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Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Monday, March 3, 2008
Search Engine Optimization Companies : Top 10 Questions You Need to Ask
Picking a company to handle your SEO (search engine optimization) is not a task you should take lightly - it’s a big decision. Selecting the right firm could bring your company increased business and great success, while picking the wrong one will be a very expensive mistake - it will cost you money, time, and business.
So to help make it a little easier, here is a list of 10 questions you should ask and things to look for when seeking out an SEO firm :
1. How well does their site rank? The very first thing you should find out about an SEO firm you are looking into is how well their own site is optimized and ranking with search engines. It seems fairly obvious but it can be easily overlooked. Don’t waste time and money on a company that doesn’t even optimize their own website. Not being able to find the company on Google for their own keywords and phrases is a red flag.
2. What will the SEO firm do for YOU? Another thing you want to look into right away is what they plan to do for you specifically, should you sign up with them. Did they evaluate your website? Do they plan to before you sign up? If they don’t offer up what steps they plan to take to optimize your website based on its current standings, don’t give them a second thought. You need a company that is serious about SEO increasing your web traffic. If they can’t explain some of the steps they plan to take and what they have in mind for you, then they can’t give you success and you should not trust them. Anything short of a detailed proposal shouldn’t be considered acceptable.
3. What services are included? Make sure you get a clear and straight forward answer when you ask exactly what you’ll be getting for your money. If this isn’t something you’re familiar with and you don’t understand something they are telling you, don’t be afraid to ask. It’s your company and your money and you need to feel good about the hands you are placing it in. Find out exactly what your money is buying you, what methods they will employ and how they will spend their time on your site.
4. Do they have testimonials and successful case studies? What better way to find out what a company is really about than right from their current paying clients. Seek out customer testimonials - if they aren’t posted on their website, ask if they have some available or if you can contact one of their clients for a reference. Find out how much success the client has seen since signing up with the firm. How many clients do they have currently? Have they lost any clients? If so why?
5. Who are their clients? If you can, see if you can find out some of their current clients and what kind of businesses they are. Chances are, a reputable SEO company will have reputable clients, and visa versa. It’s as simple as that.
6. How will progress be measured? Definitely find out what methods the SEO firm plans to use to measure the results of the changes they make on your site. There are a number of different web analytics methods a firm can use to watch web traffic. Find out what methods and software the company employs. At NewSunSEO, we are proud to use Web Trends. This software allows us to carefully and closely monitor web traffic for all of our clients so we know what keywords are ranking well and which need more optimization. This helps us determine what steps need to be taken and what our next course of action will be.
7. How is progress documented? Once you do sign up and they start to work on optimizing your site, you’ll want to know what progress is being made and you’ll want to see the results. Find out how they plan to show you their success. For example, NSS sends its clients clear and detailed monthly reports comparing historical data to show the increase in web traffic. You should be expecting something similar.
8. Do they do link building? Link building is actually a very important part of SEO and you should look for a firm that plans to incorporate it into the time they spend on your site. It’s not hard to rank well for a keyword that no one is competing for, but what good is that? To rank well for highly competitive phrases and keywords that are most likely to bring you in the best traffic you’ll need some kind of link building campaign. (Note : find out if this is included or an extra fee!)
9. Can they write quality content? High quality copy, (written content) is crucial to your website's optimization and success. Having a good copywriter to rewrite or add content to your pages is a big plus and an asset to have in your corner. The overall goal is to have text that is rich in relevant keywords and phrases and that is also informative and useful to your target audience. Poor copy will hurt your page rank and cut short the time visitors spend on your site. An SEO firm that can supply valuable written content on your pages is really something to look for.
10. Unethical Practices? Over the past few years SEO has gotten a bit of a bad name from firms using unethical methods to try and ‘trick’ search engines and achieve high rankings in a very short period of time. Some of these methods include ‘cloaking’ which is a technique used to show one page to a search engine spider and an entirely different page to an visitor; another method is the use of ‘hidden text’ where text is hidden in the code of the page where a visitor wont see it but the search engine will still index it. One more method is the creation of ‘doorway pages’ which are pages with no purpose other then to rank well with search engines. If you hear any SEO firm talk about any of these methods do not use them for your company, these are unethical methods and eventually your website will suffer the price for their under the table schemes.
So to help make it a little easier, here is a list of 10 questions you should ask and things to look for when seeking out an SEO firm :
1. How well does their site rank? The very first thing you should find out about an SEO firm you are looking into is how well their own site is optimized and ranking with search engines. It seems fairly obvious but it can be easily overlooked. Don’t waste time and money on a company that doesn’t even optimize their own website. Not being able to find the company on Google for their own keywords and phrases is a red flag.
2. What will the SEO firm do for YOU? Another thing you want to look into right away is what they plan to do for you specifically, should you sign up with them. Did they evaluate your website? Do they plan to before you sign up? If they don’t offer up what steps they plan to take to optimize your website based on its current standings, don’t give them a second thought. You need a company that is serious about SEO increasing your web traffic. If they can’t explain some of the steps they plan to take and what they have in mind for you, then they can’t give you success and you should not trust them. Anything short of a detailed proposal shouldn’t be considered acceptable.
3. What services are included? Make sure you get a clear and straight forward answer when you ask exactly what you’ll be getting for your money. If this isn’t something you’re familiar with and you don’t understand something they are telling you, don’t be afraid to ask. It’s your company and your money and you need to feel good about the hands you are placing it in. Find out exactly what your money is buying you, what methods they will employ and how they will spend their time on your site.
4. Do they have testimonials and successful case studies? What better way to find out what a company is really about than right from their current paying clients. Seek out customer testimonials - if they aren’t posted on their website, ask if they have some available or if you can contact one of their clients for a reference. Find out how much success the client has seen since signing up with the firm. How many clients do they have currently? Have they lost any clients? If so why?
5. Who are their clients? If you can, see if you can find out some of their current clients and what kind of businesses they are. Chances are, a reputable SEO company will have reputable clients, and visa versa. It’s as simple as that.
6. How will progress be measured? Definitely find out what methods the SEO firm plans to use to measure the results of the changes they make on your site. There are a number of different web analytics methods a firm can use to watch web traffic. Find out what methods and software the company employs. At NewSunSEO, we are proud to use Web Trends. This software allows us to carefully and closely monitor web traffic for all of our clients so we know what keywords are ranking well and which need more optimization. This helps us determine what steps need to be taken and what our next course of action will be.
7. How is progress documented? Once you do sign up and they start to work on optimizing your site, you’ll want to know what progress is being made and you’ll want to see the results. Find out how they plan to show you their success. For example, NSS sends its clients clear and detailed monthly reports comparing historical data to show the increase in web traffic. You should be expecting something similar.
8. Do they do link building? Link building is actually a very important part of SEO and you should look for a firm that plans to incorporate it into the time they spend on your site. It’s not hard to rank well for a keyword that no one is competing for, but what good is that? To rank well for highly competitive phrases and keywords that are most likely to bring you in the best traffic you’ll need some kind of link building campaign. (Note : find out if this is included or an extra fee!)
9. Can they write quality content? High quality copy, (written content) is crucial to your website's optimization and success. Having a good copywriter to rewrite or add content to your pages is a big plus and an asset to have in your corner. The overall goal is to have text that is rich in relevant keywords and phrases and that is also informative and useful to your target audience. Poor copy will hurt your page rank and cut short the time visitors spend on your site. An SEO firm that can supply valuable written content on your pages is really something to look for.
10. Unethical Practices? Over the past few years SEO has gotten a bit of a bad name from firms using unethical methods to try and ‘trick’ search engines and achieve high rankings in a very short period of time. Some of these methods include ‘cloaking’ which is a technique used to show one page to a search engine spider and an entirely different page to an visitor; another method is the use of ‘hidden text’ where text is hidden in the code of the page where a visitor wont see it but the search engine will still index it. One more method is the creation of ‘doorway pages’ which are pages with no purpose other then to rank well with search engines. If you hear any SEO firm talk about any of these methods do not use them for your company, these are unethical methods and eventually your website will suffer the price for their under the table schemes.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Search Engine Optimization : The Importance of Cascading Style Sheets
When looking to optimize your website, one of the very first things you should do is take a look at your source code. Is it long and unclear? Hard to read and find what you’re looking for? If so, then you probably aren’t using Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, as it’s more commonly referred to.
A Cascading Style Sheet is a method used to give web designers more control over the style of each page - allowing them to customize each paragraph, title, header, or bulleted list. CSS gives you the ability to specify font, size, and color of anything you want without having to repeatedly insert specific lines of code.
Using Cascading Style Sheets is crucial to your website’s optimization. Here are a few reasons why :
1. Using regular HTML codes to define things like font tags can be very cumbersome. It inserts extra unnecessary code into the source code of your website-therefore diluting your keyword density to search engines. Search engine spiders won’t just read the content that shows up on your site, they read every single line of code. You don’t want to pollute your source code with excessive HTML.
2. CSS gets the same result as the basic HTML you’re used to- only it does it better! Instead of placing the style tags in the actual code, it is placed in an external file. A simple and brief statement is placed in the source code to call to that external file where all your bulky style codes are laid out. This leaves your page clean and simple.
3. The use of Cascading Style Sheets will also allow browsers to read and load your webpage very rapidly. This is good for search engines- spiders want to read through your website as fast as they possibly can. With CSS, you can have all the effects you want without slowing down the search engine spiders you are striving to impress.
4. Converting old HTML layouts to CSS can typically cut anywhere from 25 to 50 percent off file sizes. They give you the added benefit of simplified, adaptable structure and the separation of code in a presentation. CSS gives you total freedom- you can group rules together to save additional space and name cases whatever you wish.
5. There is nothing you can do in HTML that you can’t do with CSS. In fact, CSS gives you even more customized control than any other method. Cascading Style Sheets go far beyond HTML control, allowing you to assign background colors or images to any HTML element rather than just the body. It also allows you to add borders to any element you choose.
6. One of the most instantly rewarding benefits of Cascading Style Sheets is that they are a huge time saver. Code it once and never again! Let’s say for example, your site is coded with HTML; the header on each one of your sites pages is written in blue text. One day you decide you want to change the look and feel of your site and you want to change the headers from blue font to a bold black. With HTML, you will have to go to each page and physically change each header. Depending on the size of your site, that could be very time consuming. If you had used CSS, then you would simply open that external file, change the header tag color from blue to black and you’re done! That one change will automatically update every header without you having to manually change each one.
The benefits of CSS are simply too much to ignore. Basically put…Cascading style sheets will help your website be more efficient and rank better with search engines. To a search engine, a website that is coded in CSS says several things about your company: you embrace forward technology and that your content is modern, up-to-date and relevant. Using CSS is THE MOST SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY way to create a web site TODAY! It is like candy to Search Engine Spiders. It will ensure that the spiders come back to your website more than your competitors that still use tables. If everything was the same between two websites, except one used a table based layout and the other used CSS layout, the CSS web site will always rank higher in the Search Engines.
Full CSS gives you the best possible foundation to go forward with doing Search Engine Optimization for your website.
A Cascading Style Sheet is a method used to give web designers more control over the style of each page - allowing them to customize each paragraph, title, header, or bulleted list. CSS gives you the ability to specify font, size, and color of anything you want without having to repeatedly insert specific lines of code.
Using Cascading Style Sheets is crucial to your website’s optimization. Here are a few reasons why :
1. Using regular HTML codes to define things like font tags can be very cumbersome. It inserts extra unnecessary code into the source code of your website-therefore diluting your keyword density to search engines. Search engine spiders won’t just read the content that shows up on your site, they read every single line of code. You don’t want to pollute your source code with excessive HTML.
2. CSS gets the same result as the basic HTML you’re used to- only it does it better! Instead of placing the style tags in the actual code, it is placed in an external file. A simple and brief statement is placed in the source code to call to that external file where all your bulky style codes are laid out. This leaves your page clean and simple.
3. The use of Cascading Style Sheets will also allow browsers to read and load your webpage very rapidly. This is good for search engines- spiders want to read through your website as fast as they possibly can. With CSS, you can have all the effects you want without slowing down the search engine spiders you are striving to impress.
4. Converting old HTML layouts to CSS can typically cut anywhere from 25 to 50 percent off file sizes. They give you the added benefit of simplified, adaptable structure and the separation of code in a presentation. CSS gives you total freedom- you can group rules together to save additional space and name cases whatever you wish.
5. There is nothing you can do in HTML that you can’t do with CSS. In fact, CSS gives you even more customized control than any other method. Cascading Style Sheets go far beyond HTML control, allowing you to assign background colors or images to any HTML element rather than just the body. It also allows you to add borders to any element you choose.
6. One of the most instantly rewarding benefits of Cascading Style Sheets is that they are a huge time saver. Code it once and never again! Let’s say for example, your site is coded with HTML; the header on each one of your sites pages is written in blue text. One day you decide you want to change the look and feel of your site and you want to change the headers from blue font to a bold black. With HTML, you will have to go to each page and physically change each header. Depending on the size of your site, that could be very time consuming. If you had used CSS, then you would simply open that external file, change the header tag color from blue to black and you’re done! That one change will automatically update every header without you having to manually change each one.
The benefits of CSS are simply too much to ignore. Basically put…Cascading style sheets will help your website be more efficient and rank better with search engines. To a search engine, a website that is coded in CSS says several things about your company: you embrace forward technology and that your content is modern, up-to-date and relevant. Using CSS is THE MOST SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY way to create a web site TODAY! It is like candy to Search Engine Spiders. It will ensure that the spiders come back to your website more than your competitors that still use tables. If everything was the same between two websites, except one used a table based layout and the other used CSS layout, the CSS web site will always rank higher in the Search Engines.
Full CSS gives you the best possible foundation to go forward with doing Search Engine Optimization for your website.
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