Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

If there are so many SEO experts out there, how come only 1 out of the top 5 results for SEO on Google is an actual SEO website? Aside from saying that you`re targeting "seo optimization techniques for blogs" and not "seo" because you know if you had plain old seo your business would increase 100 fold.

The leaders are:
Wikipedia
Google Webmaster
News
seo-usa.org (which has nothing to do with SEO)
and the only real one from what I can tell: seochat.com

How can you optimize a site for a keyword if you can`t do it for your own?



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Guitar Repair - RepairMyGuitar.com - The Guitar Repair Directory

Good observation.  When I see anyone who guarantees "top placement", I look for the asterisk.




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Steve Mann
Internet Videographer
MannMade Digital Video
My Email

Variety of reasons .... keyword density, inbound links, site age .... maybe black hat techniques as well ....

On top of what Steve said .... never work with anyone that guarantees top placement .... if they do, walk away .... there are no guarantees .... SEO experts can help increase your rankings, but cannot guarantee them to be at the top of any search.


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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

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Powerful, Free Marketing Tips to Help Grow Your Business!
Free-Marketing-Tips-Blog.com Follow me on Twitter @FreeMarkTips

There`s a flaw in the proposition. Those listed above tend toward the definition or examination of the field of SEO. That would more likely be relevant if you type in only "SEO" to the query line.

However, if you type in "SEO companies" you get a different set of results.

The whole idea of what should properly be called "search engine marketing" (SEM) is to place one`s clients at the higher end of rankings. And as with the cobbler whose children go without shoes, a lot of companies are too busy to spend the time getting themselves taken care of. They more often would rely on word-of-mouth and customer testimonials.

What a lot of people don`t understand is that search-engine optimization (SEO) is a really complicated, time-consuming process. And it`s only a portion of the overall SEM strategy. It`s like Web-site design, and takes a lot of time.

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Web Design | Best Beef Jerky | ecommerce articles | Follow vwebworld on Twitter

One thing to do would be start with the Forum dedicated specifically to discussion on search-engine optimization. We`ve had a lot of these discussions, and many community members have added links to all sorts of tools.

That gets you the theory behind SEO. But as is always the case, theory is different from implementation. And that`s what you seem to be asking.

The obvious answer is to hire a professional, which then reconnects with your topic of how to find such a professional. :-) I believe the phrase is that it`s a "Catch-22."

One way or another, this whole kit and kaboodle comes down to a fundamental concept: What`s the defining characteristic of your business.

The problem I see emerging is the growing number of people starting a business who want someone else to take care of everything! Perhaps this comes out of today`s business culture that you can throw money at any problem and fix it. Maybe not.

A much better strategy would be to first, on your own, figure out what exactly it is you`re trying to promote. What is your business about, and how does it "fit into" the world around you?

When you have that basic information, then you can be an active partner in any business with an SEO company.

If you`re NOT an active partner, then you`re basically saying: "I have no idea what I`m doing, no clue what`s my business, and no knowledge whatsoever about how to run a business. I want to turn over the keys and the checkbook to some stranger, and have them turn me into a millionaire."

Does that make any sense?

I get all your points and thanks for the responses.

But the bottom line is that if these people are preaching "content is king" and "its all about inbound links" "keywords" then why can none of them over take a site like seo-usa.org which has only 260 pages, only 75 inbound links, and ZERO meta tags, no keywords, nothing? Even the majority of their text is in images.

I see your point with the not targeting for "SEO" generically. But we all know they would do anything to have that position for that term, they just dont have the knowledge to make it happen.





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Guitar Repair - RepairMyGuitar.com - The Guitar Repair Directory

True, and what`s even more bizarre is that we`ve had a couple of people join SuN and tell us how brilliant they are at SEO. But let anyone question how come their site, or those of their clients are hard to find even when you`re looking for them, and it`s a flame war. 

seo-usa.org is not about website seo, it`s educational based ( so it really isn`t competing, if you will, with web seo ), plus it`s an .org, which gets a boost on it`s own.

Wikipedia topics show up for searches for a lot of things, jpartly because they`re within Wikipedia, which is pretty huge.

Google Webmaster .... probably due to content, and of course it`s part of the huge Google network.

SEOChat is popular, and has a lot of relevant content.

There are a lot of various reasons why some show up at the top, and others don`t. 

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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons