Why you need to focus on Organic SEO

1. The majority of people still trust the organic results on search engines. If your website is not within the top few listings, you are losing traffic and possible sales to your competitors.

2. Peoples search habits have changed. Today, people search in different ways and you cannot predict the exact keywords that your customers use to look for your products or services. But by optimizing your content to a specific keyword theme, you can amplify your website reputation in the search results listing.

3. If your competitors are up there, you need to be there also. If not, you are losing possible sales to your competitors because they are going to get more traffic than you.

4. When you optimize your website with appropriate content, you get people to stay at your site longer and this will raise your conversion rate.

5. With appropriate SEO, more people are visiting your website. This means that even with your current conversion rate, you can get more sales.

6. Always stay ahead of your competitors. As competition gets stronger, you need to leverage SEO to get more traffic and sales than your competitors.

7. With SEO, you can grab a larger market share. This makes your company an authority in your industry, which at the end of the day translates into added sales.

8. 24/7 spotlight with SEO. When your website is optimized, you get traffic all day long.

9. You do not need to pay for each click that SEO brings you. Clicks from the organic listing are on the house. So you are saving more money in the long run with SEO.

10. Repeat business. Customers referred from search engines are inclined to stay around longer, which increases client lifetime revenues via SEO.

These tips are provided by DotShot, an internet marketing company with several SEO veterans behind the scenes. If you need help with SEO Services, visit them here: SEO Services

I ran across a great blog post (List) on TopRankBlog.com this morning when looking for some SEO blogs to read, and found something worth blogging about myself. If you are in the internet marketing, SEO, or web development industry you will love the BIGLIST of Search Engine Marketing Blogs. The list has over 400 blogs listed and this list includes some of the best blogs online. A few that I recognized included ShoeMoney.com, MarketingPilgrim.com, SEOMOZ, and many others.

This is by far the best list of useful blogs that I have ever found online. It is worth a look and a bookmark.

The list is maintained by TopRankBlog, a blog that has been online since 2003 and covers all aspects of SEO, Internet Marketing, Social Media, and more.

InterChanges.com – InterChanges

A well respected SEO and Internet marketing firm based out of Florida talks about the benefits of utilizing social networks and social media. InterChanges.com is an internet marketing and SEO firm that focuses on new media and cutting edge marketing techniques. InterChanges is big in the Social Media Marketing arena and offers some great insight on Social Media Marketing.

Social Media Marketing is a relatively new concept utilized by businesses developing online communities which allow current and potential customers to congregate and discuss a particular brand, product or service. In most cases, the online communities include mechanisms such as blogs, podcasts, videos, message boards, and product reviews, all of which contribute to a transparent forum to post praises, criticisms, questions, and suggestions.

Also included in the realm of social media is Mobile Marketing. Mobile phone users (xx million in the US alone) opt-in to a short-code using a certain keyword and once they are opted-in, they will receive messages tailored around the campaign to learn more about the product or service.  Other unique and highly effective campaigns can be developed as well. 

One of the primary reasons to use Social Media Marketing is because traditional advertising is losing its influence on consumers. This premise is backed by statistical evidence demonstrating a growing trend of consumers making purchasing decisions from Internet research and referrals. Most people agree that feedback and reviews from like-minded peers hold more weight than corporate marketing messages dispersed through traditional television, radio, direct mail, or newspaper advertising.

Although businesses would be exposing certain weaknesses to the marketplace by allowing individuals, or even competitors, to post critical comments, responding with an honest and transparent answer designed around solving the issue at hand may mitigate potential risks. Marketing Experiments has conducted research on the topic of transparent marketing.

As the U.S. mobile market matures, more mobile devices will be enabled to receive video and multimedia messages. Not only will consumers be able to see video, hear sound and play games, they will be able to watch their favorite TV shows on their mobile devices during their daily commutes. This system of mobile communication and commerce is already in place in the U.K, where 97% of the population has a mobile phone and most phones are capable of receiving 30 hours of video programming at one time. There are over 200 Million cell phones and mobile devices in use within the USA. A lot of Social Networkers use their cell phones to communicate VIA social networks.

InterChanges.com contributed parts of this article to learn more about interchanges visit them online.

Free press release sites are a great way to get more exposure for your business and online press releases go hand in hand with SEO and Reputation Management.

In June we posted a small list of free press release sites. Here is a larger list of free press release sites that you might find useful. Enjoy!

bignews.biz

afly.com

afreego.com/PressReleases.php

business.pagerelease.com

postafreepressrelease.com

tennessee-press-release.com

myfreepr.com

express-press-release.com

newyork-press-release.com

pr-usa.net

washington-press-release.com

express-press-release.net

press-network.com

pressbox.com

seenation.com

newsalbum.com

mediasyndicate.com

ukprwire.com

presszoom.com

pressportal.co.za

promotionworld.com

PageRelease.com

free-press-release-center.info

pressexposure.com

speedypr.com

prwindow.com

newsblaster.com

clickpress.com

pressreleasespider.com

freepressreleases.co.uk

pressreleasecirculation.com

prurgent.com

prfocus.com

newdesignworld.com

pressmethod.com

information-online.com

pr2work.com

illinois-press-release.com

prcompass.com

freepressrelease.co.cc

free-news-release.com

bizeurope.com/pressrelease.htm

massachusetts-press-release.com

pressflow.co.uk

indiaprwire.com

pressmediawire.com

ecommwire.com

pressreleasepoint.com

pressrelease.com.np

softarea51.com

techprspider.com

prlog.org

openpr.com

ohio-press-release.com

pressbox.co.uk

exactrelease.com

businessportal24.com/en

dir.free-press-release.com

1888pressrelease.com

live-pr.com/en

free-press-release.com

i-newswire.com

prfriend.com

Enjoy the list and if you have any to share or have something to say please post a comment and let us all know!

Remove Rip Off Reports

Online complaints are flooding the internet daily. Is your business one of the ones being listed on complaint sites like Rip Off Report? Rip Off Report (RipOffReport) is a controversial online complaint portal website that allows anyone to say almost anything about anyone without verifying that the information reported is true or accurate. Rip Off Report doesn’t even verify your identity as being real when you file a complaint.

Why does this spell disaster for online and traditional businesses? Well the simple fact is anyone can say what they want about you and what they say WILL show up high on Google and other search engines when they search for your name or company name.

Why do rip off report complaints rank so high on Google? Being in the reputation management industry and working with one of the leaders in the industry I see this question a lot and there are many answers to this question. A few factors that play a role in why rip off report ranks good on Google are as follows:

Rip Off Report has been online since 1998 (11 Years Old)
Rip Off Report has 400,000+ Pages Indexed On Google
Rip Off Report Has ½ Million Complaints Filed On Their Site
Ripoffreport  is one of the top 10000 sites in the world.
Over 300,000+ Page Views Per DAY = 9 Million Per Month!

The factors above and others make rip off report an authority site in Google’s world and it makes rip off report one of the most popular sites in the world. This is why when someone files a complaint, within 24 hours or less it will normally rank very high on Google.

If you have a rip off reports complaint about you or your business ranking high on Google when you search your name, then you better be prepared to DO WORK! Remove rip off reports with the help of a reputation management company. A reputation management firm will all tell you the same thing; there is no way to make rip off report take your complaint off of their website. I don’t care if you have a 6 figure legal budget to do it; you will most likely fail like the thousands of others in your shoes have.

What should you do? You should act fast, you should be patient, you should also be prepared to invest in repairing your online reputation, and you should hire a professional. A regular “SEO Firm” or web designer/developer will most likely fail at helping you. Find a company that specializes in Removing Online Complaints. The company I work with is ReputationArmor.com they have helped several clients remove rip off reports. Removing a rip off report can take 8-12 weeks in most cases and sometimes faster depending on the name of your company and how many results on Google about you are found.

This article is provided by ReputationArmor.com they can help you remove rip off reports. Call them at 1.888.358.2766 for help to remove complaints and rip off report links from Google’s top results.

Want tips on how to remove rip off reports? Post a comment/question and we will reply with the best answer possible!

SAMPLE SEO CONTRACT

I have had a few people asking for a basic sample SEO contract for the purpose of landing new SEO deals. There is a link to a decent SEO contract template below, the contract is a little old but will give you a good place to start when making your own contract.

Having an SEO contract will help protect you from unreasonable refund requests do to problems not within your control and will allow you to set a basic outline of what services you will be providing for the initial fees. I recommend always using an SEO contract. I have literally saved thousands of dollars by having an SEO contract made for all of my clients.

Here is the link: Sample SEO Contract (MS Word)

How To React To The Google Ban

Google expects that you should make pages for users, not for search engines: “Don’t deceive your users, or present different content to search engines than you display to users,” they say, and Google goes on to list the following banned advice:

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Avoid Keyword Stuffing – Adding random Keywords In Your Footer.
• Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don’t send automated queries to Google.
• Don’t load pages with irrelevant words.
• Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

You can get your site back in to Google’s good graces if you follow some simple steps. It may require a complete revamp of your website and SEO techniques, but it is worth the effort.

• First, clean up your act. (Fix the Issues)
• Then send Google a very polite email where you acknowledge and describe what you (or your search engine marketing firm) have done.
• Tell Google that you have read their guidelines and that you will not anything like this again.
• If you hired an SEO firm that spammed on your behalf, release the firm’s name.
• Always Include full contact information.

Do apologize and make no excuses. Google will frequently reply to such polite requests and you may find some of your pages back in the index within a couple of weeks. However, it can take months before the search engine has spidered your complete site again.

The Google Ban Notice – How to get Google to tell you when you have crossed the line

It is in fact possible to get Google to inform you when they deem you have broken the rules.

Webmasters using Google’s Sitemap feature may possibly (we repeat: may) get an email from Google telling them when they have crossed the line.

Google’s Matt Cutts puts it this way:

(…) I think the ideal search engine would also tell legitimate site owners when they risk not doing well in Google. On the other hand, if the webspam team detects a spammer that is creating dozens or hundreds of sites with doorway pages followed by a sneaky redirect, there’s no reason that we’d want the spammer to realize that we’d caught those pages…”

So Google may try and tell you when they believe you have broken the rules. This is the kind of email you might expect:

No pages from your site are currently included in Google’s index due to violations of the webmaster guidelines. Please review our webmaster guidelines and modify your site so that it meets those guidelines. Once your site meets our guidelines, you can request reinclusion and we’ll evaluate your site.

If you find the issue and clean it up, then click on the “Submit a reinclusion request” and fill out the form.

Stay on top of the issue and be proactive in getting your website Re-indexed. Do not bug the spam team every day or every other day. They are very busy and will reply when necessary to your requests. Give it time, you made the mistakes and it is not Google’s fault that you were banned. It is yours or your SEO guys mistake.

Have you ever been banned by Google? How did you react? What did you do? Share your tips below by commenting so others can learn how to fix a Google Ban.

Get Free Reputation Monitoring Today

It is infrequent to hear the word free without some sort of strings attached. In this occurrence, you can really get free reputation monitoring by simply doing it yourself.  It is so simple to monitor your own business or personal reputation online. There are companies that charge a monthly fee of $19.95 and up, to basically do what you can do free.  I believe that a dollar saved is a dollar earned. Before you go out and unearth a paid reputation monitoring service (not to be confused with reputation management), try to do it yourself first.

Here is how to monitor your own online reputation. Since Google has become not only the largest and most popular search engine, it has also become what I refer to as a “reputation engine”. Google usually (quickly in most cases) finds new information online before most search engines do.

All you in actuality have to do to monitor your online reputation is use what Google offers 100% complimentary: Google Alerts – a very effortless service that sends you an email whenever it discovers search results for the terms or keywords you chose, such as your name or company name.

Many online reputation management and monitoring companies tap in to this free service then charge you for something that costs nothing. It is so easy to set-up a Google Alert, all you need is an email address and you are set.

Head over to Google and set-up your own Google Alert today and you will know when something new hits the internet about you or the keywords you choose.  I use it and I love it!

What is Black Hat Seo?

Many people have their own opinions on exactly what techniques constitute Black Hat SEO. Black Hat SEO is basically using any unethical (devious) methods to rank higher on search engines. Black Hat Seo in my opinion is not a certain death sentence for you website, I like to use what I refer to as Grey Hat techniques that are not likely to get your website penalized.

Some of the most frowned upon Black Hat SEO methods include the following:

 Link Farms This is a method where many sites link to each other to mutually up their incoming links. It can be detected since there is a very high number of mutual links and they are generally out of context.

Obvious Link Buying (or selling) certain sites sell links on their pages knowing the value of them. In general, buying a link is not likely to harm your site but you may be wasting your money. Search engines try to spot the sites selling links and downgrade or ignore the links coming from the site. If a website openly advertises that they sell links then I would not buy a link from them.

Hidden text Hiding text in a web page is always a bad thing. Older techniques of putting the text as the same colors as the background or using css to hide it are easily spotted and pointless. If you have text on a page, make sure that it can be seen. The only exceptions to this are navigation buttons which require javascript or css and the content may be used as a backup (for browsers that cannot use javascript for example). In these cases, the text that cannot be seen should be relevant and not deceiving.

Spamming Spam in this context is over stuffing your pages with text that does not read well. If a page has text stuffed in that is there for the sole purpose of keyword stuffing then it is spam. It is much better to write proper text for humans that contain the keywords that you want to be on the page.

Cloaking This is a technique where software delivers a different page to the spiders as it does for the humans to fool the spider into thinking that the page is about something else. Sometimes there may be a genuine reason to do this (formatting for different platforms etc.) but in this case the content should be pretty similar.

 A few vague definitions of Black Hat SEO as found on the web:

Spamdexing involves a number of methods, such as repeating unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a …

The opposite of White Hat SEO is sometimes called spamdexing. Black Hat SEO can be any optimization strategies that cause a site to rank more highly than its content would otherwise justify…

Black Hat search engine optimization are unethical techniques that are used to get higher search rankings. Black hat SEO techniques usually break search engine rules and regulations and generally create poor user experience.

This term refers to using deceptive or unethical techniques to get high rankings in search engines; for example hidden text, cloaking and link …

Black-hat SEO is optimizing web pages using dubious techniques that violate search engine guidelines, such as sneaky redirects, cloaking and invisible text. …

Involves a number of unethical methods designed to manipulate search engines into giving a web site higher rankings.

Unethical or illegitimate techniques used in SEO that do not follow the search engine guidelines, in order to get quicker results. But these do not last for long and if picked up by Google, would also end up in penalizing or even banning of the website

 Black hat SEO are the techniques used to fool the search engines in order to bring in more traffic to websites. …

Where does the phrase Black Hat SEO some from?

In movie, a “Black hat” was someone in a western movie (usually a villain) who would wear a black hat in contrast to the hero’s white hat. An almost perfect reference will be the popular western cowboy movie ” The Good The Bad and the Ugly.”

Local Search Engine Marketing Tips

Want your local business website to rank well online? There is loads of information about how to dominate local search terms and rank well, but it’s easy to get confused with all the advice that’s available out there. Here are the top 5 critical tips of local search that will help you rank and dominate in your local market.

1. Add Geographical Information to Your Page Titles

Make sure to use your target keyword terms and location name in your page titles. This helps search engines to decide easily what your site is about and search engine users are more likely to click on your site if it contains related geographical keywords for the area they live in.

2. Get Your Business Listed on Prominent Websites Directories

Google Maps, Yahoo Local, and MSN Live Local are all places where you can have your business listed in order to make it easier for prospective clients to discover you. By claiming ownership of your business listings on these well-known sites, you permit both search engines and potential customers to get accurate information about your business. Sometimes devious competitors may claim your listing on these sites to steal your traffic and business. Make sure you’re the initial one to claim your listings in order to build faith between you, the search engines, and prospective customers. There are also numerous geographical search directories that get noteworthy traffic where you can claim your listings. Citysquares.com is an example of a local search directory with good traffic.

3. Provide a plethora of Information about Your Business in Your Local Listings

When search engine users land on your website by clicking on your business listing, you want to be certain that you give them a lot information about your service. In addition to including the basics such as your address, contact information, and operation hours give prospective clients an abundance of reasons why they should choose you over your competitors. For example, mention precisely which towns and neighborhoods you service, what credit cards you accept, what your guarantees are, any special offers you have (Coupons), and anything else that is applicable.

4. Use Your Target Keyword Phrases as Anchor Text in Your Hyperlinks

Link reputation is a vital element of search engine algorithms. When possible, make sure that the links pointing back to your site use your best target keyword phrase and variations of your location as anchor text. Your internal links also have a say to link reputation so be sure to link to pages within your site using good link text. This link text can be used in your site navigation, HTML sitemap, and links within your content.

5. Monitor Reviews about Your Business Online and Your Online Reputation

Thanks to the internet, consumers can submit online reviews of businesses to customer-controlled review sites like Yelp and share their experiences, whether good or bad. This could be highly beneficial to your business if it gets great reviews but it could also hurt you if you get some bad reviews. Monitor the reviews your business receives on a regular basis so you can find negative reviews when they occur and rebut them if necessary. Sometimes customers don’t always present reasonable or honest reviews so make certain that if you do get bad reviews that are unjustified, the potential customers who see them can get both sides of the story at the very least. Using Google Alerts is a handy way to keep track of what is being said about your business online and is used frequently by reputation management firms. Also make it a habit to “Google” your company name, your name, your phone number, your website name and your product names on a daily basis.

Use these strategies in local search to boost your online presence. There are numerous tactics you can use to boost targeted traffic to your business’ website and develop its ranking but these are some of the most valuable ways to give your business a strong local presence.