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Search engine optimization certification confirms that search engine optimization providers have actually received industry training in regard to search engine optimization strategies. Some search engine optimization providers display a certification seal on their websites while others will simply state that they have been certified in search engine optimization. While certification may be favored due to the level of difficulty and the expertise required to effectively optimize a website for the search engines, certification doesn’t unavoidably make one provider better than the next. Skill comes with experience and a successful search engine optimization provider should be able to give you references including the names and contact information of satisfied customers and information about their keywords and website ranking so you can see for yourself whether or not the specialist is truly capable of results-producing search engine optimization. The search engine optimization industry is not regulated and doesn’t have set professional standards like some professional industries do. Thus, search engine optimization certification that is provided by one company for $50 may be compared to professional search engine optimization certification programs that charge closer to $3,000. Some certification issuers provide one to three day seminars, some provide internet based training, some provide coaching services, and some actually provide very little training at all. For that reason, I don’t place a lot of weight on certification when evaluating search engine optimization providers unless I can confirm not only the certification, but also the credentials and certification standards of the company who issued the certification. There are several organizations that seem to be working toward standardizing search engine optimization certification. Perhaps some day the search engine certification will be as valuable as Microsoft certifications, but at this point in time, with a lack of industry standards and designated certification requirements, it really just isn’t. Now that is not to say that a certified search engine optimization provider isn’t experienced or isn’t capable of achieving good search engine rankings. Some very well may be. One thing that a valid certification does verify is that the provider has completed some type of search engine optimization training and has apparently met someone’s standards in order to receive the certification. In that light, you may view certified providers as more desirable than non-certified providers as a matter of personal preference. My personal favorite is to see a proven track record in regard to achieving desirable search engine rankings. I place experience and results a lot higher on the priority list than search engine optimization certification. Whether you choose a certified search engine optimization specialist or not is a matter of choice. I do not make a suggestion one way or the other. Rather, I emphasize the need to find a search engine optimization specialist who has a solid record for achieving results through their search engine optimization efforts. Search engine optimization is challenging and it isn’t typically easy to get good ranking in the search engines. If you want to learn more about Search Engine Optimization, you can read through the following articles: What is Organic SEO Anyway, Subcontracting Search Engine Optimization Services, The Ultimate Newbie Guide To SEO – SEO Internet Marketing

As you surf the web take a look around at many of the sites you see. Do you notice anything that seems odd? Well, let me point it out to you. There are hundreds of thousands of web sites that just don’t get much traffic. Some of these sites house hundreds of articles, reviews, tutorials, tools, products, forums to mention a few things, yet still they do not receive large amounts of traffic. What is their problem? They have the content. What is left? The problem is these sites aren’t optimized for the search engines. SEO, Search Engine Optimization, SE Friendliness, however you refer to it doesn’t matter, the fact is it works and I’m going to tell you what’s involved. Before we continue let me familiarize you with some relevant terminology in my own words. **Search Engine Optimization** Search engine optimization can be referred to as the addition and modification of all variables and extended variables of a web site in hopes of achieving a better position in the search engines. By variables I mean components of a website such as META tags and content. By extended variable I mean things such as links from other sites. Different SEOs, search engine optimizers, may have different opinions on this but alas this is only my own. **What is a Search Engine Optimization Company? ** A search engine optimization company is a company that offers the service of creating and adjusting all the variables involved in search engine optimization in order to get your web site the best ranking they can achieve, during the designated project period, for all the major search engines. **Search Engine Optimization Hurdles** Back to the question of why these sites rich with content aren’t bringing in the numbers. There are several reasons why sites small and large aren’t optimized for the search engines, luckily these can be remedied. 1. Many webmasters/site owners believe in “If You Build It They Will Come”. This attitude will get your web site no where fast. Sure if you build it you will get users maybe even a decent amount of users but you will not be unleashing the real potential of your web site. 2. Not feeling that your site can do better than it is. Websites can always be further optimized. Search engines change their algorithms all the time so what worked 2 months ago may not work as well or at all in present times. For any of you that fee you can get your site optimized better, think of the story of the Little Engine and don’t think you can, KNOW YOU CAN. 3. Laziness is also a major contributing factor. Many webmasters feel it is just too hard or too time consuming to do search engine optimization. This is incompletely true. Search engine optimization is not easy but then again, anyone can do it. It does take time though and time is a precious commodity. In situations where you just can’t dedicate the time to search engine optimize your site I would recommend seeking the services of a professional search engine optimization company. If you want to learn more about Search Engine Optimization, you can read through the following articles: SEO - Choosing the Right SEO Provider to Bring Your Web Site to the Top of Google, Ethics, Best Practices, and SEO - A Crisis in the Profession?, How to Hire a Good SEO Marketer

Search is a growing industry, and it seems that every day there is a new search engine optimization company in the game. On the other hand, the skills of many of these search engine optimization companies are questionable — staying on top of the knowledge curve can be daunting, and getting up to speed more daunting still. Moreover, there are a huge variety of tactics, “safe” and “unsafe” practices (in terms of the risk of penalization), and other imperative business considerations that you should think about before deciding on any particular search engine optimization company. The following is the first of a three-part series that provides a list of questions to help you to determine if the company you are considering is deserving of your trust. In this installment, we’ll center on the tactics that search engine optimization companies might use that could put your website at risk of penalization or removal from the major search engines. Ask your potential search engine optimization company the following: “Do you show search engines anything that a visitor does not see?” There is a common tactic that certain search engine optimization companies use called “cloaking.” In simple terms, these companies use knowledge that enables your website to recognize when a visitor to your site is a spider and to then feed that spider specialized content designed to rank highly in search engines. This tactic violates the Terms of Service (TOS) of every major search engine. Sites that are caught cloaking are routinely removed from engines. Therefore, depending on your tolerance for risk, you may want to find a search engine optimization company that does not employ this tactic. “Do you make pages, either on my server or somewhere else, that are not built in to the navigation of my site?” One more common technique that some search engine optimization companies employ is the creation of “doorway pages.” Since the term “doorway page” now has such a negative connotation in the industry, many search engine optimization companies have their own names for such pages: “gateway pages,” “bridge pages,” “targeted entry pages,” “specialized content pages,” and so on. Whatever they are called, such pages are rarely effective and also put websites at risk of penalization, as this is another tactic that violates the TOS of every major engine. If your potential search engine optimization company does not give you a definitive “no” to the above question, you may want to look somewhere else. If you want to learn more about Search Engine Optimization, you can read through the following articles: How To Pick Out An SEO Company, SEO Best Assessment On Google Top No-No’s, Get an SEO Firm Or DIY

We are often asked if professional SEO (search engine optimization) can be done effectively utilizing in-house talent. Despite our obvious self-interests on the subject, our answer is always a qualified “yes”– you can attain professional SEO results using existing talent. On the other hand, for every company we have known that has met with great in-house SEO success, we know of numerous more that have seen their in-house efforts fail. We have also discovered the companies that have succeeded share some common traits. If your company is considering doing SEO in-house, there are some critical questions that you should address before you proceed. Do I have the proper resources at my disposal to achieve professional SEO results? Search engine optimization takes time, and your internal SEO expert will require to have a great deal of it at his or her disposal – especially at the project’s outset when target audiences, keyphrases, and optimization schemes are first being established. Even after the initial optimization effort, the nature of SEO will require this person to spend ample time keeping up with industry trends, monitoring campaign progress, performing A/B testing, and expanding the campaign as new product and service areas are added. Perhaps even more important than time, achieving professional SEO results requires a unique set of aptitudes. The person responsible for your internal SEO initiative must possess the ability to learn hurriedly and to look at your website from a macro-perspective, marrying together the needs of sales, marketing, and IT. He or she can not be an aggressive risk taker, as this is often a surefire way to get your website penalized and potentially removed from the major search engines. These gifted people exist in many companies, but given the unique attributes that these individuals possess, their time is often already spent in other crucial areas of the business. Without enough time to invest in the project or the right type of person to execute it, an internal SEO initiative is likely doomed to fail. • Do I know which departments of my company should be involved, and will they work with an insider? As mentioned above, professional SEO, by necessity, involves marketing, sales, and IT. The SEO expert must work with marketing to find out what types of offers and initiatives are working offline to help translate them effectively online. He or she must work with sales to classify the types of leads that are most valuable so that you can target the right people in the keyphrase selection process. And, finally, your SEO expert will need to work with IT to determine any technical limitations to the SEO recommendations, learn of any past initiatives based on a technical approach, and get the final optimization schemes implemented on the website. Sadly, in many businesses, these departments have a somewhat adversarial relationship. However, it is the duty of the SEO specialist to act as a project manager and coordinate the efforts of all three departments if you are going to get the most out of your campaign. No professional SEO project can be completed in a vacuum. For whatever reason, it is often easier for an outsider to get adversarial departments on the same page, in the same way that a marriage counselor might convince a woman of her undying love for her husband while the husband is still grimacing from a well-placed knee in the parking lot. • Will someone be held accountable for the results?This may seem like a small thought, but it can have a tremendous impact on the success of the campaign. If you have added this responsibility to some poor soul’s job explanation with the direction that he or she should “do the best you can,” you’ll be lucky to make any headway at all (especially if the person is not enthusiastic about SEO). Whether SEO is done in-house or outsourced, someone will have to take responsibility for showing progress, explaining setbacks, and continually improving results. Without this accountability, it is very common to see an initiative fade as the buck is passed. If you want to learn more about Search Engine Optimization, you can read through the following articles: SEO Certification Considerations, Selecting An SEO – Musing On An Endeavor To Trademark SEO, 10 Reasons Why You Should Pay for Search Engine Optimization

When researching SEO companies, it is tempting to choose any company willing to offer guaranteed SEO services. It is human nature – people love a guarantee. This holds especially true for purchases where the buyer is purchasing something outside of his or her area of comfort. When companies first consider pursuing search engine optimization (SEO) as a potential marketing channel, chiefly when there is an ongoing cost involved, they get a sense of comfort from purchasing “guaranteed SEO.” Unfortunately, with many SEO companies, this confidence in the guarantee is ill-placed. A lot of dubious SEO companies offer what I like to refer to as a “leprechaun repellent” guarantee. In other words, it’s a guarantee that is easily attainable – if you purchase such services and are not subsequently harassed by a pesky leprechaun, the guarantee has been met. How can you complain? The truth is that SEO companies do not control the major search engines, and any firm that claims to have a “special relationship” that gives it sway over the natural search engine results is simply counting on your ignorance. Fortunately, this does not mean that guaranteed SEO is impossible, especially when the guarantee has to do with aggregate results and the methods used to achieve them. What follows is an incomplete list of some of the more popular types of guaranteed SEO out there – some of them roughly as useful as leprechaun repellent, and some of them actually meaningful. Questionable Guarantees The “Leprechaun Repellent” Keyphrases Guarantee Many SEO companies boast that they will achieve a certain number of top rankings in the organic results of major search engines. This type of guaranteed SEO can be tempting, especially to those who are investigating SEO companies for the first time. After all, high rankings are what it’s all about, right? Isn’t that the goal? The answer is an ardent “No.” Quality SEO companies will point out that the real goal is to bring high quality traffic to your site. It’s quite simple to guarantee top positions if you choose non-competitive or obscure phrases – for example, “leprechaun repellent.” Want proof? Enter “leprechaun repellent into your favorite search engine. You will almost certainly find this article dominating the results (caveat – if you are reading this article immediately after its release, the search engines may not have indexed it yet. Wait a week and try again.). If you want to learn more about Search Engine Optimization, you can read through the following articles: Search Engine Optimization – Selecting The Ideal Provider To Perk Up Your Website, Don’t Sabotage Your Search Engine Optimization Company, Selecting An SEO – Musing On An Endeavor To Trademark SEO

Search Engine Optimization Philosophy This is debatably the most critical factor when deciding which company to work with to improve your online business or brand identity. Employing a search engine marketing or placement company that only utilizes moral search engine optimization techniques or “white hat” methods will ensure that you minimize the potential risk of being dropped, removed, penalized, deleted, or banished from the search engines. Nobody enjoys waking up glassy eyed to the unfortunate reality of being “Google sacked” for breaking or bending the search engines’ implicit rules or explicit terms of service. Search Engine Optimization Methodology / Specific Expertise Can your expert SEO Company only optimize static websites constructed in basic HTML? An upstanding SEO company will have experience working with websites in all the common programming languages and technologies, PHP, ASP, ASPX, HTML, Cold Fusion, Flash etc. Does your SEO Company have experience optimizing both static and dynamic websites? Can your SEO Company optimize using various e-commerce packages and interfaces such as Monster Commerce, Yahoo Stores, OS Commerce, Storefront.net, Volusion? Depth Of Optimization / Piecemeal Services The most basic search engine optimization companies around don’t actually perform search engine optimization at all- they are merely submission services which either manually or automatically submit your site to various search engines or directories. Submission companies are characteristically very reasonably priced since no actual coding, linking, or content development takes place on your actual website. Typical pricing runs around $19.95 to $399 per month for these submission type services. A mid level optimization company gets their hands more firmly on the marketing handle by editing code, analyzing keywords, building links, and adjusting / writing fresh content for your site. They also may do a pinch of off-site optimization, such as press releases, article submissions, and blog writing. Classically, firms of this middle level range charge between $399 and $850 per month. The highest level search engine placement firm performs the duties described for mid level optimization companies, but also is responsible for conversion tracking and analysis. The stress on off-site optimization is also much greater and time consuming. This means that high level optimization firms are fundamentally responsible for discovering what is working and what is not working throughout the entire customer experience - from initial search through conversion. More man hours per month also means a higher fee that search engine firms must charge to cover their costs. The common pricing range for these firms’ are $850.00 all the way up to $10,000 per month, but on average, you’ll be looking at fees above the $1,000 a month range. If you want to learn more about Search Engine Optimization, you can read through the following articles: How TO Be A Perfect SEO Customer, SEO And RSS Feeds, Professional SEO Copywriting Services – What They Are, And What They Aren’t

Most people who are internet savvy probably would assume it is much easier to do search engine optimization themselves without the need to hire any professional search engine optimization assistance. In some cases this may work, but in most cases this is an absolute injustice for your web business. Marketing is an important and viable aspect of any business and without the proper marketing attention a business can easily fail. The following are 10 reasons why you should hire a professional search engine optimization consultant or SEO company. Search Engine Optimization Takes Time, Effort, & Dedication It takes an extreme amount of time, effort, and dedication to successfully complete a search engine optimization campaign. Search engine optimization consultants and companies usually have dedicated time to work on your search engine optimization project, thus giving you a controlled and managed search engine optimization campaign. Large companies as well as many small companies can provide your search engine optimization campaign the SEO effort and architecture it needs. Attempting to dedicate your own time can sometimes be overwhelming and without strict self-discipline you can easily get sidetracked. Additionally, progress for your search engine optimization campaign can take time to see any results, this fact can lessen your motivation to complete your own do-it-yourself search engine optimization campaign. SEO Tools, SEO Strategy, & SEO Experience Goes a Long Way The available SEO tools are ever-changing, but most skilled SEO’s have a suite of SEO tools which they keep up with and use to execute reports and other processes, such as keyword research, keyword density reports, keyword competition reports, traffic reports, etc. Like any profession you need the necessary tools and essentials to get the job done, the experienced use of SEO tools will aid in any SEO campaign. Professional SEO consultants and companies create SEO strategies and roadmaps to successfully market client websites, this strategic roadmap outlines in detail the planned effort to market clients’ websites. SEO strategy is essential for any SEO campaign. Having an experienced SEO professional on your side is always ideal. Experienced SEO’s stay up to date with the latest SEO trends and news. By having an experienced SEO your website can impressively gain ranking within a short time and much more effectively, providing greater Return on Investment (ROI). Search Engine Optimization Is Not Easy Search engine optimization is not simple, it’s not just starting a website and throwing around hundreds or thousands of links. Those days of search engine optimization are gone. It is now more about strategy, method, and architecture. Search engine optimization is a form of engineering these days. True search engine optimization engineers stay up to date with search engine algorithm and search marketing. Knowing the trends is important, but that doesn’t necessarily mean following trends, true search engine optimization engineers use experience, skill, historical methods, and best practices to successfully market websites. Researching trends and not just following trends is very important, a good search engine optimization engineer uses good judgment, to know what methods work and what is borderline unethical or useless methods. If you want to learn more about Search Engine Optimization, you can read through the following articles: Get an SEO Firm Or DIY, Criteria You Should Look For In Professional SEO Firms, An SEO Campaign – Quick And Dirty

Search engine optimization refers to the technique of making your web pages search engine friendly so that search engines are more easy to understand and analyze your website. Consequently, your site has a better chance to gain high search engine ranking. However, please be reminded that high search engine ranking is not your only objective, and your objective should be website traffic and conversion. The following advice helps you to achieve the objectives. 1. Make Sure Your Site Will Not Be Penalized Webmasters realize the importance of attaining top search engine rankings. Hence, they perform many search engine optimization activities on their sites. However, improper implementation of search engine optimization can get your site heavily penalized by search engines. To avoid your website being penalized, webmasters must not commit to the following practices: - Use of hidden texts or hidden links on web pages. - Use of cloaking - Excessive automated queries to search engines like Google Web pages loaded with irrelevant words - Keyword stuffing - Multiple pages, sub-domains, domains with substantially duplicate content 2. Select Correct Keyword Phrases Correct keyword phrases allow you to drive targeted visitors to your website. Therefore, this step determines whether your search engine optimization effort can improve business result or not. Do not restrict yourself and be open minded in this area. You may think that most of the search is coming from 1 word keyword. However, it is wrong. Most people uses 2-5 words keyword phrases because they are more descriptive and yield precise results from search engines. In addition, think creatively and perform linguistics research can help you generate useful keyword phrases. 3. Optimize Title and Meta Tags According to Internet Marketing Articles, One of the important steps in search engine optimization is to optimize Title tag in your web page. Pages with the keywords appearing in the title tag are often assumed to be more relevant to the search query than others. Remember, title tag is the most important location of a web page after the main content of the body tag. Almost all search engines give importance to this tag. Some search engines also give importance to the presence of the keyword in the meta description and keyword tag. Currently, it does not applicable to Google though. 4. Optimize Website Content All search engines place emphasis on your body text content. The main content of your web page should contain the keyword a considerable number of times to make the search engine spiders feel that the content is relevant to the search query. The first two paragraphs are extremely important in search engine optimization. To prevent your site from being regarded as “over optimization”, you should not stuff keywords heavily in your body content. We suggest that you should present the keywords in a natural way. Apart from this, your website copy should have at least 200-250 words. 5. Ensure Clean Coding To allow search engines to index and analyze your website correctly, you must check correctness of HTML coding manually. Webmasters may build webpages from WYSIWYG HTML editors such as Microsoft Frontpage 2003, but these HTML editors may leave some duplicated or unnecessary tags in your copy especially when you edit the pages very often during web design phase. In addition, search engines are not good at understanding Java Applet and Flash. If you have Flash or Java applet navigation menu, make sure to duplicate somewhere and include HTML links as well. Please also check whether your website has broken links. They may stop search engine spiders to crawl other web pages in your website, it may result in loss of hundreds or thousands website traffic per month, and waste your search engine optimization effort. 6. Link Building In case you have a little bit knowledge about search engine optimization, you likely know that link popularity is very important to attaining high search engine ranking in major search engines such as Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc.. Yes, search engines use link analysis to determine search engine rankings. The phiolosophy is that if an inbound link points to your site, your site must have some value. Therefore, the inbound link is regarded as a “positive vote” to your website. The more inbound link you have, the higher is your link popularity. This can boost your search engine ranking. However, quality of links (link reputation) is also important. If you can get an inbound link from a high popularity website, your site will get more benefit. There are many methods to perform link building including seeking one-way link, reciprocal links, 3-way links, etc. Because link popularity and link reputation are of great importance to search engine positions, many search engine optimizers spend most of their time in link building. 7. Optimize Dynamic Website Content Search engines are not good at understanding dynamically generated web pages. Therefore, I suggest you should change your dynamic URL to static URL. If it is not possible, you should consider using some advanced search engine optimization techniques such as Mod-Rewrite to optimize website. If you want to learn more about Search Engine Optimization, you can read through the following articles: Selecting an SEO Company – Reasons Why SEO Case Studies are Significant, Selecting an SEO Company – Reasons Why SEO Case Studies are Significant, How to Select The Ideal SEO Service

Building an attractive even beautiful is the goal of most website designers. In the process, sometimes the effectiveness of the website is diminished. We need to keep in mind that our goal is not only to have a striking website that will make people want to stay and look around and take pleasure in, but also a website that will be helpful to the engines in determining what our website is about or what it is relevant to. Udi Manber, Google vice president overseeing search quality, in response to a question about webpage content evolving to be more search engine friendly explained, “It’s definitely still lacking. I wish people would put more endeavor into thinking about how other people will find them and putting the right keywords onto their pages.” Popular Mechanics - April 16, 2008 Search engine optimization or SEO is arguably the most essential way to drive targeted traffic to your website because it leads to improved search engine placement. Optimizing the benefits of a well-designed web site will result in much more traffic coming to the website thereby generating income for the company publishing the website. With this fact in mind on the other hand, optimizing your website might cost you thousands of dollars if you are not skilled in this area. Good search engine optimization that leads to improved search engine placement will, on the other hand, bring you a much higher return on the investment of either time or money you put into it. My goal in this article is to give you the fundamentals of search engine optimization so that you can understand it and incorporate it to help you accomplish your task. This will help you to improve your relevancy and search engines rankings for the best results possible through proven search engine optimization techniques. What are the major mistakes in design First is is important to remember that search engines are machines and read words they don’t see images or pictures. The most widespread mistakes form a search engine optimization point of view are: • Making a website totally in Flash™ • Images without alt tags • Minimal or nonexistent meta title or title tag If you want to learn more about Search Engine Optimization, you can read through the following articles:, SEO For Your Business Success, Your Business Success And SEO, Internet SEO For Your Success

Most webmasters today hardly have enough time to manage their web business and like to outsource most things which can be outsourced effectively. Outsourcing a web design or a service like SEO saves precious time and money when done correctly. The challenge most webmasters face today is finding the correct outsourcing partner. One who is well qualified to carry out the job, has the necessary references of past work experience and is also affordable. This article is an attempt to guide webmasters to correctly outsource SEO services. The SEO Outsourcing checklist: 1. Does the SEO Company/Professional you are hiring have a pre-formed plan for how they plan to execute your project? 2. Are they professionally qualified and do they have any third party certification which can be verified by you? 3. Do they have a website where you can examine their credentials, prices, testimonials, SEO package details? 4. Do they have contact details on their website like a phone number and physical address (not a P.O box)? 5. What are their hourly rates and how many hours are they committing to your project? 6. Have they clearly specified all applicable charges upfront - for example, link subscription charges, post ranking maintenance charges etc.? 7. And most importantly, do they practise ethical white hat SEO? This is very important unless you want your site to get banned. These are some of the pertinent questions you should ask when it comes to outsourcing you project. Most professional and reputed SEO’s / SEO firms will fulfill all the above requirements. In addition to the above, you should ask your provider if your SEO service includes the following: 1. Site Visitor Usability and SE Indexability Analysis: a. How user friendly is your website? b. How Search Engine friendly is your website? c. Does it have a clear navigation menu? d. Does it have a Sitemap? e. Is Important information easily accessible to the visitor? f. Is there Javascript on your site? Does it contain Framed pages? etc. 2. Log file Analysis: a. How much time are your visitors spending on your site? b. Are they leaving in less than 10 seconds and why? c. What are the pages they are viewing most? d. Which keywords are visitors using to find your site? e. Which Search Engines and other sites are referring the most visitors? f. What are error pages are your visitors coming across? etc. 3. Keyword Analysis: a. Are you using the right keywords for your site? b. What is the search volume of your chosen keywords? c. What is the KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) of your keywords? d. How many keywords are you targeting for your entire site and what is your keyword sitemap (which keywords will be used on which page)? e. Are you using synonyms and other keyword variants? If you want to learn more about Search Engine Optimization, you can read through the following articles: Search Engine Optimization - The Complete Details, SEO For Your Business Success, Search Engine Optimization - Lowdown