What is SEO? Why is it important?
For a definition of search engine optimization, please see our Define Search Engine Optimization page. It will give you a basic understanding of search engine optimization and reasons why it is considered important.
What are black hat and white hat SEO practices? Should I care about which are used?
There are many practices, tools and techniques that can be used to optimize a web site. Generally they fall into one of two broad categories - white hat or black hat. White hat SEO practices are considered good or ethical. They are generally accepted means of acquiring high rankings within the leading search engines. Examples are using unique and compelling content on your site, using keywords and keyphrases that you know people use to search the web, and having reputable, high quality and relevant sites link back to your web site. Black hat SEO practices are considered bad or unethical. Most, if not all, search engines will penalize or ban your site when they discover or suspect black-hat techniques are in use. Examples include stuffing web pages with keywords or keyphrases, hiding keywords (by using the same color font as background), participating in link farms, or immediately redirecting browsers to another, unrelated website. Grey hat techniques are somewhere in between and questionable. It's best to avoid anything you are not sure about. You absolutely should care about the type of practices a SEO proposes to use on your site. Black hat techniques are very easy to detect and your website will be banned or punished. Why take the chance? That depends on whether you have an existing website or you are building a new one. If you have an existing website, we start by inventorying the keywords currently in use. If you don't, we make a list of the keywords used by your competition to achieve high ranking results. Then we ask, and brainstorm with you, about possible keywords and phrases prospects and customers might use to search for your products and/or services on the web.
I'm not trying to be evasive, but it really does depend on a lot of different factors; things like:
Good question! Rather than me trying to explain the sandbox effect, please instead refer to this How To Play In Google's Sandbox article by David Wallace on searchengineguide.com. It's an excellent article.
Why does it take so long to appear at or near the top of search engine results?
There are two reasons why it takes a long time to appear at or near the top of search engine results. One is the fact that spiders don't always come around that frequently to index a site, nor do they always index the whole site. The second reason is the amount of time it takes to build high quality inbound links to your site; a major influencing factor to your site's rankings. If you build your links too quickly, you will be penalized. If you have a new site, it can take several months for the search engines to find and index you, even if you ask and/or pay them to index you quickly! If you have an existing site, the search engines will set up a "revisit / reindex" schedule based on how frequently it is updated. So if your site changes frequently the spiders will have learned to revisit your site frequently. If your site is fairly static, then the opposite will occur - you'll rarely get revisited / reindexed. Link building is a complicated and time consuming process but an abolute necessity to the achievement of high rankings. If you are willing to pay for links, they can be set up fairly quickly, but are generally frowned upon by search engines unless they come from the most reputable sites such as Yahoo.com or Business.com. Free links typically take months before they are reviewed and approved / denied. Sometimes you aren't even notified one way or the other. These links need to be submitted manually and carefully so as to be sure they are not rejected due to lack of data, poor choice of directory category or anything else. It is important to know that although more links is always better than less, the number of RELEVANT links carries far more weight in search engine rankings than the mere total quantity. Always lean towards acquiring links from similar or expert websites rather than a bunch of totally unrelated websites. Shari Thurow, a sought after search expert, has seen many websites achieve high traffic and rankings with less than 50 subject matter related links to their home page. Alternatively she has seen sites with more than a thousand irrelevant links receive very little. Lastly, please also bear in mind that at any point in time there are approximately 7.5 billion websites all maneuvering for position. A website's ranking can change daily. If and when you do achieve a top ranking, there is no guarantee that you will stay there indefinitely. It's a very volatile environment. Usually if you see a significant (+/- 10) position change, it's because the search engine ranking algorithm has changed and many other sites are likely experiencing the same thing. The change may be temporary. If the search engine is correcting for black hat techniques, you'll soon be restored to or near your old position assuming your website is using approved tools and techniques. As of November 30, 2007, the top three positions were held by (in order from the top down): Yahoo, Google and YouTube. For perspective, Microsoft was ranked #18, Amazon was #33, EBay was #71, Apple was #89 and CNN was #100. Bank of America was #500, Harvard University was #1,890, the White House was #11,345, General Motors was #14,279 and the Lance Armstrong Foundation was #201,696. In November 2007 B-SeenOnTop.com was #2,627,805. These rankings were derived from Alexa. They will vary daily. This is just to give you perspective.
Where does your site rank?
For all the reasons we have previously discussed, our site does not always come out on top for our targeted keyword phrases. Just like the Plumber's husband always has leaky faucets, our website could always use more fine tuning. That said, if you found us using generalized terms like "search engine optimization" we probably appeared way down the list. If, on the other hand, you searched for us using "Economical Search Engine Optization" or "Main Line Search Engine Optimization" we should have appeared in the top 10 on all the major search engines. It is important to note that we do continuous link building on our site in order to maintain that position. For an outline of the steps involved in optimizing a website, please see our SEO Services page. It will give you the basic steps which must be undertaken to optimize a website.
One of the many factors search engines take into consideration when ranking a website is how many large and reputable websites link back to your own site. Backlinks from reputable websites lends credibility to your own site. Directories are not the primary tool used by individuals to find what they are looking for, but they are the yellow pages of the internet and will drive some traffic to your site. For both these reasons it is important to get listed in online directories.
There is a small chance that you may decide to start over or redesign your site. It will always be your choice of course, but we may find that there are too many things impeding our ability to optimize your website and our recommendation would be to start over. That would be the most expensive recommendation and not one that we would make lightly. Often we can suggest ways to stall having to make that decision by recommending suboptimal work arounds. But for the most part, the majority of the changes that will need to take place can occur on your existing website. We understand there are SEO companies who use unethical methods to optimize websites resulting in worse rather than better rankings. We are not one of those companies. Our goal is to be thought of as the most trusted, reliable and affordable small business SEO service provider on the main line of Philadelphia. That means we can't screw up; not even once. That means we want you to leave our engagement more than satisfied and wanting to refer others. We recommend you look at what Google has to say about choosing a search engine optimization vendor. The Google Webmaster Help Center lists what to look for to determine if the SEO company you are considering hiring might not be the best choice.
If you know someone who is comfortable with HTML, we recommend you have them take a look at our code to confirm for yourself that we have not used any unethical methods. We suggest you contact one of our clients to confirm their satisfaction. We have not yet applied to be a member of the Washington, DC and Eastern Pennsylvania Better Business Bureau. We expect to shortly. In the meantime, please feel free to contact them to learn if there have been any complaints registered against us. We are a US company and therefore subject to the same anti-fraud laws as is every other business in the United States. When we begin to work with you we can provide a written, money-back guarantee that no questionable (also known as Black Hat) SEO tactics will be used which could result in your website getting banned from the major search engines. We don't guarantee top rankings; no one can without trickery or deception. We will promise to do our best and guarantee that we will set, and then meet or exceed your expections. Search engine companies are the defacto governing body for search engine optimization. They decide which techniques and practices are considered ethical and which are not. If they don't like something, they ignore, penalize or ban you. It's that simple. What has happened in the past is a search engine optimizer will come up with a cool and creative way to boost website rankings. Others notice this improvement and because source code and meta tags are visible to the entire world, begin to copy it. Soon search engines recognize a pattern occuring in search results and modify their search algorithms to account for it. If they consider the practice deceptive or trickery, they penalize, ban or ignore you. Search engine optimizers watch for new releases of the search engine algorithms and must react quickly when they see this has happened. The offensive code is removed from the website source and replaced with something else. And so it goes. A good example of this was when developers discovered if they put white keywords on top of a white background, visitors wouldn't see it but the search engines would credit the site with high keyword density. No more. What should be apparent is that search engine optimizers can make a lot of money by applying these short-term techniques to achieve top rankings. Businesses are initially happy when they see increasing sales and recognition. But they are not happy when their websites are banned or ignored. Nor are they happy to be caught in a pattern of ongoing, continuous change which costs them money. Here is a list of some of the most common unethical SEO techniques: As in the last question, we also recommend you look at what Google has to say about how to recognize an unethical search engine optimization company. The Google Webmaster Help Center lists what to look for to determine if the SEO company you are considering hiring might not be the best choice. Please look at the answer to the "What is SEO" question for some global statistics on search engine use. More and more consumers are turning to the web to find products and services, 256 million in December 2006 alone according to Forrester Research. But of these, less than 1% will look beyond the first three pages of search engine results. Less than 3% look beyond the first three results! These statistics hold true regardless of industry. Every industry should be able to benefit from SEO.
Think of it this way - every business needs customers and the most cost effective way, the best way to turn prospects into customers is by way of search engine marketing. The amount that it will cost depends on a number of factors not least of which is your ability to pay. To be clear, when we say "It depends on your ability to pay", we mean that we can customize solutions to fit your budget if you ask us. When we say "affordable", we don't mean cheap, we mean we'll fit costs to suit your budget and set your expectations as to what that means.
At the end of the analysis phase of any project we will provide you with a work plan that breaks the work down into project phases and activities within phases. Each has a cost. You have a choice of which phases and activities you want us to undertake, which ones you prefer to do on your own, and which ones you don't want anyone to complete. We will walk you thru the plan. You will decide what works best in terms of satisfying your needs and budget. In addition to the cost of our time, you will need to budget for inclusion in some top tier and inter-related web directories. Inbound links to your website from large and reputable directories is a must in search engine optimization. The two top directories are Yahoo and DMOZ (an acronym for Mozilla Directory). Yahoo charges $299 / year for inclusion in its directory. DMOZ is free, but it can take a year or more to get listed. You may never get listed. Inbound links from other business and specialty-type directories related to your line of business are the most valuable. Inbound links from unrelated businesses are not helpful and may, in fact, hurt your website's rankings.
We will invoice you at predetermined times throughout the project. We accept cash, cheque and PayPal transactions. Yes, depending on the extent of parameterization of the system. Ideally you would arrange for us to login to your system to make an assessment. Some systems are very compatible with SEO and some are much less so. Our site was built using Yahoo SiteBuilder which is a dynamic website with a content management system overlay. It is reasonably compatible with SEO. Having said that, in a highly competitive setting you will struggle to achieve top rankings because there are portions of your website Yahoo prevents you from editing. It will not, for example, pass the HTML standards test. There are coding discrepancies Yahoo employs that you have no ability to influence or change. You'll also need to know a bit of HTML yourself in order to be able to code around the shortcomings of the tool. The #1 best way to appear at or near the top of search results is to have your original web site designer work with a SEO specialist to ensure your site appears at or near the top of search engine results soon after initial launch. It's also the least costly way to "b-seenontop". At the start of our engagement we will run a baseline report showing where your site is ranking for the keywords you are currently using, and for the ones we plan to use. If statistics from your existing site are available, we will create a monthly trends report which shows the number of shoppers and customers, the number of sales and average sales, and conversion rates (visitors that are converted into customers). After our engagement we send you six (more or less) bi-monthly reports using the same statistics so you can monitor progress. You can easily verify the rankings data on the reports by going to each search engine and typing in the keyword to see what your rankings are by hand. Bottom line - We set up metrics so you will be able to see and validate improvement over time.
Once we have this initial set of potential keywords, we use a pair of proprietory tools called WordTracker and Google AdWords to first expand the list to include other candidates we may not have thought of, then to narrow it down to a manageable size. Wordtracker helps us identify other related, similar and misspelt keywords and phrases that relate to your business and have been used by individuals browsing the web during the last 90 days. It tells us how many competing websites use those same keywords and gives a ratio representing the ease or difficulty of achieving a high ranking using those keywords.
We look at estimates of how many people will search the web using each of these terms in a 24 hour period. An optimal keyword choice would have a high number of searches every 24 hours, and few competing web sites optimized for that exact term. There aren't many terms that fit that criteria, sometimes there are none. But that's the goal!
Next we take the relevant keyword phrases that have the most anticipated traffic in a 24 hour period and use Google AdWords to determine what it would cost per click for a first place positioning in Google sponsored results. We figure if someone feels justified in paying for the use of a keyword phrase, it must be bringing in results. This helps narrow our choices even further.
Lastly, we use iBusinessPromoter from Axandra to analyse the top 10 websites optimized for our chosen keyword phrases to determine what specific on and off page optimization efforts will have to take place to achieve a top 10 ranking.
iBusinessPromoter says it has a 100% guarantee of top rankings if you follow their advice. What they don't tell you is you won't always have the ability to match the competition, for example, there's no way to increase the age of your existing URL and inbound links. When this happens, you have to overcome shortcomings by excelling in other categories of optimization, for example the number of social bookmarks.
This list is just a subset of many of the factors that play into when your site will achieve its optimal ranking. There is no single right or wrong answer to the question "how long will it take". If you ask me for a ball park though, I will tell you it will typically take 9-12 months for a web site to achieve it's optimal ranking. You should start to see results sooner than that, and you should see a gradual improvement over time.
That said, may I remind you that search engine optimization is a process, an ONGOING process that allows you to achieve the goals you have set for your website. Please look at our SEO Services page to understand how we will work with you to ensure our optimization efforts are sustainable over time.
What is the sandbox effect and can anything be done about it?
We do things a bit differently. We figure out what's broken and then we fix it. We start by doing a total site assessment. That will tell us what, if anything, is getting in the way of your web site appearing at or near the top of search engine results. We develop a workplan outlining the steps which will have to be undertaken to fix what ever is broken. We then review the workplan with our client so the client can decide on who will do what, if anything. The client is always in charge. Some want as little involvement as possible. Others choose to treat the assignment as a learning experience and are heavily involved. As a minimum, you will understand who's doing what when so you can have a realistic expectation around when you might begin to see results. One of our goals is to set expectations and exceed them. Agreeing on a timeline and plan is just the first step.
Which directories should you get listed in? The top two are Yahoo and DMOZ (short for Mozilla Directory). Yahoo charges a $299 annual fee to be listed in their online directory. DMOZ is free, but there is no guarantee you will get listed. Your best bet is to: (1) read their instructions carefully and comply with their requirements; and (2) choose the single best category in which you want to your website listed. Choosing the wrong category can delay your listing significantly as it will either be ignored or referred to a different editor. It can take a very long time to get listed in DMOZ. (This site took 9 months to be listed.) Do not resubmit. Take the time to do it right the first time and be patient. More information about DMOZ can be found at the Webworkshop Blog Site.
Depending on your budget and the nature of your business, there are many other directories you should get listed in. The Best of the Web is one. And there are lots of niche directories. We will prepare a list of the ones we think could benefit your ranking and you'll tell us which ones you want to be listed in. You should never pay to have your site listed in an unrelated directory. It won't help your rankings.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) handles complaints about deceptive or unfair business practices. To file a complaint, visit: http://www.ftc.gov and click on "File a Complaint Online," call 1-877-FTC-HELP, or write to the Federal Trade Commission at CRC-240 Washington, D.C. 20580.
Other factors which play a role in determining the cost to optimize your website include:
The other thing you should understand is that we present you with a comprehensive plan to optimize your site. If it's a shopping site, it takes more work because there is comparatively more competition. If it's a niche service provider site, it takes less time and effort. We give you a comprehensive plan, with price points within it, and you decide what you want to bite off and what you don't. Some people decide to start off small and want to optimize their home page only. We don't recommend this because even though search engines optimize pages, they are doing so in the context of the overall site. They recommend you optimize at least 4 pages per website. So that's the minimum we recommend as a starting point. You don't have to do link building for each of the four pages, but you should set up meta tags as a minimum. The point is, it's you who decides what to do and not do. We'll assist by explaining the pros, cons and risks of each alternative.
The #1 best, most effective, way to appear at or near the top of search results is to have your original web site designer work with a SEO specialist to ensure your site appears at or near the top of search engine results soon after initial launch. It's also the least costly way to "b-seenontop". If you are having a new website built, please call and ask our no-cost advice. Better yet, ask your web design firm if they'd be willing to work with us to ensure you're not only happy with the look and feel, but you're also happy with the traffic and conversions (number of people that elect to positively respond to your message). If you do that, you will B-SeenOnTop of search engine results and drive more business to your website.
Bottom line? Please have a win-win conversation with us about costs.
Search Engine Optimization Frequently Asked Questions | SEO FAQ
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| SEO Frequently Asked Questions |
- What is SEO? Why is it important?
- What does Black Hat and White Hat mean?
- How do you decide which keywords to use?
- How long does it take to appear at or near
the top of search engine results? - What is the sandbox effect and can anything be done about it?
- Why does it take so long to appear at or near the top of search engine results?
- Which companies are at the top now?
- Where does your site rank?
- What methods do you use to achieve high rankings?
- Why is it important to get listed in web directories?
- Will I ever need to start over?
- How do I know you are trustworthy, that you won't get my site blacklisted?
- What are some of the practices search engines consider unethical?
- How do I know if SEO is right for my business?
- How much will it cost?
- How can I pay you?
- Do you work with dynamic websites?
- How will I know I've gotten my money's worth?
Otherwise feel free to contact us and we'll be happy to provide additional detail or answer your other questions.
| This page answers frequently asked questions about search engine optimization. |
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