5 Common SEO Myths

Let’s face is, the world is filled with myths and the internet is no different! Most of these myths are relatively harmless, but problems arise when people actually believe and act upon them.  The Search Engine Optimization industry has a bountiful amount of myths that often get many people in trouble because they take them to be true.  Not only are they seen all over the web, but businesses actually feed these myths to innocent bystanders in hopes of making some extra money.  The key is to be knowledgeable about what the industry is really about and what realistic expectations you should have. This is especially important if you are planning on signing up with an SEO company. By doing your homework, you can save yourself lots of time and ultimately, lots of money.  To get you started, here are 5 very common SEO myths you should avoid at all costs!

1. 1. SEO Guarantees a #1 Spot- If a company is guaranteeing a #1 spot on Google or any search engine for a key phrase or website name, run in the other direction!  SEO fluctuates constantly and is such a competitive industry that there is no way anyone can guarantee a #1 placement.  Period.
2. 2. SEO Works Instantly- SEO does not work instantly. Again, if any company is dishing this myth out to you, be wary.  SEO is a very involved and time-consuming process.  Not only does it take time for webmasters to develop the code and optimize your website, but you must allow the search engines time to index your site and decide where your website will rank on their SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages.)
3. 3. SEO Is a One Time Deal- This is a very common notion that many website owners seem to have.  Once they have applied SEO to their website, they think they are set for life.  This is simply not true.  SEO is one of those tactics that needs constant updating and supervision.  This may seem like a hassle, but honestly, it is worth it if you want your website to rank.
4. 4. SEO Can Be Done By yourself- Sure, anything can be self-taught!  However, SEO is not something you can learn overnight… or even in a month.  The tactics are so in depth and they are in constant transformation and fluctuation.  In other words, what is pertinent one day, may not be important the next.  Therefore, it will probably be far more time efficient to hire a professional SEO to do the work for you.  It may seem costly, but you must realize that you are paying for quality! If you want something done right the first time, it’s best to hire an expert.
5. 5. Search Engine Submissions Work- Nope! Don’t waste your money or time trying to submit your website to search engines because SEO doesn’t work this way. Search Engines want you to put in the hard work it takes to get ranked, so trying to pay them off isn’t going to buy you much. If a company is trying to sell you this tactic, tell them no thanks!

How a Sitemap Can Save Your Website

When it comes to promoting your business, your clients are the main people you need to worry about impressing.  However, this also means that in order to get to your client, you must first learn effective advertisement mediums. On the internet, your biggest hurdle will be with the search engines.  So many people use search engines to look for products and services they need, that advertising yourself on a search engine is now almost a necessity.  Therefore, truly understanding the best way to get noticed on a search engine is imperative to your business.  Almost every day, new developments are popping up in the search engine optimization world and sitemaps are only one of them.  A sitemap is now becoming a fantastic way for search engines to crawl your site without missing any of the pages within your site.  This results in better rankings for your website!

But what is a sitemap? Simply put, a sitemap is a map used to guide your visitors on what is available to them on your website. But more importantly than that, the sitemap is an XML file specifically designed by webmasters to inform search engines which pages on their website are available for them to crawl.  The crawlers simply pick up all the URLs listed on the sitemap and are able to easily extract information about each webpage with the information linked within the sitemap. Typically, search engines will crawl a website and are guided from page to page by links. This is effective but often times, they can miss pages and links may lead them away from your site. However, search engines that accept sitemaps are able to crawl websites with much more ease and in being directed by the sitemap, do not miss any pages within the site.

How does this help you? Well, the more pages that are crawled and indexed by search engines, the higher visibility you have online.  This means that all pages on your website will be picked up and become viewable to people browsing online.  By optimizing each of the pages on your website to the greatest capacity, your site will rank highly on search engines.  The ultimate goal is to be on the first page on Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.  Of course, a sitemap is only one of the many steps necessary to optimize yourself effectively online.  By combining this with all other SEO factors, you will be on the way to developing a profitable online marketing campaign.

Improving Customer Service On Your Website

While building and optimizing your site are important factors that contribute to the development of your business, they will mean nothing if you do not have a loyal and satisfied customer base.  This goes beyond simply attracting potential clients- it’s about keeping your current clients happy! This may seem obvious to the average business owner, but outstanding customer service can be one of those factors that seems to fall through the cracks because you are too busy focusing on other aspects of the business. Honestly, dissatisfied clients can be far more harmful than you think, especially online. The internet gives them the uncanny power to make your mistakes public and believe me, people research and read negative reviews! So, to avoid these sort of disasters altogether, simply follow the guidelines listed below. Not only will they appreciate your attention to their needs, but they will be far more willing to continue to be your clients for many years to come.

• Provide Contact Information- This is probably the most important aspect of customer service. How will clients be able to bring problems and concerns to your attention if they can’t get a hold of you? Always provide a contact page on your website.  You can either have a number, email and address listed or you may provide a contact request where clients can fill in their information along with their comments and concerns.
• FAQs Page- This is very helpful to your clients and especially to visitors.  With a “Facts & Questions” page, you are able to tackle the most frequently asked questions about your products and services.  To find out what these questions are, create an email specifically designed for this.  You will be able to easily track what customers are most concerned with and save them and yourself lots of time.
• Email Updates- This is a fantastic way to promote your business. All you need from the client is an email address!  With email updates you can easily spread the word about special promotions, new products and/or services and ways for them to save.  Your customer will be reminded of what you have to offer to them and will also always appreciate a good deal.
• Take the Initiative- It is up to you to give clients the best service they deserve.  However, you don’t have to read their minds to figure it out.  Sending out a survey for them to take can easily give you an idea of what is working and isn’t working with your business. This also makes the client feel appreciated and listened to. They want to know that their opinion matters!

Manual SEO vs. Automated SEO

Obviously, everything is easier when it is done automatically, but does it make it better? Software has made it easy for people to sit back and relax while the work is being done.  Manual SEO has been around for a good while and any expert will let you know that it is time consuming and takes quite a bit of dedication and effort.  So, like any good plight to the future, online marketing has now moved into an automated format as well! This is both good and bad because while you are able to implement the SEO without any effort of your own (save for downloading the software and clicking a few buttons), you may not be getting the same quality performance.  In essence, automation strives for quantity over quality.  Manual, on the other hand delivers substantial quality, but at a slow rate.  So which method is better?  Truth be told, manual methods will always be the better choice when it comes to SEO.  Although SEO relies heavily on beating out the competition, it really comes down to how much real effort you have put into your SEO.  Especially since the launch of Google Panda, search engines are dissecting the campaigns of all websites, ensuring that they produce quality backlinks, content and keywords.

• Quality Backlinks- You cannot produce a quality SEO campaign without backlinks.  Furthermore, backlinks can be hard to come by.  This is why it is crucial to make this a manual process.  Automated SEO can bring you backlinks, but most of the time, these aren’t quality backlinks at all.  In other words, all those automated results can be a waste of time and money.  When you do these manually, you are guaranteeing quality because you are able to track and pick these yourself.




• Content- Content is also a component of SEO that cannot be done through automation.  Algorithms are constantly searching for fresh content and this can only be done by hand.  Content has to be relevant to your website as well as be able to captivate and hold your audience’s attention.

• Keyword Optimization- Knowing what keywords will be most effective for your marketing campaign requires you to not only understand your business to the fullest, but also do some research online.  You will have to view which keywords are the most searched for, which are most highly used by your competition and which will benefit your business the most.  Don’t leave it up to automated optimization to determine these things!

What to Look for In an SEO Company

Let’s face it, when it comes to SEO Companies, you have TONS of options.   Not only that, but they all claim to be able to work magic on your website, or in other words, jump start your business and get you the traffic and profit you are looking for.  However, it is smart to be wary of what is out there.  Not every SEO company has your best interest in mind and will tell you anything and everything to dig into your pockets.  That’s why you have to be proactive in your search and know the essentials of finding an SEO company.  Here are 5 vital things you should look for in an SEO company.

• Make Sure They are Ranked on Search Engines- An SEO Company is supposed to get you ranked on search engines, right? If you can’t find them on the first page of any search engine for vital keywords like SEO Marketing then they probably don’t know what they are doing.  Why would you want to do business with a company that can’t even do for itself what it promises to do for you?
• Look For Client Feedback & Testimonials- True, testimonials on a company website can be written up by anyone.  However, people leave feedback all over the internet! Be a detective and hunt online for information on the company. Type in the company’s name on a search engine and see what you can pull up. The results may surprise you!
• Do They Practice White Hat SEO?- White Hat SEO are any and all legitimate SEO techniques used to get a website ranked online.  There are many layers to this technique and trying understanding it all may be overwhelming.  In general, you are looking for a company that promises quality traffic and inbound links, increased profit and a method of attracting potential prospects to your website.  For a more descriptive outline of what White Hat SEO consists of, search online.
• Are They Making False Promises?- Be wary of any company that guarantees a #1 spot on a search engine or instant SEO results.  No one can guarantee #1 placement on any search engine and SEO NEVER works instantly.
• Ask For Proof of Their Work- Why not ask for some examples of the work they are proclaiming they can do for you? Maybe they can show you a website they have successfully worked on in the past or a portfolio of their products and offers.

SEO Myths Revealed

The internet marketing world is filled with information- some of it is accurate but let’s face it, most of it is a bunch of boloney.  SEO is one of those marketing methods that continuously changes and transforms.  What is pertinent one day, can be completely disregarded the next.  This is partially due to search engine algorithms that no one truly understands.  Search engines, especially Google, give vague ideas of what their algorithms are comprised of and webmasters are left to decipher it to the best of their abilities.  This is also why there is so much mixed information online; what one webmaster may find true about SEO, another webmaster may say is false information.  Thus, SEO myths are born.  The problem lies in that innocent bystanders get affected by these myths because they believe them to be true and can often be fooled by a shady SEO company who promises them the world.  The important thing to remember is to always do some research before jumping into bed with any SEO company.  To make your research a bit easier, we have comprised a list of 10 SEO myths that most, if not all, webmasters agree on.

• SEO Can Be Self-Taught- While SEO isn’t exactly rocket science, it isn’t easy either. There are so many components of SEO that trying to learn it all on your own and apply it would be extremely time-consuming and difficult.  Not to say that it is impossible, but if you want it done right the first time, free of mistakes, you may want to hire an SEO company with years of experience to help you out.
• SEO Works Instantly- This is a common myth that scam artist SEO companies claim to provide to their clients.  Effective, profitable and long-lasting SEO takes lots of time to provide results, but if done correctly, can be extremely worth it.  Be patient!
• Number of Visitors Affects SEO Rankings- Many believe that if you don’t have a plethora of people streaming into your site daily, you won’t be ranked at all on search engines.  This is not true! Google and all other search engines have no way of judging how many visitors you get on  a daily basis and do not use this as a determining factor as far as ranking goes.
• Meta Tags Make a Difference- Meta Tags used to be a big deal but now search engines don’t give them a second look. Don’t bother trying to optimize them, in other words.
• SEO Is a One-Time Application- Many believe that SEO is a one-time application deal and you’re set for life.  This is not the case! SEO algorithms are continuously changing and therefore, your website has to keep up or you will be left behind for sure.
• It’s All About Rankings, Not Users- A lot of times, website owners will be so obsessed with getting their site ranked, they forget about their current and potential clients.  While ranking is important, if your site lacks appeal to visitors, they won’t be coming back to your website anyway.
• Guaranteed #1 Placement- Bottom line, if an SEO company is guaranteeing a #1 spot on Google or any other search engine, they’re lying.  No one can guarantee this, not even the top SEO companies out there!

Need Money? Got a Website? SEO Turns Websites Into Money.

There’s a set of tools out there for everyone who wants to turn a profit with their website: SEO. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is an umbrella term for any technique or system used to cause a website to rank more highly in the results pages for specific keywords.

For example, let’s say your website is all about Venezuelan Criollo cocoa beans and the chocolate that’s made from them. You might be on the 4th page of Google if you search for “Venezuelan chocolate”, the 2nd page for “Criollo beans”, and the 23rd page for “Criollo chocolate”.

Anything that you can do to improve any of those ‘Xth’s up there falls under the desmesnes of SEO. Follow a variety of SEO techniques (on-page, off-page, backlink building are the categories, but there are a lot of specific items within each category. For example, on-page SEO means writing copy with an eye toward keyword density; it means watching the contents of your metatags, and it means adhereing to the customer-oriented philosophy of the latest Google requirements.

The result of a few months’ SEO work is the eventual ascension of your website onto the first page of Google for some of your choicest keywords. That, in turn, will cause an explosion of traffic to your site, which you can then turn into money using a variety of techniques from AdSense to affiliate sales to selling, say, Criollo cocoa beans through the mail.

Without traffic, you have no visitors to monetize. Without SEO, you can’t get respectable levels of traffic — unless you replace SEO with some other traffic system, all of which require significant upfront investment (advertising) and/or have a profound potential to fail and cost you a load of money with no real benefit (pay per click marketing).

So website owners who want to turn their sites into cash are left with two options: spend money getting professional <a href="There's a set of tools out there for everyone who wants to turn a profit with their organic SEO performed by a respectable SEO company, or do it themselves. Either way will eventually work (assuming in the latter case they do it right), but the point is that if you want to make money on your site, get to know SEO — it’s how websites turn into money.

Three Simple Website Tricks To Take Advantage of Local Internet Marketing

Local internet marketing is a set of techniques that a website SEO guy can use to make sure that, when someone searches for something related to your business and puts in a place name local to your area, they see your website. It’s an amazing tool for getting real people inside your real brick-and-mortar store, because these days real people look up everything online before they drive into town to get stuff done.

There are several things you can do off-page to make sure that search engines correctly place your business geographically. But there are a few things you can do on your site to accomplish the same goal.

Put Your Address In Your Footer
Having your full address appear on every page of your website is a strong way to inform the search engine spiders of your business’ real world location. If you just stick it in as part of your site’s footer, it’ll show up automatically on every page without you having to remember an extra detail, and it will look natural to surfers at the same time. The same goes for your local phone number — 800 numbers are all wonderful and good, but they don’t tell the search engines where you live.

Ask Your Customers For Reviews
Every time a customer interacts with your webpage, they should get a nudge toward a review site. Avoid Yelp, because Yelp doesn’t post reviews that were solicited — but Bing, Yahoo, Google, Amazon, and other review sites certainly don’t mind. And even if you get the occasional bad review, that’s actually a good thing — it lends credibility to the good reviews. Part of the review process involves telling the review site where you live, which is another source the search engines will use to place you.

Have a Separate Landing Page for Each Branch of Your Store
If there’s a Jay’s Farm Stand in Aberdeen, Washington and another one in Olympia, Washington, there should be a landing page for the Aberdeen branch and another for the Olympia branch. Each should have it’s own address and local number listed, and each should have it’s own separate reviews. That will help the search engines establish which searches should be directed to which locales.

Article Writing and Distribution is the Foundation of Long Term Success

When you get going with a Web-based business, there are two separate tacks that people take in order to establish their success. The first is to spend money on advertising, get people to come visit their sites, and hope that they make more than they spent on advertising. The second is to work, spend a lot of time building backlinks and raising their rankings through organic SEO, and hope that they rank high enough to start bringing in enough money to pay the bills.

Then, there’s article writing and distribution. It’s both at once, and it works wonders.

In general, you can pay someone to write the articles, to distribute the articles, or both — though frequently it won’t be the same person doing both parts. That’s because the kind of people who find it easy to string words together with flowing eloquence tend not to enjoy sitting there and mindlessly clicking “submit” over and over on dozens of different article directories, and vice versa.

Once you find the people who can tag-team the job appropriately, however, you’re golden. Here’s why: when you have a well-written article and you submit it correctly to an authoritative article directory, you get the total package. Your article will likely rank quickly for it’s chosen keyword (assuming you did your keyword research correctly, of course). Once it’s ranked, you’ll start getting organic traffic through it as people click from it to your homepage.

That’s targeted traffic, and it’s worth quite a bit. Moreover, every article provides you with a context-controlled backlink with the anchor text of your choice, generally from a quite reputable source. (If you’re submitting to Jackopff’s Article Bucket, you might want to reconsider and see what it takes to get onto EZineArticles.com or another major article directory.)

Repeat the process, coming up with quality topics, solid keywords, and reputable directories every time, and you’ll soon find yourself with a quite functional web-based business. It’s a lot of effort, and it takes both creativity and technical knowledge, but once you know the game, it’s very very worth your while.