SEO TIPS

By: Gabriel Gervelis

We thought it would be appropriate to touch the top 5 things to look for in an SEO campaign, 5 basic features that every legitimate SEO campaign should include. An upcoming post will feature 5 things to stay away from that an SEO campaign can include.

1. Keyword Research
Who cares if you’re #1 on Google if no one is searching for that keyword?

Keyword research is one of the single most important elements to an SEO campaign. IMPORTANT: Make sure the SEO Company that you chose provides search counts for keywords they want to target in the campaign. Also, make sure you have final approval on what keywords the campaign will target. View this post for more details about keyword research.

2. Meta Tag Optimization
Meta tag optimization is another important factor that every SEO campaign should include. Currently, there is much debate is certain meta tags hold weight with ranking in the SERPS or if they hold no weight at all. Every page within your website needs to have the basic meta tags optimized to match the page content. Title tags, description tags, keyword tags, robots follow tags, and other meta tags apply to this theory. Always make sure that your SEO campaign includes meta tag optimization. View this post for more information about meta tags.

3. Header Tag Optimization
High rankings in the SERPS cannot be achieved by utilizing just one or two SEO Techniques. SEO campaigns should include multiple SEO techniques. One of these SEO techniques is the optimization of a web pages header tag. Header tags can are formatted h1, h2, h3, etc. You can see how the header tags and meta tags are optimized creates a direct relation to the quality of keyword research.

4. Content Optimization
The header tag is part of the content of the optimized web page, however the entire content of the web page needs to be optimized. Bold content, italic content, content that is underlined, and simply optimized content are key to any SEO campaign.

5. Link Building
The above 4 SEO techniques are on-page optimization techniques. This last technique is an off-page technique. It is weak SEO practice to use all on-page efforts and nothing off-page. Link building can include:

• blog posts
• directory submissions
• link exchanges
• link baiting (covered later in this blog)

Now you have 5 questions to ask if you receive a call from an SEO Company claiming they can put you on top of the SERPS for some miracle amount, or if you’re currently looking to hire an SEO company or in house SEO optimizer. There is much more to the SEO game. However, here at Seo Tips we want to attack things one post at a time!

SEOTIPS.ORG is a service from Clocktower Media designed to inform and educate business owners/decision makers on the concepts of SEO in order to justify cost, and to provide an education and understanding of SEO.

Good luck with your SEO campaign and be seen!

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!