Five Things Most Search Engine Optimization Firms Won’t Tell You—But That You Need To Know Before You Spend A Dime

So, you want your Web site to rank high on Google and other
search engines.

To do that, you’re planning on hiring a search engine
optimization (SEO) firm. Good move—maybe. A good SEO firm can
help make your rankings and sales skyrocket. That’s the good
news. The bad news is there are a lot of SEO firms out there
that will charge you big bucks without delivering results. As
someone in the SEO business myself, I’ve heard countless horror
stories about people who have gotten ripped off by paying for
services they didn’t need, or simply not understanding what
their SEO firm is supposed to be doing on their behalf.

Below are some of the things most SEO firms will never tell
you. Knowing these insider secrets can save you thousands of
dollars and many hours of frustration.

1. Most SEO work follows the 80/20 rule. In other words, 20% of
the work will account for 80% of the results. If that’s true
(and believe me, from personal experience I know that it is),
you should make sure that the fee structure reflects this. Ask
for an itemized quote, so you can make sure that you aren’t
paying too much for the other 80%. For example, a lot of SEO
experts will tell you they’re going to spend X number of hours
tweaking your site’s keywords and meta tags, but there’s really
no hard evidence that those techniques have a significant impact
on your rankings. Doing simple things like making sure your page
structure is “search engine friendly” (ensuring all your pages
can be indexed by search engines) is infinitely more important.
As part of a comprehensive SEO strategy, you still want to do
the other 80%, but you want to make sure that the bulk of the
priority (and cost) is focused the effort that will produce the
most results.

2. You can receive a guarantee. Most big SEO firms say to watch
out for anyone who guarantees results. They’ll tell you most
places that do so are nothing but scam artists. Here’s the
truth: I can absolutely guarantee any business I can get you
ranked in the top 10 on Google for any keyword you choose. It
all depends on how much money you’re willing to spend and how
long you’re willing to wait for the results. If an SEO firm is
confident in their ability to improve your rankings, why
wouldn’t they offer you a guarantee?

3. You can see immediate results. Most SEO firms will try to
tell you it takes months to see tangible results. Wrong. In
fact, it’s often possible to see results within a week,
depending on the keywords you’re targeting. I know because I’ve
accomplished this for my clients time and time again. Unless
you’re going after extremely competitive keywords, if the SEO
firm bidding for your business says it will take three months to
accomplish anything, they’re probably just looking to sign you
up for a lucrative long-term retainer.

4. SEO work is not too complicated to explain in detail. Too
many SEO experts will balk if you ask them to explain in detail
the work they’re going to do for you. But don’t let them off the
hook. While some strategies may indeed be technical, most of the
techniques are easily explained—especially some of the most
important ones (see point #1 above about the 80/20 rule). If
you’re going to pay someone a lot of money to work for you, you
deserve and explanation of exactly what they’re going to do.

5. The greatest factor in SEO has nothing to do with your web
site. In my research, I’ve found that around 80% of the Google
ranking factors have nothing to do with the web site itself. The
real determining factors are links to your site from other web
sites. As long as your site is easily crawled by Google, most of
the energy should be focused on getting these outside links. If
an SEO firm tries to sell you an expensive package to simply
“optimize” your site for Google, it’s probably going to cost you
a lot of money for very little result.

For more information about achieving Top Search Engine Rankings – visit…

• Stomping the Search Engines *
  Professional Search Engine Consultant

Reveals his Blue Print for

Search Engine Domination.
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If you are looking to earn money working from home, Mini Web
Sites are a great way to run your own business. Usually these are
simple one or two page sites that are designed for selling a
single product.

A mini site is basically a sales letter that is designed to
convert viewers into buyers, it is not there to provide detailed
information about the product. This type of site can attract more
viewers, which means more sales and more money for you.

The steps for creating a mini web site are:

– Find a profitable niche. – Determine the best product to sell for that niche. – Write a well crafted ad. – Design a landing page.

Make sure you do not include banners or other advertising, these
might distract the attention of your visitors, your only focus
should be on selling your product.

Design a Mini Web Site

Each site should sell only one product and be optimized for just
that product. Select keywords based on your product, that are
popular enough to attract the amount of traffic you will need to
make your site profitable, and always use your keywords in the
title, heading tags, and graphic alt tags. Create an easy to
order form, one that is fast to fill out, you do not want to lose
customers because it takes too much time or is too much trouble
to purchase your product.

Whatever you sell, start by quickly describing that particular
product and keep your focus tight on that product. Try to pre
sell your product by including several endorsements from people
who are happy about using your product. After the endorsements,
include several free bonuses to get your visitors even more
excited about buying. To host your site look for a reliable
hosting service, one that has a good track record for minimal
down time. Select a domain name that includes your keywords this
will also help your search engine rankings and get you more
traffic.

Some benefits of Mini Sites are:

– Easier to optimize for search engine rankings. – Inbound links to your sites will lead to a higher Google Page
Rank. – You can be an expert at whatever you sell or whatever service
you offer. – Higher traffic generated than regular web sites.

Mini sites are the easiest way to make some quick money because
they do not require a large setup cost, and they are easy to
design. All you need is a great idea and you are ready to make
some money.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Many people will tell you that to get your web site noticed you
need to ‘optimize’ your site for the search engines. You are then
led up a path where you have to keep changing your web site as
the search engines change their ways of listing things. As fast
as you ‘optimize’ your site, Google and the others have moved the
goalposts, meaning you have to keep optimizing over and over
again.

Now consider some facts. Most people in the world are not users
of the Internet. Let’s repeat that. The vast majority of people
who you want to reach don’t use the Internet. It doesn’t matter
how well you optimize your web site, they simply will never find
it.

Here’s another fact. Some of the best Internet marketers make
most of their sales ‘offline’. They sell their books, CD-ROMs and
so on at seminars, workshops and conferences. Indeed, for many
‘Internet marketers’ these ‘offline’ sales represent the bulk of
their income.

So what do these facts tell us? They show us that ‘offline’
promotion is more important than online promotion. You may be
able to optimize your web site to get high rankings in a search
engine. But that doesn’t mean you’ll reach the vast majority of
people who could buy your product or use your information.

This was confirmed recently by one study that showed most people
go to an Internet address (URL) after having read it in a
newspaper or magazine, been given it by a friend or colleague, or
having heard it being mentioned by someone speaking at a meeting
or on TV. In other words, it seems that significant numbers of
people who get to your web site will do so having heard the URL
somewhere outside the Internet.

You can get many people visiting your web site, even if you are
not ranked highly by the search engines. You can do this in two
main ways:

1. Write articles for use in regular publications – newspapers,
magazines and so on. Always include your URL in the article and
you’ll get millions of people to notice your web site address.

2. Speak at every opportunity. Make presentations to business
clubs, chambers of commerce, local societies – you name it, you
should speak at it. Every time you speak, announce or your web
site address.

Although these are the two principal ways of gaining offline
publicity for your web site, don’t neglect your business
stationery, posters, car stickers and so on. The more your web
site address is visible outside the web, the more visitors you
will get regardless of how kind the search engines are to you.

Popularity: 23% [?]

Everyone who has a website knows that to have sales you must have
traffic, but not just any traffic it has to be targeted traffic.

What is Targeted traffic? It is simply visitors to your website
that are interested in what your website is about. For example,
people interested in buying jewellery will find jewellery
websites interesting.

How do I get targeted traffic I hear you ask? The following are
tried and tested methods:

Forums: Subscribe to forums that discuss your topic. Answer
questions and join in the debates there. Become an expert in the
field. Then with each article reply you write have a discreet
link to your website in the signature file. What can be placed in
your signature is often determined by the forum moderators. Do
not spam the forum or you will be stopped from posting. This is
one of the most productive ways of getting free traffic as those
who click your link have already read and liked your style.

Linking from/to other websites: Contact website owners that have
similar but not competitive websites to yours, ask them for a
reciprocal link from their website to yours. Be sure to select
your link partner to match closely your customer profile.
Software programs such as Arelis are very helpful in this
process.

E-Zines: Contact e-zine owners that have your target readership
and buy advertisements from them. Be sure to have a test run to
see that the return on investment is sufficient to cover the
costs involved. If you are buying an extended run of
advertisements haggle with the e-zine owner over price. You may
save a considerable amount.

Newsletters: When people visit your website offer them something
of value for free if they sign up to your newsletter (like an
e-Book). Your newsletter should be written tightly geared towards
your topic. It should be published regularly at weekly
intervals.

E-Books: Often used, these are usually free informational books
for your clients and for others to give away free if they leave
your links in the book itself. You can place links back to your
website in the books you sell or give to your clients.

Joint Ventures: Contact online marketers looking for new products
to sell. They often have large mailing lists with eager to buy
customers. Normally they are willing to email their list for a
cut of the sale price. This works particularly well with
informational products. It has several advantages. It can give a
very sizeable boost to both your sales and mailing list within a
very short period.

Buy Traffic: This is probably the cheapest in terms of time and
most expensive money wise. It gives a traffic boost normally
within 30 days. What are you buying? You are buying traffic from
expired domain names which the company selling the traffic has
bought. They are domain names still registered on the search
engines which get a considerable amount of traffic. The previous
domain name owners have either lost interest in the name or
simply forgot to renew the registration. This means that the
traffic from the expired domain name is simply redirected to your
website. This is usually high quality traffic as only websites
with traffic such as you want is redirected to you. As always, a
test run to see if this traffic is suitable should be
undertaken.

When you combine these techniques and apply them consistently
over time you will find a rich source of targeted traffic coming
to your website. This, combined with quality products will ensure
the success of your online business.

Popularity: 24% [?]

When we are talking about search engine ranking, the first thing
you need to think about is the market place. Many people ask
themselves, how many keywords should I put in my anchor text?
What is the keyword density that I should have on my page? Should
I use 300 words on my copy or should I use 500 words? Can I use
flash? How many keywords should I put in my “alt” text? Etc…

Here is a general statement: magic numbers do not exist. The most
important thing you can understand as a search engine
optimization expert is the following: algorithms change. Just
when you think you understand what is going to make you number
one for a search phrase in a search engine, something could
change, and you might have to spend months or years trying to
find out the engineering of the algorithm again.

It is better not to try to reverse engineer the algorithm and do
something much easier instead, observe your competitors. All you
need to do is to understand what elements are your competitors
using that are making them rank on the top positions.

Let’s see what those things are:

– Number and quality of inbound links pointing to your site – Keyword density – Fresh content

The first thing to observe from your competitor’s sites is their
back link index. This means the number of sites that have a link
pointing to their website. You can easily measure it by going to
Google and type: “link://www.yourcompetitorssite.com”. But it
would be a mistake to do this only on Google, as Google
discriminates sites much more than other search engines. Yahoo
and MSN are much more accurate for measuring the back link
index.

Part of the observation should be not only what the links say,
but where the links come from. Think on what is the category
where those links come from. If you start to see a recurring
pattern, you should start actively searching for links coming
from that category.

Some marketers use special software for robotic content creation.
They generate thousands of pages with links pointing to their
sites. This practice can be dangerous, as Google may penalize
unnatural linking or violations of their terms of service. And
what happens is that those links do not look natural. One day one
site may have 50 links and the following day have 2.050 links,
which all say the same thing and come from the same IP address.

If you understand how to observe, this will never happen to you.
You will learn how to look at your competitors, and observe how
they are getting linked to.

The second thing you need to observe is the keyword density of
your competitors. How many times should we repeat our main
keyword? In which part of the web page should our main keywords
be mentioned? There is no magic number, again it’s all about
observing and measuring against your competitors. But what should
we measure?

– Meta tags – Alt tags – Titles – Names of the images on the page – Highlights: h1, h2, h3… – Frequency and position of the keywords on the body text

Each one of these items should be measured independently. There
are tools to run keyword density against your competitors. If you
run them against the top 3 or 5 sites, you may start to
understand the secrets of top rankings.

Again, your keyword density needs to look natural; otherwise you
may fail in over optimization. This is when you use keywords too
often or too early. If you look unnatural, your page ranks will
suffer as a result.

The key to success is to understand what Google likes about their
top 5 pages, and to apply this to your own website promotion.

The last thing to observe is how much fresh content do the top
sites have. If they have many articles and they are continuously
adding new content to their sites, then it is clear that the
search engines like content and are ranking better those sites
which have more and more updated information.

People that surf the web are usually searching for information,
so content is the “fuel” of internet traffic. If you want to
attract many potential customers to your site, then you need to
make sure that you provide enough content which is relevant to
their interests.

Popularity: 23% [?]

You have finished building your own website. You have introduced
your company and presented your products and services. You have
added propositions and promos to catch your target audiences
attention. You think you are doing everything “right”, but all
your promotions have failed to produce growth in your new
internet business.

There are many ways for your web site to be promoted, but maybe
youre missing the “key” to the “best” promotion. Here are some
things to consider:

– If you have started to promote your web site, keep it constant.
If you promote your site with persistence, it will catch your
audiences attention. – Be patient. Try each different promotion until you find the
best. – Free promotions such as search engines and directories would
give your web site the deserved traffic you always wanted. Make
sure to check your web sites ranking to know whether or not this
type of free promotion is right for you. – Make a deal with other web sites on trading links which could
help both web sites. Make sure to use words that could easily
interest the audience. – Find free classified ads web sites that could boost the
promotion of your web site. Most of these classified ads web
sites provide powerful marketing features and are an extremely
fast way of getting your products or services on line. – Free and low-cost internet banners are spread all through out
the World Wide Web. Banners that pop-up at the top of a page or
in a separate window would automatically catch your target
audiences attention.

Free internet advertising is a perfect way to make your products
or services known to millions of prospective Internet customers.
The probability of someone needing your services or wanting to
buy your products is very high. There are free services out there
that may suit your services, products and web site…you just
need to find them! Go to work – Browse the internet for the best
free internet advertising and learn how to take advantage of what
you are able to find.

If at first you don’t succeed…try, try again! Analyze your
techniques, keep track of your customers and learn what works.
Then be ready to try new methods and repeat those methods that
are already working.

It has been said that the best things in life are free and this
saying also applies to the many forms of free advertising that
are available on the internet. Give this form of advertising a
try and you also may become a true believer in the power of free
internet advertising.

Popularity: 21% [?]

If youve ever dreamed of running your own business from home,
whether on a full or part-time basis…and are good with people
but have very little business knowledge, then Multilevel
Marketing (MLM) may be for you. This is especially true if you
have a minimal amount of start-up cash.

MLM companies provide a product or service to the consumer via a
network of independent distributors, who usually work from
their home.

Reputable MLM companies also provide a low start-up cost, all the
training you need, advertising in one form or another, and supply
you with a product line-up or service to sell. They also allow
you to recruit other distributors and make commissions on their
total sales.

The United States Federal Trade Commission, however, cautions
anyone from joining a MLM company that pays you for each
distributor you recruit, as opposed to only paying a commission
on the total sales they generate. This is called Pyramiding and
is illegal.

The U.S. FTC also encourages you to thoroughly research a MLM
company before signing on the dotted line, and not to sign
anything under pressure, but instead, take time to consider all
the details. You can check out their Multilevel Marketing Caution
Web Page at:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/alerts/pyrdalrt.htm. On this
page, they also list seven checks you should do before making
your decision whether to join or not.

Research is always an important component of any business venture
and considering a distributorship with a MLM company is no
exception.

Searching the Internet under Multilevel Marketing returns a
recipe of results. These range from government agencies, general
information web sites, encyclopedia type sites to a host of
disgruntled, former MLM distributors. People who are pro MLM
dont write web sites on the topic because theyre usually too
busy building their network.

THE GOOD SIDE

Here are some of the benefits of finding a reputable MLM company:

– They have an established and very marketable product line or
service, and strive to improve or add to the existing line-up. – Recruiting new distributors will be a streamlined process, and
the company will not be involved in Pyramiding. – As a company, they will have a solid track record and good work
ethics. – No experience will be required. A good MLM company will provide
one-on-one training, as well as motivational seminars and a full
compliment of training materials. After all, in Multilevel
marketing, when one succeeds all succeed. – A reputable MLM company will be Family rated, meaning that
crude conduct is not tolerated. – They will provide an excellent bonus plan with many incentives
for those who excel. – Well-established MLM companies should be able to provide you
with resource material to aid you in not only product sales but
in recruiting. – They will have minimal start-up fees. – A strong support system. – You will be led by example. – Healthy team competition. – There will be a successful business and marketing plan in place
that can be successfully duplicated by others, assuming they
apply themselves to the plan and are motivated to succeed. – There exists the possibility of full-time or part-time
commitment.

These attributes would definitely belong to an ideal Multilevel
Marketing Company, however not all reputable companies excel in
all these areas. Some companies will be better in certain areas
than others. Do research on the company. Dont just accept the
motivational hype used by most MLM companies in order to recruit.

Some MLM distributors are so highly trained that they have a
come-back for almost every statement you make or concern you
have. This would be considered a high-pressure invitation to
join. Always take time away to cool off especially if youre
excited by what you heard. Sit on your decision for a while and
do research. If the company is good, they will still be there
when you wake up tomorrow; and yes, you will get a follow-up
phone call.

THE DOWNSIDE

While the MLM model can be a great tool to achieve what you want
in life, it would be remiss not to mention the downside.

– It is easy to get taken by a disreputable MLM company. Do
your research. – If you plan on developing a network a downline it will
cost you more money than you realize and take you longer than you
think although this is slight compared to the cost and time
required to start up a traditional business. You will spend a lot
on resource and training materials that you will end up giving
away to prospects and to your downline distributors. – You might spend a lot of money on fuel for your vehicle, meals
out, hotel rooms or neck surgery from sleeping in your car. – Some companies insist on a minimum monthly order to maintain
your distributorship. – Some companies only pay you for recruiting other distributors
and not on their total sales volume. Beware, as this is called
Pyramiding and is illegal in most countries. – While you may initially be led to believe that the products
sell themselves and that you can make a lot of money with little
effort, beware. Most businesses, whether they are traditional,
online, or MLM, take a lot of energy and effort to make them
successful. Consider a rocket: 60 80% of the fuel is used just
to raise it a few inches off the ground. – Be ready for a lot of rejection. Approximately 80%+ of the
people you contact will turn you down. – It is easy to get caught up in the dream and overspend
because, Winners always find a way. It is also easy to be
pressured into willingly spending beyond your means. – It could very easily become your lifes vocation, with
everything centered on it. Some distributors even refuse to
attend family weddings etc., because it falls on the same date as
their MLM seminar. – Also, like most businesses, when you begin you will be spending
much more than you make.

The final judgment: Most business entrepreneurs face the
question, How much am I able and willing to lose if it doesnt
work? That is the question you have to ask yourself before you
get into Multilevel Marketing.

And of course, what do you want from life and what are you
willing to do to get it?

If you enjoy helping others succeed so that you can succeed, are
willing to take the risks associated with being in business for
yourself, even on a part-time basis, and are willing to put in
long days, then Multilevel Marketing may just be the tool you are
looking for to achieve your business and life goals.

Heres to success!

Popularity: 27% [?]