3 Reasons Why “Ethical” SEO Companies are Misleading

by admin on February 8, 2010

eth1 3 Reasons Why Ethical SEO Companies are Misleading

Are you doing “ethical” SEO?

What does the word “ethical” really mean? According to Google definitions, ethics refers to:

The study of principles relating to right and wrong conduct; Morality; The standards that govern the conduct of a person, especially a member of a profession.

As far as I can understand, ethics mainly relates to morality. It is a code of conduct relating to other people. Does it not sounds a little off when SEO services, which are trying to manipulate search engine algorithms say they are “ethical”?

Now, there is nothing wrong with helping your clients out with their rankings and increasing their business, but at least do not use the word “ethics”.

I conducted a Google search for “ethical SEO company” and this is what I found.

Most of the SEO companies using the “ethics” hook try to increase their business using a totally different approach. They give the impression that all the other SEO companies are being “unethical” and that the client has a lot to lose if he/she goes with the “other” SEO companies.

They are the ones who tell their clients that other SEO companies will incur the wrath of Google because they do not “care” about the ranking algorithm enough to not spam or manipulate it. What a baseless argument.

I find this point-of-view quite interesting and disturbing at the same time.

According to me, SEO practices can characterized as being effective or ineffective.  Sure, best SEO practices need to follow the Google’s guidelines, but I do not think this is enough of a reason to use the word “ethics” to differentiate between SEO services.

Here are 3 reasons why I think “ethical” SEO companies are misleading:

1. They are still manipulating search engine algorithms: Every single SEO company out there manipulates the algorithms to different levels or it would not exist. Sure, there are some SEO companies which are totally white-hat, but most others fall within the grey-hat SEO.

Directory submissions, article submissions, blog commenting and on-site SEO are done for the sole purpose to give a website an edge in the rankings, even if the website mostly does not deserve the high ranking because the website design and content scream “worthless”.

How can you call these practices ethical?

2. They give the customers the wrong impression: By suggesting that they are ethical, they imply that other SEO companies are unethical and should be burnt to the ground. If you “really” want to go with Google’s guidelines, you should never artificially manipulate rankings.

Google frowns on ALL kind of manipulations because it stops Google from returning relevant results.

What is even more interesting is that they offer the same services as “unethical” SEO companies. Do you see how this seems wrong?

3. The “ethics” hook is simply unwarranted: An SEO’s job is to help the clients reach the top rankings and increase their online exposure. This goal is reached by tweaking the website to gain favourability from search engine’s algorithms.

The point is, the entity being “manipulated” is an algorithm, not a human.

You would call a marketing campaign which sells crap to people for high prices unethical. But its not the same when you manipulate a machine.

SEO services should be characterized by their effectiveness. They can also be divided into black hat, white hat or grey hat.

So next time when you see an ethical SEO company, always know that ethics and SEO are unrelated (for the most part). Ask the ethical SEO services how they are different from “unethical” SEO services and wait for them to give you a convincing answer.

Different point-of-view? We would love to hear it!

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3 Ways To Reduce Your SEO Costs By 60%

by admin on February 7, 2010

seo agreement 300x104 3 Ways To Reduce Your SEO Costs By 60%

SEO is like economics. In Economics, everything is based on the “other hand”.

Ask people for feedback on SEO and you will get two answers:

1. SEO sucks: This usually comes from webmasters who have no clue what they are talking about. People going for generic terms with a very low budget also seem to come to the same conclusion. Finally, people who use social media to get traffic, and who have never tried SEO to get traffic might also reason in this way.

2. SEO is very, very effective: This usually comes from webmasters who have spent some years trying to understand how to rightly “manipulate” the search engines into hand them cash. Once you know the game, it is very easy to understand the effectiveness.

The bottom line is: SEO is effective.

But effectiveness is all relative. If you have a USD 100 budget, you will find SEO ineffective when going for the term “mortgage refinancing”. On the other hand, if you want to rank for the term “how do you make jello”, a USD 100 budget is much more effective.

Depending on the keyword competition and 20 other factors, your perception of SEO and its results might be extremely skewed.

Here are 3 ways to lower your SEO costs by 60% (i.e. making your SEO campaigns roughly twice as powerful):

1. Build links like a madman on crack: Here is the funny part – I tell every single client that link building should be done consistently, but less than 10% follow my advice. Inconsistent link building results in lower ROI. Over the past few months, I have tried both approaches, and I clearly have a winner.

If you want to spend less money on SEO, be consistent with earning the currency of the web (i.e. links). Now remember, I do not mean get thousands of links in 2 days. I mean be CONSISTENT with your approach but start slowly.

Case in point: A website of mine in the self-improvement niche used to rank in the top 5 when I use to stay on top of link building. If I stopped link building for 3-4 weeks, it used to go down to page 2..

Lesson to be learnt here: Consistent link building IS a cost saver no matter what webmasters think.

2. Go crazy with the content: OK, don’t go crazy with it. But be consistent with content creation. It is very very simple to do.

You install a WordPress blog, add some plugins and write 2-3 posts a week. You can either write the content yourself or get someone else to do it for you.

I do not care how busy you are. This practice is a must especially if you have a commercially oriented website, which people hate sticking around. Content creation on the blog screams “More sales are nice but I want you to stick around and be interested in my content”.

If you do not write content you will spend 2X the amount on getting extra links to give you the same traction.

There is a reason why most (or all) of Technorati Top 100 blogs use content to lure the users and then make sales very subtly on the backend.

Lesson to be learnt here: Learn to write interesting content and you can leverage Facebook and Twitter to give you free, qualified, buying traffic. The catch is simple, 95% of the content out there is something no one cares about. Go here on how to write content users actually care about.

3. Go for the long-tail keywords (initially): Listen closely as this is one of the biggest reasons for failure. Most of my clients want to go for generic keyword terms with 20-40 million competition with a small budget and with a website which is 2-4 months old!

Does anyone see a problem here?

There is no way a new website will gain enough traction to rank high for such competitive terms.

The solution is simple, although a little less appealing. Go with the long tail keywords and start dominating them first. Then go for the more competitive keywords.

If you go for the competitive ones first, after spending USD 1000, you will say: “Man, I am still on page 5.. This money has gone to waste. SEO does not work! All SEOs are scammers!”

(Someone I know actually said that :D )

Lesson to be learnt here: If you are small on budget, start with using your inner pages to rank for less competitive terms and go from there.

What are some other ways that you can reduce SEO costs? Feel free to comment!

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3 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About SEO!

by admin on February 5, 2010

3 Things You Probably Didnt Know About SEO!

P.S. I would like to make it clear that I am in no way advocating spamming the search engines or undertaking black-hat methods. I am just letting you know of the reality.

SEO is a very interesting field.

With all ranges from white-hat to black-hat, nearly everyone can argue on the different SEO methods and present a winning case. It is for this reason that every single tactic on SEO forums turns into a huge debate which never seems to reach a conclusion.

There are actually people out there who get their websites to the number 1 placement by conducting black-hat SEO and link spamming. A case of this would be the Pharma industry, where even a day near the top of the search engines can make the webmasters as much as USD 300,000!

That being said, there are some things a lot of people do not know about SEO. We all seem to agree that Google is quick to burn down websites which spam and conduct grey-hat and black-hat SEO methods.

However, the truth is a little different: If you have the sense and experience to be a little careful with your SEO and link building methods, it is normally very difficult for Google to track you down and penalize you.

Websites which get “owned” by Google are literally trying their best to be penalized.

However, that is another topic altogether. Here are 3 pointers about SEO which might actually surprise you:

1. Bad is more effective: Seriously, black and grey-hat tactics are much, much more effective than white-hat tactics. Any experienced SEO can propell a website to the top of the search engines at a fraction of the cost “normal white-hat SEOs” will incur.

There is a reason why there are so many black-hat SEO websites out there: It is effective. Sure, the black-hat educational websites might have a horrible layout because the webmasters dont have the time (or derive monetary value out of them) but the bottom line is that these tactics are effective. A lot of people seem to think that just because the websites look crappy means the techniques over there have no value. This is something which makes me smile.

2. Popular/loud tactics die out soon: Scream out your effective SEO tactics out loud to the public and if you are a famous SEO-related person, your tactics might be short-lived. Websites which boast about their rankings everywhere get their rankings burnt down.

Along the same lines, article and directory submissions are among the least effective SEO tactics out there simply because everyone is using them. How do you create competitive advantage here? By sticking to a method the majority does not know or finds it very difficult to follow.

So contrary to popular belief, do not go with the mainstream tactics because they are mainstream for a reason: Everyone is using them.

3. Link spamming actually works: Believe it or not, link spammers are still out there and are making a killing. Search engines can never stop link spammers as long as links are used to reference and rank content. You would be surprised at how much link spammers make by using automated, crappy scripts which do nothing but spam links (by embeding them in pathetic and meaningless English sentences).

A close look at Pharmacy and Viagra related keywords will show you that the top results change every few hours. Why? Because of the intense competition. My research tells me that the top website for these terms makes millions.

Link spamming techniques are so prevalent that if you own a functional blog, you can witness the link embedded comment messages that you get. Spammers try to place their links everywhere, hoping that even if a few get through, they can make a killing online.

I hope you found this post interesting. If you have a different perspective, or have other nteresting SEO tips etc, be sure to comment!

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3 Reasons Why Links Are InFallible!

by admin on February 5, 2010

link to me nonprofit link building 3 Reasons Why Links Are InFallible!

Is content “king”?

The more I delve into SEO, the more I get drawn to the idea that content is not all that important. I mean, sure, on-site content should not be horrible enough to turn your visitors off, but you can easily get decent exposure by making sure you get the right links (even though you have a crappy copy).

It is for this reason that many websites with sub-optimal content still rank near the top for keyword phrases which might make you scratch your head. I just saw a website with horrible content and design ranking at the top for a localized SEO keyword which gets searched 1800 times a month according to Google Keyword tool.

How did the website get there?

Pure link building with an absolute disregard to on-site content.

Does all this make sense to you? If not, here are 3 more reasons why links are infallible:

1. Currency of the web: This point is easy to grasp. The more money you have the better you fare right? It’s the same thing online. Websites can rank at the top of Google if they build a lot of artificial links without tripping any red flags. Read more about their importance here.

Search engines are still in their primitive stage. It is still fairly easy for you to trick them into believing that your website is really authoritative when it really isn’t. An article which shows you how easier it is to trick search engines and users on the web can be found here.

2. Sheer quantity & purpose: There are billions of links everywhere on the web for some very good reasons. Links were initially used to connect one document on the web to another. Now they have another function. They are counted as votes in search engine algorithms. According to Paul’s Blog, they have over 10 benefits.

Their importance has resulted in their plentiful usage everywhere on the web (especially for spam). The end result is that links as the determining ranking and referencing factor are here to stay.

3. They are irreplaceable: Links as a referencing and ranking entity are irreplaceable at least in the short term. Sure, search engines are now incorporating social usage data into rankings, but that data will NEVER be enough to adequately decide on rankings.

Links are here to stay because it will be extremely difficult to use other factors in order to determine website authority. I do not really believe social media trumping links anytime soon.

I think that link building experts will have a huge edge over social marketers for quite a long time to come. What do you think?

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Tagged as: importance of links, links are king, links infalliable

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An Anatomy of Google’s Ranking Algorithm

by admin on February 3, 2010

I have recently started reading CopyBlogger as it provides a lot of valuable insights into the world of SEO, copywriting and online marketing (among other things). Brian Clark surely does know what he is doing.

Yesterday I came across a relatively new blog post at CopyBlogger which talked about the components of Google’s ranking algorithm i.e. how does Google decide on where and when to rank a certain webpage.

Now, before we look at the actual breakdown, I want to mention that this chart was provided by SEOMoz and for that reason I would hate not giving credit to them. SEOMoz is a great source of information on various SEO tactics.

But I digress.  Let’s take a look at the ranking algorithm chart:

SEO_Linkbuilding_chart

I really do not know what kind of testing or experimentation SEOMoz conducted in order to come up with different segments, but it (for the most part) directly reflects on what I my understanding was all along.

Lets get into the details:

1. Domain authority: This is by far the most important variable in the ranking algorithm. If you have a trusted domain with a lot of visitors, content pages and inbound links, you can actually get a junky, unimportant page to rank for very competitive terms. In essense you can actually beat many other low authority websites using this technique even if they have spent a lot more optimizing that page for the search engines. It is for this reason that Wikipedia ranks #1-#3 for extremely competitive generic keyword phrases which other companeis would spend thousands to rank for.

The lesson here must be obvious: Google loves long-term assets. If you can somehow turn your website into an authority domain, you can rank at the top of Google for very competitive phrases without a lot of effort. The problem however is the time and energy it takes to develop an authority domain.

2. Link popularity of the page: By this we mean the quality AND the quantity of inbound links to that page. You can thousands of junky links to a page but it will never help in the long-run. The idea here is to strike a balance between link popularity and link quality. Many successful SEOs can manipulate this factor (and the factor mentioned below) in order to get ranked for competitive terms. New webmasters usually have a hard time attending to this point properly either because they use too many junky links or they do not vary their anchor text a lot (among other factors).

3. External anchors to the page: This is the third most important factor. You can optimize the web-page for as many terms as you want but unless you get the right anchors from quality sources, you will never rank for your keyword term. Why? Simply because Google does not know where to rank you unless you have anchored links coming into your page.

4. On-page keyword usage: I must admit, I always ignore this factor when I do SEO. As far as I remember, I have never consciously taken into account how keyword rich my content is. I personally feel that this factor should get a little less weight as I have seen many webpages ranking for keywords which were not even mentioned on that page. Also, I have been able to rank many pages near the top without caring about this factor. But if you want to play it safe and cover all bases, go for a keyword density of 1%-2.5%.

5. Registration & hosting data: I believe they mean the domain registration stats over here. For example, a domain which is registered for 10 years might be weighted more by Google because spammers will NEVER register a domain for more than a year. Also, .info domains might be devalued and find it harder to rank because they are cheap to buy and have been expolited by spammers. By the hosting data they might been the bandwidth, the down-time of the website as well as any bottlenecks while accessing the website. So in essence, there are many different factors to look out for.

6. Traffic & click-through data: This factor needs more weight. I say that because I have had many websites ranking #2-#5 for competitive keyword terms. The only problem was, the info on them was not targeted which led to visitors instantly hitting the back button on their browser. The result? Those websites now rank #100-150. I can still get them back up by working on the content but I am lazy so I will wait. I feel that a horrible score on this factor can lead to a quick decrease in rankings even if all the other factors are adequately catered to.

7. Social graph metrics: Google is slowly (but surely) incorporating the social aspects into the ranking algo. This means that you need to start using Twitter, Facebook and websites like Digg, Propeller etc to gain traction for your content. Google knows when your content is liked by the masses and will give you a boost in rankings when that happens. The sad part is, I have not started using this factor to my benefit as it takes much more time and the results are a little uncertain.

So there you go. If you want your webpage to rank high, you have to do much more than what most people do. SEO takes time but it can give you free traffic if you do it right.

Did I miss anything? Let me know if you hold opposing views to what I have written here. Feel free to comment!

 

 

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Tagged as: google algo, google algorithm, how to rank in google

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