Archive for January, 2008

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Definition: Off-Page Optimization

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

By: Gabriel Gervelis

What Is Off-Page Optimization?

When speaking with professional search engine optimization companies you will hear the terms On-Page optimization and Off-page optimization. The cost of any seo campaign should be a direct relation to how much work is conducted. How much On-Page and Off-Page Optimization needs to be preformed in order to achieve the campaigns goals. Not taking into account the time it takes to research and monitor a website’s rankings over time, on and off-page optimization are the two main factors for project costs.

Off Page Optimization
Work conducted outside of a website or domain that the search engine optimization campaign is targeting. Labor for research, and paid submissions, and agency fees are the three parts to off-page optimization costs.

Part 1: Labor For Research
Links…Links….Links…

Research of quality links and the development of link relationships is a key part to off-page optimization. Link building concepts will be covered in more detail later in the SEO TIPS blog. The main goal of this post is to introduce to you how much labor is needed for basic off page optimization, or link building.

Researching a competitor’s links is a time consuming process. There are SEO tools that will run reports and display all inbound links to a given domain. The easy part is getting the list, the time consuming part is finding the quality links that will benefit your campaign.

Example:
We represent a professional roofing company. The main competitor for all keywords is a roofing and kitchen repair company. The link report provides a list of 1,000 inbound links to the competitor’s site. Some of these links are from kitchen repair resources, other links are from roofing resources, and the other links fall into the “other” category.

Now we need to sort through the 1,000 links to find the ones relevant to roofing. From this point we need to repeat this process on all of our client’s main competitors.

How much time will this take? The amount of off-page optimization is a direct relation to the price of a SEO campaign.

Part 2: Paid Submissions
Once research is complete, a list of quality links that competitors are using to gain high search rankings. Half of the names on the list are paid directories (websites that charge an advertising fee). In order to list with these directories, an unpredictable third party fee will affect the price of the seo campaign.

Example:
Best of the Web is a popular directory with a submission charge. The cost of a lifetime inbound link is $249. After the client receives the link report they have the ability to negotiate inbound links themselves. However, further optimization is needed. The title and description of the link needs to match optimization guidelines to target keywords, and the web page where the link points to needs to be chosen.

Part 3: Agency Fees
Most Professional search engine optimization companies will have an agency fee for the submission process and the optimization of the submission process.

Example:
If Best of the Web charges $249, the SEO Company will have a 15% ($37.35) submission fee, bringing the total to $286.35.

Summary

  1. The cost of a SEO campaign is directly affected by the degree of on-page optimization, and off-page optimization work that needs to be conducted.
  2. Off-page optimization costs are broken down into two groups, the cost of labor, and the cost of a submission.
  3. Most Professional SEO Companies have a set fee for a submission process

Good luck with your SEO ventures!

Posted in SEO Tips Glossary , SEO FAQ | 4 Comments »

Monitor The Success Of Your SEO Campaign

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

By: Gabriel Gervelis

So, what happens when you find an SEO company to work with? We’re going to look at two methods to monitor the effects of your SEO campaign. We’ll be using tools from search engines you’re probably already familiar with, Google and Yahoo!. This blog will serve as an introduction to SEO monitoring; in future posts we will explore these methods in more detail.

1. Google Analytics:

Google Analytics is a free online application offered by Google that allows you to review your websites traffic statistics (view analytics demo). This program offers many features that show you where your website visitors come from and what they do once they’re in your website. Google Analytics also allows you to monitor traffic sent to your website from keywords on organic (not sponsored) searches. This information is helpful in identifying effective targeted keywords in the SEO campaign.

There are also many advanced features of the Google Analytics. One of these features allows you to create and monitor sales goals (called conversions) through your website. Using the program properly, you can monitor how many conversions the SEO campaign is generating. This allows you to monitor the ROI of the SEO campaign.

2. Yahoo! inlinks:

This method only applies when the SEO campaign uses off-page optimization SEO techniques. A good SEO company will provide their own benchmarking and reporting system, but you can assess the success of your SEO campaign on your own. Use this technique to benchmark the number of links pointing into your website (inlinks) before the start of the SEO campaign, then 2 months after the start of the seo campaign.

Yahoo! offers a search that finds how many inlinks your site is experiencing. The more inlinks you have, the higher your website’s visibility on search engines becomes. To check your inlinks, type in “link:” and enter your URL. This will look like this: “Link:www.yourwebsite.com”

For example, to view the inlinks for SEOTIPS.ORG, we would search “Link:www.SEOTIPS.ORG”

You will see our inlinks on the top left corner of the results listing. The result listing should look something like this. Once we have these inlinks, allow a few months and work with your SEO company to do your on-page changes, and then search again.

Good luck with your SEO ventures!

Posted in SEO TIPS | 3 Comments »

Definition: On-Page Optimization

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008

By Gabriel Gervelis

What is On-Page Optimization?
When talking with professional optimization companies you will hear the terms, on-page optimization, and off-page optimization. We are going to a moment and talk about on-page optimization.

On-page optimization is optimization work that is conducted within your domain, or website. On-page SEO Techniques can include:

  • Meta Tag Optimization
  • Source Code Optimization
  • Formatting
  • Content Writing

The amount of On-page optimization will effect the cost of the SEO Campaign. How many pages need to be optimized? What types of on-page optimization SEO Techniques need to be used? Are advanced SEO Techniques needed? Answers to all of the questions will have a direct effect on the cost of the campaign. The more work needed, The higher the cost of the campaign.

For further information, check out Google’s definition for On-Page Optimization.

Good luck with your SEO ventures!

Posted in SEO Tips Glossary , SEO FAQ | 1 Comment »

Do The Search Engines Approve Of Search Engine Optimization?

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

By: Gabriel Gervelis

Do the search engines approve of search engine optimization? Will the search engines penalize you for using SEO Techniques? These are both good questions, and are questions you should ask yourself before hiring a SEO company. Each question has two answers, Yes and NO.

To understand both answers to the questions you must first understand SEO Practices.

There are three ways to practice SEO:

  1. White Hat SEO
  2. Black Hat SEO
  3. Gray Hat SEO.

White Hat SEO
White Hat SEO is the practice of search engine optimization using “search engine approved” methods. Search engines have not released any type of list of approved methods, so when we talk about “search engine approved” methods, it means methods that won’t lead to the blacklisting of your website.

A few examples of White Hat SEO are:

  • Meta tag optimization
  • Title tag optimization
  • Header tag optimization
  • Link building

Black Hat SEO
Black hat SEO is the practice of search engine optimization using unapproved practices that “trick” or “deceive” the search engines. A few examples of black hat SEO are:

  • Keyword stuffing
  • Over submissions to the search engines
  • Use of duplicate content.

Gray Hay SEO
Some say there is a fine line between love and hate. In our case, there is a gray line between white hat and black hat SEO. When new SEO practices are discovered they are considered gray hat until proven otherwise.

So the question remains, do the search engines approve of search engine optimization?

YES
Search engines approve of White Hat SEO practices. These practices make the search engine’s job easier, and thus increase your visibility. Remeber, there are billions of web pages on the internet, so anything you can do to legitimately rank higher on search engines is a good thing!

No
Search engines do not approve of Black Hat SEO practices. These practices can lead to the blacklisting or penalization of your website.

Home Work
When researching search engine optimization companies, make sure you have identified common White Hat and Black Hat SEO methods. When speaking with an SEO Company, the odds are you will speak with a sales representative that does not know the difference between these methods. It is your job to know and identify the differences.

Supporting info:
Google Help Center: What does Google think about SEO? Top pointers from the search giant.

Good luck with your SEO ventures!

Posted in SEO TIPS, SEO FAQ | No Comments »

Definition: SEO Techniques

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

By: Gabriel Gervelis

SEO techniques are techniques used in the practice of search engine optimization. When performing search engine optimization to achieve high rankings on a SERP, it is important to identify what SEO Techniques need to be preformed.

The cost of a SEO Campaign depends on what types of SEO techniques needs to be performed, Advanced SEO Techniques take more time and resources then Basic SEO techniques.

Good luck with your SEO ventures!

Posted in SEO TIPS, SEO Tips Glossary | 1 Comment »

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