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What Not to do when Soliciting for SEO Work

admin — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:29:28 +0000

I have been recently inspired.

“By what,” you might ask? I’ll tell you. It’s the story of what not to do when you are looking for new clients or SEO jobs. I wanted to post this just to give you some simple rules of thumb to follow when writing a solicitation letter to a new potential client.

The Example

I received this email by the worst SEO company after putting an ad on craigslist looking for entry level assistant/SEO. It reads as follows:

“Why am I the best? It’s simple. EXPERIENCE.

I promote your website correctly from the start. I don’t just build a beautiful website I help you market it. Increasing revenues, clients and branding.

“Most businesses could be doubling their revenues and exposure, but they just don’t know how to leverage the internet to get more clients and grow their business! They waste time and money doing it the wrong way, or they just don’t understand the landscape. Either way, they are losing out.” President – (insert moron’s name)

Please take a moment to browse through my vast portfolio. I personally have built over 490 websites. All of my work is custom and done in here in the USA.

…I can prove NATIONAL RANKINGS on high quality keywords. I also GUARENTEE FIRST PAGE GOOGLE RANKINGS…”

What Went Wrong

First, let’s start with the obvious. DON’T QUOTE YOURSELF! …I repeat, DON’T QUOTE YOURSELF! I know…it’s so stupid that you wouldn’t think it would happen. But apparently it does.

If I was reading this with the intent to shop for SEO services, I would have stopped reading this immediately. Online solicitations have the same rules as an in person sales call. Would you walk into a room and say, “Hi, My name is . You don’t know me, but here’s what an expert, myself, has to say about me.”

…You get the point. It’s just plain dumb.

The Most Awful of all SEO Crimes

Never guarantee rankings. That’s it. Simple as that.

Aside from being misleading, it makes you look like a hack to anyone with even the slightest of SEO knowledge.

Here’s a great post on why guaranteeing ranking is a shady business tactic from seomoz.

Find Business with Integrity

This email was sent to me with an auto replier that crawls craigslist and sends irrelevant emails to people looking for SEO’s to hire.

This is extremely bad for the image of your business. 9 times out of 10, you’re generic email will not have anything to do with what the person was actually posting about.

Take the time to make real contacts and sell your services with integrity and relevance, and new business will follow.

Finally…No More PageRank

admin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:07:08 +0000

It’s about time.

This morning, according to a post by Search Engine Roundtable, Google is finally getting rid of the PageRank metric. Finally, I can back up my statement that PageRank is nothing more than useless green pixels.

In the post, Susan Moskwa from Google explained the decision.

“We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it. ”

Hopefully, this will encourage those new to search engine optimization to explore their site stats beyond more than just looking at PageRank to determine a site’s worth.

Tips to be a Disciplined and Inspired Blog Writer

admin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:02:23 +0000

Finding Inspiration

Everyone gets writers block.

Even the best bloggers/writers sometimes come to a point when the words just won’t flow. God knows I’ve been there many times… However, there are a few things you can do to combat falling into the trap of having a blog that is sparsely updated.

Make Lists and Update Them Often

My desk is constantly littered with random notes and post-its… But, I always keep a place on my desk to have a pad of paper to write down random thoughts I have while I’m working. This helps more than you can possibly imagine.
At the end of my work day, I go over my notes and make ANOTHER list of actual blog article ideas [Just like this one ].
Another handy place to keep a pad of paper is right by your bed. Some of the best ideas I have ever had have been right before I fall asleep, waking up in the middle of the night, and when I’m just getting up in the morning. This has been an old writers trick for years, and it sure has a lot of salt to it.

Go Do Things During Your Work Day That Aren’t Work

The hardest part of writing is finding the time to be inspired by everyday life. I guarantee you that most people do not find inspiration to write about something while they are slaving away at their computer or piece of paper. They gain their ideas while they are out taking a walk through the park with their dog, interacting with other people in a social or public setting, or just plain relaxing at home by themselves or with their family.
As hard as it may be for people to get away from their work for an hour or two during the day [myself included], it’s absolutely essential to take a little you time during the day to go out and get inspired.

Read Your Trade Articles/Blogs/Books AND Articles/Blogs/Books That Don’t Have Anything to do With Your Trade

I spend a good chunk of my morning going through Sphinn and getting up to date on anything in the Internet Marketing field. This is imperative in the SEO business, but it’s also imperative not to over saturate yourself throughout the day with ONLY trade material.
Read news headlines, blogs about a hobby you have, or even a good book. My article about “Singularity Vs. SEO’s” came from a book I was reading on 2012 [Don't judge me...it's actually pretty interesting to read what people have to say about it!].
You can gain inspiration from just about anything you read…but nine times out of ten, you get a good idea that somebody hasn’t already written about by only reading articles within your trade.

Listen to Music

This is an iffy one.

A lot of people find it hard to concentrate when anything else is going in the background, but I find it soothing. Few things will inspire me more than a little Sinatra [...or good metal] playing in the background .

A Happy Mind Normally Means a Productive Happy Writer

If you get bored or frustrated, take a break and go do something to relax. If you aren’t relaxed while you are writing, your article will come out sounding stilted and forced. Nobody wants to read that…do the literary world a favor and just relax and let the words flow. If they wont, take a break and come back to it when they will.

I’m no Hemingway…but that’s my two cents on how to be a disciplined and inspired blog writer. Hope it was helpful!

Singularity Vs. SEO’s: When Will We No Longer Be Able to “Manipulate” Search Engines?

admin — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:59:26 +0000

The Point of Singularity, courtesy of nanofuture2030.com

I like Physics and Math.

That probably has a lot to do with why I choose SEO as a profession. It’s constantly changing, and there is always someone coming up with cool new ideas about how we can understand the way search engines work. In a way, SEO’s are the Scientists of marketing.

But how long will be it be before the Search Engines essentially get smarter than the SEO’s who are trying to get them to work in their favor?

Let’s take a look at a few things before I jump in to that…

The History of the Internet and The First Search Engines

Hopefully, everyone reading this knows that Al Gore did not invent the Internet…

The internet was actually invented by Tim Berners Lee around 1989 while working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN. [Yep, Dan Brown wasn't making that up when we wrote "Angels & Demons"]. Tim Berners Lee also in turn created the first directory of web pages called the Virtual Library to catalog all other websites, which at the time consisted mostly of colleges.

In 1993, Mathew Gray of MIT created the first “bot” called the World Wide Web Wanderer to measure the size and scope of the entire internet, and placed it into a directory known as Wandex. Later in 1993, many bot driven search engines popped up, like Jump Station. They searched the web for Titles and Headers of web pages, and listed them in the order that the bot found them, making it reletively useless to find something you didnt already know the URL for.

Then came Excite. This was the first search engine to use the statistical analysis of word relationships to make searching the content of web pages more reliable.

This was when we first saw the VERY early stages of what today would be called “SEO”. People were cloaking their webpages with hidden keywords the same color as the background, stuffing their title tags, and all sorts of other misleading tricks to get more site visitors.

Search Engines like Alta Vista, Inktomi, Lycos, and most importantly Infoseek, came next. Infoseek gained popularity because it was the featured search engine on Netscape, and it allowed webmasters to submit their websites in real time…which made a lot of spammers very very happy.

Then came Google and Yahoo. The rest is history, so to speak.

The Equation of Change

It might seem like I’m skipping a lot here, but as SEO’s, I’m sure we all know how much the search engines have changed over the years. The notable thing about the change that has already occurred is the time span in which those changes have happened. It used to be every year…then every six months…then every month…then every week…and at the point we are at currently we can sit back everyday it seems like and watch how something has changed in the way that we have to do our jobs almost daily. And they will only keep changing faster.

The Point of Singularity for Search Engines

I’m no physicist, so I’m not even going to try and explain this theory in my words. Wikipedia, like most always, I think explains technological singularity best: “The technological singularity is the theoretical future point which takes place during a period of accelerating change sometime after the creation of a super intelligence.

I. J. Good first wrote of an “intelligence explosion”, suggesting that if machines could even slightly surpass human intellect, they could improve their own designs in ways unforeseen by their designers, and thus recursively augment themselves into far greater intelligences. The first such improvements might be small, but as the machine became more intelligent it would become better at becoming more intelligent, which could lead to an exponential and quite sudden growth in intelligence.”

[Sounds kinda like "Terminator", huh?]

In a nutshell, what this means is that search engine algorithms eventually will evolve so much that is as smart, if not smarter, than it’s creators.

As I said before, I’m no physicist, so I’m not going to try to defend the integrity of this theory. However, it does get me thinking about the field of SEO.

What’s Going to Happen to the Field of SEO?

Search engine’s algorithms are changing at a rapid pace, and that pace keeps multiplying. Little by little, these changes are becoming more frequent, and more advanced. Will there ever be a point to where search engines are smarter than SEO’s, and we simply can do nothing to increase traffic and rankings of websites through them?

I’d like to hear what you all think about this topic, cause quite frankly, I don’t think I can answer that…

What Types of Links Should My Business Try to Obtain?

admin — Sat, 30 May 2009 19:24:45 +0000

What Types of Links to Obtain

Here it goes.

I’m going to try and give a basic tutorial on the VERY important topic of linking, and how it can help your site thrive in the search engines [and ill try not to be as boring as possible].

Having high quality links inbound links [we'll get to what those are in a second] pointing to your site, and the structure and quality of the links you have on your site is possibly the most important thing you can focus on with your site to increase it’s value in the search engines. You can think of links from other sites kinda like votes in the eyes of search engines. The more quality votes you have compared to your competition, the more you are going out rank them and have more traffic.

Different Types of Links

Before we go over what types of links your website should try and obtain, I’m going to go over some basic terminology:

Inbound Link – Alink from another site pointing to yours.
Outbound Link – A link from your site pointing to another site.
Internal Link – A link on your site pointing to another part in your site.
Page Rank – The rank (0-10) of a particular site and a key part of indicating its authority in the search engines.
Link Juice – How much of a site’s authority is passed on to your page by the site linking to you.
Authority Links – A link generally in the same topic as your site with a considerably high reputation and Page Rank
Reciprocal Links – A two inbound links pointing towards each other’s sites.
Follow Links – A link that passes it’s “link juice” to your page by linking to it
No-Follow Links – A link with a [rel="nofollow"] tag in the link, indicating that it will not pass “link juice” to your site.

Out of all the diffent types of links, the inbound link is best put as what should be the “meat and pototoes” of your entire SEO campaign. These are the links that the search engines weigh the most heavily when ranking your site and determining your own site’s Page Rank (or PR).

What Makes a Good Inbound Link?

There are quite a few factors that go into evaluating, and getting, a good inbound link that is going to have significant impact on your site and it’s ranking in the search engines. The biggest factor that qualifies an inbound link as a good link is it’s “authority” in the search engines. Normally, a site’s authority can be established by it’s Page Rank and how old the site is. If the site has a high page rank and is from the mid to late 90’s, it’s going to be a great link for your site to have, and is going have a significant impact on your site’s authority.

For instance, let’s say that you own a website dedicated to proving that Coke is by far a better soft drink than Pepsi [...please don't sue me, Pepsi..]. So, Coca-cola sees that you have a site that promotes their product in a light that is good for their image and decides to write a piece about your website in their blog and to link to your page. Coca-cola’s site has been around since about 1997 and has considerable Page Rank of 8 out of 10. This is probably one of the best links your site can get.

Another thing that you want to look at is how many other sites are they linking to on the page that has your link on it. Everytime I talk about this particular part of linking, I give this analogy and people seem to think it makes sense. Guys, let’s say you’re in a bar at the end of the night, and you’re trying to get a girl to come home with you at the end of the night. Do you want the drunk and half passed out girl that would probably go home with anyone just because it’s last call, or the more selective girl that you might have to actually have a decent conversation with? The smarter ‘ choice would be to go after the more selective girl, cause let’s face it, you’re only young once and who wants to get herpes…

As crude of an analogy as it might be, the same goes for looking for the right inbound links. You would rather have a site that gives out links to a select few, as opposed to a site that will give out links to anyone. This also factors into how much “link juice” a site will pass to your site once it links to it. The fewer the links, the greater the value for your site.

Outbound Links and Why They are Important

I’m not going to spend too terribly much time on this topic in this post, but the one thing that should always be kept in mind when linking to another site is whether or not the link you are dishing out on your site is going to provide valuable content to the visitors on your page. Always think about your visitors before you endorse another site by linking to it because it’s content is directly going to affect your authority in the eyes of your site’s visitors.

Why Excessive Reciprocal Linking is a Bad Idea

In a nut shell, reciprocal linking is linking to another site based solely on the fact that they are going to link back to you. While this may seem like an okay practice, reference what I said about outbound links. The links you put on your page should only be links that you think your visitors are going to find helpful. If this doesn’t apply with who you are trading links with…just don’t do it. You should always think about your visitor’s experience first. Also, some reciprocal links DO occur naturally, so don’t be freaked out if they appear in the link profile for your website.

In an interview with Matt Cutts, who works with the Search Quality Group in Google, he had this to say about reciprocal links: “Reciprocal links do occur naturally, and it’s not a thing to be surprised about. So, what we mean when we say avoid excessive reciprocal links is if your portfolio has a very large fraction of links where you’re getting them by sending automated emails saying Did you know that exchanging links can help your rankings in search engines? That’s not a basis for fundamental long term, solid growth of your links if that’s all you are doing. So, we tell people to avoid excessive swapping; and the nice thing is that people have a pretty good idea of what excessive is. So, you add a word like that and people are going to understand that it’s natural that reciprocal links happen in the course of being on the web at some point, but it’s not that I have to chase after those too much.”

If You Write Good Content, They Will Come

When it comes right down to it, the best links you can get are ones that you don’t seek out and come organically. If you write good, engaging content…the links will flow in over time. The basis of all good SEO techniques is creating a website that people will find useful, and have a good experience with when they visit. If you do that, people will naturally want to spread the word about your site

Happy linking everyone!

How to Unlock Your Website’s Hidden Potential with a Company Blog

admin — Sat, 30 May 2009 18:22:12 +0000

Find your website's hidden potential

Most of today’s businesses realize that having a website is an important part of whatever business they conduct. They hire a web design firm to put up all of the information about their business, where they can be found, what services their business offers, and how to get in contact with them. While this is a good start, after most businesses get their website up and running with what they think is the information that their customers need, they leave it alone to possibly be updated 5 years down the line when they discover one of their competitors has a better, and more up to date website.

Despite this being a common practice with today’s local businesses, this is not the goal of having a website. A business can never get ahead just by following what their competitors do, they have to lead, and be innovative. In this article, I’m going to talk about a few things that your business can do to be innovative, and at the same time feed your customers the best information possible about your business with a company blog.

Company Blogs are not a Luxury, but a Necessity

A lot of people think there is a negative connotation surrounding the word “blog” and normally think of frustrated teenagers venting their “teenage angst” on the internet for their friends to read. While this does happen, blogs can also be a very powerful business tool as well.

An article from business week in 2005 states this very well telling us about how blogs will change your business.

”Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they’re simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they’re going to shake up just about every business — including yours. It doesn’t matter whether you’re shipping paper clips, pork bellies, or videos of Britney in a bikini, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They’re a prerequisite.”

The object of a blog is break down traditional barriers that currently stand between you and your customers and create empathy. If your customers can see your business from the inside out, they are much more likely to become loyal customers.

Topics for your company’s blog

The beautiful thing about a company blogging is that it allows you to talk to your customers in a more personal, one-on-one, tone. And that’s exactly what you should do when writing your blog entries. Don’t give your customers a sales pitch, talk to them like you would anyone else trying to find out more information about your business. The goal of a blog is not immediately shove information about how and why they should buy from you, but to rather talk to them in a tone they can relate to, and guide them through the buying process. Some topics that are great to use in company blogs are:

”How to” articles
”Get to know the company”
”The Best way to get the Best Customer Service”
”What can we do to Live up to our Customer’s needs?”
”The economy is bad, but here’s how we’re helping you”

These are all great starting points in creating a company blog that really speaks to your customers. And the best part is, your customers will speak back.