to, because we are ethical
The Seasoned Pragmatic SEO
At this stage you are making more in a month than most people make in a year, spend most of your time working on your own sites, rarely do client work, are rather selective with the client work you are willing to take on. If you do much client work you created a business model that sells a product or a bulk low value services.
Google has helped you build at least one 6 figure a year income stream, and has also probably burned down at least one of them. Even if you think it was unfair, unjust, or unreasonable they taught you the value of paranoia, anonymity, and make you become much more aggressive and much more quiet about the projects you are working on.
You likely have partners, and the questions you ask at this level are no longer black and white, but are colored in shades of gray, and often framed from the perspective of how others will react to what you are doing.
Quality content once again becomes a myth, after you see some of your best information go nowhere, and some of your worst referenced all over the web. The realization that creating garbage that strokes someone's ego is more important than the quality of your content smacks you in the face. You become results oriented. Your marketing is better targeted than ad agencies or public relations firms could dream of creating. Some of your marketing is so effective that your sites get penalized because you got too many links too quick.
* It doesn't look like spam if everyone is talking about me.
* If something didn't work before, it probably isn't going to work again, but here is a quick test site I don't mind losing. If it does work how do I scale this idea commercially?
* What can I bolt onto this thin affiliate site to get it links? Here is our first feature article: 43 ways to get and use a credit card without actually having it registered to your real name
* How do I add enough value (without harming the conversion rate) to get this to pass a hand check?
* Some of those links from _____ pack more of a punch than you would think, but if everyone has too much information to act on any of it I am best off if I don't say anything. :)
* Does this bought link look like a bought link?
* Wow I can't believe how many links yahoo are buying, is my brand strong enough to get away with that?
* If my brand is not strong enough to buy links, then I will buy a few high ranking websites, just like all the big players are doing.
* Wow I can't believe my friend just cloned my site. And so did Google! Attacked from every angle!
* Why is that spammy site ranking? How can I leverage that exploit on someone else's authoritative domain, or if I use it on my own site, how can I do it without looking as spammiy as that did?
Every in-house SEO program follows a typical life cycle that has for main phases: Courtship, Honeymoon, Reality and Synergy. The duration of time it takes to get from Courtship to Synergy varies with each company, and it can also very for each division within a company.
Today’s in-house article will give you an overview of the in-house SEO life cycle so that you can predict the road ahead, minimize the severity of the Reality Phase and sail into Synergy as soon as possible.
The four phases of an in-house SEO life cycle
Courtship Phase. Your company wants to find the best candidate to start up the in-house SEO program. For companies in this infancy phase, you are looking for the best SEO candidate for the job. In this phase many companies realize they can’t afford Michael Jordan, but you can hire a great SEO leader. Once your SEO is hired, set up all of the right introductions for when they start.
Honeymoon Phase. The SEO is in place and everyone wants to talk about SEO. Recommendations come from all directions, and getting priorities is a breeze. This phase seems to last about 3-6 months, depending on the company. The biggest advice here is to make the most of your honeymoon, read up to maximize the potential of this phase and to minimize the impact of the next phases.
In-house SEO Life Cycle
Reality Phase. This is when it starts to get challenging internally. The shape of the upside bell curve can vary significantly for this phase. It can be deep and wide, or shallow and narrow. It all depends on the company, culture, how well you prep for this phase and how you handle the bumps along the way.
After speaking with other SEOs, this phase seems to be the most challenging for the more traditional companies, where the website is not the primary revenue channel and management is competing for prioritization of their projects. Dotcoms on the other hand seem to barely experience this phase, if at all, likely because search engine traffic is a part of the business model and SEO is of interest to everyone.
To make your Reality Phase as short as possible, focus on educating the team and pre-selling ideas so that resistance and opposition is caught and addressed, before you pitch ideas in a meeting. Most importantly, during this phase you want to nurture the relationships you built in the Honeymoon Phase by transforming your acquaintances into friends—friends want to help each other succeed.
If you are finding yourself in the Reality Phase with no end in sight, focus on the human side of SEO, the art of getting people to want to help SEO. A great kick-start to get you on the right track with IT is to implement over-coffees and other tips from Duane Forrester with Sports Direct, LLC. If the challenge seems to be getting management’s attention and buy-in, let the numbers do the selling. Laura Forbes with Christian Science Monitor has an interesting approach for increasing visibility for SEO—she gets SEO to boost KPIs that management is monitoring; when these numbers start to slip, she knows its time to make the sell for SEO.
Synergy Phase. You figured out what works at your company. You have reached this phase when SEO and other departments operate with synergy. You’re operating like a well-oiled machine with an established process that keeps SEO in the loop, with ideas going back-and-forth between SEO and other departments. You’ll have a few bumps here and there, but overall, life as the in-house SEO is very nice. When you reach this phase, it’s easy to get caught up with the busy work and let your relationships become a lower priority. Just remember the relationships are what got you here and their absence can send you back.
Where is my SEO team in the in-house SEO life cycle? Synergy, and it’s a beautiful place when you get here!
Jessica Bowman is the Director of SEO for Business.com and an independent consultant and author of the SEM / SEO In-house Blog. The In House column appears periodically at Search Engine Land.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Discover How To Dramatically Increase Traffic To Your Website:Website SEO Monitoring & Reporting
Discover How To Dramatically Increase Traffic To Your Website:
Website SEO Monitoring & Reporting
This year more people will find what they are looking for online through a search engine then through any other means. Search has now become synonymous with internet usage. Just what does this mean for your site? If your site is not in the top ten search ranking, you are loosing traffic. Sites in the top ten see the vast majority of traffic. The difference between a first place search engine listing and a second place listing is a 30%-40% drop in traffic. Every listing after that sees a decrease of about 5%-10% down to the number 10 listing. Having a first page listing is a must, having a second page listing is irrelevant. Imagine selling more, converting more or simply gaining more exposure.
some of rupees/ Month
Does Your Website Have What It Takes To Be In The Top 10
We all take pride in our websites; they represent an investment of time and money. But how do you know if your site has what it takes to make it to the top ten or more importantly in the top three? Climbing the search ranks is not hard, but it does require information. To realize your sites fullest potential, you need to test it – to see how it stacks up and where to make improvements. For example, do you know how many inbound links you have? How many inbound links do your competitors have? Do you know your search engine visibility score? Do know your keyword saturation? Do you know how your site is viewed by internet technologies? These are all questions that need to be answered conclusively to ensure your site masters the top ten.
Search Engine Optimization: Fact vs. Fiction
Search engine optimization (SEO) has become a boom industry. Everybody wants to get in on the action and a fairly large economy has grown out of the demand. However, the secret to this economy is the perpetuation of the idea that search engine optimization is a) technically challenging and b) complicated. The truth is that search engine optimization is neither complicated nor challenging. It can be done simply and with very little in the way of technical expertise. What is really challenging, however, is the time and patience that search engine optimization techniques require and understanding how to monitor and research your key search engine optimization metrics to help you make informed decisions about your website.
Knowledge Is Power
Knowledge is power. Being able to get reliable, substantial and robust search engine optimization information about your website is crucial for achieving strong search engine results.
SEO Reports: Informing Decisions That Encourage Strong Website Growth
Search engine optimization is not rocket science. It is a straightforward process. With the right tools and information, virtually anyone can do it successfully. With PaperclipSearch we give the tools to take control of your sites growth. We offer you two important services. First, we show you how to optimize your site through our search engine optimization e-report. Second, we will track your websites performance in search engines. This bi-weekly, optimization report will provide you with all the essential analytics and metrics you need to make informed website marketing decisions. We will rank your website amongst your competitors and track your growth over an extended period of time. We will also give you an initial “page critic” report that will analyze your webpage and provide recommendations on keywords, meta tags and page word counts. We can literally give you everything you need to push your website to the top of the search engine rankings. Being part of the top 10 listings means that your site will see the lions share of all internet traffic. If you’re at the top of this list, this can amount to thousands of visitors a day, which in turn, can amount to some serious lead generation & sales.
Impress Yourself & Your Team With Stunning SEO Reports
Our SEO philosophy is simple. We arm our clients with the tools and information they need in order to allow them to optimize their sites easily and effectively. Our SEO monitoring reports and SEO educational e-report are all that you need to search engine optimize your site and reap the rewards of being at the top of search engine rankings. Our SEO Reporting includes the following.
Educational Component: A 30 page "how-to" e-report that walks you through the SEO process from start to finish. You will learn the following:
* How to use search engine algorithms to help push your site to the to the top ten
* How to chase the “long tail” and discover new market segments.
* 9 step plan for dissecting your competitors SEO success
* How to find link partners
* Importance of building internal pages
* Why publishing is the fastest growing role of webmasters
* Learn how to capitalize on international outsourcing to run an effective SEO campaign
* How to build a strong internal information architecture
* How to get one way inbound links
* Meta tag optimization tips
* Body content optimization tips
* Learn about the correlation between design and SEO
Monthly Monitoring Component: Complete SEO metrics reports, delivered to your inbox twice a month. PaperclipSearch performance monitoring includes:
* Search engine saturation – the number of your pages indexed by search engines
* Graphic summaries of all relevant SEO data
* Organic keyword ranking reporting
* Trend graphing – a historical perspective of your sites performance
* Track up to ten of your competitors
* Track up to ten of your top keywords
* Custom reports delivered twice a month to your email
* Ongoing, twice per month reporting means that our clients are in touch with changes as they happen, allowing users to by dynamic instead of reactionary
* The visual representation of crucial data allows rapid retooling. It’s easy to decide what to do next when you can start to see a trend emerging
* The reports provide all crucial information that is needed to ensure your website can climb to the top of the search engines for your desired keywords
* Time saving, multi-tasking capabilities. It can search multiple search engines for multiple terms. Something that would take a human hours to do manually
* Visually impressive, easy to use interface that keeps your SEO history easily accessible
* See screenshots of the monitoring service by clicking here
Bonuses: Order before our sale deadline and receive the following:
* Inbound link counts & popularity check
* Page critic: analyze your website and provide recommendations for keywords, meta tags and word counts
* Access to a comprehensive link directory
* Free submission service: submit your site to top search engines for indexing
* 30 day money back guarantee
* No contracts. Cancel at anytime (Information on canceling will be on your monthly receipt)
You can easily search engine optimize your website with our tools and reporting. While many of our competitors charge hundreds, sometimes even thousands of dollars for a similar service, we are able to offer our fully featured product for a fraction of their price. We are happy to offer this industry unique service at 50% of its normal price of $49.99 per month (limited time). You can now order our bi-weekly SEO reporting today for only 24.99 per month. You will receive two reports in your inbox each month that will track your website through the major search engines along with all the tools you need to push your site to the top of search engine rankings. These reports will help you formulate new promotional ideas and will help provide quantitative data to show the effectiveness of your search engine optimization strategies.
How We Stand Up Against Our Competitors
After Your Order
If you decide to order with us your payment will be processed on state of the art secure servers. Once your order has been processed (this usually takes less than one minute), you will be re-directed to a order confirmation page with details on how to set up your bi-weekly (twice / month) monitoring. You are going to need to submit a quick questionnaire in order to let us know what 10 keywords and competitors you want us to track for you. We are also going to need to know the email address that you want your results delivered to. When you fill out the order form on the next page be sure to use the email address that you want us to contact you at regarding this purchase. After you do this you will receive your first SEO report within 12 hours. If you have any problems along the way please contact us and we'll fix any problems immediately.
Search engine marketing may be the most highly competitive internet activity today. Top placements are limited, and in great demand. Ranking above the competition, Agent Interactive provides proven, sustained search engine optimization results and pay-per-click campaign management.
220 million active internet users worldwide conduct 320 million daily online searches (Nielsen/NetRatings). At the same time, online sales total close to $30 billion annually. It is anticipated that online sales will total $218 billion annually by 2007 (Forrester).
With 85% of online traffic to websites currently generated through search engines, and 55% of online commercial transactions originating from search listings, search engine users represent an immense, self-qualifying market that conducts keyword searches for specific products and services (Booz-Allen Hamilton).
Of search engine users, however, 75% never scroll beyond the first page of results. Therefore, if you are not ranked in the top 30 for keyword searches relevant to your site, most of the users you want to attract are passing you by.
Agent Interactive Search Engine Marketing Pro
Providing tools and expertise to place you at the top in keyword searches relevant to your site, Agent Interactive guarantees a better ROI than your current internet marketing returns. Backed by industry-leading research, technology and practical know-how, Agent Interactive helps you realize a significant competitive advantage. Agent Interactive search engine optimization will save you time, money and resources while you grow your business.
Agent Interactive offers unmatched optimization packages:
* Do It Yourself (DIY)
* Expert Search Engine Optimization
* Pay-Per-Click Campaign Management
* Paid Inclusion
* Turnkey Solutions
* Pay Per Performance Web Traffic Pricing Models
Website SEO Monitoring & Reporting
This year more people will find what they are looking for online through a search engine then through any other means. Search has now become synonymous with internet usage. Just what does this mean for your site? If your site is not in the top ten search ranking, you are loosing traffic. Sites in the top ten see the vast majority of traffic. The difference between a first place search engine listing and a second place listing is a 30%-40% drop in traffic. Every listing after that sees a decrease of about 5%-10% down to the number 10 listing. Having a first page listing is a must, having a second page listing is irrelevant. Imagine selling more, converting more or simply gaining more exposure.
some of rupees/ Month
Does Your Website Have What It Takes To Be In The Top 10
We all take pride in our websites; they represent an investment of time and money. But how do you know if your site has what it takes to make it to the top ten or more importantly in the top three? Climbing the search ranks is not hard, but it does require information. To realize your sites fullest potential, you need to test it – to see how it stacks up and where to make improvements. For example, do you know how many inbound links you have? How many inbound links do your competitors have? Do you know your search engine visibility score? Do know your keyword saturation? Do you know how your site is viewed by internet technologies? These are all questions that need to be answered conclusively to ensure your site masters the top ten.
Search Engine Optimization: Fact vs. Fiction
Search engine optimization (SEO) has become a boom industry. Everybody wants to get in on the action and a fairly large economy has grown out of the demand. However, the secret to this economy is the perpetuation of the idea that search engine optimization is a) technically challenging and b) complicated. The truth is that search engine optimization is neither complicated nor challenging. It can be done simply and with very little in the way of technical expertise. What is really challenging, however, is the time and patience that search engine optimization techniques require and understanding how to monitor and research your key search engine optimization metrics to help you make informed decisions about your website.
Knowledge Is Power
Knowledge is power. Being able to get reliable, substantial and robust search engine optimization information about your website is crucial for achieving strong search engine results.
SEO Reports: Informing Decisions That Encourage Strong Website Growth
Search engine optimization is not rocket science. It is a straightforward process. With the right tools and information, virtually anyone can do it successfully. With PaperclipSearch we give the tools to take control of your sites growth. We offer you two important services. First, we show you how to optimize your site through our search engine optimization e-report. Second, we will track your websites performance in search engines. This bi-weekly, optimization report will provide you with all the essential analytics and metrics you need to make informed website marketing decisions. We will rank your website amongst your competitors and track your growth over an extended period of time. We will also give you an initial “page critic” report that will analyze your webpage and provide recommendations on keywords, meta tags and page word counts. We can literally give you everything you need to push your website to the top of the search engine rankings. Being part of the top 10 listings means that your site will see the lions share of all internet traffic. If you’re at the top of this list, this can amount to thousands of visitors a day, which in turn, can amount to some serious lead generation & sales.
Impress Yourself & Your Team With Stunning SEO Reports
Our SEO philosophy is simple. We arm our clients with the tools and information they need in order to allow them to optimize their sites easily and effectively. Our SEO monitoring reports and SEO educational e-report are all that you need to search engine optimize your site and reap the rewards of being at the top of search engine rankings. Our SEO Reporting includes the following.
Educational Component: A 30 page "how-to" e-report that walks you through the SEO process from start to finish. You will learn the following:
* How to use search engine algorithms to help push your site to the to the top ten
* How to chase the “long tail” and discover new market segments.
* 9 step plan for dissecting your competitors SEO success
* How to find link partners
* Importance of building internal pages
* Why publishing is the fastest growing role of webmasters
* Learn how to capitalize on international outsourcing to run an effective SEO campaign
* How to build a strong internal information architecture
* How to get one way inbound links
* Meta tag optimization tips
* Body content optimization tips
* Learn about the correlation between design and SEO
Monthly Monitoring Component: Complete SEO metrics reports, delivered to your inbox twice a month. PaperclipSearch performance monitoring includes:
* Search engine saturation – the number of your pages indexed by search engines
* Graphic summaries of all relevant SEO data
* Organic keyword ranking reporting
* Trend graphing – a historical perspective of your sites performance
* Track up to ten of your competitors
* Track up to ten of your top keywords
* Custom reports delivered twice a month to your email
* Ongoing, twice per month reporting means that our clients are in touch with changes as they happen, allowing users to by dynamic instead of reactionary
* The visual representation of crucial data allows rapid retooling. It’s easy to decide what to do next when you can start to see a trend emerging
* The reports provide all crucial information that is needed to ensure your website can climb to the top of the search engines for your desired keywords
* Time saving, multi-tasking capabilities. It can search multiple search engines for multiple terms. Something that would take a human hours to do manually
* Visually impressive, easy to use interface that keeps your SEO history easily accessible
* See screenshots of the monitoring service by clicking here
Bonuses: Order before our sale deadline and receive the following:
* Inbound link counts & popularity check
* Page critic: analyze your website and provide recommendations for keywords, meta tags and word counts
* Access to a comprehensive link directory
* Free submission service: submit your site to top search engines for indexing
* 30 day money back guarantee
* No contracts. Cancel at anytime (Information on canceling will be on your monthly receipt)
You can easily search engine optimize your website with our tools and reporting. While many of our competitors charge hundreds, sometimes even thousands of dollars for a similar service, we are able to offer our fully featured product for a fraction of their price. We are happy to offer this industry unique service at 50% of its normal price of $49.99 per month (limited time). You can now order our bi-weekly SEO reporting today for only 24.99 per month. You will receive two reports in your inbox each month that will track your website through the major search engines along with all the tools you need to push your site to the top of search engine rankings. These reports will help you formulate new promotional ideas and will help provide quantitative data to show the effectiveness of your search engine optimization strategies.
How We Stand Up Against Our Competitors
After Your Order
If you decide to order with us your payment will be processed on state of the art secure servers. Once your order has been processed (this usually takes less than one minute), you will be re-directed to a order confirmation page with details on how to set up your bi-weekly (twice / month) monitoring. You are going to need to submit a quick questionnaire in order to let us know what 10 keywords and competitors you want us to track for you. We are also going to need to know the email address that you want your results delivered to. When you fill out the order form on the next page be sure to use the email address that you want us to contact you at regarding this purchase. After you do this you will receive your first SEO report within 12 hours. If you have any problems along the way please contact us and we'll fix any problems immediately.
Search engine marketing may be the most highly competitive internet activity today. Top placements are limited, and in great demand. Ranking above the competition, Agent Interactive provides proven, sustained search engine optimization results and pay-per-click campaign management.
220 million active internet users worldwide conduct 320 million daily online searches (Nielsen/NetRatings). At the same time, online sales total close to $30 billion annually. It is anticipated that online sales will total $218 billion annually by 2007 (Forrester).
With 85% of online traffic to websites currently generated through search engines, and 55% of online commercial transactions originating from search listings, search engine users represent an immense, self-qualifying market that conducts keyword searches for specific products and services (Booz-Allen Hamilton).
Of search engine users, however, 75% never scroll beyond the first page of results. Therefore, if you are not ranked in the top 30 for keyword searches relevant to your site, most of the users you want to attract are passing you by.
Agent Interactive Search Engine Marketing Pro
Providing tools and expertise to place you at the top in keyword searches relevant to your site, Agent Interactive guarantees a better ROI than your current internet marketing returns. Backed by industry-leading research, technology and practical know-how, Agent Interactive helps you realize a significant competitive advantage. Agent Interactive search engine optimization will save you time, money and resources while you grow your business.
Agent Interactive offers unmatched optimization packages:
* Do It Yourself (DIY)
* Expert Search Engine Optimization
* Pay-Per-Click Campaign Management
* Paid Inclusion
* Turnkey Solutions
* Pay Per Performance Web Traffic Pricing Models
For Any Enquiries :it_bussnes@yahoo.co.in
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