I have seen quite a few posts for help with SEO and I have seen a couple people offer help but most of the knowledge leaves holes and generally hints on what you should do. So I have created a couple articles that should help you guys learn about off-page optimization and how it controls your ranking. And yes, I do know that you need to optimize on-page as well but we all know the power of links... Seven Things You Can Do to in 2007 To Drive Profits & Keep Costs Down (PDF) This article goes over some basic techniques to improving your traffic, and getting some higher conversions on the traffic you are already receiving. The Not so Ancient Art of Link Building(PDF) A useful article that goes over off-page link optimization for website owners. This article is packed full of important information on how linking controls your traffic. It's important that you know what SEO is and how you can change where you rank for your terms. If you are going to choose an SEO company to help you out consider the following: Pay for consultation initially to see if your site is ready. This will have the smallest impact on your wallet and you will get a lot of useful info. Find out how difficult your keywords are. I don't care who you use for SEO but if some guy says he can rank you for "home loans" on page one of Google he is out of his mind. Start off slow and steady. We see it all the time but many people have the mind-set that ranking for keywords is an overnight task. Simply put you should not use SEO as an instant tool. At best you could see results in as little as a month but even that would be for easy keywords. Avoid tricky wording. I saw this ad for SEO in my mailbox and it said it could get me on page one for any of my terms in 24 hours. What they neglected to say was that it was from starting a PPC account. NICE way to trick someone into thinking they are getting a deal. The cost of this incredible service was $99.95 - Go figure And last but not least... Make sure you get along with whoever you use. Afterall they should care about your business as if it was their own.
Um no... I have ranked my site against markets with 100+ million competiting sites including authority sites. You can rank for whatever you want as long as you have the funding, motivation, and patience to do so. Huge markets will take lots of planning, good content based on careful research, and a proper LSI site theme. Not too mention strong authority backlinks.
I agree, though I have never tackled the really big markets. If you have the time/money/expertise, you can rank for anything. :-P Some good stuff in your articles, though, SmokeDog.
I completely agree. You have an unlimited budget and a year or two of time and anything is possible. I think for most of us though there are quite a few long tail keywords that can easily build as much traffic if not more and lower the budget and time frame. A good place to start is keywords that use 3 or more words in the phrase. I've heard the term "Get Nichey" and honestly it works well for many people. Thanks for the praise
Indeed it does. I have targeted keyword phrases that, for the most part, are not too ambitious and are directly relevant to the "niche" nature of my website. On Overture/WordTracker they tend to show typically from 20 to 200 daily searches. That's not a lot in absolute terms. But by targeting a bunch of this level of keywords, I've gotten about 24 of them to Google's first page. And they, plus other factors, are generating about 1,000 unique visitors daily. Target your niche aggressively; it does pay off!
Mr. Best Naughty, A press release is just a nice fancy way to get links. A press release will talk about your company and how its products or services affect the market. A smart SEO will pay the $$$ and place keyword rich text links in the release. PM me if you need help on this.