The past year has been a difficult one for those in the SEO business, or at least those that rely on tricks and gimmicks in order to help clients reach the first page of Google. You don’t have to look far to find an “SEO expert” that will promise to get your website onto page one, or better yet, to position number one in Google in a few days. At one point in time, this was actually a feasible promise as there seemed to be an endless number of holes in Google’s algorithms that allowed SEO experts and spammers to game the system and get an unworthy website into the top spots.
Early SEO Gimmicks
Rewind to the early days of SEO when web directories and backlinks were everything. All you had to do was get your website listed on hundreds or thousands of web directories and in the sidebar of unrelated websites and your website would soon move onto page one. Companies and individuals jumped on the bandwagon realizing that there was money to be made not only in submitting websites to directories by the hundreds, but also in promising to get a client’s website to the number one position. They knew this little loophole and they capitalized on it and made plenty of money doing so. An unsuspecting client didn’t know any better. Soon the search engines began to realize that this loophole needed to be closed and they began to devalue links from directories.
Next up was Article Marketing. Someone on a blog somewhere in cyberspace recognized that Google ranked websites well if they simply submitted articles to article directories like Ezinearticles.com or Goarticles.com. Once the loophole was exposed, the article writing business took off. All you had to do was log on to any webmaster forum and you could find companies willing to write and submit content on your behalf to these article directories. For as little as a few dollars per article, you were essentially buying backlinks on article directories and this worked very well for about 3 or 4 years. This gave birth to thousands of low quality article directories spamming the internet. This terrible quality content was everywhere and it was ranking on the first page of Google. The problem was that this content lacked any real value. It was poorly written, had grammar and spelling mistakes and just didn’t give readers anything of value. 2011 and 2012 were great years for cleaning up this spam. With the Google Panda and Penguin updates, article marketing became devalued. Submitting hundreds of low quality articles no longer got your website to the first page.
Google Gets Serious
Fast forward to 2011 when Google started to get aggressive with tweaking their algorithm in an effort to rank websites not according to gimmicks, but according to their value to the reader. All the SEO changes that Google have made in the past 2 years has infuriated many SEO “experts,” but for those that work with high quality clients and don’t use underhanded techniques, this has been a welcome sign that Google and other search engines are serious about quality. Not only are they serious about the quality of websites but they are just as passionate about the quality of the content on these websites. Google is tight-lipped about what exactly they are looking for, but we do know a few things about what needs to happen to cause a website to have consistently good rankings.
Stop Thinking About Scamming the System
For many, this is going to need to be an ideological shift. They will need to stop thinking “What can I do to game the system?” and start looking at the website and its content. For a business owner or webmaster, the following tips will give you a great start on learning how to get your website ranking well.
Build for Readers
If you were looking for a product or service and you naturally turned to the internet for information, what would YOU like to find? Would you like to find poor quality articles with no value? Or, would you like to find high quality articles that offered honest information about the product or service? Think about your customers or your readers. What are they looking for? You have a wonderful opportunity to meet the needs of your customers and clients and show them that you are eager to give them high quality information. You have a captive audience, waiting to hear from you through your company’s blog or social media outlets. Don’t waste it.
Stay Up-To-Date
I was recently looking for a price to get a suit dry cleaned and I searched for a few local cleaners. I came across one of the larger dry cleaners in the area and it proudly said “Welcome to our new website.” That was the only article on the website and it was dated April 2008. The problem was that I was searching for this information in June of 2012. 4 years ago this company posted on their website’s blog and that was it. They never touched it again. I’m sure you have witnessed many examples of this – Twitter accounts and Facebook pages with only 1 post, or blogs with a few posts from several years ago. When I come across these website I immediately get the feeling that this company is out of date and it reflects on their business. Even if you don’t have time to blog or use social media on a regular basis, hire someone to do this for you.
Communicate with Your Readers
The internet has done a lot for small and medium sized businesses. It has leveled the playing field and allows smaller organizations and businesses to market for next-to-no investment. It’s also given businesses the opportunity to communicate with their customers and clients in real-time, which means there are no expensive mailings, or TV or radio commercials to produce. All you have to do is take part in the social media community, be authentic and communicate with your clients and customers in a real, transparent manner and it will grow your business. Consistency and authenticity can go a long way in engaging with your clients or prospective clients and customers.
All the SEO gimmicks of the past are supposedly behind us. Google is serious about quality and thankfully web results are getting better. Unfortunately there’s not a surefire way for them to totally eliminate spam and poor quality content from the internet, but you can do your part. Don’t fall for quick and easy SEO gimmicks advertised all over the internet. If you need SEO help or advice, work with someone that you can trust. Look for an SEO company that you can foster a long-term relationship of trust with, not a fly-by-night “expert” that may end up causing more harm than good.
Fresh content is important from an SEO standpoint, so let me get that right out there at the beginning of this post. From a practical standpoint, I would suggest that it’s even more important. There’s nothing worse than going to a blog’s front page and noticing that the last time they posted was last year! There’s plenty of talk in the SEO community though about how fresh content ranks better in Google’s search results, but I don’t believe that’s entirely true.
Here’s been my experience with how content ranks in Google when talking about “freshness.”
1.) Established websites that continue to write fresh content will more easily maintain their rankings. Fresh content is like a placeholder for these websites.
Fresh content is important to keep Google interested in your website, but it’s not the only game in town either. It’s just part of the puzzle and needs to be supplemented by social media, building quality backlinks (or better yet, acquiring them because your content is great.)
2.) New websites that post content can see small increases in their search engine rankings each time they post new content. If you’re on page 4 and in spot 8, after new content is published, you may move up a few spots, or maybe even make it onto page 3 for a short time, only to slip back.
It needs to be noted that SEO is a total picture and looking at just one element isn’t healthy. Fresh content is a piece, but only ONE piece of a puzzle that includes many pieces.
If you have been looking around for help getting your website ranked better in the search engines, you’ve likely come across a few terms that can be slightly confusing. Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) are the two main terms that are tossed around and it’s assumed that consumers just know what they mean.
If you don’t quite understand the difference, don’t feel bad. It’s not you! Many in the online world are guilty of tossing around confusing terms and not fully explaining them. Sometimes I wonder if professional SEO’s (people who do this stuff for a living) use industry-exclusive terms in order to sound smart or more sophisticated? Who knows…
If you’re wondering what exactly Search Engine Marketing is, here’s a simple answer. Search engine marketing is a phrase that encompasses a number of activities including search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising (PPC) social media marketing and content marketing. It’s the generic term used to convey all those elements. Some in the field may break it out further, but for simplicity, I won’t do that.
Here are the 4 elements that make up the term “Search Engine Marketing.”
Search Engine Optimization – Analyzing various factors on your website and elsewhere to find out how to improve your search engine rankings. This can involve analyzing your website structure, the content on your website and building backlinks from quality sources, all in an attempt to improve your website’s visibility online. FYI: Jonathon Hyjek online believes in doing “white-hat SEO.” In other words, doing things that are ethical. Anything spammy or unethical, we won’t do!
Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) – Anytime you search for something in Google, you will see ads at the top and side of the pages, often shaded a slightly different colour. These are advertisements that are paid for by the person advertising. Each time someone clicks on the ad, the advertiser has to pay money to Google. This can be from as low as a few cents per click to over $20 per click for very high competition keywords. PPC advertising may be a good option for you if you have a good quality website to direct people to.
Social Media Marketing – This is simply a fancy name for using Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin, Tumblr or some other social network in order to advertise. Some of this is completely free while some of it will cost money, usually on a pay-per-click basis. Social media marketing involves communicating with and engaging your customers, clients and prospective customers/clients.
Content Marketing – Content marketing involves writing high quality content and distributing on different websites. The most obvious and best place to put your content is on your website or blog. Beyond that you can submit it to various online article directories, however be very selective where you distribute your content. Look for websites that seem to only have good quality content on their website. Traditional article directories have been guilty of accepting content from anywhere and have often been filled up with spammy content.
I hope that the information about has helped you to understand what Search Engine Marketing is and if you should be looking into it for your business. Although I may be biased, I believe that EVERY business should have some sort of search engine marketing strategy/plan in place.
This is a topic that I have researched myself for obvious reasons and one that I find very interesting and confusing at the same time. The reason that I find it so interesting is because there’s such a wide variety of prices represented in the SEO field. There are local companies that charge rates that I think are a little high, others that I believe charge far too little and then large, national companies that charge rates that would seem like highway robbery.
Google the term SEO prices and you will likely come up with websites from SEO companies located around the globe and prices that span a wide range. From as low as $50 per month to over $10,000 per month for monthly rates. Many individual SEO professionals however charge by the hour, anywhere from $50 per hour to $1000 per hour and it may be difficult to tell what the difference between the services and service providers is. Clearly something is wrong with this picture!
Let’s compare…
SEO is still a fairly young industry and therefore doesn’t have a long track record. When you go to a local auto repair facility and have your car fixed, you expect to pay between $75 and $100 per hour. It’s the going rate for that type of service. It’s unlikely that you will find a mechanic that charges $10 per hour and unlikely you will find one that charges $1500 per hour.
There are a few industries that have a wide range of prices, like the SEO business. One of them is hairstylists. You can drop by a local hair salon chain and get a haircut for under $20 or you can find an exclusive salon that charges $400. It’s seemingly the same thing that you’re getting at both businesses, so how can one charge 20x more than another?
So why is the SEO price range so wide?
Three words come to mind when I think of SEO prices: Expertise, Value & Exclusivity.
Expertise: How long has the SEO consultant been in the business? It takes a year or two of trying, testing, failing, testing, failing and trying some more to truly understand the ins and outs of SEO. An “expert” in the field may not have formal education, but they will have spent time to build their knowledge. They will spend time everyday reading and keeping up on the trends in SEO and they’re highly adaptable. There are a few different “certifications” for the SEO industry, but not one that stands out like most other industries have, so beware of someone claiming to have a certification. For $89 an SEO can get a book, read it, write a test and get the “certification,” however it’s value is questionable. Real life experience is far better.
Value: This is something that is hard to put a number on, but there’s something to be said for the value that an SEO can bring to a project. For example, imagine an SEO is contacted by a fortune 500 company for SEO services. The value that he/she may bring to helping them with their SEO could easily generate millions of dollars in extra revenue for the company. It’s highly unlikely that this type of work is going to be done for $500!
Exclusivity: Along with value, there are some SEO experts that have built a name for themselves, they have a proven track record of success and therefore are asking a lot of money for their help. It wouldn’t be out of the question to pay $500 or more per hour for their services, but on the other hand, this is money well spent if you can afford it.
A word about price
Just like everything in life, there are low priced items and high priced items and they aren’t the same. Watch out for SEO services that are priced very, very low. It may be tempting to jump on board with a low price, but watch out; You might be doing more harm than good. Often low priced SEO services are also attached to people who are using old methods and they believe there are magic tricks they can do to get your great search engine rankings overnight. Truthfully, they can’t so don’t buy their line. They most likely can’t get your website into the #1 position in a week or two, although it might be possible. Just watch out for a deal that is too good to be true.
A good quality, reputable SEO knows their value and will charge accordingly.
This is somewhat of a rant and I apologize now if I offend you. 🙂
SEO has changed A LOT in the past 10 years and for the most part, it’s changed for the better. Google’s main focus is on quality, not on old spammy SEO tricks that once worked.
There are still a lot of people out there that either don’t keep up on SEO trends or don’t care that their old methods have become obsolete. They’re pounding away at old, out-dated SEO methods that Google sees strictly as web spam. The funny thing is that their frustration with the old methods doesn’t cause them to stop, but seems to cause them to keep doing it (whatever “IT” is) with greater frequency and volume!
I have just two words for you: STOP IT!
Stop buying/selling 5000 .edu backlinks for $20 and expecting big results.
Stop buying low quality articles by the dozens and spamming article directories.
Stop trying to hide keywords on a page with white text, or sentences that make no sense.
Stop selling footer links to random websites for a few bucks.
Stop your subscription to your private blog networks. Most have been de-indexed anyway.
Stop submitting your website to 1000 low quality directories.
Stop scraping content from other websites.
Stop building low quality websites/niche websites.
One of the websites that I co-own and manage is enjoying some wonderful long tail keyword success! I love logging into Google Analytics each day and looking at how people found the website.
On a side-note, it’s always fun to look at what people actually type into Google to find a website. Some people really don’t get search engines…
The website in question has a lot of content on it and I suspect that’s why it’s getting the long-tail keyword searches. With enough content on almost any website, it’s almost inevitable that you end up with traffic from long-tail keyword searches. In fact, it makes one take a good look at all the content on a website and ensure that there’s enough of it to tempt the search engines to rank the website well for these searches.
Of course there’s that list of coveted keywords that every website wants to rank for, but maybe we (myself included) spend far too much time optimizing for those few valuable keywords, all the while, missing out on the vast amount of traffic that’s available for the taking from those odd long-tail searches.
The best thing about the long-tail success that I am having, is that it’s accidental so it means the website doesn’t look spammy. I didn’t try much at all; It just happened.
What’s the key to long-tail keyword success?
1 word: CONTENT
It’s as simple as that. No blackhat SEO tricks, no keyword stuffing, no spammy content. Just real, quality, fresh content and lots of it.
