What really matters is what you agree upon in the contract you sign with the firm. You’ll need to read through the contract thoroughly so you understand what the goals are your SEO consultant is trying to achieve. Are you working purely on traffic or conversions, or ROI? Or are you wanting a combination of these three? Depending on the contract, your SEO contract might not specifically define the expected results and will instead focus on the type of work which is being performed. This is done to protect the SEO firm as they are performing a certain function, instead of work which is based on results. This keeps unfulfilled promises from coming back to bite the firm in the long run. You should understand the work which is going into your campaign and if the campaign isn’t working for you, you should cancel the contract and move on, instead of demanding something different be done, as the contract isn’t working for you to begin with.

Most clients hire their SEO firms under the impression that rankings will be a great indicator as to how well the consultant is performing. Your ranking is only part of the wayto measure how well your SEO consultant firm is working for you. You shouldn’t expect an instant result in top rankings for highly competitive phrases, and even moderate phrases can be a challenge for any SEO firm. You should never expect a specific keyword to always rank well. Rankings constantly fluctuate, and your SEO consultant has no control over this. Overall, you should base your results on how well your site is known for a range of keywords and how much traffic you’re gaining weekly, or monthly. Just remember, SEO takes time.

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Before Google sitemaps was released in 2005, optimizing a site for Google was like playing a game of Russian Roulette. Website’s pages could be deleted from the index with no inclination as to why, as well as site content being scanned, but the only pages which ranked were the About Us pages for sites.

Because webmasters were held at the whim of the Googlebot, sites were literally made and broken over night through shifts in engine positioning. There was absolutely no way to communicate with Google about your website, so if you couldn’t understand what was wrong with your site, you were basically out of luck when it came to ranking in Google.

After the release of sitemaps, getting indexed in Google was a much clearer process. Because of the way sitemaps has influenced the Googlebot, you should understand how they work and how they can benefit your site. Sitemaps provide you with a way to make sure Google knows all valuable information about your site. In return, you can also use sitemaps to learn what Google thinks about your website.

Google’s main concern when it comes to ranking sites is making sure webmasters can communicate important information concerning their sites. The Googlebot does a pretty decent job of finding and categorizing sites, but it has no real ability to rate relative importance of one page versus another. Many pages on the internet are not optimized to be spider friendly because many people just don’t care whether their site is listed high or not. Using sitemaps, Google gives you the ability to tell them on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0 how important each page of your site is, relative to the others. Using this system, you’ll be able to tell Google that your homepage is ranked at 1.0, while your contact information might rate only 0.2. In addition, you can also tell Google how often your website is updated as well as the last modified date of each page on your site.

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As it stands, techniques which work for one search engine won’t necessarily work for another. Even in some cases, things which work brilliantly for getting listed highly in MSN and Ask might be a death kiss when it comes to getting your site listed on Google. If you’re worried about getting your site on all four of the major search engines, there’s one thing you should keep in mind. Friendly site design, good content and smart networking are things which will get you listed without fail, in all four of the major search engines. If your site is well constructed and has been treated well by your SEO consultant, you should have no fears about getting ranked on all engines, as long as your site has useful and relevant information to express.

Google is currently the king of search engines, and it treats links differently than the other three. Google loves backlinks, as do the other search engines, but links have a lesser effect on older engines like MSN and Ask. Getting your page indexed requires you filling out your Titles, Tags, Text and Structure of your pages correctly, involving the correct links and keywords. If you’re wondering what criteria a search engine looks at while spidering your site, here is a small break down.

Google: Incoming Links, Page SEO, User Analytics, Outgoing links, Document History

Yahoo: Page SEO, Link Patterns, User Analytics, Document History

MSN: Page SEO, Site Design, Links

Ask: Page SEO, Site Design, Links

As you can see, both MSN and Ask are the least strict when it comes to getting your page indexed. Because Google accounts for about 50% of organic search traffic, it should always be your main concern. If something you do to rank higher in another engine messes with your Google ranking, you should stop immediately.

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If you’re planning on making a press release, you should consider adding a video in with your release. Not only will people stay on the target site longer to watch your video, but it’s proven that users who watch videos are more likely to take action. Users who watch your video will be more inclined to read the text you’ve supplied them with and as such, they’ll probably want to visit your website for more information. There are lots of firms which can help you in making a video for your press release, and many of these firms offer optimization for the text which will be included with the video. These firms link to your video which already appears on the most popular video-sharing sites, like YouTube, where you’ll be getting lots of organic views. This piggy backing provides you with an economical means to include video in your site, as bandwidth hogging video can be quite an issue for small hosts. Of course, the viewing quality for your video might not be great on a third party site, so you’ll need to take this into consideration before deciding to create a video to accompany your press release. Because of the nature of video sites like YouTube,submitting your video there has double the intention. If your video is catchy and creative, it will have a viral effect and will be spread across the web to hundreds, perhaps even thousands of viewers, which means more sales for you.

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1. Targeting the correct keywords. I can’t tell you how important this is. If you want the right people to find you, you need to incorporate the keywords your customers are typing into the search engines for your product. It also doesn’t do to target generic keywords, like digital camera, or video game. You need to target specific models which are popular, as consumers are very specific in what they’re looking for. This also helps yourclick through ratio, as the more likely you are serving up content relevant to what your user is looking for, the more likely you are to make a sale.

2. Optimizing pages for keywords. Picking the correct keyword phrases is only half the battle. You’ll need to optimize your web pages for your chosen keyword phrases. This means sprinkling the targeted phrase throughout your web pages, but also having that certain phrase in your title and meta tags. Also including the keyword phrase in your anchor text will help tons.

3. Getting links Google loves. Google ranks sites according to their importance, so getting links from sites which Google thinks are relevant to your content is very important. The sites will also include your keyword phrases in their anchor text when they link to you. Having an authority site link to you is very much like having a respected community member give you an endorsement in your home town. These links tell search engines, as well as the rest of the world that your site recommends source of information for the topic at hand.

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Myth 1: Pay Per Click advertising can either help or hurt my organic rankings.
Debunked: PPC is categorized entirely different than organic listings. As such, there is no effect either way on your ranking.

Myth 2: Websites are banned if they ignore Google guidelines.
Debunked: Generally it’s a good idea to read the Google Webmaster Guidelines so you can understand how the Google Crawler works, but you are not banned if you ignore their guidelines.

Myth 3: Websites are banned if they buy links.
Debunked: Sites which utilize link buying are not banned. The links which are bought are not counted toward the page’s overall rank.

Myth 4: Copy on a site’s pages must be a certain number of words, use a specific keyword density, and must contain both bold and italicized keywords.
Debunked: Back in the day, there was thought to be a magic number of keywords for each article on the web. This is simply not true. It also doesn’t matter whether you bold or italicize your keywords. It just doesn’t do anything to improve your ranking.

Myth 5: Duplicate content will get your website penalized.
Debunked: Your site will not be penalized, unless you count the duplicate content as not being counted toward your page rank as being penalized.

Myth 6: Reciprocal links don’t count.
Debunked: Every link to your site both in and out counts to a certain extent. The only instance where links do not count is if they are purchased links.

Myth 7: SEO companies can increase your rankings without doing any on-page work.
Debunked: If you hear this from any SEO company you’re considering hiring, run away as fast as you can. SEO isn’t magic, but then again, neither is it gambling. There is a certain formula to making your website appear at the top of search engines, and the best way to do that is either for your, or your company to optimize your pages for the search engines. That’s exactly what search engine optimization is.

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SEO doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg, and there are always ways for you to get it doe without blowing your budget. However, the most important thing to keep in mind if you’ll be in charge of getting your business search engine optimized, is whether or not you’ll have the time to dedicate to the task to see it through to the end. If so, here are a few tips to help you get started so you can make the most of both your time, and your money.

1. You should find a company which specifically works with small businesses. Typically, these types of services run anywhere from $300 to $500 a month, depending on your needs.

2. The next thing on your mind should be whether or not the company offers custom packages. You should haven’t to pay for things you don’t need, so see about getting a custom package which meets your needs and offers the best results for you.

3. If all else fails, you can begin learning how to promote your website and being SEO friendly by blogging, link building, or even article syndication. You’ll save money, but all of the above can be time consuming.

4. If you’re really unable to afford professional service, you can get a reputable book and read it for some basic understanding of SEO. Getting started might not be perfect, but with the help of the right guies, you can get your site known before you know it. Just remember if you choose to go this route, you’ll need to have time to dedicate to SEO. It just doesn’t happen over night, and you can’t expect results immediately.

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A great way to get people to visit your site is to ask for input. If you’ve written a great article, or a great tutorial, ask people to visit and give their opinion. Just remember, it is their opinion, so don’t be upset if you get some snide remarks. You’re building backlinks, not making friends. Just remember to always keep yourself in a positive light, even when others may not respond to you in a positive light, so you’re not banned from the forum for rude behavior. Asking people to review something on your site is a great way to get your site on the forum and getting people there, without seeming like a blatantly spammy post.

You can also ask the forum members for ideas regarding what they’d be willing to buy, or to give you ideas on articles. WIth this approach, you’ll have real people telling you what product they want, as well as what information they want to know about. This way, you avoid worthless advertising on things which just aren’t that popular.

You can also use the forum as an extension of your website, especially if you are running a tips or tricks site for anything. People go to forums because it’s a place to ask questions. If you find that lots of people are asking questions which you’ve already answered on your website, make a post telling them the answer is on your website. Most likely the subject in question is something the person is interested in, and if your site has the answers they’re seeking to one question, it’s likely to be a wealth of knowledge for the answers to other questions.

Either way you decide to advertise yourself subtlety on an already established forum is a great way to build back links. You’ll also be building your reputation as a webmaster, as real people will be interacting with the you, instead of just your content.

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If you do feel comfortable handling your own SEO, you’ll need to remember to make time for your SEO activities. You can plan on spending a minimum of 3 hours a day on SEO for sites which are already well established, and considerably more time if your site still needs work. You should also consider whether or not you’ll be able to begin your SEO work within a week. Most projects which aren’t started within a week from when they are first conceived are indefinitely delayed, and not having good SEO for your site is something your business can’t afford, no matter what you think. You should also consider the size of your SEO project. Pages of your site grow and grow as you add content, so if you’re constantly adding pages without keeping SEO in mind, you may find that when you return to finish your SEO work, you’ve actually created more work for yourself than originally intended.

The last thing you should consider before doing your site’s SEO is whether or not you have the tools, or you’re prepared to purchase the tools which will help you with keyword selection, site analysis, and reporting current niche information. 70% of all webmasters target the wrong keywords for their niche, which severely limits the traffic and conversions they receive. You’ll need these tools, whether you think so or not.
If you’re comfortable with everything I’ve mentioned above, you might be okay handling your own SEO. Otherwise, leave it to the professionals.

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In order to find information on the web, internet surfers use search engines. Crawlers work the same way. The endlessly move from site to site, following link to link, gobbling up all the information they can find in a matter of seconds. Sites with site maps benefit the most from crawlers, as it allows every single page of their site to be indexed by the crawler. To understand how you get traffic once you’ve been crawled, you’ll need to understand the mind of an internet surfer.

Most surfers will abandon a search, or try a different keyword combination if they don’t find what they are looking for within the first two pages. That means if your site isn’t listed on the first or second page of a search engine, you’re not positioned correctly for the keywords you’re targeting. Before you can target visitors, you need to know where they go for what you’re selling. Almost 43% of users go straight to a search engine to search for what they need, so having your page in Google and other search engines benefits you enormously. Of those 43%, 70% of searcher say they prefer to use the organic listings, or natural listings that haven’t been paid for. This means in order to reach your optimal audience, you’re going to have to do some good old fashioned work. Paying Google to rank you high will only get you so far.

Getting ranked naturally on a search engine’s page is your best bet for attracting new visitors and possibly customers to your content. However, achieving a high ranking is another matter, all together. SEO can be challenging, but it is financially rewarding. Consider SEO your Moby Dick. If you do it right, you’ll have a huge share of traffic to your site, and consistently if you continue to rank high.

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