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!

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can serve as the linchpin to your overall marketing plan for your business.  Gone are the days when all you needed was an ad in the local phone book.  The most efficient way to drive leads to your business is through Internet marketing.  You need more than just a website, though.

A website that has not been optimized for search engine results pages (SERPs) will only serve as a digital business card.  Nobody will find it unless they know about it and where to look.  Your competition will quickly surpass such an outmoded approach.  You need to hire a Denver SEO consultant to help get your website seen by those searching for the products and/or services that your business offers.

A competent SEO company will offer a full-service approach to Internet marketing, in order to ensure that your SEO campaign is in fact successful.  You will need to start out by looking for a Denver SEO company on the Internet.  Here’s a good tip: if you search for SEO company, SEO consultant, SEO, Internet marketing, etc. the company you end up choosing should appear near the top of the SERPs.  The reason:  if a particular Denver Internet marketing company can’t get their own site near the top of the SERPs, they probably can’t do it for you, either.

Once you have chosen a particular SEO company, carefully examine the SEO consultant with whom you are to be partnered.  Do they act in a professional manner?  How much experience with Internet marketing do they have?  Can they provide examples and references to demonstrate that they have a track record of success?  Do they have as many questions for you as you do for them?  A good SEO consultant will begin by trying to understand your business and the goals you have for it.  This will aid them in one of the early steps in SEO, keyword research.

Do not settle for a mediocre SEO company.  Don’t shop by price alone.  Remember, you get what you pay for.  The success of your business depends on you choosing the best Internet marketing company possible.

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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.

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In this tougher economy many companies are cutting their marketing costs, yet they are not taking advantage of the free resources that they have online.

By: Cade Lee

I have seen a great deal of articles about how to cut your marketing costs in this economy; how to “eliminate waste, make fewer mistakes, nurture what you have got, increase conversions, etc.” I have read these articles and sincerely considered the true message of each article and I continue to think about all the clients that we have visited with over the last several months. With the market the way that it is and the state of the economy, it is definitely easy to lose site of the bigger picture and start making cuts without much thought. On the reverse side of this, something that struck me as funny with all this talk of cutting costs is that many businesses have not considered changing the way that they do business or rather the way that they approach their market. What I am saying here is that if it is new, a new way of marketing online for example, they are not even considering this as an alternative to their current marketing strategy. In our case it is because they don’t have the money to invest in a new marketing campaign, but that begs the question as to why these same customers are not taking the time to focus on search engine optimization or internet marketing.

In our meetings with prospective customers, we continue to hear that “search engine marketing is not in the budget right now”. It did not hit me until I started to read these articles that our clients in Denver that are working on their search engine optimization campaigns are not sharing in the woes of the economy like those prospective clients that cannot be seen online. It’s hard to grow or even survive in an economy like this if you don’t have new customers calling and e-mailing you about your services.

I also understand that search engine optimization takes one of two different things, money or time and many of the prospective clients we talk with seem absolutely unwilling to part with the first of the two, I just don’t see how they cannot invest the time at least. Here are five things you can do to help your business right now at absolutely no cost to you. I am assuming that you have a computer and internet connection, so with that being said, here goes:

1. Obtain a local listing with the major search engines: Submitting your businesses information to any one of the major search engines will allow your business to be more easily seen and this service is offered completely free! It’s not always easy to figure out how to list with the various search engines, so the best thing to do is to simply perform a search like, “how to list your business with Google”, etc. By simply listing your business with Google or Yahoo, this does not mean that you will automatically pop up on the first page when a prospective customer is searching for your service or product, but it does get you one step closer to optimizing your site.

2. Post an ad with Craigslist: If Craigslist is not charging you for an ad, why aren’t you posting a flyer or advertisement with Craigslist? The most common objection I hear to this is,”I don’t have time to post on Craigslist” to this I reply that they should hire an internet marketing firm to take on this responsibility for them. Like I said earlier, it takes time or money. If you do not have one or the other you had best examine your schedule and make the time or you will not ever see any change in your business.

3. Start a blog: This is not at all complicated. Google offers a free blogging service and there are so many more that we do not have time to go into. Blogging about your company and services will often time make it to the 1st page of a search well before your site will. Make certain you incorporate a habit of blogging at least every other day.

4. List your business and yourself with Linked In:  We have a fantastic competitor here in Denver that shows up for all the various keywords applicable to our business. This gentleman has a blog, a website and a linked in page that all show up on the first page of Google when you search for Denver SEO, SEO Denver, Search Engine Marketing Denver, Search Engine Optimization Denver and Internet Marketing Denver.

5. Create a facebook page for your business: Once again all of this takes time but does not cost you a thing to do. I know that facebook is not a revelation to you or your business, but if you make certain to mention your site in your page and continuously link to and from all these sources to each other you will start to build links to your site and more importantly your presence online.

None of these things are new or revolutionary; however I am amazed at the amount of our prospective customers that do not have these things already completed. Once you have established these accounts it is important that you continuously work on them. If you were to spend as much as 1 hour per week updating the content of your facebook page or your blog for that matter, you will start to see these sources rise to the top of the search engines which of course gives you more exposure.

The most important thing you can do is link. Link to your site, link to your facebook page, link to your local listing for that matter always be linking. Always focus on linking all of your web presences together which creates a larger presence online.

Please let me know if you have any questions as always, we are here to help!

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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

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With today’s shift from paper to major search engines and online directories, a website is one of the best marketing tools a company can have.  A website can reach not only individuals searching for your services or products locally; it can reach hundreds of thousands of individuals nationwide and around the globe.

Whether you sell a product online such as cookies or jewelry or provide a service such as laser hair removal, the first step to being successful online is being found on the major search engines.  It does not matter the size of your company or how great your website looks, if individuals cannot find your business in their searches you simply will not be successful online.

Too often, companies or individuals spend thousands of dollars on the design of their website thinking they are doing the right thing.  This idea of creating a website that just looks good is a thing of the past.  If a website is unable to be found under searches relating to its content, this marketing tool is a waste of your money.

The quickest possible way to get listed on the major search engines is through search engine marketing (SEM) where you pay for quality leads to your website often called Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.  Although PPC does get you immediately listed on search engines, through our research 75% of individuals using the internet do not click on paid advertisements on the side.

A more effective but time intensive way to get noticed by the search engines is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  SEO is the science of analyzing and enhancing your website to manipulate your ranking on major search engines such as Google® and Yahoo!® to increase the volume of traffic to your site.  Since 65% of searches make their decision before moving to the second page, it is vital to have your website optimized and show up for different search terms on the first page at least once.  The more times your website appears under searches relating to your business, obviously the more exposure you have that will ultimately lead to more traffic to your website.  After your website has been optimized and starts to appear on the first page of the search engine for a few terms, then the appearance, flow, and functionality starts to become a factor.  It only makes sense to keep the individuals on your website once they are they.  The longer people are on your website, the more likely they are to use your product or services.

A huge advantage to SEO when it comes to advertising is the quality of the traffic viewing your site.  Most everyone that visits your optimized website is looking either for the product or services you provide.  This quality lead is much better than the traffic you are reaching through a billboard, newspaper, or radio advertisement.  The reason I say that is because the individuals who hear or see that ad, do not necessarily need or want your services.  Plus in these types of advertisements, your information does not stay in front of individuals, whereas a properly optimized website can be found over and over again with your contact information and list of products and services blaring right at them.

There are many techniques that SEO experts use to increase the ranking of websites.  The key to a good SEO campaign is a constant effort.  Web pages need to be added and updated, link building needs to continue while your website remains live, and submissions to all major search engines along with directories are just a few of the many techniques an SEO company would use to help increase a websites rank.  If you would like more information on SEO techniques or strategies, call Iniquitous as (303) 327-8991 or visit their website: Iniquitous

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