Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I remember when Google started selling high rankings for money. People got upset and said it would be the death of the small business. But then lots of people, even posting here, noticed that when you put in "gadgets" to the query line, you`d get "Find gadgets at Target!"

If you clicked that paid-for ad, you`d EXPECT to be taken to the page on the Target site that sold "gadgets." Instead, you ended up simply at the home page for Target and had to search all over again. It`s a ridiculously idiotic use of computer technology.

Google has a reputation for pushing the envelop, trying to find ways to make searching more personally relevant. If it works, they go with it. If it doesn`t, they drop it. SEO writing should always be an add-on...a secondary consideration, not the primary workaround for lack of product or poor quality, or whatever else.

I think we should watch what happens with Google. If it doesn`t work, you can believe there will be plenty of people salivating at the chance to go back to the "old way" and capture market share from Google! :-D

If this wipes out SEO writing, so what? But I doubt it`ll censor search results. After all, if you`re looking for "Vulcan helioptic crystals," do you think you`re going to find them on the Wal-Mart site? Small businesses are known for their niche products. As such, there`ll be a direct association between the actual words in the query bar, and the number of hits to the very few sites that actually offer those words.

What`s particularly interesting in this change to Google, is that I think many of the thoughts and comments offered here on SuN for visibility will now move up in their importance. It`s no longer the passive aspect of SEO writing that`ll push the rankings. Instead, it`s the actual marketing and promotion tools.

In other words, it`s just one thing to optimize pages with "rich content." It`s very different to actively go out and establish a connected presence on MySpace or SuN, or other shopping malls or discussion boards. That means actually taking personal time to actually do something proactive.

Personally, I`m a bit fed up with how "online" is a buzz word for "easy money." Instead, online résumés, online job applications, online this and online that, have ensured that what used to be a local neighborhood shopping expedition has now turned into the most anonymous of all things. It`s hard enough to not get lost or overwhelmed in a town of 60,000 or in a large city`s suburban sprawl. But to go out into the entire planet Earth? That`s overwhelming!

It helps to first understand why search engines rank pages and websites highly and others don`t ever seem to get on their radar.

The search engines make assumptions as to what makes content "valuable." One, and probably most importantly, is links. If a page contains links that connect to similar content, it adds "relevance" to that page. Likewise, if the page has links coming to it from other websites, it assumes this content must be pretty important.

Search engines also analyze the text on the page, looking for words and phrases that are repeated. These are the keywords and key phrases that everyone talks about. The search engine stores the pages based on the keywords/phrases in its index and if/when that keyword/phrase is searched, it returns all of the relevant pages.

You`ve received some great advice/tips above and it should help your own website. Another option is to look into posting your content with your keywords on another site that is built specially to deliver high rankings on search engines. Our service, Lead Maverick, does just this. If you are interested, check out our website to learn moare and visit our Partners page to see a list of agencies, web developers, SEO consultants, etc. who can help you with using Lead Maverick and other SEO and SEM opportunities.

Good Luck!



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Ecordia
Top Organic Search Results in 2 weeks
www.ecordia.com

I wrote a blog article a few months ago on two excellent tools for keyword placement analysis. It`s a bit long, but here`s the link.

My site places #1 on Google and Yahoo for about 80% of my target keywords. There are three significant keys to this:

1. The site has been at the same URL for 15 years, predating search engines. Longevity goes a long way in Google`s formula
2. My target market doesn`t have many competitors. In some cases mine is the only matching business
3. I do a lot of SEO optimization on my sites, because 65% of my traffic comes from search engines

Even though I have a competitive advantage I don`t discount SEO work. When three quarters of new business finds you on Google, you`re throwing away money if you don`t proactively manage SEO.

LeadMaverick, I don`t mean to come off as a jerk, but I notice that your SEO optimization company, that promises `top organic search results in two weeks`, doesn`t show up anywhere in the first ten pages of a Google search for `SEO optimization`.

I will suggest what I have been doing and I learned it from reading SEO books and from couple of friends on mine.
I launched my new site 2 months back.
The site was http://www.skill-guru.com
Now before I launched, I had a domain name therefore I set up wordpress blog.
http://www.skill-guru.com/blog

I started blogging with relevant topics and started pushing up in rankings.
I also post the blog articles in relevant forum.
So I am on first page of google for some keywords but as people have suggested, it is an ongoing activity

I`m still bummed out that I sold the domain name "online.com" for only 6-figures about eight years ago.  I should have held ut for seven, or kept it to monitize it myself later.  But, it was a year`s worth of income for no work on my part.


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Steve Mann
Internet Videographer
MannMade Digital Video
My Email

While I am still a newbie to SEO, I signed up for a service that has had a dramatic impact on our search engine ranking as well as the amount of traffic we are getting.

The service is easy to use, cheap and does not require a lot of man hours. It is called LotusJump.

I am not suggesting that this is the "be all end all" for SEO, and you should make sure that it aligns with your marketing strategy, but I think it is an excellent add-on to what you are already doing.

Seth,

Using a website designer that doesn't know much about SEO is detrimental to your website.  Creating pages from page "name" to meta tag "title" "description" and "keywords" including "alt" tags for any graphics in your website, anchor tags for text links, etc. 

These are the basics of website "creation" even though it's SEO.  The two work so hand-in-hand that one without the other will just kill ya'.  What's a beautiful website if nobody's finding it, as well as, What's the point of having lots of visitors, if your website's so awful that nobody stays?

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Nancy Golliday | Custom Point2 Agent Websites | WordPress Websites / Blogs | Social Media Branding | SEO

Seth,

If you go to your signature on this website and replace the www.coolbugstuff.com with

<a target='_blank' href="http://www.CoolBugStuff.Com">CoolBugStuff.Com</a>

It will change your signature to a live link. The next time SUN is indexed you are going to pick up a backlink to your site for each post. It will also allow all of us to get to your site quicker by clicking on the link.

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MyWebJourney.Com
Pasteurizers.Info
href="http://SumpAlarm.Com">SumpAlarm.Com

I will Suggest you a right person for you he is energetic and have a good track record. if you are interested ping me back i will give you his contact detail

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Cygnis Media