Are You Looking For Some Magic SEO Pixie Dust?
Many Business Owners are Now Realizing They Do Indeed Need to Pay Attention to Their Organic Rankings
Oh boy, now that the economic climate is what it is, and many business owners are feeling a bit of a downturn in their sales, there is a little more buzz being heard by SEO consultants about “how can we get top search engine rankings?”.
And unfortunately there are a lot of lousy-no-good SEO firms sending out emails saying “We can’t find your website in the search engines. How would you like GUARANTEED top-10 rankings for these keyword phrases?” and then they go on to list terms they think are relevant to the website in question. Then of course there’s always the mention that there is an on-going monthly fee involved for the “guaranteed” ranking positions!
Unfortunately, too many businesses mistakenly jump at the rip-off offer being made. Of course guaranteed month-after-month top-10 rankings does sound pretty darn good, doesn’t it? Sigh …
I have never blindly assumed what keywords are or aren’t important for bringing targeted qualified traffic into a client’s site, without first having a good discussion about what their business goals are; who their target audience is for their products or services; what do they want their website to “do” for them. Important issues like that!
Then, and only then do I begin my research to determine the SEO “game plan” for my client.
SEO is not about picking keywords that are sitting at the top of a generically researched keyword list and then stuffing those keywords into the content. Not at all. This method rarely converts into the “MWR”. “Most Wanted Response” being capturing leads; or maybe getting visitors to sign up for a newsletter; or yes, perhaps making SALES!! And that is where these shady “we can help you – guaranteed” SEO firms miss the boat.
Among many other issues to take into consideration, my clients are taught about the need for well written and informative content that will satisfy the visitor when they land on that particular webpage. Yes of course, part of the SEO goal is to have great search engine rankings so that a potential customer can find your listing, but crummy content that isn’t targeted to and written with the key factor in mind doesn’t work. A great page of content that is convincing and informative will hopefully convert that visitor into doing what you want them to do!
If we could find magic SEO pixie dust that would GUARANTEE that each and every person landing on your website would give you your MWR … well then we’d all be standing in line to buy some, me included. (Gimme a big bag, please! 
) Then doing business online would be a no-brainer!
If you’d like to find out about how to improve the response of visitors coming to your site, or would like to discuss any other aspects of improving your online presence, please contact me. I offer a complimentary consultation.
Does Your Site’s Google PageRank Value Matter?
The Short & Sweet About PageRank Determining the Success of a Site
Why do so many people worry about their Google PageRank? Here’s my professional, simple and brief “take” on PageRank:
Often, new clients ask me “Claudia, does my website’s PageRank matter? What can I do to get a higher PR number?”
My answer? I tell them that to be honest, I don’t care very much at all about a site’s PageRank value, as PR really DOES NOT ensure a site’s success either traffic-wise or profitability-wise. Many years ago yes indeed, the PageRank number (value) mattered, but that was in the olden days of search engines ranking algorithms.
In the early internet days, PR importance was crucially important to a website’s organic search engine ranking, but over the years many other relevancy pieces to the algorithms, such as domain age, domain name, anchor text, and keyword word to content relationships, have come into play. If a client needs even more convincing that PR really could concern me less, I can add that a high PageRank does NOT GUARANTEE a high search ranking for any particular term. Honest!
What matters nowadays, and here are just two of the many factors, are things like keyword focused quality content that provides good information to the visitor who lands on that page; and keyword focused anchor text for internal hyperlinks in the site. Things like these are now much more important to the overall organic search engine ranking positions of a site (or even each page on the site), rather than whether a link is sitting on a high PageRank page, or how many keywords you’ve got sitting on a page, or …
I’ll put it another way … those brainy folks behind locked doors at Google and the other SEs are devising more and more complex mathematical equations that determine the importance of a website and how that site will rank versus other websites in the same niche. And those algorithmic equations are SECRET.
Here’s a bit of PageRank info taken from a Google webpage Technology Overview:
The software behind our search technology conducts a series of simultaneous calculations requiring only a fraction of a second. Traditional search engines rely heavily on how often a word appears on a web page. We use more than 200 signals, including our patented PageRank™ algorithm, to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important. We then conduct hypertext-matching analysis to determine which pages are relevant to the specific search being conducted. By combining overall importance and query-specific relevance, we’re able to put the most relevant and reliable results first.
- PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.
- PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page’s importance.
Yes, PageRank is somewhat important, but it is nowhere near as important as it once was. The “olden days” of PageRank importance determining a site’s success versus failure are long gone. A well coded website that contains lots of quality well-written keyword focused content, and that has had proper search engine optimization attention is the ultimate goal. 
Do you have concerns about your website? Did you know I gladly offer a Complimentary 30-Minute Consultation? Contact me and let’s chat about improving everything we can about your website so you can be more successful in your online marketing endeavors.
Thinking Of Hiring A Service To Get Top SEO Rankings?
Let Me Warn You Against Worthless SEO Ranking Services Like This One
OK … this is a blog devoted to everything SEO, website building and internet marketing information, and how-tos. If you’re not yet aware, I do gear a lot of the information to people who are basically new to having a website, and who hope their site will start making money for them. I try my best to educate and empower my readers with quality, honest information.
I also have a real desire to protect everyone from the c**p and baloney that many unethical people and companies are promoting. These bums know darn well that a lot of people, especially those just starting out, can be very very gullible. There is so much to figure out and learn once you have registered your domain name and are ready to start getting your new website up and running. And the snakes are right there, hoping to bite another unsuspecting person who hasn’t yet figured everything out!
It definitely can be overwhelming, as far as all the different things you must learn to become successful online. It was for me in the beginning. And sometimes I am still overwhelmed with the next learning curve that I must tackle … as I think most all of us are, if we are honest amongst ourselves.
It’s a sad fact that the new website owner can be very vulnerable to getting ripped off. It can be for things such as what they may pay for website design services; or what they may pay for SEO consultations or actual optimization of their website; or purchasing software that they really don’t need (and many times will never be able to master how to use). Unfortunately this list can go on and on.
It is not unusual for new clients of mine to tell me incredible stories of the wasted money they shelled out for horrible website design; the wasted money spent for SEO work that was performed by people lacking the proper education and knowledge of the craft; and the wasted money willingly handed over for all sorts of other “deals” that a newbie gets sucked into because … because they are not knowledgeable enough to know what is “good” from “bad”.
As examples, the newcomer normally hasn’t a clue about what software would be highly suggested and/or necessary to assist them in doing a better job at running their online business vs. what is absolutely not necessary in the beginning states, or what software is effective in achieving the intended purpose vs. not effective, etc., and of course what are correct and necessary SEO techniques versus worthless ones, or even worse, ones that are pure SEO black-hat methods.
Let Me Educate You About One of the Many Worthless SEO Ranking Services
In an effort to continue to bring to light what I perceive as plain and simple SCAMS, but what I know to a new and very enthusiastic website owner can sound like a very affordable and pretty great service, I want you to read the following abbreviated example of a real “SEO services” website’s sales pitch that very clearly explains a WORTHLESS service.
But how would a newcomer (maybe you?) really know it’s worthless? You probably wouldn’t, because your SEO learning curve normally isn’t to the point where you can spot the red flags sticking up all over the place on this rip-off “SEO service for guaranteed top rankings”.
What do I preach about any SEO service stating they will GUARANTEE top rankings?? Hmmmm? Yes! Run, run, run the other way with your money!!
OK … let’s read the first part:
After reviewing your site’s coding, we submit your website to over 300 search engines and will continue to submit it every month. You can purchase our six or twelve month plan.
Red flag #1! There is absolutely NO use nor benefit to submit to 300 search engines! Nor to continue to do so on a monthly basis! Basically, if Google, Yahoo! and Bing (formerly MSN) begin to index your new website, well you’re good to go with all the other small, smaller and obscure search engines! Don’t get suckered into the value of being submitted to “300 search engines”.
News flash! For FREE you can help get your site indexed (visited by the spiders) in Google, Yahoo! and Bing quite quickly by submitting an XML site map. Read how to utilize an XML file to help your new website get spidered faster. And remember … you can do this for FREE!
We basically submit all the “text” on your website and your keywords come from there.
Red flag #2! OK! Everybody STOP HERE for a moment! I have no clue as to how, as a professional SEO consultant, I could “submit all the text on your website” to get a client’s new website ranked.
NOTE: I can tell you that if you have structured everything about your site correctly; if it is cleanly coded; if you’ve provided good quality, keyword-focused content; if you’ve got an HTML site map page on your site; and basic SEO touches have been done … well then yes, in the loosest sense of the meaning, your text will “be submitted” to the search engines. But “submission” happens by way of the search engine spiders crawling your site and registering all the data that then triggers your ranking position(s). It does NOT happen because someone manually submits all your content to some special place at the search engines offices!!
And the gibberish that further states “and your keywords come from there” is more smoke and mirror tactics. If you’ve done a good job of creating quality, informative, and keyword focused content, then yes … your keywords would “come from there”.
I can tell you that part of the very necessary optimization I must perform for every client’s website I work on, that the Title tag, and Description meta tag must be properly optimized using the appropriate keywords I’ve uncovered during my research. But to just “submit text” and my clients sites will get ranked … WOW! This is a new flim-flam on me. (Or maybe I need to take SEO lessons from these folks … nope!)
Let’s continue:
Although it greatly depends on your site, most clients can expect to see anywhere from 5-15 keywords showing up within the first one – three pages of Yahoo! and Google within 30 business days.
Pleeeeeease … more bull-pucky! Notice how they’ve covered their behinds with the wording in this statement in case you don’t get the rankings they’re trying to promise you?
You can also suggest keywords to be submitted. You will be asked for keywords you want to include after your order is completed.
This is more worthless gibberish. No one can “submit keywords”. Site submissions don’t work like that!
You will continue to have Google and Yahoo! rankings for as long as you are a client.
Red flag #3! This is a BIG red flag, folks! So, as long as you keep paying for their “service”, you will be able to rest easy that your website will have rankings?? EGAD! These people sure have a song-and-dance going!
Listen … your site will “have Google and Yahoo! rankings” without the need to pay anyone to do that for you! Given a few exceptions, all websites are ranked – even a position of #12,378 for a keyword is technically a “ranking”. But they are making claims with cloaked words. Are they saying you will continually hold consistent top-ten rankings, or merely that you are able to find your site’s pages showing up buried on page 100 of the search engines? **Remember … ANY position in the search engine results is technically referred to as a “ranking”.
Come on! Normally, most new websites all have some kind of search engine ranking if they are coded properly so they can be crawled by the spiders. But whether the ranking position is #1 or #1,235 or #12,378 … well I’ve just stressed above that it is still technically a “ranking”, isn’t it? Uh-huh …
I am so sickened by companies like this who offer worthless SEO ranking services and truly take advantage of people with new websites who aren’t yet knowledgeable of what can and can’t be achieved via ethical SEO techniques. I hope this little rant of mine has truly educated you and possibly has helped you keep more money in your pocket.
Please don’t hesitate to take advantage of my complimentary, no strings attached free SEO phone consultation. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have and will try to steer you in the right direction for whatever services or help you may need.
Keyword Ranking Hiccups Come and Ranking Hiccups Go
Should You Sit Tight … or Start to Tweak Your Web Page?
I recently made another post in this series about how I noticed that some top ranking keywords, that have been quite stable for a long time, suddenly were ranking horribly. I could only deduce that a brief 36-hour glitch in the Google algorithms were affecting the website in question, The-Artistic-Garden.com.
I also said that I wasn’t going to frantically start to tweak content, or change meta tags or anything at that time. It is better in situations like this to take a deep breath, sit back for a bit and see if things get back to normal.
Well … guess what? My Google rankings did settle right back to where they’ve always been in about 24-hours after I wrote that post! Those important keywords are now right back up where they belong. 
What you can learn from this is, is that all of us can have rankings flip-flop and dance around at times. It is something you and I can’t be immune to. I now know that my first hunch about what was causing the sudden drop was correct.
See? There was absolutely NO need to tweak or change anything! Think of all the wasted time, and possibly harm I might have caused to my ranking positions, had I started to try and figure out what to change to get those web pages of content ranking back up in Google’s top-ten.
Now … had I seen after two weeks or so that the keyword phrases in question were still suffering, then and only then would I have slowly and methodically looked at all the angles of what might have caused it before I started making changes to the web page content and tags.
How’s your website’s ranking positions? How long have you been online, yet still aren’t seeing a nice flow of targeted traffic to your site?
Did you know I gladly offer a Complimentary 30-minute Consultation? I’d be happy to take a quick-look overview of your site and give you my professional opinion of what might be causing you problems. I look forward to assisting you!
