We should not try to be smart, smartness will only last to get the project—the results one will deliver will speak volumes, and then clients can decide about whether to continue with the services or not. So client always has a choice. But it happens many times that clients do not seem to be all that willing to give a chance to the service provider. Most of the times, it is because the clients are misinformed about what is SEO or what can be done with SEO. They forget to realize that there are only 10 top results displayed on the Google search results page, and not everybody can fit in there.

But isn’t that what SEO is all about? Why should I even go for SEO?

At present, the kind of algorithm Google search uses is based on calculations, and calculations are always taken advantage of. That is why Google clearly says that one should not worry about search optimization techniques, and instead worry about quality content and site structure. But there are companies who have already made it big in the market and they promote other sites solely based on their reputation (not the clients product). And if you are ready to spend lot of money, you too would get such ranks, but how many of the “traffic” will convert into customers? You never really can get such answers, can you?

So what is my point?

Instead of deciding your online marketing strategy based on a single factor called as page rank, it makes sense that the clients should instead define their goals, their needs for the business and sit with the service providers and talk about achieving those goals instead of demanding and then not benefitting.

But clients come first, isn’t it?

I never disagreed with that, I am just saying that we can create a better playing field for the clients and the SEO services by understanding the “catches” in each other’s fields and then do make the most of what is available.

So what exactly should the client ask from the SEO services company? To be continued…

So we decided to put together a list of SEO tools for the essential tasks that you may come across at various stages.

Here is the assorted list:

For checking Domain stats

Check domain age

For checking HTTP Headers

HTTP path Tool

For checking back-links

Backlinks of a website

Backlink Analysis tool

Google Page rank check, Adwords Keyword tool

Tool for Advanced Google searches
Google Page-rank Checker
Google Data center wise PageRank by Google data center
Google Adsense Keywords Search Tool

Google Keywords Analysis tools

Keyword Density Tool
Keyword Density Tool
Keyword Density checking Tool
Keyword Suggestion

Link Popularity/ Site Link Analyzer checking tools

Tool for checking the depth of the links
Tool for checking link Popularity
Tool for checking Link Popularity
Link Price Calculation Tool

There are more tools coming your way, please check back in.

My team lead had to say the following things:

• Page rank is controversial
• Lots of people doing business are promising page rank for websites
• Page rank adds almost no value to your business in the end
• It does NOT help in getting your page to the top in the SERPs
• Google might decide someday to totally do away with the concept of page-rank

Although I understand the emotion behind his words (even he knows that!), we do know that page-rank has its place when it comes to SEO, although its value is over-rated for sure by people who especially do not belong to the industry. Surely, it shouldn’t be one of the factors for rejecting a company for your SEO project.

Here is a bit of demystification:

1)      When lots of sites are competing for the same keywords to get into the SERPs (given that other factors are evened out), the one with higher page rank will get higher priority.

2)      Sites with higher PR are served with “high-value” add sense ads.

3)      Google bot will crawl the website with higher PR more often that the ones with lower PR, as a result more pages of higher PR site will be indexed more.

That is why specialists exist, why don’t you change your question next time around—“How soon can you get me into the first page of SERPs for my keyword?”

Now I have raised another controversy, haven’t I?

How important is it?

More than you think. It is one of the best strategies to keep the visitors on your site. Also, it can serve as an important link-baiting activity, since it allows you to attract more page views. It is like lighting two candles with one flame: increasing the usability and increasing the search rankings at the same time.

Adding of links (that are relevant to the user and in context) to the content of a site provides another way you can lead/direct your visitor to some destination page.

Usability studies have shown that users are more likely to click on a link in the text of a page instead of those on a navigation bar—Why? –Because it feels more natural.

People have gone lengths to even say that internal site linking is one of the ways to get Google site links (not necessarily, but one of the important factors to get site links).

So how do you go about it?

Individual choice really, you start perusing the content of the site and find the relevant ways you can link from one text on a page to another page/post on your site/blog. Further, you if you are using Wordpress for your site/blog, you might want to check out plug-ins like Crosslinker and Insights.

Moreover, if you are linking to other posts, it simply means that your site is not a random pieces of information joined together, instead, it means that your content has meaning and that your entire site information is coherent.

Be Careful:

• Avoid out of context link
• Avoid this post kind of links
• Avoid too many links

Online search market has sprung up 41% since last year with more than 113 billion searches conducted in July. The results show that each person who has access to the Internet, on an average conducted 103.3 searches in a month.

Bing is unable to increase its market share in spite of billions of dollars spent on its marketing. Microsoft has also launched Bing Visual search, which is a more interactive search in which you can search for something and get images for the same. But it remains to be same if it can compete with Google search + Google image search combination.

In the latest release, a Forbes study says that the best way to generate conversions is through SEO. No wonder, when people are using Google, it makes sense to optimize the websites for the same. Don’t you dare CTRL T!!

Have a peek yourself

A hyperlink on limitations has surely crossed another border to provide users with more meaningful glance at the SERPs without entering the page. For a moment, the link appeared to be part of the site links, but there you go! As of now, we do not see if Google intends to have hyperlinks in the description for other sites (since we only see them happening for Wikipedia). Since we all believe –No, we know that Google plays it fair, it means that depending  on how Google decides to induct the hyperlinks in the text description—we might have something to look forward to.

So are they:

• Trying bringing more important links in purview of users?
• Trying to highlight some common important dictionary terms?

More comments are needed….

You might wonder why lot of SEO services companies offer directory submission services. Majority of the search engines find you, is there still something useful about directory submissions? I had this doubt very early in my SEO ventures; not my fault, I did not come across something that could tell me the right things.

Philosophy: If you think directories aren’t useful, then you probably don’t know how to use them

Still useful? How?

• Directories can help to increase page rank and referrals.
• More links, so more chances of getting traffic
• Good directories are always valued by Google and other search engines

Philosophy: Best directories are selective—you can’t even bribe them!

Avoid very generic directories with lots of categories. Also, it is advisable to avoid directories that ask for reciprocal links. If you search around and find the directories useful for submission, you might come across few hundreds, and again, which one to submit to and not to, will be a question mark. There are few standard  “trusted” directories to which we can submit our case. Few of them are:

• DMOZ
• Best of the Web
• WOW directory
• Yahoo
• Blog search
• Bloggapedia for blogs

But again, our philosophy of being selective has to be kept in mind.

So apart from that how do you select a directory for submission. How do you find them?

An interesting tool called Web directory search can come in handy for such analysis.

The tool saves lot of time spent on searching for directories and also the time wasted on filling lengthy profiles in the blog directories, only to know that they are paid ones, or require some kind of reciprocal linking. Also, the tool gives you control over the regions for which you want the directories, so if your target audience is India, then you are better of submitting to the best directories that fall under that region.

Philosophy: localizing and narrowing your directories increases karma.

Like changing times, mantras change for time. Directories are no different and they too change over time. A Juicy link today may become dry after a year because of changes within the directory. But instead of canceling the link, nurture your link and renew it if it is possible.

Exit philosophy: Beauty lies in the eye of beholder…take your beautiful links out and show them around some gorgeous directories.

]]> http://www.talentgurusblog.net/directory-submission-philosophy/feed/ 0 http://www.talentgurusblog.net/directory-submission-philosophy/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tgoutsourcing/~3/pmSnEjXneQQ/ http://www.talentgurusblog.net/seo-in-5-minutes/#comments Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:00:19 +0000 admin http://www.talentgurusblog.net/?p=692

So you want to get into SEO and you have got no clue, what will you do? Raise your hands and give an excuse, or manage something quickly before you can spend some more time and learn the details of the trade? Business competency lies in venturing out into new areas, so if a client wants to give you business, would you want to stay away from it? (Unless the client is offering you a SEO project and you are into selling Dog-food). So, next time when you are in a business meeting and the client is talking about outsourcing the SEO project to someone; it would be better if you can quickly chip in, instead of dismissing the talks and thoughts because your IT off shoring department doesn’t have the required capability.

So you hear the word SEO—it is not the name of an intergalactic carrier—coming back to earth, it is much much simpler than that. Search engine optimization.

“What the hells is that?” you ask. Simple—If you have a website, and you want that website to be found out when people search for something on the web using search engines, then these [optimization] procedures can help (yes, it doesn’t mean that you can just have a website without relevant information and make it popular among people).

So you have got a web page? And what do you intend to market on that page? Think about it, find more about it using some search engine, and please write it down. With some hit and trial, you should end up with a pretty good title for the thing that you are trying to sell or market. Since you already know what you are selling, you might also want to write down a good description of your services using the help of a good writer.

Now it is time to get some dirty work done—if you see lot of things on the page that do not make sense, make little sense, or there are some supposedly flashy things which can be either improved or can be done without, then please do so. We are told that such things are not good for “optimization”—yeah, whatever the hell that might be. But, lets not be bothered by words here, looking at it (the site) closely, chances are that you might be convinced that such [irrelevant] things were after all hampering the usability of the website and also distracting the users. Believe me, you have already done few things that people on the SEO planet call “ optmizae proceduarae thy on-paiger”.

So do you know any other company that is also selling Dog food? Do they own a website? Try to share link with them. Is company too fussy about the dog-links? Simply go to a discussion center on the web where people currently are fighting about which dog-food is best for their dogs. Join the group discussion, throw a piece of advice, and provide your company address. Congratulations—you don’t know what you have done!!

This article is not a replacement for the huge information base related to SEO, but if you are just looking to know what is this so called helluva-SEO, then I hope it answered few of the questions. The other side of 5 minutes… to be continued

What exactly are things that make us believe that SEO and married life are similar? Here are few that we may find quite logical (Please don’t think of your wife or your husband as Google here):

• SEO is a process not an end result. It is true for marriage. Both need commitment.
• Lot of times there is a tendency to overlook lot of things. We know that lot of marriage fights occur over pity reasons. Similarly, it is common to overlook few things in SEO project, for e.g., “even Google’s home page has validation errors”, “It doesn’t matter?” But fact remains that everything counts.
• Doing the basics right—possibly applies to everything in life, and is true for SEO and marriage also.
• Marriage can have its ups and downs, so realizing that there won’t be huge traffics all the time is important. Adding quality content to the websites, and not stopping the marketing websites are ways to show commitment during the downtimes.
• Knowing things during the both the processes can be both funny and frustrating at times. But remember, perseverance will pay, and nothing can beat you when you are past that stage.
• No cheating allowed please! Google doesn’t like it, and the partners in the marriage won’t like it. So if you are looking for quick ways to find satisfaction, look at the screenshots (photo albums) of your website ranking in the first page.
• Nothing works like hard work, so keep at it.

Everybody knows that maintaining the positions in the search engines is far, far more difficult than getting the rank. Not ranking well in no way should lead to lack of enthusiasm to scale up the marketing activities. In fact, that is the time when search engine marketing activities should be beefed up. In contrast, what we get to see is clients backing out, wanting to spend less time and less money on marketing.

As a SEO company or provider of SEO services, it is important that we make client aware of all the possible scenarios that lead up to a successful search engine marketing campaign. Clients should be taken into confidence, should be made to believe that as service providers, we are not here only to take their money. After all, clients getting profits automatically means our profits.

So it is your call—do you want to be divorced?

It happens sometimes that we can over-think our SEO strategies because we want to satisfy the clients—“don’t blame me! I am just trying to do my job”. That is ok, when your client and the manager are sitting on top of you like an Ostrich sits on top of its eggs, chances are that you will be even dreaming about trading links. Well spare a thought for the clients—they are spending their money, and the managers—they are taking money. Following is a result of my small intellectual ability being put under under-use.

So how similar is SEO to married life, or a “marriage-process”:

• Both start with a proposal: Marriage proposals can be formal and informal, but there cannot be a marriage without a proposal, isn’t it? Similarly, initiating a SEO project involves first getting the project, which essentially begins by a presenting a proposal.

An offering company gives a proposal to a client. Similarly, in real life scenario, usually, a guy proposes a female. Most of the projects don’t get past this stage due to various reasons. Lets not get into the particulars, but writing a good SEO proposal (promise it’s going to come later) is the first thing you have to do if you are seriously thinking about getting married.

• Both might involve a pre-analysis: Dating, in lot of cases might precede Marriages. Similarly, before the project commencement, a SEO consultant analizes the client site by perusing the site for any bloodstains, conspiracies, previous history etc. (meaning, checking errors in the site, page rank, and the popularity of the site respectively).

This is probably the only case where guy might suggest few things to the girl; rest is really history waiting to repeat itself.

If you have reached here, then, as a SEO consultant, you will be living the best days of your life, the days that you dreamt of for years before becoming a SEO consultant. As a guy, you are probably going to see life for the first time. And what about the client you ask? She is going to buy new offices, because she knows, ok, the client knows that the business is going to expand four folds hence after. Oh yeah, I am talking about the time when there is a tremendous activity for the client website on the web—In other words it’s called the honeymoon-time.

Mind you, honeymoon is no easy job; it does involve great deal of work on behalf of SEO consultant. So is the honeymoon period over-rated? No, don’t be bothered as of now; I don’t want to leave you on an unhappy note, but I am going to spoil the fun by just saying, “Success might not breed success”…to be continued