The Click Depot Blog

Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing are established businesses these days and there are dozens of such firms in every major city in the US. Well, there are many many more online that don’t even have an office or a registered company. These so called Internet Marketers operate from home and some don’t even have a website. Nothing wrong with any of that, except that many of them also end up scamming you. Long story short, they don’t know what they are doing, claim things that aren’t true, make promises that they can’t deliver and overall, end you up in a mess. Unfortunately, many SEO firms are the same way too.

So, how do you know if your Internet Marketer or SEO firm is scamming you?

5. Do they have a website? Is their website optimized for Search Engines?

You will be surprised how many Internet Marketers operate without a website. A company’s website says a lot about how much time and effort they’ve invested into a business. Especially for an Internet business, their website will reflect what they know about the business too. For instance, if their own website is optimized for search engines and is ranking well for their key search term, then that says that the company couldn’t have been formed yesterday and probably has a good track record. That doesn’t guarantee that they will do a good job for you, but at least gives you one more reason to believe that they are real and professional. An easy way to tell if their website is optimized for search engines is to look for the basics - Are their page URL’s full of giggerish or do they have user-friendly words in them? Do their pages load quickly or do they take forever? Take the first few words from the page title on their home page and search using those terms on google. Do you see their website?

4. Is the firm registered with BBB?

BBB - Better Business Bureau is a good place to look for compaints against a company. If your SEO firm has a whole bunch of complaints, they are obviously not a good choice.

3. Do they have “too many” good reviews?

Back in the day, to review any service, all you had to do was go to Google and type <Service name> review. Not anymore. These days, there are tons or sites that write paid reviews. So, chances are that your SEO firm used some of those paid sites to get good reviews. In fact, if you see too many “too good to be true” reviews or testimonials, I would actually take that as a negative.

2. Do they use good SEO and Internet Marketing practises?

Do they use black-hat SEO techniques such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, Etc.? Do they buy email lists and spam them? Important - where do they stand on SEO ethics? Do they think that it’s OK to get to the top of the search engine by hook or by crook or do they stand by their morals. The reason why this is important is that most long-lasting SEO companies understand the importance of ethics to thier business. There will always be a gray area, but the ‘whiter’ you are, the better your chances of success. The good SEO companies know that. A good way to find out is to suggest to the company that you WANT them to use black hat techniques. If they agree, you’d know.

1. What does their Internal setup look like?

There are way too many “SEO firms” out there that actually have ZERO employees. The one person shops outsource everything. There’s nothing wrong with that, in fact, it could be a smart business move. Do they have any sales people? How many dedicated resources do they have internally? Do they offer a timeliness guarantee? These questions will help you determine whether the company can meet your SEO and Internet Marketing expectations.

Do not hestitate to ask these questions to your prospective SEO company. Better safe than sorry, right?

Ever wondered how to attain higher local search engine rankings? Here are a few SEO tips to strengthen organic search engine placement. Although the competition can be fierce from local businesses, local search engine optimization is far less convoluted by comparison to national search engine placement.

Creating a truly effective marketing campaign online takes a lot of work that consumes a great deal of time for small business owner. Simply having a website will be suitable to many, but this is hardly relevant if it is poorly designed, hard to use, or bland. The process starts with having a website but never truly ends. Maintaining the site, targeting an audience, tracking statistics of visitors and other factors has to be employed to grow your business in the information age.

What matters is that your website has organic visibility across multiple search engines when searches are conducted for your most prized keywords and key phrases. Ranking above the fold, the top 10 positions for your most relevant keywords is important, particularly locally which can facilitate calls or walk in traffic. Local optimization services should be tailored to meet the requirements of all major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN to achieve search engine visibility.

Local Internet marketing is a cost-effective advertising method for your online business. Local search results through local marketing campaigns can yield qualified loyal repeat local business for a fraction of the cost of television, print or radio advertising. If you haven’t considered local search engine optimization as a viable alternative, your business could be missing dozens of calls, emails or leads every day. Local search marketing can secure organic rankings top 10 for your website for keywords related to your city or state.

Local SEO is one of the most effective forms of internet marketing and online advertising. Optimizing your site for local terms such as your city, state, surrounding county or suburbs not only produces a steady flow of regional business for your company, but brings more revenue into your community.

The more qualified visitors that frequent your site, the more likely you are to sell your product or services. However, all traffic is not created equal. Although a number of regional websites are available for local marketing such as craigslist.org, Topix, the Yellow Pages, Google, Yahoo just to name a few, unless there is a common thread that unifies your marketing message, the optimal keywords used for positioning and offer you are promoting, you may as well be shouting your offer from rooftops to random passerby’s.

The long-term effectiveness of online advertising is more complex and requires a bigger time investment than most choose to accept. Setting up a campaign is the easiest part, but because it’s so easy, everyone does it. Reviewing, tracking, testing and changing require not only proper setup and analysis, but also regular follow-up modifications. All of this becomes a fairly technical undertaking, but because it is hard, not many are willing to dedicate the extra effort even if it means sacrificing income and future clients.

To be honest, if you value your time and money, you probably want to find an expert to help you with all the fine-tuning and analysis. By working with an expert, you’ll virtually guarantee that your resources will be used with high-efficiency and will attain results that you could do on your own after a great deal of frustration and many hours later. Once you have an effective website and strong online marketing campaign, you won’t have to chase customers; the customers will come to you.

1. Simple. Search for the word http on Google. The top 100 pages (or even 1000) pages by page rank appear.
2. Want to know what Google thinks are the 1000 most popular websites in the world? Enter www in your search result and see for yourself!
3. Want to know what google applications are the most popular and which ones aren’t, just enter google
4. Want to search within a site but the damn site does not have a search bar. No problem just search for <keyword> site:yoursite.com. For example, search advertising site:theclickdepot.com and you’ll never again spend valulable time navigating through a site.
5. Want to exclude certain sites from your search results? Go ahead and exclude them with -site. For example, use seo books -site:amazon.com. This will show books from all but amazon.com
6. Want to know who’s linking to you? Just type link:url for example link:theclickdepot.com will show you who links to us. But remember, Google reveals only a fraction of the actual link information with this command. Noone knows why. Yahoo Site Explorer shows much more.

We got more coming…sign up to our RSS feed to stay informed!

Recently, we were questioned about an SEO technique that is commonplace - Blog commenting and forum posting. So before we dive into the issue, let’s look at what this technique is. Blog commenting is the process of making comments on other people’s blog with the primary intention of generating backlinks pointing back at your own blog or website. Secondarily, it also generates “buzz” for your website and people get to know about you.

Now, everyone comments on blogs and that’s definitely not a bad thing. However, when you spam somone’s blog just for the backlinks that is certainly spamming. These days, there are several plugins and tools that are available to bloggers to block comment spam. One of the best available is Akismet
- http://akismet.com/. These do a pretty good job of blocking out comments that are either stuffed with keywords, not relevant to the blog post or use a weird-looking name or URL. Another technique for discouraging comment spam is the use of no-follow tags (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow) on blog comment links. These have proved quite effective as well.

However, there are other kinds of comments that are less obvious and in fact, many consider them perfectly acceptable marketing techniques. If a marketer visits blogs that relate to their website and post relevant comments on these blogs with backlinks pointing back to their sites that cannot be considered spam. Some still do. Perhaps it’s because when used as a backlink generating technique, they usually don’t just go about commenting on any relevant blog. They specifically target the ones that are popular and the posts that are related to their niche. They also try to find blogs that do not use the no-follow tag. Further, the point that really makes it debatable is that they don’t really desire to share thoughts on the blog posts and are doing it just for the sake of the backlink. So, is that spam?

According to us, it is not. As long as it is done the right way. Here’s the reason why. Television, radio and any other media advertiser tries to target their ads to the right market. Not all marketing is on TV or radio. Nike pays movie makers a lot of money to get actors to wear their apparel. Iron Man only drove Audi’s. So, is that spam? Not really. So when commenters try to target blogs and comment on them for popularity, why is that spam? The thing about do-follow. OK, that’s a no-brainer. The idea is good, but it really doesn’t help anyone that wants to improve their blog’s search engine popularity. Any who doesn’t?

Bottomline. Don’t get carried away. Remember that your blog could be spammed as well. Your competitor could use blog commenting too aggressively and beat you at the rankings race. In order for this to be a viable technique, this needs to be the same for everyone. Comment, but be relevant. Add to the content of the blog. Add thoughts, opinions or information that will be valuable to the reader of the blog post. Resits the temptation not to do so. If that makes you post fewer comments so be it. You can at least know that you are doing the right thing. That way, everone gets what they want.

So, where do you stand - the clean and clear side of things or do you dwell into the darker, questionable kind of things. There is always a gray area. In most professions, and even in personal life, we often run into decisions that we have to make where there really is no wrong on right, at least the law doesn’t mention it. That’s when we have to take one side, the side that we believe in and touches us stronger than the other. That’s when we need to decide whether we let ourselves get greedy and carried away or stand by and do the right thing.

One such situation the choice between Black Hat SEO versus White Hat SEO. In the world of SEO, there are several techniques and methods that one can use to get higher rankings on search engines, that are not conventional. They attempt to get the better of search engine algorithms and artificially achieve rankings that the page may not otherwise rank for. These are called Black Hat SEO techniques. Some of the common ones are mentioned here for your reference:

1. Keyword stuffing 1: Invisible text: Use keyword text that is the same color as a page’s background
2. Keyword stuffing 2: Hide the text: Add keywords behind other visual elements such as images so you don’t see them on the page but they are there.
3. Keyword stuffing 3:  Small font text: Keywords in really small font placed along the top, bottom or sides of a web page.
4. Doorway Pages: Pages that never display to the visitor but are there only so search engine spiders can see and list them. These pages redirect to the actual page that sells the product.

There are plenty more of these to go by. There are entire forums dedicated to these techniques - http://www.blackhatworld.com/. But here’s our stand on this: DO NOT DO IT. The reason should come from your business ethics, but if that’s not enough, just know that search engines are not stupid. They will get you and when they do, you will lose all your work because of a little bit of greed. About.com puts it well

Black Hat SEO is tempting; after all, these tricks actually do work, temporarily. They do end up getting sites higher search rankings; that is, until these same sites get banned for using unethical practices. It’s just not worth the risk. Use efficient search engine optimization techniques to get your site ranked higher, and stay away from anything that even looks like Black Hat SEO. Here’s a few articles that can get you on the road to knowing search engine optimization:

In reality, every professional SEO knows to stay away from these for the long-term. There are sites that sometimes need to be successful only temporarily, for instance, before the day of the elections, Etc. However, even for those, there is no point in using Black Hat. Search Engines could block out an entire IP. If you are on shared hosting, that could affect other sites using the same IP. You could be doing harm for you and others.

There are other harder decisions. Ones that are no all black or white. These are the hardest. Our next topic is regarding practises that are commonplace but debatable.

First of all, what are backlinks? Backlinks are simply links pointing to a page. So why are they not called just links? Well, you could call them that, but looking at it from your site’s perspective, you have links on your page, for instance, this link to the best raleigh internet marketing company (ok, i had to insert some propaganda, afterall, i want to make money too is an outbound link whereas any links pointing to this page (like the one you should add on your blog is a backlink.

Backlinks are also called inlinks (by Yahoo), inbound links (by Google) and so on.

So why are they so important? Read this post about search engine ranking factors and you’ll see that we said quality backlinks are the #1 factor in ranking pages higher on organic search results. Quality backlinks can skyrocket your website’s popularity and help your drive tremendous amounts of web traffic to your site. If you are serious about your business, whether is is online of offline, you need to know how to generate quality backlinks for your site. For that you first need to know what quality backlinks are.

Here you go, the seven qualities of a quality backlink:

1. Popularity: The page where the link is situated should be popular. In other words, that page should in turn have a lot of quality backlinks itself. It is emperically proven that SE’s look at at least 2 degrees of link popularity to determine rankings. Google page rank is a good measurement of the popularity of a page even though these days its accuracy is being questioned. So, if this is all too confusing for you then just know that you should get at least a few links from pages that have a google page rank that is higher than your page.

2. Outbound links: The page that you are getting backlinks from should not have too many outbound links on it. The recemmended number is 25 of less, in general. This is what makes the links from directories relatively less useful since directories typically have several dozen links on one page.

3. Age: The older the link that is pointing to your page, the better. This way search engines know that you are not buying links temporarily form a website to drive your link popularity.

4. Do Follow: Some websites mark some of their links as NO FOLLOW within their HTML coding or using other SEO techniques. They usually do this to avoid spam. No follow links are basically avoided by search engines when they determine rankings for a certain page.

5. Relevance: The link should be on a domain that is relevant to yours. It is increasingly becoming apparent that search engines understand link neighborhoods. In other words, if you are florist website and get a link from a website that talks about flowers, the link has more weightage than a link from a car mechanic shop. Now, your car mechanic might genuinely love the flowers he buys from you, but say sorry to him, search engines don’t really like his link all that much.

6. Location: Links that are mingled inside content (also called content links) are better than links that are on the footer or the header of sites or on a popup window for instance.

7. One way: Now this should actually rank pretty high up in this list but it’s down here because it is sort of obvious these days. Reciprocal links are less useful towards the link popularity of your website than one way links.

Now that you know what quality backlinks are, your next goal should be to find out how to get them. There are a lot of resources on the web that talk about this, but I’ll give you my 2 cents in a future post..

I knew you’d ask. I knew it. The million dollar question, it is. I wish I could tell you I know exactly Search engines (SE) look for when they rank pages for specific keywords. The truth is noone except the Ph.D’s at Google, Yahoo and MSN headquarters that are paid big bucks to create and maintain this algorithm know this.

I have a friend who worked at Ask.com and now works at Yahoo Search and even he does not know the specifics of the ranking algorithm. Why? Well, if that information were to get leaked out, I really think the Internet will be a crazy place and search engines will not be nearly as effective as they are today. SE results will be a lot less relevant since people with manipulate them with ease instead of letting the SE’s determine true relevance. There is already enough black hat SEO stuff out there without people being sure about how and what exactly SE’s look at.

The other point to remember is the SE algorithms are constantly changing. The algorithms are tweaked to increase the relevance of search results and make search engine marketing more lucrative for pay-per-click customers. They are also tweaked to make it harder for people to manipulate their sites to inappropriately display higher on search results.

That being said, if I don’t know the answer to this question, then what is this whole deal about SEO? Well, based on research, experimentation and emperical testing, it is process to read into the SE algorithm. At least somewhat. And that’s what SEO’s have done over the years.

So. let me give you my version of the truth. The factors are listed in the order of importance according to me.

1. Number of quality backlinks pointing to your page

So what are quality backlinks? I am going to have to write a separate post about that. But in essence, backlinks form high page rank, relevant, aged pages, preferably containing your keyword in their anchor text are quality backlinks. I know that leaves you asking for more evidence and explanation which is why a separate post is in order.

2. Your keyword in your page’s Title tag.

This is more important than most people realize. Your title needs to be carefully crafted to include 2-3 of your keywords but at the same time sound relevant and enticing to your human readers. I spend over 3-4 hours per month figuring out the right Title for my most important pages.

3. Age of your page/domain

Exact extent of this is hard to gauge because the older pages also usually have more “optimization” done on them over time naturally. But it is much easier to rank higher for pages on domains that are old.

4. Your Keywords in your URL

Search engines used to give a lot more importance to this a few years ago than they do now, but this still ranks among the top 10 ranking factors in my list.

5. Age of the backlinks pointing to the page

This is a factor that was almost not important at all 5 years ago but today, is gaining importance steadily as more and more websites buy “Temporary” links. So those temporary links will be rendered ineffective as a result of this rule since SE’s will not consider newly formed links for ranking pages. A generaly rule of thumb is to have links that are over 90 days old but again, that’s not set in stone at all. Just based on experience.

There are several sources for more information on this topic.

1. SEOmoz search engine ranking factors is exhaustive but too general.

2. Here’s a good discussion about the number one ranking factor on Google

Several other sites talk about this. And there’s too much information out there in fact. The crux of SEO, like in life, is FOCUS. Focus on the top 5 factors. Don’t get overwhelmed by the whole thing. Just one SEO technique applied right can sometimes make a HUGE difference. If you have even thought about optimizing your page for search engines, you are ahead of 75% sites out there. If you have spent 5 minutes on it, then you are perhaps ahead of 90% sites.

So you’ve decided to create your website and drive traffic to it! And you’ve heard these terms tossed around - SEO, SEM, SEF etc. They all seem the same to you. They are not.

I was like you too, until recently. I can shamelessly admit that it was after I had done a few website optimization assignments that I actually figured the difference between these words. Let me cut the c@ap and get to the point.

Let’s start with what we think you’ll already know.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization:

Wikipedia Definition: Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic“) search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

In essence, SEO is the process of increasing a site’s ranking for organic search results on Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN.

SEM: Search Engine Marketing

This is where the confusion begins. Most people use SEO and SEM interchangeably and they might even justify it. In fact, the Wikipedia definition of the term SEM actually includes SEO. That’s strange.

But I can tell you that if you are one of them, the pros are gonna laugh at you behing your back :). So, regardless of where you stand on the chicken-egg debate, it might be a good idea to know what SEO experts think the difference is.

SEM is the process of marketing a website via paid/sponsored search engine listings. In other words, Google Adwords Marketing, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN Adcenter advertising all qualify under SEM. So, to me, the major differentiating factor is that in SEM you are paying money directly to the Search Engines for sponsored listings. It is a more direct form of advertisement than Search Engine Optimization where you are actually trying to naturally/organically rank higher for your target key phrases.
SEO usually takes longer and more creative techniques to implement. Your rankings on search engines depend on a variety of factors. I will cover these in a separate post.

SEF - Search Engine Friendly

This phrase is usually used in the context of Search Engine Friendly URL’s. So, SEF is not a process or a technique. It is an adjective used to describe certain elements of  website such as URL, Title, Footer, Design, Code, Etc. that are designed to make it easier for search engines to crawl and rank them for relevant key phrases. Making a site SEF is one part of the SEO process. Makes more sense now?
Any debate about these definitions is welcome..

There are hundreds of things you can do to promote your blog. These 3 are the easiest ones that you can do within 5 minutes. So for something that can be done in 5 minutes, including reading this post!

3. Ping Site Update Services

Login to your wordpress backend. Go to Settings > Writing (in v2.5), and copy-paste this list

http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://thingamablog.sourceforge.net/ping.php
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/b…ter/ping.php
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

Every time you post, your blog will automatically ping these sites and they will know that you posted and their readers will know that you posted. How cool is that!

2. Ensure your URL’s are SEO friendly

Go to Settings > Permalinks, Select Custom Structure and past /%category%/%postname%/ in there. Your URL’s are now SEO friendly. Ensure that your .htaccess is writeable.

1. Install the Headspace2 plugin

Headspace2 is THE best SEO plugin out there in my opinion. It offers a TON of functionality. Even if you can’t do it all in 5 minutes, just installing it on your blog and knowing that it is THE way to go is half the battle won. Next when you get a chance, visit their site - http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/headspace2/ and watch their videos. Get started, it it worth the time. They got Google Analtics integration, Meta tags optimization, Etc. all in one place.

Hope this post was worth your 5 minutes!

Pricing Search Engine Optimization campaigns has always been a touchy subject. Even though this field is almost a decade old now, there are almost no standards or regulating bodies. No certifications and no way to differentiate the best from the amateur other than their own claims. Given that, pricing often tends to be the differentiator. Most SEO businesses do not reveal their pricing. And I am not just saying that. A simple google search for “best seo companies” results in several companies. I just picked the first five sponsored ads. Let’s look at these sites -

http://www.rankforsales.com/seo-company.html

http://www.yourwebgurus.com/contact.html

http://www.949inc.com/lp/SEO/Search-Engine-Optimization-Orange-County.php

http://www.clickresponse.net/search-engine-optimization-service.htm

http://www.evisionworldwide.com/

Based on the fact that they show up on the top sponsored ads on Google, you would think that they are on top of their work, right? Well, don’t be so sure. NOT ONE of them provides their pricing information online. When you send them a request for a quote, they almost NEVER return with a $$$ number. It will only be more questions, a sales person calling you and after the same old “we can make you a million” sales pitch, they reveal a quote based on how much you can afford. NOT based on the results that they are promising. That’s what’s so bad about this market.

Based on experience, I can tell you that there are way too many so-called Top SEO companies out there that don’t know what they are doing. This market changes on a daily basis. Most SEO companies don’t take the time to learn, to experiment. They simply lack the passion to stay on top. When it comes to SEO, it is a war out there. #1 on search results is everything. You cannot afford to be with SEO companies that do not realize that.

At The Click Depot, we are trying to level the field. We are trying to make it easy for anyone to KNOW what their online spending is going to be. Our pricing is on our website. It is the same whether you are a millionaire with a hundred websites or a newbie turning to Internet Marketing for the first time. Take a look. If you are an SEO reading this, I would love to hear your thoughts about our pricing and my comments. I invite heated debate.

We at The Click Depot are attempting to mak