October 18, 2011: Announcement on the Goog-O-Blahg-oh in the name of “Making search more secure”:

We will stop all third party tracking services in their tracks, or more mildly put, “we are encrypting search for signed in users and websites won’t be able to see the keywords that brought them there, but don’t worry, we’ll send you a summary if you register your site with our Webmaster Tools where we can control your behavior.”

Google will use SSL technology to [...]]]> Google Will Break A Lot of Tracking Tools and SEO Hearts With This One

October 18, 2011: Announcement on the Goog-O-Blahg-oh in the name of “Making search more secure”:

We will stop all third party tracking services in their tracks, or more mildly put, “we are encrypting search for signed in users and websites won’t be able to see the keywords that brought them there, but don’t worry, we’ll send you a summary if you register your site with our Webmaster Tools where we can control your behavior.”

Google will use SSL technology to further obscure the process by which people find your website, just in case you were trying to figure that out and optimize your content in any way to rank for a particular term, something Google kind of dislikes unless you’re a big brand name like Nike. Then you can rank for shoes. If you’re a shoe store selling shoes in Westbury you can go to SSL encryption purgatory. Sign up, let Google babysit your website and you’ll get a summary if they don’t come up with a penalty program for everyone selling anything or promoting anything they don’t pre-approve.

Do you ever get the feeling that Google is controlling a bit too much lately?

Could this tip the scales in the favor of Bing?

What does this mean for sites that receive clicks from Google search results? When you search from https://www.google.com, websites you visit from our organic search listings will still know that you came from Google, but won’t receive information about each individual query. They can also receive an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to their site for each of the past 30 days through Google Webmaster Tools. This information helps webmasters keep more accurate statistics about their user traffic. If you choose to click on an ad appearing on our search results page, your browser will continue to send the relevant query over the network to enable advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and to improve the ads and offers they present to you.

In the name of privacy, Google sweeps away more of the competition just by throwing a switch.

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Watch the video carefully as the website is engulfed by the inescapable Panda Update. It’s everywhere now as you have seen with your own de-ranked website that you knew was wrong as polio anyway.

In case you need a better, more [...]]]> Slam-Dunk Google-slapped! Your stodgy ugly boring website is finally going down! Crash and burn time for the surviving spammers of Panda 1.0 or whatever name you like. This video clearly illustrates a website meeting its demise as it’s owned by Panda 2.2. Your article marketing supported squeeze page site nobody likes is next!

Watch the video carefully as the website is engulfed by the inescapable Panda Update. It’s everywhere now as you have seen with your own de-ranked website that you knew was wrong as polio anyway.

In case you need a better, more technical explanation of Panda:

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Yes.

I’m better off with this photo of a hummingbird than you are with your article because people like it better.

That’s the essence of Panda Update.

The end.

Dave

Is SEO going to pay off for your business? Here is the essence of deciding on what, if anything, to do about SEO for your business website: make your determination strictly based on acceptable ROI (return on investment) and your business sales process. In sales training, this will be the sales path, or cycle or any number of monikers but it is the process by which your business persuades customers to make a purchase. The same process should be absolutely followed when making decisions about SEO. No marketing strategy or campaign should stray [...]]]>

Orange County SEO

Is SEO going to pay off for your business? Here is the essence of deciding on what, if anything, to do about SEO for your business website: make your determination strictly based on acceptable ROI (return on investment) and your business sales process. In sales training, this will be the sales path, or cycle or any number of monikers but it is the process by which your business persuades customers to make a purchase. The same process should be absolutely followed when making decisions about SEO. No marketing strategy or campaign should stray away from the formulation and execution of an effective sales process and SEO is as much a marketing campaign as any other form of marketing or advertising.

So, ask yourself. What would create an acceptable ROI? Can I get that with SEO? Will a page one, or number 1 top position for a keyword deliver increased sales volume? Is it worth the expense of getting that spot? How does organic placement perform vs. PPC? How much search traffic is there actually for this keyword or phrase? Do people who search this phrase make a buying decision or are they likely to only be investigating and evaluating? The job of SEO is to sell products and services.

SEO is a topic of debate these days and opinion varies from person to person. Opinion varies from people who think that SEO is just a frivolous activity and that it’s useless and over-simplified (it is made so by some purveyors of “partial SEO” solutions) to those who advocate SEO in the highest terms as an essential core component of online marketing success. Ultimately, the leading companies presently enjoying online marketing success utilize the services of SEO companies. The successful SEO firms (including this Orange County SEO consultant) are those that employ all the essential factors in an effective site optimization and link building campaign. They do their customers and themselves a viable and valuable service producing a win-win result.

Before deciding on any SEO link building effort, companies, and anyone, can get a glimpse of whether it will be worth investing in site optimization. The first course of action is to evaluate search traffic and competition for your business by testing terms associated with your product or service in the free Google Adword Keyword Tool. It is undoubtedly a critically important step missed or misunderstood by many who are new to SEO practices. The process is straightforward: think in terms of the consumer and test terms that they might type into a search when they are seeking a solution, an end result and a benefit. Again, the determining factor in making a purchase is the confidence a decision maker or buyer has in receiving a valuable benefit from your offering. These search terms, or keywords, are the same kind of things you think of during your formulation of the right kind of presentation, script or telephone dialogue in the development of your sales process. A common mistake many business owners make when it comes to optimizing a website is that of forgetting the sales process and forgetting the importance of the emotional connection created by effective, compelling presentation of the benefit of features or products or services that you provide. Consumers online are looking more than ever for the benefit. They are not necessarily looking directly for your product or service or service unless it is the precise benefit they are seeking. You probably already know enough how to promote your business in ways that deliver the highest ROI, and that knowledge should be directly transferred and applied to any search marketing or SEO effort.

Let us stipulate here that the majority of companies are in favor of search engine optimization in some form, but  many do not have enough understanding of SEO to transform the process into an effective return on investment. There are numerous “SEO companies” selling partial solutions, or misrepresenting the amount of investment or work that will be required to deliver an appreciable ROI that many business owners have already been left with unsatisfactory results that add to the impression that SEO is not a viable pursuit for their business. These partial solutions tend to exclude a difficult component of SEO and that component is usually effective link building. Contextually relevant links from external sources must be created or obtained and that’s an intensive process that must be done in accordance with the Google TOS to provide a lasting, effective result. Many so called SEO providers will try to sell businesses on shortcut strategies like PPC which is proven to receive a predictable but small and expensive ratio of click-thru and conversion traffic. PPC is fair enough if you understand its metrics and expectations but the overwhelming majority of online search trust goes to the organic results. The other usual “trick” of those offering an incomplete solution is providing only on-site optimization including site design, blogging, content creation and structure, etc. These all account for around 15% of the total factors in search engine rankings according to surveys of top SEO experts. The other 85%? You guessed it. Acquisition and aggregation of quality, contextually placed, keyword-rich anchor text back links.

Companies who understand this holistic approach to SEO continue to dominate search engine results and acquire the lion’s share of online business.

Contact me at 888-216-1231 for ROI focused SEO | Orange County SEO.

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Here’s what I mean: the gist of a promise that cannot be kept on one website I recently reviewed is this: We don’t charge monthly SEO fees because WordPress does everything you need for SEO. Its communication with the search engines is automated by using a Google site map plug-in. All [...]]]> Beware of bragging or otherwise promotional hyperbole on terms like “SEO blog coach” and the deception of mostly untrue advertising.

Here’s what I mean: the gist of a promise that cannot be kept on one website I recently reviewed is this: We don’t charge monthly SEO fees because WordPress does everything you need for SEO. Its communication with the search engines is automated by using a Google site map plug-in. All you have to do is blog several times a week following our particular instructions for content creation, etc. (Hence, the need for a service that is dubious- you can get everything you need regarding content for search engines for free)

Search Placement shall not live by blogging alone.

To me, that’s downright deceptive especially noting that the website that has this claim relies on the very thing they ignore when it comes to promoting the product to clients–link building. That is, links to the website in question from external sources. Given a topic with any appreciable competition your website is not going to rank high in searches regardless of how well it is written or constructed. Let’s take an example of that–one I work with routinely, South Florida real estate.

Let’s look at one particular area that I’m not involved in, Boca Raton, Florida real estate. Every website that shows up on page one for that search has over 1000 back links except for one that has around 650. These are all links from external websites, however they were acquired, and those links already essential part, in many cases the sole determining factor of which website appears first, second, third and so on in the lineup. SEO experts across the country have reported in the biannual SEOMoz SEO factors survey that on–site factors account for only about 15% of the total SEO picture. Anyone who tells you differently is gaming you in order to fill their own account with your hard-earned money, while depriving you of the knowledge and tactics that you need to perform well against the big hitters that you will undoubtedly run into for any product or keyword or term or service of value being promoted online.

Don’t be fooled by any demonstration of high placement for low value keywords. Check the claims out for your self use the free Google adword keyword tool and see how frequently words and phrases are actually searched for by anyone. Be sure to use the [exact] and “phrase” options on the left panel to see what the traffic for specific terms actually is. The broad option gives you a general search for words in any order and can be misleading, especially for specific types of searches. If the search volume is low and competition is low, the bragging about placement for this keyword or phrase is a ruse to trick you into perceiving performance where there is little or none.

Putting my money where my mouth is: TBP

Need an expert SEO blog coach who  also provides excellent training in SEO? Visit Katerina Gasset’s SEO Coaching page: SEO Blog Coach

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This is a post about the increasingly common ploy of using a long tail niche keyword with little search and no competition to market a brand that creates the impression of value but may provide far less than perceived. In other words, objects in this mirror (smoke and mirrors?) are much smaller than they appear.

Let’s look at an example, Get Found Now. It’s a keyword that seems important enough. Who wouldn’t want to get found right now on the search engines? [...]]]> This topic was originally posted on my personal blog under: Get Found Now

This is a post about the increasingly common ploy of using a long tail niche keyword with little search and no competition to market a brand that creates the impression of value but may provide far less than perceived. In other words, objects in this mirror (smoke and mirrors?) are much smaller than they appear.

Let’s look at an example, Get Found Now. It’s a keyword that seems important enough. Who wouldn’t want to get found right now on the search engines? The truth is, very few people use that phrase in search engines when they’re trying to discover the answers to that kind of question.

Why do I single out any particular keyword or even bother to post about this topic? Because I have repeatedly had to deal with both clients and detractors who have been run through this kind of mill and come out poorer and not one bit more visible to their intended audience after all is said and done.

One common theme to this ploy is the promotion of the notion that if you build a better website using the unique or proprietary platform offered by the so-called SEO or branding expert you will move up the ranks of Google by sheer force of the perfectly optimized website that they build and help you develop content for.

Link-building is perhaps discussed in an obligatory fashion, but is ignored overall.

Why? Because link-building is hard and intensive work. It is subject to a lot of rules imposed by Google and other search engines and those rules have moving parts, ie. Google can and frequently does change the game plan. Long term, short term and intermediate linking strategies are built around these rules and at the opposite ends of the spectrum of link campaign methods are the so-called white hats v. the underground crowd dubbed black-hat SEOs.

The problem with a phrase like get found now is that it tends to be self-exclusionary. If you’re going to get found on Google for anything that matters, and you’re just starting out, you will be found anything but “now.” It takes time and for anything that has even moderate competition, it takes a well thought out and well-managed link building campaign.

In the next post on this series, I’ll address the traffic & competition analysis for the example keyword: Get Found Now, and the relevant search terms that the overwhelming majority of people actually use.

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