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5 Important Reasons to Hire Professional SEO Services

August 3, 2012 by Liz

by
Prarthana Majumdar

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5 Important Reasons to Hire Professional SEO Services

When you take your business online, it becomes vital to hire professional SEO services. It is the SEO experts who take care of optimizing your website to search engine requirements. That will help you achieve the boost in traffic that gets search engines to move you forward in their listings.

Here are 5 important reasons to hire professional SEO services:

  1. Professional SEO services are designed to increase the visibility of a website and facilitate in better traffic flow along with improved profit sales return.
  2. SEO professionals take the help of various SEO tools and techniques like keywords analysis, link building, on-page, off-page SEO, directory submission etc. in order to increase your webpage ranking in search indexes.
  3. A website can rely on a professional SEO service to make choices that generate quality and relevant traffic.
  4. Using the right set of keywords suggested by a professional SEO service will work in attracting related traffic flow to a website.
  5. Link building, another essential aspect of professional SEO services, can seriously increase the popularity of a website among the top search engines.

Make sure that you choose these services from cost-effective and affordable SEO service.

Author’s Bio:
Prarthana Majumdar is an expert SEO writer with considerable years of experience. This article has been solely written to provide you with an expert SEO solution and guide. To learn more on these SEO topics like professional SEO services and affordable SEO service visit his website.

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Filed Under: SEO, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, hire SEO services, LinkedIn, online business presence, optimize your website, Reasons to Hire SEO, SEO, small business

Do You Have an SEO Game Plan for Your Small Business?

July 18, 2012 by Guest Author

by
Miguel Salcido

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SEO and ROI

With all that small business owners have to do on a daily basis, a thorough SEO game plan can often fall by the wayside.

In fact, some business owners end up neglecting SEO altogether, leaving them with missed opportunities for traffic back to their sites and a better return on investment (ROI). Think about it, your small business could very easily be missing out on free traffic, from qualified leads, who are interested in your products and services.

As a small business owner, do you feel you have a strong SEO game plan in place, an average one or you’re simply missing the boat when it comes to SEO?

Do You Have an SEO Game Plan for Your Small Business?

Get Started
BigStock: Get Started!

In the event you find yourself in the latter category, take some time now before you fall further behind to see how you can get on the boat and sail towards better returns.

Among the advantages for your business having a solid SEO presence include:

  • Increasing sales through qualified business leads from search engines;
  • Better Web site performance and more traffic showcasing your brand awareness;
  • Added credibility and legitimacy for your brand;
  • Tie in to specific keywords that consumers will utilize to come to your site.

In taking a look at some of the above-mentioned items, keep in mind that your goal at the end of the day is to drive traffic to your site, preferably traffic that is interested in purchasing from your business. With the right SEO game plan, you are able to gain the attention of top business prospects, increasing the chances of a sale.

Another factor to keep in mind is that you are better served putting out products and services based on the keyword search terms that led visitors to your site in the first place.

Okay, doing what was just mentioned above makes sense, right? In order to successfully do that, you need to be recording and analyzing your SEO metrics.

Make sure you are able to see via statistics where you have a competitive edge over the competition and where you need to increase your efforts. Find the keywords that rank best for you in leading traffic back to your site, stay on top of the ones that are working, and look to improve upon other terms that need a little boost.

Lastly, many small business owners are working on tight budgets to begin with, so they go back-and-forth as to whether or not they should hire someone for in-house SEO or outsource it.


Remember that the most important question to answer is discovering how many people are searching for what you sell.

If you are a tech-savvy business owner or have a tight budget, you may look to do SEO efforts on your own or contract them out. If you have more of a budget to work with, consider hiring a company that specializes in delivering SEO results to small businesses.

At the end of the day, your small business wants and needs a steady stream of referrals coming to your site with the potential to buy.

When deployed properly, SEO marketing can be a very cost-effective means by which the small business owner drives quality traffic to their site, traffic that can very well lead to a purchase.

Author’s Bio:
Author Miguel Salcido, held executive positions with large search marketing agencies over the years and now runs an SEO consulting services agency and loves fielding questions over at his organic SEO blog so feel free to reach out to him there.

Thank you, Miguel. Understanding SEO as part of social business is so important.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Filed Under: SEO, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, business growth, business referrals, LinkedIn, SEO, small business

How to Your Boost Quality Content in Organic Search Results

July 13, 2012 by Guest Author

Basic SEO

by
Jun Raisun Llamera

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How To Generate High Organic Search Results

While search engine optimization (SEO) is widely used in the online world, particularly in the internet marketing industry, there are still many internet marketers struggling to get their pages visible. Most of the popular search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) offer two types of search results: paid results (mostly at the top) and organic results. The only difference of the two is that paid results are “paid placements” and organic results occur naturally through searcher interest in the page topic.

Often internet marketers prefer the former since you’ll only have to do a little bit of work, and your cash will do the rest of it – an instant visibility assurance on search engines they say. Organic results, on the other hand, do not require cash. To get organic results, the key is producing relevant, up-to-date content worth sharing from your Web site. That means you have to be original and well versed on the topics you are publishing on your site.

The height of producing high organic results does not end there. No matter how relevant and latest your page displays, you can give your work a boost getting to the top.

Use of Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools can give you detailed statistics and reports about your Web sites’ visibility on Google, depending on how you manage them to aid you. Such as why you are getting 404 and 503 errors (page not found or unavailable), and which URLs are linking to your web site. Webmaster tools also offer to verify the status of your XML sitemap flow (like how it is submitted or how your pages are being indexed so users can find them).

You’ll only need a Google account, sign up, add your site, and then create your XML sitemap. And if you are using WordPress (http://www.wordpress.com/), you’ll be able install its WordPress plug in version.

Thorough and Keen Keyword Research

Unless you haven’t heard it repeatedly, keyword research is still the best way to produce relevant content. These are the natural or organic search keywords (or phrases) that you want to be optimized so people who are searching for those terms will eventually find you (immediately). Many webmasters rely on two main factors to work this: optimizing your pages for these keywords (avoid the temptation to overstuff your work with the same keyword), and getting inbound links that use link anchor text matching the keywords you’ve targeted.

Apparently, there is no specific tool that can tell you what keywords will be on top search in the upcoming hours or days, but the Google Keywords Tool is a good place to start. Write about what really interests in ways that will get other people interested in it too. Use the tool to find the words and search language people use to find information like what you wrote.

Producing high organic search results is not an easy thing to do, that’s why others choose the paid results or a combination of both. But one good thing that makes it a lot better that the others is that people mostly prefer relevancy and not advertisements.

—-

Author’s Bio:
Jun Raisun Llamera writes about ways to promote your business online and how to generate traffic to your websites at Ardor Backlinks . He is also the author of “Tips To Maximize The Effects Of Your Social Media Presence”. You can find him on Twitter as @JunRaisun

Thank you for adding to the conversation!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Filed Under: SEO, Successful Blog, Tools Tagged With: bc, Google, Keywords tool, LinkedIn, organic search, paid search, SEO, small business, Webmaster tools

What Google Penguin and Panda Updates Mean for Blogs

June 12, 2012 by Guest Author

by
Jen Thames

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Google Penguin and Panda Updates and Blog Search Engine Results

In the blogging world Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and placement in Google Organic Search isn’t usually at the top of the priority list. Bloggers blog to add value to the lives of other people. Google seems to have finally recognized this with their newest algorithmic update (still in progress) called Google Penguin.

Google has released two major updates recently in an effort to combat spam. They are called Google Panda and Google Penguin. It’s over simplification but basically:

Google Panda attacks the misuse of keywords
Google Penguin attacks the misuse of links

Great articles about Penguin’s affects on SEO in general can be found on the websites SEOMOZ and Search Engine Land . This article looks at what Google’s Penguin update means specifically for bloggers.

Bloggers Were Helped by the Google Penguin Update

Bloggers who are just out there producing great content may find their numbers skyrocketing after Google Penguin (most recent May 25th/May26th and June 7th/8th). Why? Well, the update looks to take away credit from linking strategies that have created unnatural organic placement for websites in the past.

Google uses more than 200 separate ranking factors for organic search. One of the results of Penguin’s update is that more “professional” sites are now trumped by smaller blogs especially for targeted keyword searches. As the larger websites fall the smaller blogs rise.

For example, researching a Lean Management book entitled Toyota Kata returned several small blogs in the top search positions. The author’s University of Michigan personal page for the book actually ranked below the blog reviews when searching for the words Toyota Kata Reviews.

Generally, longer blog posts seem to be doing well post Penguin update. Widely shared posts are doing really well.

Post Google Penguin: Things Bloggers Should Know

Despite the positive sides of Penguin for many bloggers the new updates can also cause a blog’s placement in organic search to decline. Here are some of the reasons your blog rankings may have declined post Penguin.

Penguin has hit many directories hard. Google has decided that many of the directories and bloggers rolls were just too spammy. They have lowered the ranking of many directories and this in turn can lower the ranking of your own blog.

Comments that have links to spammy sites and bad incoming links can negatively affect your ranking. Google is supposedly developing a disavow tool as we speak to give websites the power to remove unwanted incoming links when they occur. The ETA on this new disavow tool is 6 months.

Specific Blogs will do better post Penguin. Your blog may be too general and this can hurt your organic rankings. Here is why. Google places a higher value on incoming links that come from websites that are similar to your own. If your blog topic is too general the likelihood of other sites linking to you from unrelated sites is higher. For example, lets say you have a home improvement blog and somewhere along the line you wrote a large series on building doghouses. Through that series a group of pet supply stores started to link to your blog to show their customers how to build doghouses. Google’s computer bots might not get the connection between pet supplies and DIY.

Paid affiliate links can hurt if the ratio is too high. Provided the ratio of paid links to unpaid links is not too high the blog should be ok. However, this is something to watch.

Things Bloggers Can Do to Boost Traffic and Take Advantage of Panda/Penguin

Update! Update! Update! Do what you do and do it well. Google is completely on board right now with blogging. The more you update the better you will do in organic search.

Produce amazingly useful content that is widely shared. Here are three examples from blogs in different industries.

  • writing on Pinterest
  • The 10 Best Do It Yourself (DIY) Websites
  • Who and Where are the Facebook Four?

Accept posts and ask for guest posts from bloggers within your own industry. The links that connect guest posts are organic, useful for readers and OK by Google!

Do sign up for good blog rolls and directories. The safe list on SEOMOZ is a great place to start.

Learn Google’s rules and use their tools. Google tools are useful and they can quickly keep you up to date on all the new things happening at Google.

Don’t put all of your marketing eggs in one basket. Google is not the only search engine out there, and organic search is not the only way people will find your blog! There are a variety of other ways to market your blog that may be just as good at driving traffic as Google organic rankings. Alternative marketing strategies include:

  • Mobile marketing (for phones and tablets)
  • Local marketing (Google Places, Bing Business and Yahoo! Local)
  • Promotional product marketing (using real promotional products like green shopping bags)
  • Social Media Marketing
  • PPC marketing

Have a mixed basket and no matter what Google does in the future viewers will find you and the blog will grow!

Author’s Bio:
Jen Thames writes about marketing and business at SixSigmaOnline. You can find her on Twitter as @SixSigmaAveta

Thank you, Jen! Great information on the update. Love having it all one in place.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Filed Under: SEO, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, blog SEO, Google, Guest-Writer, link strategy, Panda Update, Penguin Update, small business, spam

How Three Tips from a Babysitter Helped me Establish a Successful SEO Agency

April 19, 2012 by R. Mfar

We learn some of the best lessons in our lifetime when we are young. Not only that, but most of the times life throws invaluable lessons at us when we are least expecting. But surprisingly, some of those lessons stay with us and keep helping for a long time to come. The reason for the childhood lessons being more effective as compared to those we have in the later stages of our lives, is probably the willingness to listen and to learn from others as compared to how flexible we are, once we grow old.

Coming back to our topic, the tips I was talking about actually came from a babysitter who did pretty well in landing herself job after job as a caretaker, always getting calls and referrals from parents who were looking for a nanny. These tips were meant for someone else who was looking for some babysitting jobs (and getting none), but somehow, these tips got stuck in my mind, and years later, when I founded a small SEO agency, I ended up using these tips to boost my clientele.

Let me share those simple yet very effective tips with you guys …

Tip # 1:

Getting your first clients is going to be the most difficult part, mainly because you don’t have the experience or confidence to help you. If that’s the case, you should try doing some short babysitting gigs for free. Even better, you should assist or go along with an experienced nanny or babysitter in your neighborhood to get some experience. And that’s what I did when I first started my SEO agency. Before I started my own business, I had actually worked as an SEO expert in a well-known company, but I couldn’t share that work for some reasons (was bound by some sort of a NDA), and it was practically impossible to grab some projects without having anything to boast in my portfolio. So I acted upon the advice and accepted some projects for free (or dirt cheap prices). Needless to say, it didn’t took me long in convincing those clients to start giving me work at normal rates, not only that, but I was able to generate an impressive portfolio without wasting any time.

Tip # 2:

Ask the parents for whom you have babysat to refer you to their friends, if not, ask them to write a couple of lines and use it in your broachers (of course after getting their consent). In online world, these are known as testimonials. The point is, when you have done your best and the client is happy with your work; don’t just stop at getting the payment and departing. Tell them that you are looking for more work, and ask them to refer your services to their contacts. In my case, one of the most consistent sources of orders so far has been the customers referred by my clients.

Tip # 3:

Lastly, make sure that you are putting your best foot forward, regardless of the compensation you will be getting for the job. Remember that both in babysitting, as well as Internet Marketing, your client’s needs are usually of recurring nature, and satisfying one client means that you’ve booked them for a long time to come. Every time they are looking for someone to take care of their child or website, you will be the first person that comes to their mind. And so, probably the best way to market your business is to perform in a way that causes your clients to have a high opinion of you.

__

Natasha is an SEO and Internet Marketing expert. Apart from an SEO agency, she runs a discounts website where you will find coupon codes for sittercity promo coupon (find it here) and care.com code (get it). Teenagers looking for babysitting jobs can use these discounts to join sittercity or care.com and find babysitting jobs.

Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, SEO Tagged With: bc

Ideas & Infographs: How to Build a New Age Marketing Machine

December 5, 2011 by Guest Author

by Mihaela Lica

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The Right Balance of Human & Machine Outreach

Human powered search engines to artificial intelligence (AI), technology not only astounds us, but at times confounds us as to its proper uses. The same holds true for PR, marketing, advertising, even yelling at your next door neighbors for their dog barking. How and what you use to convey your messages is a crucial part of success, no matter what your goal. SPAMMING current or potential clients is only one negative where mechanized marketing is concerned, the “who” of method is just as crucial. How the message is received, this is the rub for all corporate, business, or personal community.

The infographic below reveals a good balance and some insight into how a new age marketing machine should be built. Using the right proportion of personable and technological (mechanical) power can work wonders for your business outreach. Conversely, the wrong mix will lose conversions, make some angry, and become an overall burden on your personal and business brand. You can’t grow your business to its potential, without thinking of how your message is perceived, adopted, and reverberated.

[Click the image to see the isolated infograph and again to see it full size.]

Understanding Marketing Automation

Marketing mechanization is then, in a real sense, just an extension of a good, standard communications strategy. Even “brick and mortar” PR & marketing firms do not SPAM their constituents with post office clutter, the balance is still crucial. Ask any great communicator today about chosing the right mix, and you will invartiably get the simple answers presented in the graphic above. Of course the long tail of overall communications strategies is complex, and for in depth professionals to implement, but you see the value.

Even in your personal mailbox, you can see the wisdom of correlating what you enjoy looking at, versus what really turns you off about newsletters and other communique. For the expert that comes up with the best balance? Well, the sky is the limit, wouldn’t you say? We hope you enjoyed the data above, and please let us know your views on best practices too.

—-

Author’s Bio:

Mihaela “Mig” Lica founded Pamil Visions in 2005 where she uses her hard won journalistic, SEO and public relations skills toward helping small companies navigate the digital realm with influence and success.

You can find Mig on Twitter as @PamilVisions

Thanks, Mig!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, SEO, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, Infographic, LinkedIn, Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Search

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