Ten deceptive SEO company ‘tricks’

When it comes to SEO tactics, there are many ways for clients to be deceived.

Make sure you’re NOT one of them…

  1. Ranking No:1 in Google: Let’s face it there are hundreds of terms an SEO can rank first for & on the first page for in Google. Now, you have to remember it’s the quality of the search term you rank for that’s important. So how do you decide between a good search term and one that is just simply Ok? Well to start with if you count the number of words in the search term it’s usually harder to achieve high rankings the less words you have, however, if a short search term has an obscure word within it, it may be less competitive i.e. ‘SEO superstar’ would be a much easier search term to rank for than ‘SEO specialist‘ because the latter is searched for more often, meaning it is far more competitive.
  2. Ranking No:1 in Google: Does the SEO’s own domain name incorporate the search term used? It’s a fact, if you have the desired search term within your domain name you hold a distinct advantage. In fact if your SEO consultant ranks on the first page for a term that he/she has contained in his/her domain name it’s likely their knowledge of SEO is very limited indeed!! 
  3. Ranking No:1 in Google: Using Google Places – Yes, that’s right, there are businesses out there that will still maintain this is ‘proper SEO’ and it can be argued that they’re right – in a way. However, the skill required in achieving this ‘ranking’ is absolutely zero and we are all likely to diminish the ‘achievement’ further by asking “Did you add your business to Google places”, it’s that simple to do!
  4. Rank 1st page in Google: How often do you hear SEO companies promise that they will get you on the first page of Google results? What they should be talking about is how much relevant traffic they think they can achieve from natural online searches for your products or services.
  5. Ranking 1st page in Google – Guaranteed: It’s so easy to achieve if you target those particular keywords that no-one searches for or if there is very little competition for them! i.e. “Aoratherapy Technician in Bungay, Norfolk”. However, this tactic is definitely used as a hook by some SEO companies to drive enquiries through to their sales teams.
  6. First page On Google: Ok, so let’s say your SEO consultant convinces you that they can optimise your site properly and get you decent first page positions. What next? Have they discussed training? Have they shown you how to use your website properly?
  7. Is SEO purely about getting to the first page on Google?: Absolutely not, ask what experience the company has in helping to achieve online sales? What do they know about payment options? And what things should you look out for with credit card fraud? How good is their overall knowledge in your field of business? Let’s face it if an SEO consultant has enough knowledge wouldn’t they use it to set up their own rival business?! If not, then why not?
  8. Don’t be afraid to ask for references: Make sure you follow this up, regardless of how nice or knowledgeable the SEO/Developer seems!
  9. Dealing with international SEO Companies: It’s likely your SEO company will be based in India. Is it a problem? Well it depends on whether your business depends on the Queens english, there is a massive difference between Search Engine OptimiZation & Search Engine Optimisation. A bigger SEO company doesn’t automatically mean a better one, and a larger SEO company usually involves call centres or could even be just that – a call centre with operators who know a limited amount about SEO. Do you really want to work with an SEO company that asks for your account number before discussing why your SEO campaign is underperforming?!
  10. SEO for $39.99 pcm: If you see offers like this you can guarantee you will get what you pay for – very little! Let’s say you are in the retail business and your biggest competition is the high street. Do you really think you will be able to compete by spending this little on SEO?
Development, Marketing Online, Norfolk SEO Consultancy, Norwich SEO, Norwich SEO Consultancy, Online Marketing

The Seven Natural Wonders of SEO

If you’ve ever wondered why companies use SEO here are a few things you should know:

  1. Fixed Costs -  The cost of implementing an SEO program is relatively fixed and is totally unrelated to the volume of unique visits to a website. Effectively, the cost per click or per visit resulting directly from the SEO campaign reduces over time.  Following the initial website optimisation costs it is comparitively less to continue an SEO program and further cement your first page positions. How successful an SEO campaign is will depend on two factors, firstly the ability and application of your SEO consultant & whether you have made the effort and followed the instructions they have provided.  Conversely, pay per click (PPC) is essentially a variable cost and has to be used effectively whilst keeping track of your Return on Investment (ROI).
  2. Brand Visibility - When you consider how tough it is to rank highly for competitive terms, for example ‘car insurance’, then it is no surprise to learn how expensive pay per click marketing is in regard to generating site visits. It is therefore extremely difficult to gain brand awareness online without utilising SEO techniques. Staying with this example you can imagine how desperate the big insurance players are to have a first page presence on Google thus driving up the cost of using Adwords. The bottom line is smaller companies miss out, by being outpriced in the stakes to generate leads online. SEO redresses the balance however, and a competent SEO Company can get you competing in this market place within your budget restraints.
  3. Target Marketing – Online search is demand driven, so anybody referred to your site via a search engine is expecting your web page to match their search query. If it does, and your content influences them, they may well become your next customer. Marketing to people who are physically typing in a request for your products or services, and providing a landing page that solves these needs is the most effective marketing weapon your business can posess and one you should be taking full advantage of.
  4. Credibility - Consumers expect big brand businesses to be prominently positioned in Google. Websites with high ranking natural positions will always hold more credibility than those using pay per click advertising purely because people correctly assume that Google will always show quality content naturally.
  5. Consistency - Well positioned websites that are fully optimised consistently generate fresh traffic from relevant search terms, driving continual interest and further enquiries.
  6. Increased Sales & Enquiries - Along with increased traffic, a fully optimised website will also enjoy an increase in sales revenue because more people will be visiting the site and more people will be buying products. 
  7. Affordability - There are many ways in which you can promote your website online. SEO aside, the next most popular website promotion method is PPC which in basic terms translates as paid advertisements. As the term suggests a business would pay the search engine an agreed fee whenever this advertising link is clicked on. Pay Per Click can work alongside search engine optimisation to boost results further and can still be a very powerful marketing tool if used correctly. The difference between the two is that SEO gains you natural rankings within the search engines (over time) whereas PPC gives you instant results by advertising your products or services at the top and right hand side of the search results page.

 Meanwhile, if you’ve ever wondered what the downside of SEO is I would have to say “there isn’t one, unless you hire the wrong SEO company or SEO consultant that is!”

Norfolk SEO, Norfolk SEO Consultancy, Norwich SEO, Norwich SEO Consultancy, Online Marketing

Developers Giving SEO a Bad Name

We realise this might look like “another rant” but just this week we’ve had calls from disgruntled parties who’ve purchased SEO ‘services’ from their local Web Designer / Developer.

When we research these companies it is obvious to the trained eye that their understanding of online marketing is limited at best. 

Their lack of scruples is simply giving SEO a bad name and making their ‘victims’ far less trusting of the genuine professionals operating in the SEO industry.

Add to this the many ‘quick buck charlie’ SEO companies that have sprung up in the name of profit, and you have an industry that is causing its own demise.

It’s actually quite easy to recognise these so called ‘SEO companies’ when they advertise for business. Infact, you may have noticed this yourself with so many SEO companies now using Google AdWords to advertise and attract new business leads!

There is of course a certain irony in a company selling SEO services by using Pay Per Click in order to be seen on the first page of Google!!! However not everyone can be up there for such competitive terms as “SEO” or “Search Engine Optimisation” and to achieve such a feat would require a prolonged SEO campaign. However, it should be expected that a company selling SEO should command decent ‘organic’ positions for competitive search terms.

More often than not, companies who are not experienced SEO’s are offing SEO services to their clients when they may well have had THEIR website designed before SEO even became a factor.

This is a big mistake… To be able to offer this service you require actual industry experience & not just have read about it in a book or magazine article…

I can understand the problems that face these designers and developers, but it is simple – if they do not change with the times they will become obsolete, no different in fact to operating systems such as Windows 95/98/2000/XP/Vista etc.

It has to be said though, that the same goes for SEO consultants. Things move on and an SEO’s training should be incorporating new techniques and information for the future – all the time. It’s an industry constantly changing and evolving and those who stop bothering to move with it will quickly need to find new careers.

Take other industries – law, construction, health and transport for example – they all have to move with the times, constant change is an ever present and to those developers who are selling a substandard SEO service I have to say, “SHAME ON YOU & STOP BEING LAZY!

The fast lane is where every forward thinking business should be and quality SEO advice is key to success.

Development, Online Marketing, Web Design

Google Seo

If you want your business to be seen then optimisation for Google is simply the best way to target your market audience, when i’m asked why I have one simple answer – “It’s Keyword specific” & if used correctly will allow your company to present the ideal information to the searcher who is likely to be your potential customer.

Seo Google searches

Seo Google searches

There is lots of information online about SEO and many angles that SEO consultants will like to talk about especially for ranking highly in Google but equally the emphasis must be about providing what that particular user is looking for and delivery of the page has to be structured with sales in mind.
There is a school of thought amongst us more senior SEO specialists that delivery of traffic is only part of the process. Ultimately all that matters is that the user finds what they are looking for and are convinced that the page they have entered convinces them that:
a) They have found the right product or service.
b) They are confident that the company is exactly what they are looking for.
c) They feel safe to buy or use that particular product or service.
Other factors are equally important but this gives potential clients an idea, it is not just about gaining higher position on Google.
A good SEO specialist will add serious value to your business by looking for potential and opportunities and presenting them as potential growth areas.

Good Seo Specialists will also double as online business consultants.

Always remember what Google preaches, it’s all about quality and the better the page you present to that target keyword the more business you will produce from it. Google is so highly thought of by it’s users because it has developed the best system of delivering the information and products that follow the guidelines and are supported by others, however the sales and enquiries go to those that convince the searcher they need look no further.

Development, Online Marketing, Online Retail Stores, Search Engine News

Organic SEO

organic seoWhen surfing on the Internet with the use of a search engine the results shown are from two different sources.

One source is paid for by £x.xx amount per click and the other is what the search engine thinks is the most likely match using it’s algorithms. Algorithms (or rules) are defined by the search engine you will use so to achieve good placement in these searches you will need to use SEO (search engine optimisation) which makes sure your website is optimised to maximise the pages for these untold rules.

For those of you that are not familiar with the term Organic, it is a term which defines the unpaid links and if you are serious about achieving a good placement you will need to employ the best SEO specialist you can find. Google is the mother of all search engines and this is the one that has to be targeted whereby placement on Yahoo and MSN etc will come naturally as a result.

Each keyword term entered by users in the search engines will result in a number of searches over a given amount of time, the higher the volume the more competitive that term will get. So for SEO specialists to guarantee 1st page placement on google for a “low fee” please expect your website to rank highly for a organic search term that is rarely used.

Pay per click SEO can have instant effects on the traffic coming to your website, however the down side is that if your website isn’t optimised then you will be forever locked into this bill and a percentage of this bill will not be generated by customers but by your competitors who want to use up you budget. AdWords is google’s version of pay per click it’s simple to use and is a great tool to see what response your website gets which is useful to help you with the tweaking on the website design.

Organic traffic through SEO may mean that you have to work hard and pay up front so to speak, but the benefits are much greater and more sustainable plus people tend to trust the organic listings than the “could be fly by night websites” using AdWords.

 

Online Marketing, Online Retail Stores
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SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION SPECIALISTS

Seo Specialists - Website Optimisation & Search Engine Optimisation Consultancy.

Thoroughly research relevent keywords specific to your business for effective SEO. The main purpose of organic SEO is to increase relevant or targeted traffic for all those right keywords through search engines. SEO can take up lots of effort plus depending on your industry it can sometimes take up lots of money. You should have a clear idea right from the start as to what keywords you want to target. There are a number of tools available on the Internet, even Google has a free tool for choosing keywords. Seo professionals will also target key phrases as well as those more difficult terms. These have lower volumes of traffic, but if enough of them are targeted the total will add up to a sizeable amount. By their very nature they will also have low levels of completion making it easier and quicker for you to achieve higher search engine rankings and get your SEO campaign of to a good start. Relevant content FOR seo makes your website information-rich, if the site provides meaningful information people will come back to it it will increases your keyword density and it gives your website ULP (unique linking property) this will increase those all important inbound links. Updating your website with new relevant content is a good long term SEO strategy which will drive you up the search engines. Make sure you have unique titles for every page as titles are used by the search engines to both rank and display pages. Leveraging your page titles will also increase your rankings and search engine traffic. Your description Meta tag should describe your page in one or two sentences, and of course include your keywords but also selling the page to the potential searcher. Content at the top of the page is considered more important than the content below, so ensure your SEO keywords are near the top of the page. Use semantic HTML where possible. Ensure you use semantic HTML and that your keywords appear within the header tags. Your website will need to be using search engine friendly URLs. Try not to use dynamically generated URLs, as these are usually lacking in keywords. I am happy to take on SEO in London or any of the other major cities like Manchester as SEO jobs or contracts can be undertaken as i work online. Talking about SEO, We have a new client who are specialist's in Pond Construction Security Norfolk  Letterboxes
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION Our goal is simple: we want to make the Internet a successful addition to your business. That means making websites user friendly and visible to web surfers by promoting the pages in the natural search engine results with the skills and contacts in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) that we have, also by using paid advertising methods such as Pay Per Click (PPC). As a Search engine optimisation specialist i can help drive more unique visitors to your website. This is far more complex than simple search engines submissions and to achieve increased volumes of traffic, your website will need to be optimised, if done correctly the site will will then be structured so that all pages are search engine friendly and get indexed. Achieving first page Search Engine listings naturally and effective PPC campaigns will bring regular visitors which your business can receive regular enquiries - The deciding factor then is what you have to offer potential customers. Through extensive research we know what works and what doesn't in SEO, with the key factor of our service being the actual website optimisation and link building. What is Search Engine Optimisation? Search Engine Optimisation is primarily about creating valuable information for the end user. Effectively Website Optimisation ensures that your companies website presents an excellent user experience, therefore growing in value to Search Engines through natural linking. Many think Search Engine Optimisation is only about manipulating placement results which isn't as effective as website Optimisation that is ensuring that your company's website delivers what potential clients want of which the search engines can interpret. Any site that follows these basic principles will find their website will add real value to their organisation, and once Website Optimisation is in place your website will be ready to compete for more competitive keywords. So Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or Search Engine Optimization as the Americans call it, is the practice of modifying a website so that it is considered to be Search Engine Friendly. If a website can be properly read by the search engine spiders, there is an increased probability of achieving desirable results in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). The primary task for any Search Engine Optimisation company is to understand your product and customers and the search terms these people are using to find a product or service related to the website owner. An aspect rarely mentioned is that to be good at SEO the specialist must have had lots of life experience which can only come with age One rule which we constantly preach to our clients is that in Search Engine Optimisation their content must be unique. It's no secret that google filters out websites or pages that contain duplicate content from other websites so its not a good idea to copy!! besides that every company is different so they should be shouting out about their good points and not someone else's. With SEO clients should be fully aware that when optimising websites, organic rankings don't increase overnight and it can take up to six months and even longer for highly competitive keywords. Other factors such as domain age can affect the time it takes also. Even your domain name can have an effect on search engine results. Generally though the more pages you have and the more articles you have, the more search terms related to your business you will rank highly for. One thing for sure after all the process of getting a website tuned and positioned gaining free traffic is that, it's well worth the effort and will bring you a consistent level of new found business of which your website will be responsible for, This is where your company starts to get a return on it's investment. If a jobs worth doing it's worth doing right!! I hope that after reading this you will see I know my job - and i know how to do it well!! A WORD OF WARNING Hiring as bad SEO company can also get your website banned as well as not achieving what you set out to do for the privilege of a fee.

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