Cute video about google.

I have clients that call and ask me to develop an SEO strategy for them. Many times they ask certain questions that I thought it would be nice to answer here in my blog.

1. Can you guarantee me a front page google listing? No. And neither can anyone else no matter what they say in their ads. They see these ads all over the web that promise top listings in google in just 30 days and such. Any company who makes this claim is a scam.

Yes I said scam. If someone who owns an SEO company and is using this type of ad wants to debate this with me I’d be happy to set up a web conference and record it for everyone to view.

2. How long will it take to get my website on the front page of google for my keywords? I would need a crystal ball to answer that question. The number of variables is astronomical. The number of competitors for your keywords, how well those competitors are doing with their own SEO campaigns, and how long your competitors have been online or age of their domain name, are just a few of the factors we have to include in predicting how well you might do in the SERPs. No one can give you a timetable, likely not even someone who works for google.

3. How long will I need to do SEO? Uhhh . . . As long as you do business on the web. SEO is not a one-time deal. It is an ongoing process. You will always need fresh content. You will always need more relative inbound links. You will always need someone that will stay on top of changes in the market and to respond to results.

Lets say we do your SEO and in 3 months we get you to #3 in google for your top key phrase. Wow! We did our job! You don’t need us anymore right? Sure, right up to the time your competitors ramp up their SEO campaign just as you did and overcome your position in the search engines.

If you own an offline company and you do an ad campaign on tv, radio, and in the newspaper and it brings in a lot of traffic to your store for the month of July, do you stop advertising in August? I would think the answer might be no. So why would you stop an SEO campaign that is having success?

SEO is a business expense you need to factor into your budget if you want to do business online. It is as simple as that. No ifs ands or buts. SEO is essential to your online success.

4. How long will it take you to come up with an SEO strategy for me? There are a lot of SEO companies who will give you a plan right now. They have set packages. They do A, B, and C for x number of dollars and they will throw in D, E, and F for just a few dollars more!

The problem is that there is no one-size-fits-all SEO plan for anyone. SEO companies who tell you to choose from their preset SEO packages are not going to do the best job they can for you. They are trying to make a sale. They know that having preset packages helps them close more sales and that is exactly why they have them ready for you.

Every client is unique. Every website is unique. You face a different set of obstacles than my other clients. You have a different budget to work with. The level of your competition is different. The number of inbound links you already have is different than the next client. The content on your website is different. I have been doing this for 13 years and have yet to find two clients who were in the same exact situation.

As a result, I have to create a plan that fits your needs and that fits into your budget. I have to prioritize each task depending on your exact situation. It takes time to research what keywords you should be targeting, research how well you rank for those keywords currently, research the competition you have for each of those keywords, and figure out the best way to help you with the budget you have set aside for SEO.

You may have to wait a week or more to see what the roadmap we create for you looks like. Many clients do not have the patience and end up buying some preset SEO package somewhere. I usually hear back from that same person 3 months later after nothing has improved and they have even less money for SEO.

Give us the time to do the research and we will create a plan that works.

I’ll address more frequently asked questions in another blog post. Right now I have a roadmap to build for a client before they wake up and drive to their office this morning. Til then . . .

Visit SEO Service Provider for SEO, Content, and Link Building Strategies that work

I saw a great post about a ton of places to get the answers you want about almost anything. A lot of people go right to wikipedia as the authority on a topic. In reality, wikipedia is edited by human editors that may or may not be much of an authority on the topic they are writing about or editing.

Don’t get me wrong. I applaud some of the editors at wikipedia for their dedication and thank them for the volunteer time they put into editing. However, there are some editors who seem to have an agenda and it shows in the entries they edit or delete.

It has led to acknowledgement that wikipedia is not an authority on any topic. It is just a source for “some” information about a topic, enough for most people, but not authoritative enough for researchers who want authoritative information.

When qualified people in a specific field only write about their field on their website, it tends to be much more accurate than the entries in a human edited wiki. Visit the blog post below to see how many great information websites this person links to on their blog.

100 Places To Go For Answers Online

I was inspired to write this article by some people who are doing article marketing or whom at least THINK they are doing article marketing. I go to rentacoder.com, getafreelancer.com, and other freelance websites and I get emails for bid requests where people are looking for article writers. Some of the bids would amaze you.

Example: “I need high quality articles of 500 words or more each written with SEO in mind. I am willing to pay $1.50 per article.”

Some go on to say they want 2.5% keyword density while another will say 6% keyword density and others have other density requirements. The Bottom line is, that tells me they are the ones who are dense.

They read some EBook, or whatever, that told them what the proper percentage is for keyword density. No one can give you an exact percentage. Those that do give out advice on that and quote a specific percentage are almost as dense as the people who believe them.

You are not going to get high quality articles written for $1.50. I run an article writing service and my prices are on the low end of the scale at $30 per article. That is extremely cheap for well-written articles. Anything less than that price is likely to be keyword-stuffed drivel that is not worth the time to submit anywhere.

But many people who think they understand article marketing don’t really care about quality. They want a large number of articles with that perfect keyword density they read about.

Here are 10 things you need to understand about article marketing. Obviously, there is a ton of people out there doing what they believe is article marketing who do not have a clue.

1. Target your audience. If you target the American Market for your products and services, then having someone who does not understand how to sell products to Americans and who doesn’t write like an American write your article is just totally worthless.

2. Everything on the Internet is permanent. If you are hiring a ghostwriter then your name is going on these articles with links to your company website. When readers read the poorly written articles that are stuffed with keywords and look like a boob wrote them, they are going to think you are the boob that wrote them and your company’s image suffers.

3. Having articles written and submitting them to directories is not what article marketing is about. This is where most people’s understanding of article marketing stops. Article Directories are there to provide quality content to webmasters who want to use articles in their websites. The tradeoff of giving a link back to the owner of that article is the price they pay for the use of the content.

4. Article Directories are not there to increase your link popularity. Just submitting articles to article directories does increase your link popularity a little. However, these directories are not websites that are related to your topic. Websites that might use that article are likely related to your website’s topic. Therefore, unless the articles are good enough that people want to re-post them on related websites then you are missing the whole article marketing boat.

5. Long-term value. Buying a bunch of cheap articles and doing mass submissions will not give you the long-term value, which article marketing, can and will do if done properly. A well-written article submitted to just one website can give you more link popularity and direct traffic than 100 poorly written articles that are mass submitted.

6. High quality articles have a snowball effect that lasts for a very long time. As more and more websites use the article as content you will see your link popularity, grow. Each of them becomes a related website linking to you.

7. It takes time to see the real effects of good article marketing. The longer your article is out there, the more it is used by other webmasters and the more your link popularity grows. It happens a little at a time just like the search engines like for a websites link popularity to grow. Getting 1000 links to your website overnight can cause your website to rank lowers in the search engines rather than higher.

8. Direct Traffic. If the writer of your article does not know how to sell product or make a rational point that leads a reader to WANT to click the links in the footer, then again you are missing part of the value of article marketing and are wasting your money. Article marketing can drive traffic directly to your website if they are written properly.

I’m not talking about an article that just promotes your website or product. Webmasters will not use those and article directories will not accept them. However, if you wrote a guide to filing a patent and in the article advised they consult an attorney, then you have written an informative article that puts the idea in the reader’s head that they need a lawyer to file a patent. In addition, the links are right there in the footer to your legal services. How convenient!

9. If the person writing the article does not really understand SEO, then you are again missing a major part of article marketing. There is no set percentage that your keywords should appear. They should be mentioned where possible but not in a way that detracts from the quality of the article itself. Reader first, SEO second. Some writers really know how to do this and it is second nature to them to write this way. Webmasters who might want to use it as content do care that it contains the right keywords, but they will not use an article that is written poorly and that is an obvious attempt to spam the keywords into the page.

10. Good writers who understand sales, SEO, and know how to write well deserve to be paid well. If you want quality articles that you are not ashamed to put your name on, then you have to pay for it.

Some of you out there that might read this article really don’t care what they put their names on. In that case, this article is not written for you. Go and keep doing your thing out there. When you decide you really want to try to be successful come back and read this again. Bookmark it where you found it right now, read it in six months, and see if you understand it then.

For those of you who do want real quality and want to have all of the advantages that article marketing can give you and who do care what their name gets attached to, just remember that good writers need to be paid what they are worth. I hope this article has helped you understand what article marketing is really all about.

Need Articles or Content written for you?

Ok, I was looking around at places to submit some of my blogs to and a friend recommended I take a look at The Power 150 .

This is where a guy named Todd Andrlik ranks marketing blogs by a system he created there. I decided to look at how he ranks blogs and here is the explanation from their about page;

Todd Points (1 to 15): As the only subjective measure in the Power 150 algorithm, 1 to 15 opinion points were assigned to each blog. Todd Andrlik values frequent, relevant, creative and high-quality content. The use of audio, video and graphics is also heavily weighted in the Todd Points.

Frequent is good. Relative is good. Creative is good. And High-Quality, well, if it is frequent, relative, and creative, wouldn’t that be high-quality. Now he heavily weighs the use of graphics, video, and audio. Not sure why that would make an SEO Blog more relevant. It doesn’t matter, this is the subjective part of their formula for ranking blogs anyway. So this 15 points is based on whether Todd likes your blog or not. And The Power 150 is Todd’s Blog so he can give you points if he wants to.

Yahoo InLinks (1 to 30): Much like Technorati’s InLinks count, Yahoo uses its Site Explorer to tabulate the number of links to a particular blog. We then scale this number down to a 30-point scale.

Yup. Gotta get those Yahoo Links. Kind of surprised that Yahoo Links are counted high but not Google links. They do add pagerank later as a factor, but Yahoo is 1-30 points while google page rank can only get you 10 points. In 1995 that would have made sense.

Technorati Ranking (1 to 20): Technorati ranking analyzes the number of sites pointing to a particular blog. The more link sources referencing your blog, the higher the Technorati ranking. Similar to the Bloglines Subscribers value, Technorati ranking ranges were determined (i.e., top 9,000, top 10,000, top 20,000, etc.) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 20) that was used in the Power 150 algorithm.

Technorati Authority (1 to 20): Much like the InLinks count, Technorati’s Authority count is the number of blogs (as opposed to individual links) that link to a particular blog. This number is then scale down to a 20-point scale.

Technorati InLinks (1 to 20): Technorati tallies the number of links to a particular blog, and we then scale that number down to a 20-point scale.

And even more interesting is that if you do well in Technorati, you can get as much as 60 points! Google is worth 10 points and technorati is worth 60?

Alexa Points (1 to 15): Alexa ranks sites with an algorithm that incorporates page views and reach (the percentage of all web users who have visited that particular site). For the Power 150, we take that rank and assign it a proportional score between 1 and 15 and factor it into a blog’s total score.

Ahh the Alexa Points. You even get more for doing well in Alexa than you do for doing well in Google. Alexa counts how many people with an alexa toolbar visit your website, then use that sampling to decide how Internet users worldwide behave. Know anyone who uses the Alexa toolbar? I don’t. I just don’t take much stock in what Alexa says.

Bloglines Subscribers (1 to 10): Bloglines displays the number of feed subscribers. Subscriber ranges were determined (i.e., more than 20, more than 30, etc.) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 15) that was used in the Power 150 algorithm.

Wow. Bloglines. Cool. What about Blog Catalog? Blogged.com? or Other blog directories? I guess Todd has decided he likes Bloglines best, so we should all like Bloglines best and how we do in other blog directories doesn’t really matter.

Google PageRank (0 to 10): Google PageRank is a link-analysis algorithm that interprets web links and assigns a numerical weighting (0 to 10) to each site. High-quality sites receive a higher PageRank. The actual PageRank number was used in the Power 150 ranking algorithm.

So a blog with a page rank of 6 gets 6 points. But you can get up to 30 points for yahoo link pop and up to 60 points if you do well at technorati. Wow, Todd, don’t you like Google?

Collective Intellect (0 to 10): Collective Intellect is a social media analytics company that works with brands to evaluate consumer opinion, measure buzz, identify customer sentiment and manage corporate reputations at the industry, company, brand, campaign and messaging levels. For the Power 150, Collective Intellect’s authority ranking uses a patent-pending algorithm to calculate an author’s authority on a topic, including such measures as link-analysis between on-topic posts, topic density, author’s percent of contribution to the topic, number of comments and post quality.

First I’ve heard of them, but went to their website to look and here is what they say they do.

Customers use our technology to:

track information related to stocks and investing
support public relations and investor relations activities
facilitate customer support outreach programs
create product management market research feedback programs
develop interactive forums where customer relationships can be nurtured

Ok. I’m still not sure how this applies to ranking SEO and marketing blogs per say, but I’m sure Todd could explain it to you.

I decided not to submit my blogs or those of my clients there. Nothing wrong with them. Nothing wrong with Todd creating his own ranking system and ranking blogs according to what he or she thinks is important. Really, anyone with a blog could create there own ranking system and list blogs according to what they think is important.

It’s just funny how the Internet allows people to be important just because they say they are. I’m going to build the Universal Extreme Ultimate Beyond Power 1000 and creating my own ranking system.

I started buying and selling domain names in 1995. Domain speculation began sometime in 1994. I did appraisals and was one of the biggest advocates for registering generic domain names rather than made-up names or those that violated trademarks.

I made a good income from my domains because I did not just sell domain names, I sold domain names that had a business plan and a website while others were just trying to sell their domain names with no traffic, no business plan and no website.

Today many are still doing it that way. Although now they park them at SEDO or Go Daddy or somewhere to try to make adsense revenue while they list them for sale. So my background in domain names is good enough that I can dispel a few myths.

First TLD stands for Top Level Domain. .COM, .NET, .ORG are all examples of TLDs. The domain name most people refer to is what goes before the dot. The TLD is what comes after the dot.

These are some Common Myths about Domain Names;

.TV is for television or multimedia websites. Pure myth. Any domain name in any TLD can work for television, video, or multimedia. The TLD .TV does not give you any special tools for creating multimedia-rich content. .TV does not stand for television. It is the ccTLD or country-code TLD for Tuvalu Island. An island in the pacific that had no real use for owning a TLD so they sold the rights to sell domain names on their TLD to a company that leads people to believe it stands for television. It works. People buy them and use them and associate them with television and that is ok. It’s just a myth that .TV was created to mean television.

Another Domain Name Myth: If you want to build websites that people can access by their cell phone or PDA you need to get a .MOBI domain name. Just like dot tv does not give you any special capability for television or multimedia, dot mobi does not give you any special tools for mobile-capable websites. Any website on any TLD can provide content to cell phones and PDAs if it is made compatible for them. Many will lead you to believe that dot mobi somehow gives you the advantage when it comes to cell phones and PDAs. it doesn’t.

.ME Domain Names Myth Coming Soon to a domain registrar near you. Coming soon to a domain registrar near you. Soon domain names will be marketing for the TLD dot ME. They will market them as great domain names for personal websites. They may be. But it was not created as such. It is the Country-code top-level domain designated for Montenegro.

.PN Domain Names I own Blogs.pn. I would love to tell you it stands for Publisher network or something like that but it doesn’t. It is the Country-code top-level domain designated for Pitcairn Island. Another pacific island that did not have much use for a TLD so someone was authorized to sell dot pn domain names.

Shorter Domain Names are better than Long Domain Names Myth: Only in certain circumstances is a shorter domain name better than a long domain name. Many domain gurus disagree. I don’t care. They talk about people being able to remember your domain name. Truthfully more traffic comes from people clicking links in search engines, on other websites, and on social bookmarking sites than comes from people who type in the domain name.

What is more important is that the domain name help you capture a phrase you want to target in the search engines. I can give you a ton of examples where having the exact phrase you want in the domain name has helped get a top position in Google and other search engines. So if the phrase is longer, do not abbreviate it just because you heard shorter domain names are better. Get the phrase you want to target.

If you are planning to advertise your domain name OFFLINE, in advertising on TV, radio, or even magazines and newspapers, shorter domain names ARE better. Offline, people have to be able to remember your domain name.

The best of both worlds: If most of your traffic comes from the web, shorter means very little. To cover both, get a domain name that matches your key phrase and put your website on that domain name. Then get a second domain name that is short and catchy and redirect or point it to the same website. Use the shorter-easy-to-remember domain name for your offline marketing and the domain that matches your key phrase for the search engines.

Anything other than a dot COM is worthless Myth: This is a favorite myth spread everywhere. It is based on the same myths about shorter domain names. If people have to remember it, then yes, they do remember dot com more often. If you are doing offline marketing, use a dot com.

Online your website can be on any TLD. People are clicking links. So again, get the domain name that matches your key phrase for your website whether it is on .com, net, org, tv, pn, cc, ws, or whatever. Start with dot com, try your phrase. If it is taken, move to the next TLD and try your phrase again. If it is taken, repeat your attempts to register until you find a TLD that your phrase IS available in and register it in that TLD.

Soon ICANN will be allowing more TLDs to be created and domain names will be marketed in these new TLDs. More and more countries will also offer domain names for sale in their ccTLDs. So the market will be opening up and it may be confusing to some. The truth is what comes before the dot matters most. Getting a domain name in a TLD that makes sense to users can help you though.

These are some Common Myths about Trademarks and Domain Names;

Domain Name VS Trademark Myth: If I own a trademark I need to register my trademarked name in every TLD. Pure Myth and a worthless, time-consuming strategy promoted by Intellectual Property Lawyers who need to justify what you are paying them.

Another Trademark VS Domain Name Myth: When you register a trademark, you have to choose a classification for that trademark such as “entertainment television”, “clothing and apparel”, “beverages”, etc. You do not own the phrase you trademark. You are being allowed to use that trademark in commerce within the classification you chose. Someone else can register the same exact trademark and choose a different classification. In addition to that, the geographical area you registered your mark in only covers that area. Someone could have the same trademark in the same classification in a different geographical location. So again, you do not own the phrase you trademarked, so no need to register every TLD in existence. It could even be construed as anti-competitive business practice to do so.

Yet Another Domain Name VS Trademark Myth: If you chose the trademark, “goofball lawyer stuff” and chose the classification “clothing and apparel”, I could still register the domain name gofballlawyerstuff.com or net or org or whatever. As long as I do not sell clothing or apparel, link to anyone who sells clothing and apparel, or try to confuse people into believing my website is owned by you, I have not violated your trademark rights. Get over it.

I hope this helps you dispel a few of the most common domain name and trademark myths you may have been reading about.

I know it seems that I am doing a lot of new website launch announcing lately, but we are expanding. SEO.pn is not just another seo website, it is focused on providing services to business owners who do not want to hire several people to provide the many different services they need for their online marketing.

By partnering with other companies we are able to provide everything they need. Some things we do in-house and other things are provided by our partners. Visit SEO.pn for more info

Most people take web hosting for granted. They look for the cheapest hosting they can get. That’s like starting an offline business that needs foot traffic but buying space in the back of a warehouse instead just because it was cheaper.

When you buy cheap web hosting, you are sticking your website in the back of some warehouse. You don’t know if you are in a good neighborhood or a bad neighborhood. You don’t know if some other website on the same IP Block as you is a spammer, a malicious website, a porn site, or other bad neighborhood site.

When you buy cheap hosting you usually get terrible tech support, slower load times, and other problems you do not have the time for if you are running a business.

SEO Hosting Provider was built to offer clients with business websites a better alternative. High-end Servers and fast connections can make a huge difference. It affects your visitors which affects sales. It affects your search engine rankings as well. Faster load times is important to both users and search engine rankings.

No third world tech support where the person answering the phone cannot fix anything. No support tickets that need to be “upgraded”, “passed on to level 2 or level 3 techs”, or excuses that “the problem must be on your end”.

Each support ticket submitted goes to ALL of the techs at SEO Hosting Provider. The first available tech will work to resolve your problem and email or call you to let you know what they are doing to fix the problem you have. Even IF the problem IS something you did, SEO Service Provider will do its best to help you resolve it.

Blog Hosting includes updated wordpress to the latest version automatically, backing up your database daily, and even installation of your blog comes with your hosting package.

Shared Hosting is on a “clean” box. No one can buy hosting automatically. SEO Hosting Provider will only accept legitimate business clients. No adult websites. If you are a spammer, you will be removed from the server and your money will not be refunded. If you are phishing, downloading malicious programs onto people’s computers, or doing other malicious or illegal practices, you will be removed from the server and your money will not be refunded.

SEO Hosting Provider was created to serve business clients and to make sure their website is in a good neighborhood. Cheaper hosting companies do not offer this screening process. They sell hosting to anyone who will pay and due to the fact they are cheaper, those who spam, sell warez, or that do phishing and other malicious activities flock to those hosting companies.

Dedicated Servers are also available at SEO Hosting Provider. Having your own server with only your domain names hosted there is the safest way to host your website. It is more expensive, but it’s money well spent.

If you are interested in taking your business to the next level and making sure your website is located in a good neighborhood, visit SEO Hosting Provider

A lot of people that use our services, such as Article Marketing or Blog Management, do not know all of the services we provide. So I wanted to post a few of our SEO Services to the blog.

SEO SERVICES

ARTICLE MARKETING AND WRITING SERVICES - Our professional writers write articles on your chosen topics that are optimized for your keywords. You can choose to have us do article submissions to syndicate your articles for reprint or use them as website content. Visit Article Content Provider for more information.


PRESS RELEASE WRITING AND DISTRIBUTION SERVICES - We can write your press release, optimize it, and handle the distribution for you. Click here for more about Press Releases.


SEO WEB HOSTING SERVICES - Don’t take choosing a web host for granted. Well known names do not equal great hosting for an online business. Cheap hosting can hurt your business. To learn more about SEO Web Hosting, click here.


SEO WEB DESIGN SERVICES - Web Design and SEO do not have to be two different steps. Save money by having us do your SEO as your website is being designed! For more about SEO Web Design, Click here.


DAILY BLOGGING SERVICES - Every online business needs a blog. A blog needs to be updated every day. Do you have the time to write your blog every day? Do you have the skills to make sure your blog is ranked well in the search engines? Our Pro Bloggers write and optimize your blog posts daily. Our social bookmarkers make sure your blog gets traffic. To learn more about our Daily Blog Posting Service, Click here.


SOCIAL BOOKMARKING SERVICES - Whether you write your own blog or we write it for you, our full-time Social Bookmarking experts bookmark each new blog post at social bookmarking websites daily. This increases the traffic to your blog and helps you gain link popularity. To learn more about our Social Bookmarking Service, Click here.


WEB DIRECTORY SUBMISSION SERVICE - Link Popularity is important to your online business. It directly affects your search engine positions for your keywords. We manually submit your website to hundreds of Web Directrories to help build more links for you. To learn more about Web Directory Submissions, Click here.


LINK BUILDING SERVICES - There are a lot of ways to get more links to your website. We will help you get those important links. To learn more about our Link Building Services, Click here.


WEBSITE CONTENT SERVICE - Our Content Writers know how to write optimized content for your website on any topic to help you rank better in the search engines. More importantly, we know how to write text that helps you make more sales. Learn more about our Website Content Service here.


OTHER SEO SERVICES - SEO Service Provider can help you with everything you need. If we do not do it, we know where to get it done. Let our experience help you. Call 786-317-8774 or use our contact form to ask for a free seo consultation.

Our website has been rewritten and updated for all of the SEO services we provide. We are offering a Free SEO Consultation for all new clients. The normal charge for this is $150/hour. This is not where we just give you a sales pitch about our services. This is free SEO advice about your project. We feel it is a great way to advertise our business while giving us the opportunity to help you with yours.

Pay SEO Service Provider a visit or call us at 786-317-8774.