SoloSEO

Don’t be a Victim of Online Fraud

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on January 24th, 2008

Due to all the mortgage fraud around here, and throughout the country, there have been public service announcements popping up, to better “educate” us about the dangers of fraud. Fraud seems to be a part of life, with new ploys being developed all the time to take advantage of trusting individuals. The last comment of one of the public service announcements heard frequently around here states: “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” We all have heard this comment before, and frankly it is a good piece of advice. Due to blatant greed, we all need to be suspect of almost everything, if not everything. I can promise you there is no money locked in a secret US bank account, which only you can get out to help a banished Prince of Nigerian royal decent, and for your efforts the good Prince won’t be giving you a few million as a commission either.

In online business the same goes, I am sad to hear of stories of people who put out their hard-earned money on some hyped-up trick to increase traffic to their site. These programs might in fact increase traffic a bit, but it isn’t quality traffic, it isn’t qualified traffic, so it isn’t worth what was paid.

Then there are the “online marketing experts” who are willing to open their secret treasure trove of online selling secrets for a nominal fee. These are the secrets that have “made them millions” and they are going to hand them out to you for only $29.95. Oh, but that’s not all, you can also get a special bonus of the super-duper extra secret online marketing magic techniques for just another $19.99, but you have to do it before that 60 second timer ticks off to zero… hurry!!! Please…

I am also tired of hearing of the many SEO scams, and then dealing with the fallout these scams put on the SEO industry. These SEO scammers are the people who ask you to pay a relatively small fee up front, then monthly fees thereafter for their masterful “SEO services.” All of which can’t be audited or proven, while you are being assured by the scammer they are working hard on your site, and you sense they are sitting in their underwear, and you swear you can hear Halo 3 being played in the background. I am sure there have been many occasions when all these SEO guys have done is sign our sites up for that traffic-pusher scam system mentioned earlier, and then they just sit back and claim the new increase in traffic is from their relentless SEO efforts. Total scam.

In the world of Internet marketing, let’s just agree on this… If it sounds to good to be true, it MOST DEFINITELY IS NOT TRUE. Please do not fall for any of these and a myriad of other online scams, there is not easy money out there, not legally anyway.

Making a site a success is like anything else in life, it takes work. SEO is work, it takes time to build links, create content, research keywords, all of which are important in SEO efforts. There are tools you can use to make the process of SEO more manageable, but the work has to be done by someone, somehow, somewhere, in order for a site to really improve its performance. You can use a system like SoloSEO to help you keep track of all your progress and provide you with tools and training to do it yourself, but it does take time and effort. Or you can hire a reputable SEO firm, one that will be a bit pricey, but they will tell you what they are doing, and show you reports of the progress they have made, and you will see an increase in qualified traffic, and ultimately sales. Good SEO efforts drive real potential clients to your site because they already know what you are offering and it is what they are searching for, that is the type of pre-qualified clients we all want browsing our product pages.

At SoloSEO we are working to make the tools and processing of SEO easier to use, as well as more educational. We not only want our clients to see their sites improving the right way, we want them to know how SEO works and to understand what the tools and processes are doing, and why the positive results are happening. Understanding the concepts behind SEO allow us to better understand our online marketplace, and helps us quickly determine the different online tactics be employed by our competitors, so we can better compete. Learning and doing are both important in SEO, as it is with many other worthwhile endeavors.

In short, please be careful when purchasing SEO services, make sure the providers will be accountable, make sure they give you some benchmarks on what they will accomplish over the term of the contract. Not so much in terms of traffic, traffic will come if the SEO is done right, instead make sure they give you a timeline on when the keyword research will be done, how much time they will spend building links, and how they build links, (hopefully they avoid purchasing links), and how much time will be spent on content, etc. Pin them down, and make them commit to a defined time-line. This is the way business is typically done in the offline world, we should demand and expect the same level of responsibility from the online world. Don’t be intimidated by their perceived expertise, you know more about other stuff than they do, I assure you. Speak with confidence, and expect them to stand by their performance.

If you have any questions on whether a SEO service provider is a good one or not, ask them to provide you a few URLs they have worked on and talk to the owners of those sites, see how past clients have felt they were treated. You could also use our SEO tools to analyze these sites and see if they have addressed basic SEO principles required to improve a site for the long haul.

Ultimately, just be wary, money can make good people do some pretty dumb/dishonest things. We unfortunately had $20K stolen from us last year by a family friend. This someone we allowed in our home as one of the family and we mistakenly trusted, so it can happen easily, anywhere, anytime, even to the most untrusting among us.

One final note on fraud, pay attention to all the political campaigning going on right now. Some of the very best scammers in all the world are now running for President of the United States, it is fascinating to watch. Let us all remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, even ( or especially) in politics.

4 comments Visited 913 times January 24th, 2008 Aaron R Stewart

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Instant Testimonial Page, Just Add Blog Post

Posted by Michael D Jensen on October 22nd, 2007

Recently I noticed a few backlinks to our blog coming from HitTail, a long tail keyword tool. Instead of being some spammer that puts up a temporary post that pings our blog, HitTail is collecting “testimonials” about their service from virtually any blog (that pings it), and delivering this list in a nice clean way. Even a link in the comments will trigger an “entry” into the HitTail quotes and testimonials page.

I love the idea to automatically collect who talks about your site, and then to post it as a quotes and testimonials page. I track what people say about SoloSEO using Google Alerts, but maybe this is a great way to not only track it but also share it!

This is also a great way to create “user generated content” without users having to directly interact with your site!

The only downside is they are essentially giving away a free link from a PageRank 4 page.

Update: Although it appears to still be very automated, there is definitely someone weeding out the entries that get on the page.

3 comments Visited 1112 times October 22nd, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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Hey Businesses… Its about Blogging time.

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on September 7th, 2007

A good friend of mine, Thayne Peterson, called up yesterday and asked what he should do with his website to just help it perform a bit better. As you can imagine we get that question quite a bit around here, especially now that more people have kind of figured out what SoloSEO is about. This friend owns an auto dealership in Provo, UT (free link alert) and deals mostly in high-quality, used BMWs. He also has a repair shop as well, where they specialize in repairing most German made cars (this needs to be stated more clearly on the website). He, like many of us, just wants to be a bit more visible online.

In our conversation he mentioned he was considering signing up for a local online business directory, and perhaps purchasing some advertising on their site. He wondered if I thought it was a good idea, so I took a look. After some initial poking around, it was soon obvious that signing up was free, and the site existed solely on ad space it sold on the site. So I had no problem with him signing up, at least it is a new link to him, and this directory is well put together and has quite a comprehensive overview of local business, organized by category. I didn’t tell him if I thought purchasing an ad on this site was a good move or not, I don’t know enough about this directory’s traffic mix, or his business to understand if online advertising will provide a high enough ROI to make the ad price worth the investment. I will leave that decision to him.

But after a quick review of his site, I just gave him a few ideas that I think will help its performance in the search engines. First off, he does an excellent job of keeping the inventory of current cars up to date. As soon as they receive a new car, they clean it up and takes some nice pictures of the car, and then put those up with a simple description of each car on the site. I suggested that they should spend a bit more time on creating content for each car, focusing more on some keywords they are targeting, as well as the specifics of each car. These keywords should come from what they feel their strengths are, with local references included, like Provo, UT, Northern Utah, 40 South of Salt Lake City, UT, as examples. Additionally, I would have them use SoloSEO tools to analyze other local automotive sites doing well in the search engines, and then start targeting those keywords as well. Finally, they should also make sure the photos for each car are labeled clearly, and using an occasional keyword here and there, in a picture description, isn’t going to hurt rankings either.

Once a car is sold, they currently take the content and the pictures of that car off the site. I think this is a mistake many of us make. Rather, I would suggest they create a sold page, or past inventory page, then organize all the cars by model and year on this sold/directory page. Keep all that content written about each car, and the descriptive photos for each in play for the search engines. If they spend time creating the content, then they should continue benefitting from it. Plus, it might help potential clients find a model of car they are looking for. Thayne does a great job finding cars according to a potential buyer’s specifications. He did this for me, and it worked out great. So, if a potential buyer found a car on Thayne’s site by browsing the past inventory, which takes no time from Thayne’s sales people (truly a major benefit of any well conceived site), and Thayne gets a new client to work with, along with all the specs he needs to find a similar car, it is a win/win for everyone.

Next, I would suggest they start a company blog, it is another easy way to add content. We of course love WordPress Blogging system, we use it ourselves, and highly recommend it to everyone. On the Independent Import’s blog I would have them blog about sales they are having on certain cars, about automotive tips, about information on recalls, about new performance parts or options to “pimp our rides,” and even about the new innovations BMW is coming out with all the time. The automotive industry is one of constant innovation and change, and this provides excellent and frequent topics for a blog. Keep the blog fresh, with one or two posts a week at least, and also let his current and new clients know about the blog. Many new car owners are passionate about their cars (especially BMW owners), and reading new info about their brand of car and possible improvements/options, is very interesting and will increase business. I’ll bet Thayne could get quite a good subscription base fairly quickly, I know I would sign up.

I would guess there are many of us who feel like we need to do better online. Our site is there, but we need it to perform better, if at all and bring us some new clients. This is most easily done through search. Look for ways to increase your content, adding new pages, and a blog. Then write about products, changes in the industry, and keep your content, don’t ever throw it away. It may need to be tweaked or placed on an archives page of some sort, but you worked hard to create it, let it continue to work for you, it will make a difference in search engine rankings. As far as all the free advice to Thayne, I will take it on trade for a M3 convertible, black… of course.

1 comment Visited 1651 times September 7th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Discount or Ignore Paid Links

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on August 16th, 2007

There has been some post and comments lately which have expressed frustration with Google’s attempts to discount the referral power of links purchased to bolster rankings. Why people have a problem with this makes no sense to me. I personally don’t have a problem with any SE discounting paid links. Why wouldn’t they attempt to discount paid links? Isn’t the whole purpose of a search engine to provide clients with the most relevant results possible, results not influenced by tactics or games? I personally want my organic search results to only contain sites that are reputable, sites where the owners have worked hard to get there, have written good content, have naturally established themselves in relevant circles, have referral links from past clients, or associates, based on a good product, solid customer service and historic proficientcy. I don’t want directories, no matter how “good” the content is, or fly by night companies looking to make a quick buck, who have paid for links to sneak themselves on the first page. it is sites like these which muck up the SERPs organic results.

Some will spew that ads on the SERPs are actually paid links, to which I totally agree, but we know they are paid links, we understand the bias there, and they are obviously quarantined away from the organic results. In my mind the search engines have earned the right to sell space on their pages based on the traffic they attract. This incredible level of traffic is based on the satisfaction of searchers, due to the accuracy of previous organic search results. So, in my mind, if you want qualified traffic quickly, then paying a search engine and picking out some targeted keywords in a PPC campaign might be the best way to go to get started. But there is no way someone should go out and attempt to purchase a bunch of paid links in an attempt to bully their way onto the organic search results page, that is not what organic search pages are there to provide, and the search engines are looking to stop you. Don’t risk your business in this manner.

Search engines attempt to deliver relevant results for search clients, these results consist of both organic results and paid ads attempting to match the purpose of the initial search. However, when a SEO uses other sites they own or control to provide links to improve their clients rankings, that too is a paid link. Do these sites, which have been artificially forced onto the SERPs, occasionally give the searcher what they need, perhaps, but not always, and that is the problem. Random links from a site, which only is linking out because it was paid to do so, can’t ethically be considered a link with any value, it is a tainted and usually irrelevant link. Search engines rightfully use the number of links and the quality of the sites providing the links, to assist in determining the quality of a site, that makes perfect sense to do so. But links from sites that have no relevance, or from individuals who have never used the product, really don’t have any business handing out a link and should be discounted, or not used in the rankings at all.

All a paid link can really tell us is the site buying the link has money to spend on links, and the site selling the links enjoys cashing checks. That really isn’t a sound foundation for a legitimate referral. So Google, Yahoo, Ask, all of you guys, please continue to weed out those sites that purchase links, and those SEOs that use other sites to game the rankings, they are attempting to bury small business owners who are working to establish themselves online by working on content and links the right way.

5 comments Visited 1794 times August 16th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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SEO - Vital to Small Business

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on August 7th, 2007

To small business owners, SEO cannot be seen as the “end all - be all” to their potential success, but it rightfully should be considered a “must do” in order to maximize their full business potential. Based on our own situation, and finally deciding ourselves we needed to spend time on SEO, we now understand that getting started in SEO can be a bit intimidating, and very confusing without the right information. The SEO world tends to speak in their own tongue, and their language wasn’t developed, or taught in any business classes I attended. These new terms, whether it was meant to be this way or not, seem to have created a bit of a “barrier to entry,” to use a term we are more familiar with. Essentially the SEO industry created an illusion of “if we don’t know the terminology, it will be difficult to understand or perform SEO, and even tougher to do it well.” I felt the same way at first, but that perception is simply not true. SEO done the right way, without all the tricks and tinkering (which isn’t all that effective anymore anyway), is actually pretty straight forward. Just as simple as learning about credits and debits in Accounting or how supply and demand affect pricing in Economics. Not too tough to understand with a little reading and some hands-on exercises.

So if SEO is important, and we can learn it, how much time should we spend on SEO as a small business owner? It is an excellent question, and ultimately depends on how much business a firm hopes to bring in through their online efforts. For example, if a firm has in mind that in 12 months they would like to have 50% of their sales coming from online sources, and they currently only enjoy 5% of total sales from the site, then they should probably spend a considerable amount of time working on the site, making sure all the pieces are in place, so not only will the site’s visibility improve, but potential clients will be happy with what they find. Conversely, if this firm wants only 50% of their sales from online sources, but they now enjoy 60% of total being online generated, then they should focus more attention on more traditional forms of marketing and advertising until this ratio changes.

To get started in SEO, I would recommend just setting aside an hour a day to dive in. At first start just by learning about SEO, either from some pretty good books on the topic here and here, or through a number of blogs we recommend to our readership, namely: Michael Gray (GrayWolf), Todd Malicoat (StuntDubl), Lee Odden (Online Marketing Blog), Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz), and Brian Clark (CopyBlogger). These books and blogs will provide good insight and instruction on the ins and outs of all aspects of SEO.

Once one has a basic grasp of SEO, they really should get themselves an account with SoloSEO, in order to put this knowledge to use, using the most comprehensive set of SEO tool on the web. Much like exercises in Accounting and Economics, actually using the tools, and seeing the results of your work, drives home the SEO concepts, and puts the finishing touches on the learning process. Through working with SoloSEO’s tools, a solid understanding of the pillars of SEO, namely keywords, links and content will form, and SEO will then seem not only doable, but pretty simple.

So once we understand what SEO “is,” then it is time to really understand our industry online, and review what our competitor’s are up to. This online Competitive Analysis can also be done using some of SoloSEO’s tools and reports. We must remember we are competing within a different marketplace, with new competitors, and how they have positioned their sites online, could and should influence how we position and optimize our sites today and in the future. There is not a pre-determined set of guidelines at this point for SEO, no matter what some might say, much of what we need to do to compete most effectively online will be determined by what our competitors have done and will do in the future. While the process of SEO is standardized, the focus of our specific SEO strategy will need to be flexible to face the challenges put forth by our online competitors. If we watch what they do, and manage our online SEO accordingly, then we can keep pace or outpace what they are attempting to do, and better our online exposure.

In my mind there isn’t a business out there today which cannot benefit from an online presence, especially a site that is well prepared, and skillfully promoted. Small business owners need to take every advantage, use every possible tool and strategy available, to insure their eventual, or continued success. I can think of nothing more vital, more accessible and more easily implemented (not to mention more affordable) than SEO. A site which runs well, and effectively targets the right potential clients, promotes a firm’s image in a positive way, while making sales, even while we sleep, or while we play golf (not that anyone would do this during business hours). Take the time to get to know SEO and you will quickly understand just how big your little company can become, and that realization can be quite jolt.

2 comments Visited 1600 times August 7th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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The Googlerithm

Posted by Michael D Jensen on July 17th, 2007

The Googlerithm is the “Google algorithm”, rolled into a single, catchy term. Ask a programmer what algorithm means, and he’ll probably tell you something like: “An algorithm is a set of instructions to accomplish a task.” In the case of Google’s algorithm, the task is to take a search term and end up with a relevant set of content, sorted by relevance. To accomplish this task, Google has a set of instructions that their machines follow for identifying and sorting relevant content based on the keyword search. This is the Googlerithm. But what exactly are those instructions?

The exact instructions, weights, and specifics about the Googlerithm are probably only privy to a few people on earth that work in Mountain View, California. However, years of SEO experience from SEOs across the globe have contributed to understanding much about the Googlerithm from the outside, based on experimentation and testing.

This is an attempt to condense the Googlerithm into its most basic components. It can serve as a good checklist for your sites, to make sure you aren’t missing important elements in your search engine optimization. Keep in mind there are many more factors, but this is a simple list of the most important items.

Backlinks

• Anchor text of links
• Context of link (subject matter of site and surrounding text)
• Strength of page and site (The Page Strength tool is helpful)

Content

• Keywords in title, header tags (h1, h2), main text, and URL
• Content quality (readability, spam-like?, and possibly manual ratings)
• Internal links (and here, and here, and here)
• Outbound links (topic, quantity, and reciprocal; case study here)

Other Factors

• Age of domain
• Visitor metrics (time on page, click-through rates from SERPs)
• Freshness (see indexed in an hour article)

Take a long, hard look at each of these 3 areas and identify how you are doing in each factor. If you need some more information, I’ve included links to some authoritative articles on most of the factors above. A new version of SEOmoz’ Search Ranking Factors that gathers opinions of experts on a long list of factors. Make a list for yourself on what needs done for each area so that you can make the most out of the Googlerithm.

7 comments Visited 1812 times July 17th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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Why You Should Love Yahoo! Answers

Posted by Michael D Jensen on July 6th, 2007

Just over a year ago Danny sullivan said “Look out Wikipedia, Here Comes Yahoo! Answers”. Yahoo! Answers is becoming not only a great resource, but also a social network (who isn’t, right?). I like Yahoo! Answers because people ask real questions and often get a handful or more of responses.

Sometimes links are all about ranking, but in this case you can get a good flow of traffic (Matt McGee on why he loves it) from a bona fide link on Yahoo! Answers. Every time I’ve jumped onto Yahoo! Answers, I’ve had a fun time. Not only responding, but also reading other people’s comments and questions.

Yahoo! Answers Made Easy

For starters, let’s make following your favorite topic really easy on Yahoo! Answers. They have a RSS feed, just like this blog and other blogs, that you can subscribe to and watch as new questions are asked.

http://answers.yahoo.com/rss/searchq?p=seo

Let’s say you are interested in GPS gadgets (i.e. you have a site/blog for GPS gadgets):

http://answers.yahoo.com/rss/searchq?p=gps

The name of the game is get there first (or early) and answer the question. If you answer it well, correctly, and in a thorough manner, chances are you get most of the attention and are selected as the best answer. Then “forever” afterwards if that search comes up in the SERPs you’ve got a great chance of getting some traffic.

The best way to use Yahoo! Answers is to primarily be there to help others. If you have something on your site or blog that is helpful, then point them to it. If not, point them somewhere else. A good mix of those would be very natural.

Do you ever have a hard time figuring out what to write? Why not take a question, or part of an answer to someone’s question, and expand it on your blog? Better yet, answer someone’s question on your blog (quickly) and then add it as a response!

8 comments Visited 3049 times July 6th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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7 Months to Get Past Google’s “Did you Mean…”

Posted by Michael D Jensen on July 2nd, 2007

One of my early posts to the SoloSEO blog was How to Get Your Web 2.0 Brand Past the “Did you Mean” in Search, and I discussed how in Google if you searched for our brand name “soloseo” Google would come back and say “Did you mean: colosseo”. Well, it’s time to celebrate around here…we have overcome! No longer will Google give a suggestion, but now it knows that when people search for “soloseo” they mean it!

What contributes to that? It’s very hard to tell, and I don’t have case studies beyond our own, so it’s all just a guess. I think the main factor is the two main focuses of SEO, content and links. We establish our brand through both content and links, producing content from our site, and obtaining links to our site (many of which have soloseo as the anchor text of the link). Since November 2006 when we first launched SoloSEO, we have gained thousands of links and have created hundreds of pages of content.

My blog post mentioned above gave another example, this one with Alexa.com. Alexa also has a “did you mean” when searching for our domain name. Unfortunately, things haven’t changed there. If you type in soloseo.com it says: “Did you mean: solosexo com?”. How crazy is that?

What experiences have you had with getting past the “Did you mean” in search engines?

1 comment Visited 1213 times July 2nd, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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Learn SEO Basics: Anchor Text of Inbound Links

Posted by Michael D Jensen on May 29th, 2007

Anchor text for inbound links is one of the most important factors in search engine optimization. According to SEOmoz’ search engine ranking factors (v2), anchor text is the 2nd most important positive factor.

“The text people use to link to you is one of the most important factors — often the most important factor — for how you will rank in Google.” (Danny Sullivan, Mar 15, 2007)

Now that I have your attention, let’s learn about anchor text, and how to benefit from this very important factor.

What is Anchor Text?

Anchor text is the visible text of a link. For example, if I was going to link to a friend’s blog, I might use his name for the anchor text.

Check out Todd Malicoat’s blog.

If I wanted to make the most out of my link for Todd, I would use a nice keyword for my anchor text, for example:

Check out Todd Malicoat’s blog on SEO Consulting.

Todd ranks pretty well already for SEO consulting. If you check the anchor text for his backlinks, he has tons of links for “SEO Consultant” and “SEO Consulting”. If you do a search in Google for “SEO Consultant”, notice how the words “SEO Consulting” get highlighted as well. The words are very related and mean about the same thing, and so Todd is going to rank well for both of those terms. Obviously the anchor text of the link is not the SOLE reason Todd ranks well, but it is a major reason.

The Power of Anchor Text

Many examples show the power of anchor text, but here is one simple one:

Computers

Skip the wikipedia result and look at the Dell result. If you view Dell’s homepage you don’t see the word “computer” anywhere. When you view the source you can find the word “computer” just one time, in the meta tag for keywords. Obviously that doesn’t have the power to get it to that kind of ranking. If you check the anchor text of its backlinks you’ll notice a lot of their backlinks use the text “Dell Computers” or something with the word “computer” in it.

How do I use Anchor Text to benefit my SEO?

Any link building efforts should start with keyword analysis, identifying the keywords you want to rank better for. There are several tools for keyword research, including our Keyword Finder tool in SoloSEO that lets you find keywords from Overture, WordTracker, and Google Adwords all at once and to compare the results side by side.

Link building comes in many forms. Whether you’re requesting links from other sites, submitting to directories, or buying links, it is important to make the most out of your link by choosing the right anchor text. If you are requesting links from others, have the code for your link all ready to go, easy for them to insert into their webpage.

Keep in mind that having all of your anchor text the exact same from all your links may not be the best approach. Try mixing it up by adding a word, changing from singular to plural, or stemming a word differently. Just like above, Google considers “Consulting” and “Consultant” to be very related, enough that they would highlight the other word even though it doesn’t match your search term.

Some other articles on the topic

How to Link to Your Friends, by Todd Malicoat

The Power of Anchor Text, by John Chow (more like Google Bombing, but the Googlebombing algorithm hasn’t hurt him yet)

Aaron Wall’s post about the depreciation of anchor text

V7N discusses link vs content and the ending is a great quote (spoiler alert? hehe):

PageRank does matter. In fact, anchor text and inbound links is 95% of effective search engine optimization. Anyone who tells you otherwise does not practice real search engine optimization.

Subscribe to our RSS feed for my upcoming follow-up post about advanced tips for ways to control anchor text of inbound links, and ways to get more of them.

14 comments Visited 3563 times May 29th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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Does SEO work in Hawaii?

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on May 15th, 2007

I was gone all last week, in Maui. Yeah baby. It was our first time to Maui, and I loved it. I didn’t even think about writing a post the whole week, I am sure you understand. We had a great time, we enjoyed the beauty of the island, stayed in an amazing place with good friends, played a bunch of golf, hung out with my wonderful wife (who, we discovered, is allergic to macadamia nuts, poor thing), and made some new friends. One of the new friends we actually met on the plane over, his name is John Kennedy, and he is a manager of a wonderful magic/comedy show in Lahaina on Maui called Warren and Annabelle’s. If you are visiting Maui, you MUST attend this show, it was amazing. John, and the entire W&A staff treated us like family (in a good way), and we will never forget the experience, it was fortunately unforgettable. We saw the show on Monday night and were on the island the rest of the week, so later on in the week we called John and he kindly joined us for a round of golf on the Makena North course (which has some of the best views on the island, better than the Kapalua Plantation course, and is frankly a better course, but once again I digress).

During our round the usual topics were up for discussion, and we eventually discussed what we do for a living. I had given John a sleeve of SoloSEO logo golf balls, so he asked about SoloSEO specifically. (In fact, I will be happy to send out a sleeve of these Callaway HX Tour balls, to the first person who leaves a nice comment, and sends their address to info@soloseo.com, these are so rare and new, not even Michael has a sleeve yet). John listened to my simple explanation of what SoloSEO was, and he asked a question many have asked previously… “Does it work?” Excellent question. Either due to beauty of the course, my miserable play, or our competitive banter I don’t remember ever answering John’s question, so I apologize, and now thought I would take some time to fully answer John’s question here. John, a resounding YES, SEO does work, and here is why.

SEO is a process of getting your site into a format in which the search engines can scan it, quasi understand it, categorize it, then refer it to others when the search engines feel your site can deliver what the search client is looking for based on the text they entered into the search engine. Any of the search engines want to handle searches as efficiently and effectively as possible. They are attempting to earn the public’s trust and gain search traffic, ultimately so they can demand advertising dollars from firms who want access to the traffic the search engine attracts daily. This is why we have sections on a search engine results page, consisting of both organic (free) and paid (ads paid for to the search engine for positioning) search results. To keep the public’s trust, search engines must not unfairly mess with the organic search results, which are algorithmically based on a number of factors, including many of the resulting work we control/create in SEO processes.

In the past there were an enterprising, yet deceitful group, who learned to “game” the search engines, using what has been termed “black hat” techniques. These techniques essentially fooled search engines into believing some poor quality site actually had quality content, and reputable products or services which matched what the search clients were search for. Instead, when these pages were visited, search clients would find a bunch of nonsensical text coupled with paid text ads, ironically usually placed by the search engine which originally referred the searcher to this garbage site. This did not make the search engines appear proficient, and the black-hat site owners didn’t care. They were greedily hoping search clients would click on the paid ads, rather than the browser’s back button, so they could make some commission paid to them from the search engines. Very creepy. It would be like finding what appeared to be the best ad in the Yellow Pages for a plumber, then driving to the advertised address only to find a smelly, dark, smoke filled shop, with a greesy guy convincing you to take some pamphlets they had on real plumbers. Then the slime ball expecting the Yellow Pages to pay them for each pamphlet taken by the originally deceived client. It wouldn’t fly in the real world, and it shouldn’t have flown in search.

Who were the big losers in this game of search deceit? First, the searchers, who were looking for something, but made to go through junk sites to find it. Second, the search engines, who were attempting to provide clients with a relevant site, but instead delivered garbage, making the engine look bad, and hurting their reputation. Third, the firms paying the search engines to place the company ads on quality pages, which were instead placed on pages of non-sensical text, which unfortunately associated the firm with the junk site. In all, it was a very bad period in search, and ultimately called into question the search engine’s ability to decipher the good pages from the bad ones, and the effectiveness of good SEO technique. Now the good news, the search engines are now doing an excellent job, really since November 2006, of figuring out these junk sites and removing them from the search results pages, and search has become much better for it.

Now the search engines have a better ability of determining the quality of the sites they index, good SEO technique is more important than ever. Now solid SEO can actually have a bigger and better influence on your site’s performance, than was possible when the search engines results could be tainted by the black hats. Now we can be assured if we do the SEO work, which is most definitely work, then our hard labor will be rewarded, and our sites will perform better, since site quality is more identifiable. The search engines have essentially created a situation where those who work hard are rewarded, and those that still attempt to cheat are more than likely caught, and their offending sites punished. Just how it should have always been.

There are many wonderful, and quality SEO tools out there, but SoloSEO offers the most comprehensive set of online SEO tools, all in one place. SoloSEO gives you a location where you can manage all your SEO processes, from link building to keyword research, from content creation to online competitive analysis, and keeps it all organized for you. In fact, just having a SoloSEO account can improve your online competitive knowledge. SoloSEO offers monthly SEO related reports that can be customized, and sent to you on a monthly basis, via email, without you lifting a finger. With SoloSEO, you will not only know more about the online competitive situation of your industry, but you will have the tools at your disposal to flex some serious SEO muscle, and improve your competitive online position.

So there you have it John, SEO works, everywhere, and even in Hawaii (even if I don’t). SEO is becoming a better use of marketing time and effort because the search engines finally have their act together. To you John on a personal note, thank you for the conversation on the plane, and advice on what to do on Maui, thank you for the evening at Warren and Annabelle’s is was most memorable, thank you for the golf, it was a blast, and thank you for the question, it was an excellent one. We look forward to meeting up with you again soon on Maui (or here)! Until then, to you a heartfelt Aloha and Mahalo!

5 comments Visited 1156 times May 15th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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