Here are a few points to consider before you set up your website:

1. Put someone in charge. It doesn’t matter if you’re planning to have someone outside or inside your company doing the work on your website – you need someone to be responsible for keeping the site up to date and performing well. Websites aren’t “set and forget” sales generators – they need to be regularly updated and fine tuned, or you will find your leads slowly dwindling.
2. Have a budget, and a timeline. Developing a website can quickly eat up more time and money than first anticipated – so make sure you map out a detailed agreement with your developer before you hand over any money. Get your developer to produce and commit to a project brief and a timeline for implementing it, including a definite “launch” date for the site. Make sure it includes all of the features you want your site to contain, and that there are regular reviews built in.
3. Know who you’re selling to, and what your site needs to do for you. Do your customers want to buy online and have their purchase sent to them? Do they just want to research your product or service and then make contact in person? Do you need a shopping cart, or don’t you? How ‘tech savvy’ are your customers, and how important are bells and whistles to them? A thorough profile of your customers and their needs are critical to designing the right site to appeal to them – and can save you a bundle of money if you can eliminate unnecessary website features.
4. Make sure updating your site will be easy. If you plan on managing your site in-house, choose a developer that provides a Content Management System (CMS) so you can update the site yourself. If you only plan on periodic updates to your site and you want to outsource, make sure the costs and scope for this are included in your project brief with your developer. You don’t want to be stuck paying through the nose every time you want to advertise a special on your own site!
5. Check out your competition. Look at your competitors’ websites, and assess what you need to do to be in their league or better. There’s no point spending time and money on a site that won’t stack up again your competitors.
6. List other sites you like or dislike. This is a great help for your developer, and will prevent your designer coming back to show you something you can’t stand! Tell your designer what you like or don’t like about the sites, and remember they don’t have to be in your industry. You’re just looking for design and functionality.
7. Carry your brand through. Your website is more than just an electronic brochure, but it should still look like your website. Give your existing marketing material to your developer, so that they can design a site that ties into your brand and the way you present yourself.
8. Work out what will be regularly updated, and what will be mostly static. Choose a few areas on your site that you update regularly – at least monthly. You might have a news section, specials, a library of articles, or an archive of your newsletters. This is important to maintain your search engine rankings and keep your site looking current for your customers.
9. Get your site ranked. There’s no point having a great website that no one but your existing customers can find. Work out how you’re going to go about getting a great Google ranking, and then do it from day one of your site going live. It takes time to build up a good search rank. If you don’t have someone in-house who can manage your Search Engine Optimization (SEO), find a reputable company to manage it for you. Media One Pro (Google them!) is a favorite of ours, or your developer may be able to help you with this.

• link visibility (placement and appearance)
• link relevance

So, no more small text links in footers, no more links buried in comment spam, no more link exchanges where your link sites on a link page with a bunch of others. You need quality links that stand out and are likely to get the click. (Hear that link spammers, no need to keep emailing to ask for link exchanges!)

Linking methods that are no longer as effective:
• Forum posting and blog commenting. (Still do it to add value to a conversation and help people but don’t count on link juice from it)
• Social bookmarking. It’s still a helpful resource so use it to be helpful but don’t count on link juice from this.
• Bulk directory submission. This has been a bad idea for a while but it’s worth repeating.
• Bulk link exchange. Bad idea and could result in penalties or being banned from the engines.
Linking methods that are effective:
• Guest blogging. Great way to get exposure for yourself and get a high quality link back to your site.
• Link baiting. This means just putting great content out there that acts as bait and people can’t resist linking to it. The content has to be really good and it
really needs to be spread around.
• Press releases. With some effort and some luck, you can get a quality link from big media.
• Social Media. As I mentioned earlier in this newsletter, you can attract links via Twitter (and Facebook).
• Article Syndication. A great way to spread your content (but it has to be good)

• High cost. Depending on its size and location, a Yellow Pages ad can cost up to $20,000 per year. And you can easily spend another $5,000 designing a customized ad. At those rates, it takes a lot of customers just to break even on the cost of the ad. Plus, studies show that the phone directory companies continue to raise their fees far beyond current inflation rates.
• Cluttered media. You spend a lot of money to design and place your ad, and where do you end up? Depending on the size of your market, right next to dozens, perhaps even hundreds of companies all competing for your next customer.
• Lack of flexibility. In today’s mass-media world, it takes a variety of messages to reach your audience and motivate them to contact you. Yet, once your Yellow Pages ad goes into the directory, that’s it. You can’t make any changes for a full 12 months.
• Difficult to test. Because of their inflexibility, Yellow Pages ads don’t allow you to test different marketing approaches. Once you place an ad, you have to wait a year to test a new headline or message. And unless a patient says they found you through the phone directory, you have no way of knowing the effectiveness of your ad.
• Reach the wrong market. Yellow Pages ads tend to attract only elderly and non-internet savvy. While these people can augment your regular clientele, they’re not the kind of customers upon which you can build a healthy, growing business.

With the Yellow Pages, it depends entirely on what you’re advertising. If I owned a shoe store that specialized in orthopedics, I would take out a large full page ad. The elderly who are in need of orthopedics still use this directory. It’s all about your demographic. There are several good reasons to advertise in the Yellow Pages, but it’s nowhere near as valuable as it once was. All advertising (especially print) is undergoing a major revolution. Search engines have taken over as the method of finding products and services. That aside, there is also a tangible SEO benefit to having your website linked in directories like this. However, the cost of the link is most often not worth the investment. If you wish to use Yellow Pages, then try it once. Use a unique phone number and a unique website. Negotiate very hard with the sales representative. They often charge ten times more than the fair market price on print advertising. Don’t get scammed! And carefully monitor the responses you receive. Otherwise you are best to utilize the current major marketing method of SEO and Social Media. Even late adopters such as the elderly are catching on to this. The simplicity of looking things up via Google and Bing have replaced the cumbersome task of thumbing through a yellow pages book. And more and more people are becoming aware of what directories really are. A place to pay for advertising. And people want to know what’s fair information, not what some company has paid to make you believe! Contact Media One Pro if you would like to learn more about the advantages of SEO/Pay Per click Marketing and Social Media. Leave the yellow dinosaur (yellow pages) in the past.

Now, this doesn’t mean that suddenly Twitter and Facebook links are the main ranking factor determining where your content is showing up in organic searches. If anything, Google seems to be tiptoeing into the waters in this area.

“The web search quality team has a lot of different groups in a lot of different offices, so people including the original Blog Search team, people who worked on Realtime Search…have been working on using these sorts of things as a signal,” explains Cutts. “So primarily, it has been used a little bit more in the realtime sort of search, where you might see individual tweets or other links showing up, and streaming up on the page. We’re studying how much sense it makes to use it a little more widely within our web search rankings.”
 
To reiterate, you’ll still see this playing more of a role in realtime search, but Google is “looking at it more broadly within web search as well,” according to Cutts.

“Now, there’s a few things to remember,” Cutts warns. “Number one is: if we can’t crawl a page (if we can’t see a page), then we can’t really assign PageRank to it, and it doesn’t really count. So if we’re able to obtain the data, then we can use it, but if for some reason a page is forbidden for us to crawl or if we’re not able to obtain it somehow, then we wouldn’t be able to use it within our rankings.”

This would appear to mean that links within Facebook will not mean a whole lot when the user isn’t sharing their updates with everyone. Many Facebook users have their privacy settings adjusted to only share with their friends. While Facebook may have far more users than Twitter, privacy settings will greatly reduce that number in terms of links that will potentially help your search rankings.

“This is something that is used relatively lightly for now, and we’ll see how much we use it over time depending on how useful it is and how robust it ends up being,” says Cutts. “The one thing I would caution people about is don’t necessarily say to yourself, ‘Ha. Now I’m going to go out and get reciprocal follows, and I’m gonna get a ton of followers,’ just like people used to get a ton of links. In the same way that PageRank depends on not just the number of links, but the quality of those links, you have to think about what are the followers who mean quality. Who are the people who actually are not just bots or some software program or things like that.”

– from interview with Matt Cutts

How we achieve this level of success for your business is that Media One Pro provides only the best and most efficient solutions to improve your company’s growth, productivity, and the bottom line. Helping your business is our top priority, not helping ourselves to your bank account. We know how this industry can be – confusing clients with technical jargon to the point where all you can do is throw money at the problem and hope they get the job done right. We’ve seen other companies do this time and time again, and that’s why those other businesses fail.

This is why Media One Pro was established in the first place. We saw an opportunity to corner the market on great, honest web work. Our range of work and services goes above and beyond your average web design firm. We can be a web design, web marketing, graphic design, and social media firm all in one, and for the fairest price we can possibly come up with. When you, the client gets more than they expected, for less than they budget for – that creates an infectious feeling of relief and gratitude that Media One Pro strives for with every single client.

We are staffed with professionals that are devoted, and love to solve your business problems. We don’t just sell you a product that other people like – that would be like only selling one size of shoe in the shoe store! We specifically tailor our services just for you so you can get the most out of them and overcome your business challenges.

Our website is obviously an integral part of our business. We have to make sure that it contains the most up-to-date information; just like our staff! We have also made it a place where you can find out about new products and ideas and a great place to network with other businesses and people with similar interests.

SEO has been around for years, yet a lot of business owners are still not fully aware of how powerful this marketing tool this can be. If you do not know where to begin with SEO, an SEO expert may guide you in utilizing SEO techniques to increase traffic to your site. Here are six reasons why as a business owner it is imperative that you hire the services of an SEO consultant in order to maintain a competitive edge in marketing your online business.

1. Any business can have a website, but how valuable is it if no one knows about it? Internet users who search for your product or service are the hottest potential customers. These customers need to be directed to your site somehow so they can choose you over the rest. This is why it is critical to obtain first page rankings for search terms that relate to your business. Here is where SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Experts come in. They can guide you through the process of building up your website rankings within the popular search engines.

2. A true SEO expert will have vast knowledge of not just a few techniques, but many that are critical in the success of your online marketing campaign. It is not enough just to create topical articles with back links to your domain at content directories. There is a lot more than trading links or publishing content. An SEO Expert will have a wide arsenal of SEO strategies and can utilize the best combination for your business.

3. To be successful in growing your business, it’s important to discover your true areas of weakness and to be resourceful in finding the best consultant for this. A good SEO advisor will be able to analyze and determine your weak points and develop strategies to strengthen these core areas.

4. The greatest value in SEO is simply the opportunity to increase your profit in relation to the expenditure with the SEO company. For example, a monthly expense of $1,000 in SEO services can be recouped by the gain of $8,000 in profit by the influx of new business that has been a result of the SEO expert’s efforts.

5. The benefits of SEO don’t stop when the service does. If you have invested heavily in SEO over time, then the higher rankings of your website remain, even if you stop the service for a time. In advertising, the business stops when the ads stop. The only downside is that if you discontinue SEO, you stand the chance of your competition catching up. That is why is it critical to have a SEO maintenance plan to maintain your high rankings.

6. The costs of SEO are generally less expensive than those of traditional advertising. For example, a directory listing (Yellow Pages) can run in the thousands. And the only benefit is that you can be found in that specific directory. With SEO, your website is found EVERYWHERE and on the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing). Most people search on these search engines and less and less people utilize paid directories.

If you are a new business or an established one but seeking an injection of sales, a true SEO expert can be the hidden edge that you are seeking. Be sure to take your time and choose wisely. An experience SEO consultant will have client references and case studies to prove that they can get the job done.

About the Author:
Steven Kim, aka “Dr SEO”, has been performing SEO services in Las Vegas for over twelve years. His expertise has helped many in the realm of online marketing. For more information, visit his website, Media One Pro.

Whether you are a bricks and mortar business or an online Internet-based business, chances are your sales will go up if you are marketing your business. There are many offline businesses that can effectively leverage social media to strengthen and grow their businesses in creative and effective ways. It’s about thinking outside the box.

Most importantly, your social media marketing must fit in with your overall business Marketing Plan. If you are ad-hoc in how you use social media to market your business then yes you will probably get ad-hoc results. Be sure to implement a Social Media Marketing Plan to ensure you get the most effective results for your business.

Many of the popular social media websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, all engage prospects and customers, grow the awareness and popularity of your business and inevitably boost your sales.

If you are serious about taking your business into the 21st century, then you will need to embrace social media. There are many ways that businesses can use social media to their advantage. Here are just a few:

* Become an Expert:

The first step is to create your profiles on the various social media websites and then update them on a regular basis. You will need to check your accounts a couple of times a week to respond to comments from your followers. This a great way to build presence, to be seen as an expert and to build relationships with your followers. The more you update and are seen to be interactive with your followers, the stronger your business’s reputation will be. 
 
* Educate Don’t Sell:

Social media is another way to build relationships with people, prospects and customers that you may not ever have otherwise been exposed to. So make the most of it. In today’s market, consumers are getting smarter, plus we live a world of mass advertising. The last thing you want to do is sell your products and services on social media. It’s about educating your fans. Every once in awhile you might promote a workshop or specíal deal. Educate more, Sell less. If people want to find out more about you and your products and services, they can visit your website.

* Get the Whole Company Involved:

If you have a staff, get them involved and task them to update your social media posts on a daily basis. This is an excellent morale booster and your staff’s involvement will strengthen your marketing effort and grow your business’s online exposure. A little suggestion – you might want to keep an eye on how much time your staff spends on social media and that it is for work and not personal purposes.

About Media One Pro

Media One Pro is a firm based in Las Vegas, NV that specializes in Online Marketing & Sales, helping passionate and committed businesses to grow their client base and reach a new level of success through custom online Sales and Marketing systems. If you want to learn more about how to grow your business, seo company in las vegas.

1. View high quality videos

Youtube gives you the option to switch to high quality videos for some of the videos, however you can check if a video is available in high quality format by appending ‘&fmt=18′(stereo, 480 x 270 resolution) or ‘&fmt=22′(stereo, 1280 x 720 resolution) for even higher quality.

2. Embed Higher Quality Videos

While the above trick works for playback, if however you want to embed hig quality videos you need to append “&ap=%2526fmt%3D18&Prime and “&ap=%2526fmt%3D22&Prime to the embed url.

3. Cut the chase and link to the interesting part

Linking to a video where the real action starts at 3 minutes 22 seconds, wondered if you could make it start at 03:22? You are in luck. All you have to do is add #t=03m22s (#t=XXmYYs for XX mins and YY seconds) to the end of the URL.

4. Hide the search box

youtube url start time

The search box appears when you hover over an embedded video. To hide the search box add ‘&showsearch=0′ to the embed url.

5. Embed only a part of Video

youtube url to mp3

Just append ‘&start=30′ to skip first 30s of the video. In general you can modify the value after start= to the number of seconds you want to skip the video for.

6. Autoplay an embedded video

Normally when you embed a Youtube video and load the page, the player is loaded and it sits there waiting for you to hit the play button. You can make the video play automatically by adding ‘&autoplay=1′ to the url part of the embed code.

7. Loop an embedded video

Append ‘&loop=1′ to make the video start again without user intervention after it reaches the end.

8. Disable Related Videos

Publishing your content in the form of Youtube video? Don’t want people to see other people’s content that may be related but may as well be in competition to you? Just add ‘&rel=0′ to the end of the url part of the embed code and you just turned off the related video suggestions!

9. Bypass Youtube Regional Filtering

Some videos are only available in certain parts of the world. Your IP Address is used to determine your location and then allow or deny access to the video. Change the url from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<somecode> to http://www.youtube.com/v/<somecode>

10. Download Video

Although not inherently a youtube trick but useful all the same for downloading videos. Just change youtube to kickyoutube in the url of the video and it will take you to kickyoutube.com with all the options for downloading the video you were watching.

Do you know of some similar Youtube URL tricks and hacks? Fire them in comments!

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg himself made this announcement of a social search partnership with Bing. Zuckerberg stated, “What makes this a great partnership is that in this case Microsoft is the underdog in search. In fact, I couldn’t think of anyone better to be working with to build the next generation of search!”

One of the first products of the Bing / Facebook partnership is that via a Bing iFrame, Bing search results are native inside of Facebook searches. Now, Facebook data will be integrated into Bing and influence search results based on signals from the searchers social connections. This product, called Bing Social brings Facebook posts and links that relate to the topic searched right into search results.

How does Bing bring the social context of Facebook into search relevance? Starting today, Bing is integrating data from your friends and social network into search results. This could include information on “likes”, reviews, photos and links from your friends into your search experience. According to Bing, search results will be really personal to the user, different than what others will see for the same search. This “instant personalization” will make a search by you relevant to you alone and not necessarily that relevant to someone else.

Obviously, the impact on SEO will be enormous. Search optimization currently relies extensively on relevant links from authority sites. If links and ‘likes’ from your personal social network become more important than links from websites then SEM’s will need to rethink their SEO strategy.

With the Facebook module your search results will now include information on what your friends liked or commented regarding the restaurant or movie or other item you searched for. Your Bing search results will actually be different depending on what your network of friends link to, like or dislike.

Another big implication is with a non-celebrity people search. Search engines don’t do this well today, often giving non-relevant results for common names. What Bing is going to do is use signals provided by Facebook such as location, friends, jobs and their interests to better determine what person you may actually be searching for. Bing is opening up features that will let you additionally add and confirm data back to Facebook as well. Bing also has plans to bring in the faces from Facebook of those who liked and disliked links that show up in your search results.

Social search may reignite the search wars. After all, Google rose up to conquer other search power houses like Alta Vista because PageRank made search results more relevant. If social search makes search results even better, then history has shown that the most relevant search algorithm will ultimately win consumers over!

- article courtesy of Richard Ord, Web Pro News

Media One Pro is an online web marketing company, rooted in Las Vegas, NV.  They have been on the leading edge of search marketing technology since 2002.  With this news regarding social search, Media One Pro is retooling its system in anticipation of changes ahead.  Who rules in the future, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or Social Search, remains to be seen.

To visit our company in Las Vegas, feel free to call for an appointment and we will schedule a time to go over our SEO services.  Also visit our partner site 702SEO.

Few internet users are fully aware of all that goes into the results page they view after performing a search. The complex mechanisms which govern what they see when looking for information or products is the result of two activities. The first is by search engines, like Google, who analyze each website to extract key elements used to give it a rank. This can mean the difference between popularity and obscurity, as low ranked sites are not visible on the first page of results, meaning they will get fewer visitors and less customers. From these search engine activities, the second factor of SEO, or search engine optimization developed. This is the designing of a website in such a way that makes it come out in the top returned search results, preferably the first page, when Google or other search engines are used to find information. This is achieved by various techniques such as careful placement of words and key phrases, hyperlinks, meta tags, images, links and HTML and other forms of coding.

Search Engines

Google and Yahoo are the two best known search engines, a part of popular culture now the expression to “Google” a person or product has become commonplace. Estimates of just how many searches are performed every day vary, but with the rise of internet availability and use, the figures are well into the billions. When a search for the any information is performed, search engines take the information an internet user provides and compares it with its own data, then gives back results showing the sites most likely to contain useful information by matching some or all of the words entered in the search box. Data is collected by search engines using spiders, highly complex automated programs which read all the information on a website and then assign it a rank. The spider downloads it onto its own servers, and through a process described as crawling, who take all the relevant information on site to be cataloged by another program called an indexer. They work constantly updating search results by adding new data and start again as soon as one cycle of scanning is finished. Search engines use programs known as algorithms to rate the information they gather, the details of which are highly guarded secrets within the industry.

SEO Consultants

A huge industry of SEO advisors and providers has developed to help companies gain web presence, a term meaning their sites are search engine friendly, and consistently are found in the top results on returned searches. They may be involved from the design stages of a website or take an existing page and totally re-write it from scratch, using the content of the company in such a way that gets it higher ratings. A huge market, fraught with scams and other questionable techniques, which will be discussed below, has opened up for companies who perform SEO services for clients who often do not understand the mechanisms involved. SEO Webmasters submit the URL (web address) of the site they have optimized to the search engines, so they can send out a spider to analyze it. SEO experts analyze the patents that search engines apply for, when registering their specially designed algorithms, to try to find hints of how they operate in a drive to give their own techniques, or companies, the advantage in a very competitive business.

A History of SEO

The technique of SEO appeared for the first time more than 10 years ago. Danny Sullivan, the editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, mentioned it in his blog which comments on news and information about search engines. By 1995, SEO was a known means for getting high results with search engines and the race to produce the best results for clients of SEO firms had begun,

The all-important programs feeding data to the search engines, the algorithms, have a history of their own. The first famous algorithm was in a program called “backrub”, developed by two grad students from Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. This program eventually became a pat of the Google link analysis system, PageRank, named after Larry Page and used by the Google internet search engine. Pagerank gives a numerical value to each web page that it visits, to determine overall rank, by weighing the value of a its links, because as well as looking at written content, search engines also take into consideration inbound links. These links to other sites can make or break a page’s rating. Google describes how PageRank works by saying, “Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B.”

Search engines had to evolve quickly, as an engine that failed to get relevant results did not last long, with customers expressing irritation at often irrelevant and sometimes disturbing results from searches. As the engines were reliant on webmasters to give the correct keywords for a given site, unscrupulous ones found the system easy to abuse. Webmasters could, for example, stuff pages selling goods with keywords containing the names of popular celebrities, or news figures

In 1998, Page and Brin established the company Google, which fast became popular with internet users, for ease of use and reliability. The Google search engine was less likely to be fooled by dubious SEO techniques as it ranked pages by keyword frequency, meta tags, headings, links, page rank and hyperlink analysis, to name a few of its sources. Google now admits to using 200 different measurements when ranking pages for search results.

Not in the least bit discouraged, SEO webmasters were soon coming up with ways to exploit this new engine, using techniques developed on gaming the Inktomi search engine, which was eventually acquired by Yahoo. Link-farming, keyword stuffing and other processes all became popular ways to get high rank by fooling the search engines.

Google, Yahoo and Bing,(Microsoft) became the three largest search engines as by 2004 the smaller ones were left behind, often the victims of bad SEO practices, which caused their popularity to wane by returning irrelevant search results, for example, porn sites would buy highly ranked pages and substitute their own content, giving offense to users.

The next milestone came in 2005 with Google’s use of search histories to provide targeted results based on predictions of what customers would want based on those histories. The public outcry against invasive practices did not last long, as advertisers sought to exploit this new tool to their advantage. At the time, Bruce Clay commented that meant the end of the ranking system, because a page’s value for each person could be different, but time saw this actually just changed the game, and did not halt it.

2007 and 2009 saw two big changes in how Google rated paid links, taking on the “pageranksculpters”, as SEOs who exploited Pagerank were called, with a system called nofollow. This consisted of using HTML codes to tell search engines that some links should be excluded from a page’s overall ranking. Very effective in cutting down spam in search results, nofollow improved the service Google offered its customers, who responded by boosting it to the top the of search engine pile.

Search Engines and SEO companies, A Match Made in Heaven?

The relationship between these two often opposing sides of the same business is a complex one. In recent years, search engines have offered webmasters tools to check how their pages are performing, as incentives to work with, not against them. Yahoo offers a program which guarantees early search engine indexing, for a fee, and others only take manual submissions, which hampers the automated fee-based SEO companies While Google and others want to encourage good SEO practices by sending representative to SEO conferences, the bad guys, or “Black Hatters” as they are known in the trade, still cause many problems for them. A forum for discussion between the two parties was opened in 2005, with the establishing of AIRWeb, the Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web. This body met every year to look for solutions to control the black hatters, who, drawn by the potentially huge amounts of money to be made by offering high page ranks were resorting to more destructive techniques, disrupting the activity of search engines.

Common SEO Techniques

These include both “White Hat” and “Black Hat” methods of gaining a high page rank.
The first relies on a well designed page with carefully chosen keywords, and the second is a mix of techniques that can result in the banning of a page from search results. White Hat SEO practices are planned to steadily gain views over the long term, by quality of content, while Black Hatters are mainly concerned with a fast spike in customers, knowing that the search engines will catch up with them, eventually. Another area, harder to define, as the methods could be said to belong to either of the above categories, is so-called” Gray Hat’ ESO technique.

White Hat SEO Methods

The “Good guys” of the SEO world keep within the guidelines issued by search engines, and exclude deceptive practices by keeping the content of their pages relevant to any chosen keywords, meta tags and titles. Since search engines ignore pages that are over stuffed with keywords, the sparing use and precise choice of them is an art form. Typical texts contains the most important keyword in the main title, the first paragraph, perhaps once or twice more in the general body of the text, then at the end or in the last paragraph. Recent research on how viewers look at web pages gives some very useful information to those engaged in good SEO work. It was found that customers tend to look at the page of search results in a certain order, from top to bottom and from left to right. Since search engines have introduced paid advertisements which are typically displayed to the left of the returned search results, webmasters combine their SEO skills with buying space on pages showing their sites, and so increasing visitors. Webmasters use this same information when placing content on the site itself, as part of SEO technique. They also ensure the websites provide useful information to the viewers, rather than just targeting the spiders from search engines, which produces some almost unreadable text and worse customer reviews.

Black Hat SEO Methods

These include anything the search engines feel is not fair game to improve page rankings. Quite creative in the variety and scope of their activities, Black Hat SEOs know their activities they may lead to a client’s site getting banned by search engines, and may not disclose their methods to unsuspecting customers who only find out the facts when page views drop from amongst the top sites viewed to zero. Examples of their methods ar found in pages with text that is invisible to the eye, hidden in colored areas, but are seen by the tools search engines send out to get information. This may add to the overall keyword density of the page, or have some currently trending topics secretly embedded in the site, producing totally irrelevant search results. Some recent scandals, such as those involving BMW and Ricoh, two German companies that Google banned, showed that not only small, but also large, well-respected companies could become involved with Black Hat SEO methods. In both instances the pages were corrected and Google reinstated them.

Gray Hat SEO Methods

This involves some methods that are frowned upon by search engines, but not as strictly as the Black Hatter’s activities. These techniques involve buying links, second page poaching and some creative use of content. They manage to escape notice as questionable sites by appearing to be authentic. One example could be the inclusion of customer reviews that are actually really cleverly worded adverts, so when carefully scrutinized; the same keywords found in the main text will be seen. The trading of links for money is not appreciated by Google, Yahoo and its fellow search engines. Bad SEO practices involve creating “Link Farms” that involve pages linking back to each other in a loop, creating a false sense of web presence. Webmasters can also create a number of very similar sites, all with the same content, which link to each other, usually on separate domains, to attempt to fool search engines into accepting them each as an individual and independent entity. Yet another method used by bad SEO webmasters takes records of domains whose ownership will expire soon, waits for the sale to be advertised, and then uses their already established popularity to insert different content of his own choosing.

SEO as a Tool

Companies advertising on the internet have a far smaller chance of getting higher page ranks now that all so many businesses use SEO practices. At its best, it is a useful tool to present any website in the most appealing way to viewers. As a source of extra traffic, it may be somewhat over rated, as experts in the business have observed the majority of views come from links to other popular websites. Another factor to take into consideration is the ability of search engines to change the configuration of their algorithms, meaning a site that gained heavy traffic from searches one week, may not have the correct SEO to maintain that level after adjustments are made in search terms.

Choosing a SEO Company

As the choice could result in either a nice boost in page rank, or being banned from search engine’s results, the decision is one that needs to be carefully made after good research. The reputation and web presence of a company can be at stake from shady SEO webmasters who collect their fees and vanish mysteriously by the time the victims learn their trust was misplaced, if they have used Black Hat methods and been caught by the search engines. Good firms, on the other hand, can take a website from boring to booming by utilizing such tools as keyword research to better target customers, content development to capitalize on the strengths of any product or service, and add their technical expertise in areas like coding, to produce results that reflect better on the company as a whole. Questions that any prospective SEO company should be happy to answer include finding out which guidelines they follow, since Google, Yahoo and other search engines keep lists of methods they condone, and those they will ban sites for using. Asking to see websites the firm has completed work on is a good guide to the quality of their SEO abilities.

The Future of SEO

Google has won the race to be the top search engine, with over 75% of searches on the internet carried out via its engine. This may not last as the next generation of search engines is already emerging. Wolfram Alpha is only the first that aim to provide a totally different way to search the internet, and Microsoft’s Bing has re-configured to reenter the market. All these changes will also affect the way SEO is carried out.

Article – Copyright 2009 Seo Las Vegas

About Dr. SEO – Steve Kim aka “Dr. SEO” is an Expert Internet Marketer who works in Las Vegas, NV.  He specializes in Search Engine Optimization, as well as Video and Local Search Optimization.  See more at www.drseo.org