Data Choices
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The Horse's Mouth is designed to be a straight shooting article about search engine optimization. SEO is a hotly debated topic, and some are left to wonder why. The first part of the equation is simple. Companies want to get to the top of the unpaid, or so called organic market, quickly. This, of course, leads to the second part of the equation. The search engines want to deliver the most relevant content to the user. When a user consistently gets the results he is searching for, he is likely to continue to use that engine.
Picking an Ethical Search Engine Marketing Specialist
Finding an ethical search engine marketing specialist can be a difficult task indeed! We have said many times in the past that no one can guarantee a number one ranking on a specific search engine. Google agrees. "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a 'special relationship' with Google, or advertise a 'priority submit' to Google." Google goes on to advise that there is no priority submit with their engine. You must use ethical search engine optimization methods to succeed!
We have seen several forms of this so called "Guarantee." The most common is to charge $100 or more initially and then some monthly fee for a guaranteed number one listing on Google or Yahoo. Once they have your money they place a paid ad, using Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing and then take a snapshot of the screen to show your number one listing. Many companies figure this out after they are sent the "proof" of their number one ranking and cancel, losing only a couple hundred bucks. Some may not spot (or understand) the 'sponsored' tag and continue to pay a monthly fee. Of course you could get this paid number one listing on your own for a few bucks, instead of a few hundred bucks!
The other type of common "Guarantee" is a company that charges a few hundred in a non-refundable "setup fee" and then a couple thousand dollars over the next year. At the end of the year if they were unable to deliver on their guarantee they refund everything but the setup fee. This gives them your money for them to invest over a one year period. Worst case for them is that they keep your setup fee and the interest they made on your money over the past year. $400 or so isn't a bad take if they don't spend much time working on your account!
The flip side of the second 'Guarantee' plan is that if they truly do work hard to get you into a number one position and fail you can be assured that $400 is not much compensation for a years' work! Nevertheless, Data Choices prefers a more straightforward approach to SEO.
Our SEO plans have no 'setup fee' because there is very little to be 'set up' initially. You provide information to us, such as your domain name, the pages you want optimized and (if you know them) the key phrases you want optimized. You select a distinct period of time, three months, six, nine or a year. Although we have had some incredible results with our own website in only a few months, the reality is that getting high rankings on competitive terms will likely take more than three months. Nevertheless our RankMaster package is a three month program that is great for brand new domains. For us, RankMaster is one of the most labor intensive packages and it comes to you at a very low cost. It gives you an opportunity to see how we work before committing more resources to Internet Marketing. But you should not expect number one listings in only three months! What you should expect is that Data Choices will review the competitiveness of the keywords you suggest, and/or make suggestions of our own that have a better chance of getting your website organic hits. Initially you want all the name recognition you can get, regardless of keyphrase. As people begin to see (and remember) your company name, you can migrate to more competitive keywords that can bring e-dollars to you!
Interestingly, our SERP challenge, which involved two disparate keyphrases (something you should not try, but something we wanted to prove we could do) has brought organic hits to the Data Choices domain from users who have spent significantly more time on the website and dug deeper into the website than many of our non-organic hits! This shows that quality content pages not only appeal to the search engines, but they appeal to people as well - people that may be inclined to spend e-dollars on your website even if you did not expect those results! And, at the very least, it promotes organic name recognition, which is exactly what any new business needs!
If you have taken the RankMaster Package to get your website launched into the e-world, then we believe you will be very satisfied with the results, even over such a short period of time! And once you have tried the package we think it is highly likely that you will then come back for the Charge Ahead Package or the Domain Pro package, to see what we can do over the next six to nine months.
Instead of playing the Guarantee Game, listen to Google, Yahoo, MSN and all the others who will flat out tell you that an organic number one position cannot be guaranteed in a specific time frame. Not only is the Web changing everyday, but the engines are too! We think a smarter strategy is to take a starter package and let the results speak for themselves! Then, once you are convinced that you are getting much more than you are paying for; get on the Domain Pro Supersaver bandwagon and let us become your Internet Marketing Specialists!
Imagine that you are the head honcho at any one of the major search engine companies. Someone does a search for "houses for sale" and a website pops up for an insurance company, only the descriptive text under the link makes you think this is what you are looking for in the results. So you click on the link only to find that this company wants to sell you insurance for your home, auto or anything else. How many links do you go through, not finding what you are looking for, before you try a different search engine?
Of course the owner of the insurance company is happy, because he was able to deceive the search engine and get a page one listing. But now the search engine company adjusts it bot to counter the tactic used by the insurance company, let's say keyword stuffing. So now the insurance company falls from the listings on buying houses, so he goes back to work at trying to deceive the engines again. Once he again succeeds, perhaps this time by sending the search engine to a page about buying houses, but sending people to his insurance website! So again the game of cat and mouse continues.
Unfortunately there may be a large number of legitimate companies that get dropped from the listings as well. A common current problem is the keyword stuffing scenario outlined above. Some of the keyword stuffing algorithms are so rigid that perfectly legitimate companies get hit with a keyword stuffing mark, even though they did not intend any such action.
Once upon a time these unethical search engine optimization techniques worked. And some still do on the smaller engines. And, of course, new strategies are being developed everyday; strategies that may work for a short while but will eventually harm your legitimate site! The absolute best strategy is to use ethical search engine optimization that will allow your legitimate site to move higher in the rankings. If your competitors are not search engine savvy then they may remain low in the listings either because they are inadvertently using a technique banned by the engines (we see a lot of that!) or simply because they don't know the best way to optimize their site.
This can of course give you an advantage.
Here is how Google looks at SPAM:
"Trying to deceive (spam) our web crawler by means of hidden text, deceptive cloaking or doorway pages compromises the quality of our results and degrades the search experience for everyone.We think that's a bad thing . . .we'll use the data to improve our site ranking and filtering algorithms, which, over time, should increase the quality of our results."
Google goes on to specifically identify the following:
- Hidden text or links
- Misleading or repeated words
- Page does not match Google's description
- Cloaked pages or deceptive redirects
- Doorway pages
- Duplicate site or pages
Think, for just a moment, about how broad these categories can be! Just how "hidden" does text have to be to get your rank dropped? What looks like a good, non-distracting web environment just might trigger the hidden text algorithm! What types of words are "misleading?" What if your website is a robust content portal to help people find related, but distinctly different products and services? What if you are the real estate company that also wants to include informative content on insurance, mortgage rates, building inspectors, and even information on nearby parks and recreation?
And that is just taking into account one search engine! Do you think that the algorithms for Google will be the same as the ones used by Yahoo or Microsoft?
Now let's take a look at Yahoo
"Web users look to search engines more than any other tool to find what they need online. Search engines generally rank their results based on a complex formula that considers page contents, keywords, number of links, site size, and other details, and they change their formulas regularly to ensure that web sites can't artificially elevate their rankings by manipulating one or more of these elements."
" Larger web sites and those with frequently updated content also tend to rank more highly."
"Search engines change their page ranking and relevancy formulas frequently to keep sites from artificially boosting their rankings above where they would normally be based on their content."
Yahoo no longer uses the keyword META tag in its rankings. But don't let this fool you! Other search engines, even major search engines, still use the keyword META tag, as long as it is supported by actual content within the page. Keywords themselves (meaning content) are definitely King, but when supported by proper use of the keyword META tag it can have a profound result on your website!
There is no question. You need to stay ahead of the curve avoid the common pitfalls that prevent you from getting a good ranking.
Charge Ahead and get ahead now!
