You might be surprised to learn that Matt Cutts, who works for the Search Quality group at Google has most recently come out with comments about meta tags or more specifically “keyword” meta tags and stated “Google does not use keyword meta tags” in their rankings. For the longest time many SEO professionals pounded the desk suggesting that keyword meta tags were critical for any SEO campaign.

According to most SEO Companies, Google has for many years completely ignored this tag which has made the use of this meta tag completely pointless. I know as a Denver SEO company, we have definitely utilized the keyword meta tag and we will continue to do so. It is not that we believe that this meta tag would help us in the rankings, rather we have used it to define the theme of each page that we publish. So, although Google has stated that they do not utilize the keyword meta tag, we have still found much use for it.

Usually when speaking to anyone with any knowledge of SEO, they will go over a list of important factors to complete when working on a SEO campaign. One of the first things we hear many SEO companies speak about or write about is the importance of keywords in the keyword meta tag. This might be a warning to those that are looking for the experienced professionals who actually know SEO and focus not only on “onsite Optimization” but “offsite optimization” or link building as well. I have included the Matt Cutts Video in this post about Google’s complete lack of interest in the keyword meta tag, you can read more about their disinterest in the keyword meta tag here on their very own Webmaster Tools blog.

So why would Google disregard the keywords meta tag anyway? It started several years ago when the meta tag was actually abused by many website owners. If Google strictly followed the keywords in the meta tags, than it would be easy to mislead or misdirect the search engines. Google has probably one of the most elaborate and complex algorithms for their search results which has made them a market leader in search. So it is going to take much more than meta tag to throw them off course.

Even though Google has stated that they ignore keywords, we will continue to use this meta tag as previously described. It gives us direction for each page that we produce and keeps our entire campaign organized so we find it very useful even if Google does not. However, when you are talking to that next search engine optimization sales representative or SEO Company that goes through their thorough process of search engine optimization, you might ask,”How important is the meta tag keywords for a SEO campaign?” You might just be talking with one of those that is not in the know and this would be a good way to find out!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Most of the sites we have worked on that have been built by “website designers” are not effectively producing leads for that business. We have seen some of the most beautiful websites but without traffic and without new customers what good are they? Your online business should be another source of income and customers. If you trust the right people to work with your website designer than you might have a shot of obtaining both.

Please do not misunderstand what I am saying here. Website designers are very useful if their services are used in the correct capacity. Most web designers do not have a clue how to build a website that is developed to convert traffic or drive floods of traffic to the site; most developers that I have talked with would agree. Usually web designers are focused on aesthetics, navigation, look and feel and not placement in the search engines.

So why do you have a website?

Most business owners that I speak with have a website so that they can develop more online business. When I say this, what I mean is they are looking for more prospects or customers online. They definitely want to see some type of return from their website as most of them have spent a small fortune on developing the site to begin with. So if that is the case for you, it is probably best to make certain that the web designer you are working with owns a successful online business and knows also how to run it. They should be able to show you some successful online campaigns that they have led and give you references for their work. Simply showing you websites that they have built is not enough. I know that you want a “pretty” site
but I am certain it is more important that you are able to develop new customers from your site, right? It only stands to reason that your website designer should have the same experience that would deliver the results you are looking to achieve yourself!

Your website is your business online!

Sure it is nice to have a charming storefront, one that customers constantly compliment. Does it bring in cash flow? Is your office, store, garage or retail space built for sales?

These are the same types of questions that you should be asking yourself about your website. Your website is not there to win awards or compliments, you are building this website to make money and build customer relationships. Even if you have the lowest prices online and are providing more services than your nearest competitor, it is the website that attracts more traffic that wins more prospects and customers. Being the best at marketing your product and services is really all that matters at the end of the day. Stop reading this right now, hop on Google and check it out. Use a search term that a customer would use to find your business. If you don’t know what they would type in, go to Google’s free adwords keyword tool and locate a search term related to your business or service. (To locate Google’s free keyword tool simply search for “adwords keyword tool” in Google)

Now, after you have located a popular search term for your business, search it! Open the first “organic” result that you see (by organic, I do not mean any of the “sponsored links” or local listings next to the map), what do you think of your competition’s website? Is it the prettiest site you have seen? Is it the “coolest” site you have ever been too? If I was to place a wager on it, my guess is that it is none of the above. Probably a very average looking site at best, yet all of your prospective customers are coming here first.

Marketing online is not like you’re off-line marketing

On every website project I have ever been a part of it seems that somebody always has a problem with a font that we have chosen or an image that we had used. While branding is extremely important and the look and feel of your website is important as well, it is important to remember that all of the communication tools and techniques that you use in the real world are very different than what works online. Whatever type of marketing you are doing in the real world may be a complete and utter failure online. This is why it is so critical to work with an online marketing agency or consultant who has experience with successful websites. When I state successful, I mean websites that have a proven track record of traffic and generating leads. Usually these types of individuals know what works best for traffic conversion and online marketing. For example, online marketing absolutely requires you to know how to get your site ranked extremely high in search engines like Google and Yahoo so that you organically show up on the first page for customers that are searching for your product or services.

Most website designers and businesses do not know SEO or search engine optimization. If a business owner does know and understand how to optimize their own website; they usually do not have the time to implement all of the tactics and techniques used by a search engine optimization professional to make the campaign successful. It is imperative for any online business to have both an optimized presence as well as a strong marketing campaign online! This means that not only should the site be optimized for search engine optimization but there must be a campaign put in place for search engine marketing.

If you are looking to market online, only work with Internet marketing firms that know website and online marketing

I know it’s a simple statement but probably 97% of web design companies do not know how to create websites that actually market your products and services. Often times when we are talking with prospective customers about search engine optimization they refer to their experience with the larger corporations that have handled their pay per click campaigns and even their “search engine optimization campaigns”. You absolutely must work with people that know how to create “high traffic” websites that can “convert”. A sales representative from one of the larger advertising directories doesn’t usually have knowledge of SEO. Usually he/she can regurgitate whatever pitch their sales manager gave them that morning and sure it sounds good, but will the team behind him/her be able to deliver the product that you were promised? Usually they cannot deliver the results that were originally promised or they are able to show minimal results compared to a firm or company that is dedicated to internet marketing. Internet marketing takes a great deal of time and cannot happen overnight. You’ll need to work with a team that can make it possible for you to have an online revenue stream. These people must have real world experience as well as online experience that can combine your website into a practical functioning marketing machine for your business! The best combination would be a search engine optimization professional that has sales and marketing experience or a marketing company that has proven search engine optimization experience.

If you are attempting to perform search engine optimization or search engine marketing without a professional, that would be very similar to representing yourself in court if you are not a lawyer or building your own house if you are not a general contractor. Granted, I’m certain that you could learn any one of these trades but it is probably best if you focused on the strengths you have in your business rather than trying to focus all of your time and energy on staying up to date with Internet marketing. The most successful businesses and business leaders have developed a team of experts and surrounded themselves with experience.

Lastly, MEASURE THE RESULTS!

It doesn’t matter whether or not you are advertising in the Yellow Pages, newspapers, local trade magazines, or a bulletin board near your office! You will always, always want to measure the success of any marketing campaign to validate its effect on business. It is never a surprise for us to see a prospective client that has absolutely no idea about the amount of traffic they get on a daily, monthly, or yearly basis. Usually they do not know where they get the traffic from, how long visitors are on their website, or what keywords brought them to their site to begin with. You should always pay attention to your key performance indicators for your online strategy and if your web developer has not shown you how to monitor the results of your website, you might want to consider working with a different developer.

At the end of the day, a website developer is absolutely needed to help you with your website; however, they are usually best at working with code, graphics and overall look and feel. An internet marketing professional is what will help you take your online business to the next level. Either a professional search engine marketing firm or agency will help you establish a marketing plan for your site so that you can start to see results from your presence online.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

 So by now, if you’re learning about SEO (search engine optimization/search engine marketing), you’ve probably heard of Black Hat SEO. What exactly is spamming as far as SEO is concerned? Ultimately search engines like Google, Yahoo, ask and MSN want to provide the most accurate and complete research results that they can to their target market. At the end of the day, a search engine is only as good as the results that it delivers to those that use it. If their audience does not have faith in their search capability, the traffic will dry out and so will the sponsored listing fees as well, and any other advertising fees that they’re able to obtain.

It wasn’t all that long ago (1994) that Internet marketers used various techniques to trick search engines into positioning their sites high in the search results for search terms that didn’t apply to their site. This was very prominent in the adult entertainment world as a matter of fact. It’s in my opinion; the inception of search engine optimization came from the adult entertainment industry.

Today, these techniques do not work for long-term search engine optimization campaigns. It’s true that you can obtain quick rankings in a very short period using “Black Hat SEO” ; however, usually it takes a great deal of work, and the results do not last very long. Once the search engines discover that you are trying to “Duke” their search engine, many of them may not list your domain at all. Search engines are programmed through their algorithms and robots to detect many of the techniques used in “Black hat SEO.” A few of the search engine tricks that used to work, especially pertaining to website design are:

• Keyword stuffing — several websites repeat the same keywords over and over again on both the home page, and even places that you can’t see. They do this by hiding the keywords in invisible layers such as <No Frames> tag, and in meta-tags. Also, spammers will repeat those keywords over and over again at the bottom of the document. For example:
  

  “Denver attorney, best attorney in Denver, attorneys in Colorado, Denver attorneys, attorneys for Denver, criminal attorney in Denver, bankruptcy attorney in Denver, attorney Denver, Denver attorneys.” There’s been much talk as to what is an acceptable amount of keyword stuffing, or keyword placement within the text of the document. As a rule of thumb I have heard that Google does not like to see more than 7% saturation, while MSN and Yahoo! Do not want to see more than 5% keyword density within any given page.
  

• Hidden Text and Links – another tactic used by spammers has been hidden text and links. What they are doing here is simply hiding keywords from human eyes. By making the text the same color as the background of the website. There is no fooling Google, Yahoo or MSN with these old tricks as the “Google bots” have been able to spot these tricks. Another example of this might be hiding keywords in areas which are not visible, such as placing these keywords in style sheets.
  
• Content duplication — I know that there are several other search engine optimization professionals that are completely against duplicate content, I do think it has its place. Why would I say such a thing? We should probably start as to why search engines do not like content duplication. Take for example a website that you already own, it ranks very well. You decide that you would like to have two sites on the first page of Google so you simply duplicate your first and post it under a different domain. Search engines want to provide unique content to their searchers; they do not want to provide duplicate content again and again. I should probably explain why I think duplicate content does make sense from time to time. If you’ve written an excellent article and published it with E-zine articles for example, I think it is completely within reason to go ahead and post that on your own blog or website as well.
• Page swapping or cloaking — this is where the website owner has taken content from a top ranking site and placed it on their page to achieve the top ranking. Once they have achieved that ranking they replace that page with completely different content. Cloaking is very similar to page swapping. The intent of cloaking is to serve search engines one page while the end-user is served in other, not a good move!
• Misleading Title Changes — making regular title changes so the indexing bots believe that your site is a new site. The desired effect from this is so that the site is listed again and again, this is considered misleading.
• Domain Spam (Mirrored Sites) — this is very close to content duplication. Ultimately this is why the search engine’s do not like content duplication. Some web owners have duplicated their entire website or maybe even slightly modified their site and target under a different domain or URL. Usually the intention was to obtain more than one listing on the first page. In the end all this does is get you banned from practicing this type of technique, once again it is misleading.
• Refresh Meta-Tag — I am certain that you have visited a website and automatically you were brought to a different page within the site, this is the result of a “refresh meta- tag”. At the end of the day you do not want to use a redirect unless it is absolutely necessary and I strongly recommend using a “permanent redirect” (301) which tells the search engines that the page they are looking for has a different home now. The preferred way to use a refresh meta-tag is to use a delay of at least 15 seconds or more and provide a link on the new page back to the page that they were taken from. Often times a website will use a redirect or refresh meta-tag to take visitors from a page that is obsolete and is no longer being used.
• Cyber Squatting — this refers to taking traffic from legitimate websites. So for example let’s pretend that somebody was to operate a website called www.ebey.com it would be hoping to obtain traffic by visitors that have misspelled the domain that they were truly looking for. Usually when companies are doing this they are promoting completely unrelated contents to that of the site that they are trying to obtain traffic from. Google very much dislikes the cyber squatting.

So even if you do not understand anything about search engine optimization or search engine marketing, it is easy to see that none of the search engines tolerate misrepresentation, misleading searchers or tricky techniques. If the technique you are using on your website does not offer value to the end-user and it is done solely for SEO it is very likely that Google, Yahoo or MSN will take notice. Trying to avoid the hard work of real
search engine optimization is practically impossible. Certainly you can avoid the hard work and go with a technique or strategy that will get you listed with Google rapidly, eventually that domain will get you delisted. At the end of the day it is twice the amount of work to optimize two websites quickly vs. optimizing one website in a nice slow and steady manner.

Cade Lee is a Search Engine Optimization Professional in Denver | Denver SEO

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions, perpetuated by industry SEO experts, is that a website must follow perfect SEO strategies to get top rankings. While adhering to simple common SEO standards does help the search engines both find and index your site more quickly, it doesn’t guarantee by any stretch of the imagination that following those SEO guidelines will propel your site to the top of the rankings.

If only search engine optimization was that easy!

No doubt, there are some SEO faux pas that will do harm to your site’s rankings, especially in Google, the ultimate hall-monitor all puffed up and ready to pounce on any misbehaving webmaster. Things such as keyword stuffing, keyword spamming or linking out to bad neighborhoods such as link farms, pharmaceutical or gambling sites may get you blacklisted.

But how much SEO do you need? How much search engine optimization do you need to get top rankings? Do you need a whole lot or do you need very little SEO?

Actually, after 10 years of marketing online, the answer to that question varies depending upon what you’re trying to accomplish with your SEO efforts? If you’re operating an online business in a very competitive (read lucrative) market, SEO will be high on your agenda as you go about annihilating your competition.

Even if you’re an ordinary webmaster or website owner you’re probably fussing over your rankings in the search engines. The higher the rankings you achieve for your chosen keywords; the more traffíc you will get. Good quality traffic that converts well into loyal subscribers and fans of your site.

Many webmasters and companies spend thousands of dollars each month in order to get their keywords and sites up to the top of the líst. If you’re into affiliate marketing, your daily income will rise and fall almost parallel to your rankings. Now, if my earnings go up, I know automatically my rankings have gone up, usually in Google. If my earnings go down, I know my rankings have gone south. Some times even a drop or rise of one place on the first page SERPs will affect how much you earn.

Obviously, because of this fact, SEO or how well I am optimized for the search engines is extremely important to me. I am constantly building quality links and quality content for my sites. Some keyword battles you win, some battles you lose. I have been fighting some keyword battles for over 3 or 4 years now!

But how much SEO is enough? How much SEO should you do with your sites? Many webmasters make sure all their on page set-up or lay-out is done exactly to what the SEO experts say you should do. This is not a bad idea. Make sure your Title, URL, Headlines, Keyword Density… are all laid out right. These are things we can control and adjust to meet the SEO standards.

Other SEO or ranking factors are much harder to predict, many of them are simply out of our control. How other sites link to us, what they put in the anchor text, what they say about us… simply things we can’t control.

I believe the over-riding reason why your site is listed at the top of any rankings has to do with the number, the quality and the quantity of sites linking back to your page. The higher the number of related quality one-way links you have flowing back to your site, the higher it will perform in the rankings. Your anchor text is very important (underlined part of a link); it must contain your keywords or variations of it. The content on the linking page should also be related to your chosen keywords.www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm

Get this part right and you will get high rankings.

Or at least this has been my experience – all the other ranking factors do count but this is the over-riding factor in my opinion.

Another major ranking factor lately, has been the importance Google is placing on social media links. Get your content to the first page of Digg with lots of diggs and it will rank high in Google. This is not surprising when you consider the nature of these social bookmarking sites… it really is an actual “vote” for the quality of your content. Getting Delicious bookmarks has a similar positive effect.

Another prominent factor, from my observations, is having your major keyword in your Domain Name. Use hyphens if you want but having those keywords in there, does help rather than hinder your rankings.

Now if you’re wondering about how Google ranks pages or your keywords…. Google has around 200 ranking factors (with filters and penalties thrown in to make all our lives interesting) which it uses to rank your keywords/pages. This is still the best online resource that lists all of Google’s ranking factors:

Now the question still remains, how much SEO do you need? How much time should you spend at optimizing, building links, worrying your head off over the latest Google Itch?

The answer always comes back to quality content. Create a site that has quality content and the SEO will take care of itself. People will link to your site, you will get bookmarks in all the social media sites, Google will find your content and rank it. Your SEO will grow naturally as your site grows. Keep building more pages, keep targeting more and more related keywords in your niche or subject area and you will get higher rankings.1. Download SEOquake and place this free SEO toolbar plug-in on your Firefox (or I.E.) browser.2. Go to Google and type in the keyword or keyword phrase you’re targeting with your site or content.3. Select the number one ranking and observe how many pages it has indexed, PageRank, how many backlinks it has, age of the site… and so on.4. Then use the page info button and study all the on-page factors this site has and notice what it’s doing with its page and keyword density lay-out.5. Check all the backlinks this site has in the different search engines. Copy or try to get the same backlinks for your site that your competitor has acquired. Then get more backlinks and/or higher quality backlinks than your competitor.6. Watch your rankings rise…

Now, of course, some webmasters are a little more aggressive in how quickly they want their rankings to rise to the top of the search engines. Here’s something you can do if you want to go into the SEO battle full-force.

Just a few more words of wisdom and we’re done. Some battles will be too tough to fight, the competition will be so stiff you just can’t compete. Other battles will take a long time; months, even years before you rise to the top. Your best bet is to choose long-tail (multi-worded) keywords that have little or no competition. You can rise to the top within days, even hours. The sweet thing is this: long-tail keywords are often the most lucrative and bring in the most sales. For in the final analysis, you just don’t want SEO, you want smart SEO. And you will quickly learn, most times you can often out-smart your competition, even if you can’t out-rank them.

About The Author
These 10 SEO Tactics Bring Me Over 2000 Visitors Daily: SEO Tips To learn more Internet Marketing Tactics try: Marketing Tools Copyright © 2009 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Is internet traffic the most important consideration for online success?

Of course it is, internet traffic is critical to the success of any site. It is extremely important, but it seems to me that some companies and individuals do not really focus their time on other extremely important factors like conversion. It was a couple of weeks ago and I was at a local meetup here in Denver for SEO, I was talking with one of the other search engine optimization professionals about some projects that we were looking at, when the topic of conversion surfaced. Ultimately I explained how a low bounce rate was so important to us and that it was one of the KPI (key performance indicators) that we really measured our success by. At first I thought he was going to have a heart attack, he began to “school” me in the ways of search engine optimization and explain to me that bounce rate should not be something that we (search engine optimization professionals) should be gauged or tracked by.

Of course we had to respectfully disagree on this. Good search engine optimization does bring traffic to a site, which goes without saying. If your SEO, SEO department, internet marketing firm or search engine marketing professional does not bring more traffic to the site, than the entire campaign is worthless. It’s not necessarily just a matter of getting your site on the 1^st page of Google (which is nice, and important), it is a matter of bringing a constant growth to the overall traffic through site referrals, banner ad placement, social networking, PPC or CPC and organic results. Right next to increasing traffic as far as importance is concerned is conversion. All the traffic in the world without a sale or conversion into a real lead is just as worthless as having a website that isn’t getting any traffic at all.

So, who works on this conversion and how do they funnel the traffic through your site? The answer to this I believe is your SEO firm and your web developer together. Of course if you don’t have both, than certainly either one of these would understand or should understand traffic conversion and implementing a “call to action” within the site. A call to action is any action which visitors can take to complete the selling process. Obviously in a perfect site, a call to action would be so perfectly designed that the end users have no alternative choice but to move forward with the call to action. We have found that most sites are stuck in the traditional methods or “calls to action” with flash banners that say, “Click here” or a “buy now” button. Consumers or end users want information so that they can make educated buying decision. By now that end user has more than likely made a purchase or request for information online that they regretted. This has left most a little “gun shy” to say the least. So, why not give them that information that they are craving. I am not suggesting that you go out and load your sales pages with content, but on the other hand, instead of having another “click here” or “buy now” button, it might behoove the seller to have a link to product reviews or testimonials.

Another call to action that works is stating the benefit or value received next to the action you want the end user to make. So for example, “purchase now and save 46% over the next 12 months”, long I know but this states a clearly defined benefit as opposed to simply “buy now”. Your call to action should also state the benefit of acting now; you want to create a reason for urgency in your buying message.

If you are not obtaining the conversion rate that you are looking for with your internet traffic, re-consider the message that you are giving to your users. Is it enticing to you? After you have reviewed the site, make sure to look outside for criticism from others about what would make them act on your offer. Invest some time into conversion instead of just focusing on increasing your internet traffic.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Cade, excited at Christmas about some new socks

By: Cade Lee

Completely new to Twitter (at least only having been there for the past couple of weeks now), I have never been so enthused about a new social networking media. I have been on facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sits but I have to say that I have run into more people in a shorter time frame on Twitter than anything else so far. So with that being said, I was asked by GreigWells (@GreigWells on Twitter) to conduct this post and I was happy to do so. I had never really considered the three types of marketing separate or “versus” one another before, nonetheless GriegWells requested a SWAT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Achievements and Threats also referred to as SWOT, O for opportunities) assessment on the these three internet marketing techniques. In trying to remain objective I must state that I am a strong believer in “search engine optimization” and that includes using all three of the above campaigns for marketing online. I definitely lean more towards traditional search engine optimization and social networking versus pay per click (cost per click) advertising and I will explain this very shortly. So with that being said, let’s begin.

Pay per Click (PPC, CPC)

For those that have not heard this before or are completely new to internet marketing, these are the advertisements that you see on the right hand side of your screen or at the very top of your Google internet marketing and already know this so bear with me for a few seconds while I explain to those who do not know. PPC or CPC advertising is paid for by the advertiser. In a pay per click campaign you will set up an account with whatever search engine you are advertising with, you will “buy” or define keywords that searchers would use to find your product or service and then bid on those keywords. Depending on your bid, you will show up on the 1^st page or perhaps the 5^th  depending on how you bid. You can control the amount of money that you spend on these types of campaigns by defining a daily budget and how much you are willing to pay for the keywords defined in your campaign.

Organic listings are bordered in blue while PPC is highlighted and bordered in Red. Our next figure will be easier "which one of these kids is doing his own thing".

searches. Usually you will notice a “sponsored links” text by these advertisements. I know that many of you have much experience in

Strengths, Achievements: With PPC or CPC advertising you are able to achieve a very high page ranking (as long as you bid high) at a very fast pace or in a very short time frame. You do not really have to work at obtaining high amounts of traffic to your site, it is extremely convenient and time efficient.

So PPC or CPC goes in line with the golden rule, you know, “He/she who has the most gold makes the rules”. You simply pay enough and you are in front of all that coveted “front page” traffic that everyone is after, as long as you have followed the terms and conditions of the search engine that you have placed the campaign with.  

It has been documented in some studies that PPC/CPC advertising attracts 14% of the overall traffic; however, when you consider the sheer volume of some keywords 14% can add up to tens of thousands of searches every day. There are other studies that have shown PPC/CPC obtaining a total of 30% of total traffic. So while it is hard to say just how many searchers trust or look to PPC/CPC to find the solution for their search, pay per click advertising does deliver results and for many companies (especially newer domains or sites) it is a necessity.

Threats/Weaknesses: Man it was certainly tough to cover the strengths and I had to bite my tongue to get here. Threats and weaknesses to a pay per click campaign are many. To start, once you have initiated your campaign for PPC/CPC and “gotten the ball rolling” you can definitely expect to see traffic, but what kind of traffic? Could it be that your jealous competition is simply clicking on your ad to use your budget for the day? Google and other companies that offer PPC/CPC advertising cannot prevent this type of activity from occurring; although they have put some protocol in place to avoid it as much as possible it is still absolutely going to happen. I don’t necessarily condone this type of behavior (clicking on PPC ads to drive out the competition) but, for those that believe business is war (especially among small to mediums sized businesses) I know that this is a daily occurrence having heard it from the mouths of many prospective customers. At the end of the day spending your competitions budget on PPC is a strategy just like any other. The sooner your competition spends your budget for the day, the sooner they can take your advertisement down and then perhaps if they have an ad of their own, theirs will surface from the bottom of the heap where they have bid a much lower amount for the same keywords you have bid on.

Another weakness to PPC is that once you have spent your budget for the day you are off the “board” unless you are willing to go in and change your budget and spend more money. So in PPC/CPC you are sincerely at the mercy of the market. Whether your ad is visible to that prospective customer you are hoping to meet depends on whether or not your ad has been clicked on enough times to spend your budget for that day. If you think about this, what type of advertising have you ever done in the past where your ad disappears? Maybe with passing out flyers, or television ads, both of these campaigns tend to be just as effective in today’s market as PPC (maybe even more effective in my opinion).

Getting back on topic here, I thought I might mention that keywords in PPC/CPC seem to be less forgiving here than in search engine optimization. I say this because it seems to me that if you have not defined the keyword exactly as it is typed in by your searcher than you will miss that traffic as well. An example of this is “Denver Attorney” versus “Attorney in Denver”. In my experience in the past, if I purchased “Denver Attorney” and did not place “Attorney in Denver” in my campaign, than I would not show for it as a keyword.  Makes sense as Google or any other search engine would not want to take charge of your PPC campaign and just assume that you would want to be in front of that traffic looking for “Attorney in Denver”. Whereas in search engine optimization you will be able to “net” the traffic from misspellings, variations of keywords, etc. I will explain more about this in our assessment of search engine optimization.

Search Engine Optimization

Strengths/Achievements:  It seriously pains me to separate search engine optimization from social networking, but given the request of comparing these three “side by side” I must abide by the rules here. Anyway, search engine optimization for those of you who might have heard the term (who hasn’t latey?), but are new to the concept means that you are optimizing your site in hopes to achieve a page one ranking or improve your ranking in the search results by optimizing the keywords

One of these kids is doing his own thing, can you tell which one? By the way, this has nothing to do with this post.

used within your site as well as making use of meta tags and building links to your site from other credible and relevant sites. As cited earlier, 14% – 30% of traffic (according to some studies) is going to PPC/CPC results which would imply that 70% or more of searchers are going to the organic results. This would only make sense as Google or whatever major search engine that searcher is using has taken the time to find the most relevant site or results for that searchers specified search. There seems to be an inherent amount of trust given to the larger search engines as they have proven over time with their very complex algorithms that they deliver the most trusted and useful results first.  So is it really any wonder that the majority of internet traffic prefers organic results over PPC/CPC results?

In the sites that we manage (we are a search engine optimization firm if I didn’t say that before) we have noticed a lower bounce rate and a higher “lead conversion rate” on our SEO efforts versus the results our customers had achieved through their previous experiences with pay per click campaigns managed by “pay per click” experts. Mind you that some of these customers were using “AdWords qualified professionals” designated so by Google’s very own designation program. In order to qualify for this program (read this) you will read that it is imperative that these professionals have a quota to fulfill before they ever even qualify. This was absolutely amazing to me as I thought Google would want to have the absolute most qualified individuals giving advice on this sort of campaign versus requiring some sort of monthly quota as they have outlined in their requirements.

Okay, okay, back on topic here. Search engine optimization offers stability for those sites which abide by the guidelines stated here. Although Google changes their algorithms and updates their search engine results regularly, I have noticed that by abiding the guidelines set forth and constantly improving our customer’s websites we are able to stay in front of the right prospective customers for the same keywords 24/7 for a myriad of keyword combinations (i.e. “Denver Attorney” versus “Attorney in Denver). So the biggest strengths of SEO (search engine optimization) is that a site has no daily budget concerns because it is free! Also there seems to be more trust among searchers with organic listings and more stability and dependability as far as showing up at “the right time and being in the right place” when that prospective customer is looking for your products or services. Lastly, the conversion rate seems to always be higher with a well optimized site versus only working with PPC traffic.

Threats/Weaknesses: At any given time, when you are depending on search engine optimization for your results, you are at the complete mercy of the search engine. At any given time a search engine can go through an “update” or change their algorithms and not include your site in their new results for various search terms. So you are at the complete mercy of the unknown here. With PPC/CPC as long as you pay your bill, you do not have this concern.

With SEO, there is no such thing as instant gratification and there is no “known” way of obtaining a 1^st page ranking. All SEO experts have usually deomnstrated some sort of ability to achieve these types of results, but even they cannot sincerely guaranty a page one ranking. Perhaps if you are optimizing for a search term like ,”Rodent racing” as used by Peter Kent in “Search Engine Optimization for Dummies” you might see quicker results; however, if you live in the real world it is most likely that there are many competitors vying for that first page result you are looking for. So, there is much competition in search engine optimization not to mention how time consuming it really is. If you are sincere about optimizing your site and obtaining that 1^st page ranking than it is imperative that you work on optimizing your website every day and following an “optimization plan”. I know that there are many other experts out there that would disagree with me, but I sincerely believe that the only way to “white hat” your way to the top is to work earnestly on obtaining that 1^st page ranking every day.

A well optimized site requires regular maintenance, so it is imperative that you continue working on your optimization even when you obtain that 1^st page ranking. PPC/CPC does not require any of this laborious work.

Social Networking

Strengths/Achievements: I strongly believe that social networking differs from PPC/CPC and SEO altogether. If I were to come up with a fair analogy, I view social networking like networking in general.

When I first entered the professional market, I was a sales representative. I trained with a class of other sales representatives and we were taught two basic ways to obtain business. One was through hard work which included marketing, cold calling and basically getting out there in front of strangers. The other way we were taught to obtain new business was in networking. Networking is also hard word, I did not mean to imply that it wasn’t, but it always seemed like so much more fun than cold calling or handing out fliers (I know I used flyers before, who knows both seem acceptable). Social networking online is the same to me as networking. If you can establish you or your company as a trusted source for any particular solution, than when the time is right for the prospect who has been reading your facebook or linked-in page comes, they will contact you (at least that is the hope). These leads are solid as they already know who you are, what you have to say, how many kids you have and where you went to school. These prospects know that they want to do business with you, they have studied your content and they are interested period.

I strongly believe that (personal opinion here) the closing ratio is higher for those businesses and professionals that have obtained leads or prospective customers strictly by networking online versus those who are only using PPC/CPC or SEO. I say this because social networking is more like public relations versus SEO and PPC/CPC which is more in line with advertising. When advertising, it is more likely to get objections from prospective customers about price or value than it is from referrals. I view social networking just like I do networking in real life.

Threats/ Weaknesses: Similar to SEO, with social networking, your ranking and account are always at the mercy of who you have them with. Just as Google has guidelines, so do the majority of social networking sites. So at the end of the day it is not beyond the realm of reason to suggest that the page on linkedin you have been working at so hard to promote goes away over night as they are sold off to a larger competitor or perhaps they change their guidelines and the scope of your page goes against their guidelines now. While my first example might seem more ridiculous (imagine facebook disappearing overnight, right) the second is not so unimaginable. Facebook could change guidelines tomorrow eliminating all references to any commercial product or company within their domain tomorrow if they wanted, and if they did I don’t think they would suffer all that much for it. I am obviously using my imagination here; the point is that anyone depending on social networking is at the mercy of the services they use to network. Take Squidoo for example, many were using this as a way to promote themselves only to have Google disregard the high page rank they had obtained for their Squidoo page and next thing you know they were not visible any longer. The rules can change at any given time.

So, there you have it. The strengths, weaknesses, achievements and threats of SEO versus PPC versus social networking as I see and understand it. Ultimately, I think any professional or company for that matter is insane not to take advantage of all three of these. I am not suggesting that anyone go out and do all three at the same time, but I do believe that the first stage to obtaining good traffic for a new site is through PPC/CPC. I say this because a site that has never been marketed or is newer will not be able to achieve results organically right away (at least not for the long run), so while the search engine optimization campaign is being worked on, PPC/CPC can deliver results immediately.

The second phase of a solid internet marketing plan incorporates search engine optimization and social networking. Both search engine optimization and social networking used hand in hand will deliver the most optimal results for your search engine marketing campaign. First time I used this term right? What is search engine marketing you say? There are several different definitions of this; I am going to give you the meaning I give to search engine marketing. Search engine marketing is any attempt within the “whitehat” world of internet marketing to get a useful message out to the online community about your services or product, period. By making a constant effort to market you, your website and your product or service, I believe you are marketing through the internet and search engines alike.

The third phase of your internet marketing plan should be improvement. Improving traffic, improving conversion goals and education. The internet is obviously changing faster than any of us can keep up with it, so by constantly striving to stay on top of it all and educating yourself on the latest social networking techniques, PPC/CPC and SEO strategies you will be able to keep your traffic and grow.

At the end of the day, any one of these internet marketing techniques is beyond valuable and they have all assisted with the success of thousands of professionals and businesses alike. Used in combination with one another, an explosive internet marketing campaign can be designed for almost anyone.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

By now you know that Iniquitous is a search engine optimization firm in Denver, we specialize in search engine marketing and most of our clients are here in the Denver Metro Area. Anyway, as a Denver SEO firm we are pretty lucky as the SEO / SEM community here is pretty thick (well populated and saturated) and so I feel like we have a lot of real life professionals here. We have met some excellent affiliate marketing professionals in the area as well as some fantastic SEO experts over the last couple of years, just knowing these individuals has helped us offer our clients a better service.

This got me to thinking about when I started in Search Engine Optimization, and the myth or mystery I had originally placed with optimizing a website. In the beginning after we had worked so hard to get a website to the front of the search engines, and we actually achieved it, I thought we were lucky. I couldn’t believe that we had anything to do with it; I thought that we had just been fortunate and at anytime we would lose our ranking or Google would change the algorithms and our site would fall. In the end this never happened (I am certain that it could, but have been lucky thus far).

It got me to thinking about all the “quick” systems I have seen over the time I have been marketing online, you know what I am talking about if you have ever submitted your domain to directories that require a reciprocal link. These are the directories that have placed you on every junk e-mail list known online and so you constantly receive those fantastic offers. Fortunate for us we never participated in the 1 million backlinks overnight  offer. Over and over again when I was getting started in this business, I read that there is no easy way to optimize a site, and that true optimization was not rocket science but rather time intensive work. I can honestly say that this is the case.

I have read many of the blogs written by other SEO experts in Denver and around the nation for that matter, and it seems that much of the literature that is out there on search engine optimization has been disregarded as old and out of date. I respectfully have to disagree with some of these folks as I haven’t read anything new and outstanding that held that golden key to excellent optimization; however, I continue to read the materials that come out and if nothing else they continue to reinforce the same principles over and over again.

I wrote this article to point out some of the good books I have read about search engine optimization and search engine marketing so that some of those who want to go to the library and find a well written book on the subject could do so. Mind you there is much more to optimization than is written in these books, but I believe they are an excellent start to learning about search engine optimization.

1. Search Engine Optimization for Dummies, Peter Kent

2. SEO Search Engine Optimization Bible, Jerri L Ledford

3. Get to the top on Google, David Viney

4. Search Engine Optimization, An Hour A Day, Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin

5. 101 Ways to Promote Your Web Site, Susan Sweeney, CA, CSP, HoF

6. Problogger, Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income, Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett

I could go on and on about other references and materials for Search Engine Optimization and internet marketing, but in my honest opinion, these are some of the first materials that I would cover if you are looking to market your site. In many cases these books will show you how to market your site with a limited knowledge of the internet or web design.

I hope this helps a little, if you need further resources or you are looking for more tools to optimize your site let us know!

Denver Internet Marketing | Denver SEO | Colorado SEM

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

“Look at the flow and navigation of the site” the developer says!  Google along with many other popular search engines respond “I don’t care.” “The flash is too busy, there is no text, and the navigation is impossible” the Googlebots further explain (that’s if the Googlebots were able to talk, and they can’t). 

Many times web developers experience criticism but not always from humans, Google and their “Googlebots” are the ultimate website critics.  Can you imagine working with a critic that does not give any verbal feedback?   A site has been designed with an interface that pops with beautiful GIFs and JPEGs, dazzles with Flash and functions like a charm with JavaScript, but the search engines simply do not care.  The content, keywords and the tags do not correspond with the criteria of the search engines. Therefore, you are ignored.  It could take six months to find this out while you are banging away at blogs, online directory submissions and trying to figure out just how to get your website to the top of Google for various search engines.

Just yesterday, we were at a meeting with a local Denver Printer because we have been working with them on a new site that they want to launch at the beginning of 2009.  This printer has been in the graphics business since the early 60’s and if anyone knows graphics and marketing, it would have to be these folks.  Yesterday’s meeting was the review of the first draft of the new site.  The new site was built for Google optimization first and than the actual user has been the second priority.  The reason for this is self-explanatory, however to explain, if we build the site for the end user then Google will not rank the site as high as if we appease Google first and the end user next.

It is a struggle between art and science that frustrates many.  The responsibilities of web developing – the art — clashed with the role of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) — the science.  This is why some companies and development firms are designating web developer and optimizer as two distinctive jobs. This being said, many smaller companies and shops still have the web developer fulfilling both roles.  In the case of the printing company we have been fulfilling both roles. 

The first comment I had received was “the landing page is too busy”, I did not get the opportunity to explain to them that Google craves content and that if we do not have relevant content on the first page then Google will not place too much importance on the site or landing page in general.  The problem is that search engine optimization is becoming challenging and competitive.  Here is some information to help start the website optimization before, after or during the development of your website.

Content

It is all about the writing on the wall.  Remember that search engine optimization is all about the written text.  I can’t stress enough how important the content of your website is.  So if you have not read anything about SEO yet, make certain you understand that Google (the king of search engines) places the most importance on content or text.  Search engines are text driven but there are still some basic HTML tags to keep in mind (i.e., h1, h2, meta tags, title tag).  SEO helps improve search engine results but does not guarantee top ratings.  Patience and realistic goals will keep the frustrations low. By this I mean planning on 60-90 days getting real results.  Search engines have to crawl a site to determine what the site is about. This takes time, usually about a month, before the crawling and indexing are completed by the various search engine spiders.

Take some time to think (a lot) about the purpose of the website.  Write down and brainstorm a lot of content in a word processing program even if it sounds ridiculous at first.  Then edit what you wrote, edit some more, get some feedback and then start working on the keywords and keyphrases that identify the unique quality of your website.

Keywords and Keyphrases

The days of locating and finding easy Keywords are gone.  Keywords are extremely competitive.  Using two-word or three-word, maybe even four-word, phrases makes optimization less frustrating.  A keyword phrase (keyphrase) helps identify the distinctiveness of a website.  The keyword “catering” will generate about 92 million (!) results.  The keyphrase “wedding caterer” will generate about 2 million results.  That is a difference of approximately 90 million.  The keyphrase “Denver wedding caterer” will generate about only 419,000 thousand results.  The time needed to be spent finding unique keyphrases and determining your target market will be worth it in the end.  When you narrow down the results, with multi-word phrases, this provides a better chance of your site being noticed and ultimately allows quicker results.

Keyword Density

The density formula is D = KC/WC (D = density; KC = keyword count; WC = word count)

For major keywords target 3-7% density

For minor keywords target 2-3% density

Keyword density measures how relevant keywords are on a page.  The formula density = keyword count divided by the total word count will provide a general idea of the density percentage.  For major keywords, try to keep the density between three and seven percent.  For minor keywords keep density between two and three percent throughout the page.  For best results, try to optimize between two to three keywords per web page.

Avoid the old SEO tactic of keyword stuffing or writing your keyword numerous times on a page.  You will be penalized and possibly banned from the search engines and your chances of being listed at the top will go right out the window.  Keyword stuffing involves many techniques but it is basically stuffing a page and/or Meta Tag with several occurrences of a keyword or keyphrase. 

Title Tag

The title tag is absolutely critical!  We have found that focusing on the Title Tag and making certain a site has the keywords included here is one of the most important keys to SEO.  Most search engines will read up to 100 characters in the Title Tag.  The Title Tag should be unique on every page just like the content and keywords are.  Make sure to match your Title Tag to the keywords you are aiming for on each page.

If you have a webpage about digital printing in Denver, make sure you include that in your title.  Absolutely do not title your pages with “home” and “contact”.  Instead use “contact denver printing company, digital printers, best denver printer, denver printing estimate”.  This keeps us under the 100 characters, the user will look at the top of the page and still be able to see ”contact” and we have used great keywords for search engines.

Meta Tags

The Meta Tags are important although some will disagree.  Meta Tags once were the solution to SEO a year back but have began to slightly fall of the chart.  Keywords and content are more beneficial in getting a web site in top rankings however, Meta Tags are still important.  Meta Tags are a part of the HTML and are used by most search engines to find a description of your website.

When building a website, place these Meta Tags below the Title Tag on your page but make sure these are all included in the <head> and before the <body>.

<title>~</title>

<meta name =”description” content=”~” />

<meta name=”keywords” content=”~” />

Using keywords and keyphrases in these tags helps to slightly boost search engine rankings.  Although the Meta Tags do not have the influence on search engines they once did, it is still vital to

include them in your SEO campaign.

 ____________________________________________________________________________

Cade Lee seen relaxing with some of Santa's Helpers

 About the Authors: Cade Lee is in an independent web developer/SEO Expert who owns and maintains over 100 different domains. Cade has worked on various e-commerce and website projects. Cade has coached and implemented successful SEO strategies for many Denver Companies as well as national Companies.

Nick Hantge specializes in website optimization and Google Ranking

 Nick Hantge specializes in SEO campaigns at both local and national platforms. Nick has spent time educating several other individuals to comfortably run their own SEO operations. Nick has dabbled with website development for companies that range in size of 4 employees to over 500

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

By Cade Lee

Keywords are absolutely “key” to getting a good page rank on Google or any other “crawler” type search engine. When I say “crawler” search engine, what I mean is a search engine that literally crawls the internet and indexes or records those websites in a central database. A “crawler” website like Google will actually analyze the keywords in the “meta” tags.

Often times when I review websites, I will see the same pattern from site to site and to me that would suggest that a keyword analysis was never completed nor considered when the site was created. Most web designers will not complete a keyword analysis nor will they consider the marketability of a website as they are designing it. Web designers most often consider the aesthetics, the look and feel and navigation of the site. All of the considerations above are critical for the end user, but for Google it is not as important.

As a matter of fact, there are two things that need to be considered when developing a website. First is the compatibility of that website with Google, and second is the site’s “user friendliness” with the end user which of course is the prospect or “searcher” that you are trying to reach. More often than not the order of these is switched and the end user is considered way before Google or any other search engine. I can understand the logic of most graphic designers and web designers, but my argument is that a website does not mean much if it is not in front of the user it was designed for. Unless you plan on spending a huge amount of your budget marketing your website through old mediums (magazine advertising, trade shows, etc.) than the very first thing that needs to be considered is your target audience and the search terms they will use to find services like yours.

Keyword analysis as suggested previously is hardly ever considered when the website is being built. Most of the sites that I review do have “meta tags” for keywords within the site, and there are still several sites that have no keywords or Meta tags for keywords at all. Let’s use a pawn shop example. In searching for “Denver pawn shop” I come up with www.fastcashpawn.com as the first result. The following is their Meta tag:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”pawn, Colorado pawn shops, Denver Pawn, fast, cash, loan, pawnbrokers, pawnshop, jewelry Colfax Pawn shop,, fast cash, lender, Denver pawnshops, pawns, loans, jewelry, money loans, moneylender, hock, Federal Heights pawn, money lenders, Lakewood pawnshop, Aurora Pawn, Parker Pawn, pawn brokers, eBay, loans, Edgewater pawn, Quebec St Pawn, Larimer St Pawn, Thorton Pawnbrokers, Parker Pawnbroker, North Fderal Pawn, Jewelry, money lenders”>

They have used keywords that are a little more user friendly, or more used than other keyword metatags that I see. For example the combination of “Denver pawn” instead of “Denver, pawn”. When Google last indexed this site, the googlebot recorded “Denver pawn” as a keyword not “Denver” and then “pawn”. Ultimately if this site had used “Denver, Pawn” as keywords in the meta tag than they would be back further in the search results and not the very first listing, at least that has been my experience in the sites I have worked on.

Let’s look at another example, “Denver real estate”. This is a highly used search term, notice that I am not using “Denver” or “real” or “real estate” or just plain “estate” as none of these search terms would more than likely yield the results I am after. I am mainly interested in finding homes for sale as the prospective searcher, and I am looking for homes for sale in Denver.  The very first result is www.denverrealestateonline.com. Here is the Meta tag for the keywords on the landing page for that site:

<meta NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”Denver real estate, Highlands Ranch Real Estate, Metro Denver Real Estate and Homes, Cherry Creek, Greenwood Village real estate, Lone Tree real estate, Centennial real estate, Littleton real estate, Englewood Colorado real estate, Cherry Hills Real Estate, Parker CO real estate, Bill Kosena, luxury homes and real estate, homes, residential real estate, relocation Denver homes, property search, mls, Realtor Bill Kosena, Denver homes for sale”>

Notice how the webmaster has used their keywords. They have not used “Denver, real, estate” those are literally three different search terms. Please understand that I am not saying that using keywords as referenced in the above example will not work, but it is probably an excellent way to insure that you will be on page 2, 3 or even 100 of the Google search performed by your prospective customer. Using the same search term, “Denver real estate”, I found www.jaylarsonrealty.com on page four. This site is buried in the back where no customer will typically go.  Here is the meta tag for Jay’s site:

<META NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”Home, Homes, Houses, Real Estate, Realtor, Agent, Broker, Relocation, Moving, Greenwood Village, Lone Tree Real Estate, Cherry Hills Real Estate, Cherry Hills homes for sale, Centennial Homes for sale, Bear Creek Village Lakewood Colorado, Bow Mar, Littleton, Englewood, Old Englewood, Brookhaven Lane, One Cherry Lane, Taylln’s Reach, South East Aurora, Pradera, Falling Water Condominums, Jay Larson, Jay Larson Remax, Jay Larson Remax Classic, Jay D. Larson, Relocating to Denver, Relocating to Colorado, Moving to Denver, Moving to Littleton, Moving to Lone Tree, Moving to Highlands Ranch, Highlands Ranch homes for sale, Heritage Hills, Heritage Estates, The Pinery, Parker Homes”>

He has actually used a meta tag and he is within the first 100 results, so they are doing something right. However, if you look at the search terms, you will see the usual. All the neighborhoods are broken up and so, instead of completing any research on the most often used search terms it would seem they have just compiled a list of “make sense” keywords and used those.

Keyword research should be the very first consideration when designing a website for search engine optimization, and the second consideration should be the usability of that website by the end user. A couple of tools that can be utilized in finding the correct keywords for your website are:

1.       Google keywords: you can find this tool by simply entering the term “Keywords” into the Google search engine. Here you will be able to enter a myriad of different keywords and actually see the search volume for the previous month as well as the search volume monthly average.

2.       Ask your clients how they found you through the Internet. Odds are pretty good that they will not remember the exact search term; however, they will have some ideas that you may have not thought of. For example, in the case of our realtor above that is listed on page 4 of the Google search “Denver real estate”, he or his webmaster has used his name as a keyword for the website. Most new clients that don’t know this realtor by name would never use his name as a major search term when looking for real estate in the Denver metro area.

3.       Friends and family are a fantastic resource to use when developing a keyword list. Often times I find myself asking my girlfriend which search terms she would use when searching for various services such as “carpet cleaning”. Whenever I am asking for her advice, I make certain not to give her too much information so that I do not corrupt her subliminal mindset.

For more information on keyword research or assistance in developing a core keyword list, contact Iniquitous at info@thisisiniquitous.com. Iniquitous is a search engine optimization and Internet marketing company located in Denver, Colorado. They have completed many successful campaigns for many local Denver businesses with a national demographic. If you are looking for search engine optimization Denver or outside of Denver, you can call on Iniquitous for a free evaluation. Iniquitous offers professional search engine optimization coaching as well as a monthly search engine optimization subscription for their services.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites