I am often asked Why does it take so long to gain visibility in the Search Engine Results Pages of Google. Why SEO is ongoing process and can’t be done over night.

On October 22nd during a Q&A session with some of the Google Folks it was mentioned that Google made over 450 changes to their Search Algorithms in 2007. This statistic was derived from an earlier article/interview with search guru Udi Manber.

Manber once with Amazon and Yahoo is now the vice president in charge of search quality for Google.

This is a good thing for user searching for the very best results but a bad thing for Internet Marketers looking to increase or maintain visibility through search engines.

In summation, search engine optimizers need to stay on their toes and always be aware of the latest search engine algorithms.

..............

I have been asked this question many times through my own personal blog and whilst delivering search engine marketing workshops and training. The answer is simple: often.

Many SEO professionals entertain the belief that Google shroud their activities in a cloud of mystery and that nobody knows the actual answer apart from Google employees. This isn’t actually the case. Google are reasonably open about how they manage their algorithms (without giving away any trade secrets, of course) - you just need to know where to look to get the information.

Google have several teams dedicated to continuously improving various aspects of their ranking algorithm, and this team makes regular changes to the algorithm - sometimes as often as 10 times per week!

Most of these changes are minor, and all are intended to improve the user search experience, by offering improved localised results for example, or streamlining the algorithm code to improve performance. Sometimes the changes have more significant implications for search engine optimisation and can cause websites to slip down the rankings for particular keyphrases. There’s always a good reason for the changes and the best course of action if your website has been affected is always to go back to basics: content, content, content.

http://www.a2b.cc
http://api.feedster.comping
http://api.my.yahoo.com
http://api.my.yahoo.comping
http://bblog.comping.php
http://www.bitacoles.netping.php
http://blogbot.dk
http://blogdb.jp
http://www.blogdigger.com
http://blogmatcher.com
http://www.blogpeople.net
http://www.blogroots.com
http://www.blogshares.com
http://www.blogsnow.comping
http://www.blogstreet.com
http://blog.goo.ne.jp
http://bulkfeeds.net
http://coreblog.orgping/
http://www.lasermemory.com
http://mod-pubsub.org
http://www.mod-pubsub.orgping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://www.popdex.com
http://rcs.datashed.net
http://rpc.blogrolling.com
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.comping
http://rpc.weblogs.com
http://www.snipsnap.org
http://thingamablog.sourceforge.netping.php
http://topicexchange.com
http://www.weblogues.com
http://xping.pubsub.comping/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blogbot.dk/io/xml-rpc.php
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://www.a2b.cc
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com
http://api.my.yahoo.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://bblog.comping.php
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://blogbot.dk
http://blogdb.jp
http://www.blogdigger.com
http://blogmatcher.com
http://www.blogpeople.net
http://www.blogroots.com
http://www.blogshares.com
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com
http://blog.goo.ne.jp
http://bulkfeeds.net
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://www.lasermemory.com
http://mod-pubsub.org
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com
http://ping.blo.gs
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://www.popdex.com
http://rcs.datashed.net
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://www.snipsnap.org
http://thingamablog.sourceforge.net/ping.php
http://topicexchange.com
http://www.weblogues.com
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blogbot.dk/io/xml-rpc.php
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://ping.blo.gs/

Why would you want to hire an SEO firm that gets top results in the search engines for it's own
sites and for those of it's clients for whom we have executed search engine optimization services ?

Why would you want to hire an SEO firm that can optimize your website for the
UK, USA, German, Italian and Thai markets and search engines ?

Why would you want to hire an SEO firm that guarantees
you a 300% to 1000% increase in traffic within 3 months ?

Why would you want to hire an SEO firm that will charge you 50% to
start with and the other 50% only after the results have been achieved ?

Why would you want to hire an SEO firm that will give you back your
money if we do not get you a 300% to 1000% increase in traffic by 3 months ?

Why would you want to hire an SEO firm that can communicate fluently with you in your own language,
English, German, Italian and Thai and is fluent in the language of your web site targetted market ?

Answer:
Why would you hire anybody else ?

Web site architecture, keyword structuring and code tuning:

We find your web competition and analyze their web sites.
These are other sites providing same services as yourself and this is
an important factor in keyword architecture for your site.
We even reverse engineer competition sites to get more details for positioning your site.

Research and finalization of the keywords to be used in the optimization process:
This includes the identification of high-traffic keywords and
selection of case, singular-plural, and tense for each keyword phrase.

Directory and search engine categories:
Research and selection of appropriate search engine categories
for submission to each directory and search engine.

Keyword analysis:
Keyword configuration concerning their density, frequency, prominence, weight and many other factors which distribute keywords throughout the web pages both in the page body text, inside the html code and elsewhere.

Reviewing and revising existing Client pages to be optimized for the Search Engines:
This is a process that may involve many versions for each page.
This includes a detailed review and alteration of the title, description, keywords,
headings, comments, image alts, and link tags, and the text appearing in the body of the page.

Insertion of popularity linkage technology to improve search
engine bot, crawler and spider navigation and rankings.
This may involve adding visible text to various pages consistent with current design.

Site content text tuning and content review as appropriate:
This serves to analyze keyword density, frequency, and distribution throughout your content.
In some cases it may be appropriate to create additional site pages focused on specific content. In many cases it will be appropriate to revise content structure to comply with search engine and directory requirements.
This does not mean we get you to change your text copy - but some additions, modifications will be implemented.

Deep web page tuning:
Home pages (index.html) and several other pages will need a lot of tuning in the code.

Root files restructuring:
The actual .html files, images and scripts that reside on the server may need a different structure.
Sounds easy but is not. This might involve renaming some of the html file names hence restructuring all the internal page links to these.

Seo testing and analysis:
Once the site has been optimized it is put through tests using special instruments (software programs specially written for this purpose) and on the basis of the results obtained - further tuning and modifications are applied - and then tested again. And so on.

Search Engine Submission:
The site will then be submited manually onto the search engine at several intervals during a 2 week period.
After the keyword analysis, tuning, intergration and all that is involved in the optimization process, your web site will be submited to the the search engines and depending on if you decided to have your site targeted at one language or several, your site will be submited to some or all of the following.

World Wide Search Engines: Some of these have local country versions,
Google, AltaVista, AOL Web Search, Ask Jeeves, Teoma, AllTheWeb, HotBot, IWon, Lycos,
NetScape Search, DMOZ - Open Directory, Yahoo Directory, and Yahoo Index

UK specific Search Engines (includes most of the above)
Find, Mirago, Google.co.uk, Yahoo.co.uk etc

Italy specific Search Engines:
Virgilio, Arianna, Iltrovatore, Yahoo.it, Google.it etc.

Germany specific Search Engines:
Yahoo.de, Google.de, Altavista.de, Excite.de etc.

Czech Republic specific Search Engines::
Seznam, Atlas, Quick, Opendirectory.cz, Yahoo, Google etc.

Client side support:
Client agrees to provide reasonable support when upgrading their
web site pages with our provided additions or changes.

This support includes, but is not limited to:

Constructing web pages containing code to aid in
search engine optimization as defined by ourselves

Uploading files in a prompt manner when provided by ourselves

Testing and approving changes provided by ourselves

Providing reasonable notification to ourselves, of any
changes to the Web Site Pages initiated by Client

Client is responsible for providing server space and directories
as defined by ourselves to hold pages associated with SEO efforts

Client is responsible for providing ourselves with FTP
access to the Client web site unless determined inappropriate by Client policy

Estimated time period for the optimization
process for a 5 to 10 page web site is about 3 weeks.
This estimate includes all the abovedescribed tasks(keyword research, site tuning, testing etc) and also a two week period in which the site submission onto the search engines is executed. We submit to some search engines one week, to others a week later.

We do not use search engine spaming techniques and adhere to
the guidelines specified by the major search engines concerning allowed seo practices.

A successful optimization 'job' requires that most pages from your
site be tuned individually and then submited manualy into the search engines.

The cost of having your site optimized professionally, compared
to a half page advertisement in a local newspaper or a pay-per-click program
is a lot cheaper and more effective in the long run.

The newspaper advertisement can cost anything from
$ 500 to $ 10.000 or higher and will have a 1 day exposition.

A pay-per-click program can cost you $ 25 to $60 per day and is efective only for the period of time you use it.
Using a good pay-per-click program for 1 month for example could cost you an avarage of $1500.

Our optimization services, once applied to your web site, will help your site for several years
bringing you a constant increase in traffic for a one time only payment.

If you haven't already - see our services offered section as the
services offered and needed for professianal optimization of a website are many.
Some of them will be repeated here below.

Estimating seo costs:
We do not estimate our seo service costs only on the
number of web pages nor on the number of hours spent on the job
of optimizing a website and our cost estimates are based on:

your web competition - other sites providing same services (important factor in keyword architecture)

keyword analysis - keyword configuration concerning their density, frequency, prominence, weight and many other factors which distribute keywords throughout the web pages both in the page body text, inside the html code and elsewhere.

site content text tuning - this does not mean we get you to change
all your text copy - but some additions, modifications will probably have to be made.

web page tuning - home pages (index.html) and several
other pages will need a lot of tuning in the code.

root files restructuring - the actual .html files, images and scripts that reside on the server.
Sounds easy - but is not. This might involve renaming some of the html file names hence restructuring all the internal page links to these.

seo testing and analysis - once all has been optimized the site is put through tests using special instruments (software programs specially written for this purpose) and on the basis of the results obtained further tuning and modification is applied.

search engine submission - the site will then be submited manually
onto the search engine at several intervals during a 2 week period.
This is an art in itself.

Prices
Based on all these tasks and many others here are some cost estimate examples but
you will receive a precise quote once you submit a quote request info@jaroos.com for the whole project and we get a chance to look at your website and talk to you directly via phone.

1 to 5 page sites: $ 1800
6 to 10 page sites: $ 2200
11 to 30 page sites $ 2800
larger project after evaluation.

These estimates are for a one-target language optimization.

Payment structure is 50% down and 50% after 3 months - unless you get to use our guarantee - see below.

These are basic estimates and a lot depends on how much competition you have.

For example - if your site offers health insurance there will be much more work to be done tuning and
tweaking the keywords than if your site specializes in selling car insurance only to Ferrari car owners.

The 1 to 5 page site at $ 1800 works out at about $ 20 per day over a 3 month period and if your
website does not generate 3 times this much now - per day, what are you even doing on the Internet ?

Also note that you cannot train and pay a competent employee to perform these tasks with $20 per day.

If you do not want a fixed-fee rate, hourly rates may be applied:
Labor @  $170.00 per hour..
This is complex and often far exceeds the fixed-fee rates.

How can we guaranteed to get you a 300% to 1000% increasei in traffic ?
This is nothing extraordinary and we have optimized sites that went
from 500 monthly visitors to 20.000 which is a 2000% increase.
Any good optimization service worth their salt should be able to at least double your visitors.
We're pretty good at what we do so we feel absolutely confident in offering a traffic increase between
300% and 1000% - and if your site does get a 2000% increase - then the extra 1000% is for free.

We are so confident in our seo service that we offer you a money back guarantee.
Our payment structure is 50% down, then 50% 3 months after the site has been optimized
and submited onto the search engines.
If after 3 months you do not get at least a 300% increase in traffic - you get your
initial 50% downpayment returned - no questions asked.

1. Quality Content is and always will be your number one factor for getting high rankings and keeping them. You must understand search engines are simply businesses who supply a product like any other company. That product is information. They must offer quality results to anyone using their service to solve a problem, answer a question or to buy a product. The more relevant, the more targeted the search solution they return, the higher the overall quality of their product and the more popular their search engine will become. Providing quality content is vital for SEO success.

2. Keywords are your number one tools for achieving high rankings. You must understand keywords and how they work on the web. You must know how many searches are made each day for your chosen keywords. Sites like Wordtracker and Seobook will give you a rudimentary number of searches. Design your pages around your targeted keywords and don't forget to do some deep-linking to these pages on your site. Find and build backlinks to these interior keyword pages and not just to your home page or domain URL. Picking keywords with medium to low competition has worked out well for me. So too has using the more targeted and higher converting "long-tail" keywords been very beneficial for me.

3. Onpage Factors and site design will play a major role in the spidering and indexing of your site/content. Make sure all your pages are SEO friendly, made sure all your pages can be reached from your homepage and no pages should be no more than three levels away from it - keeping a sitemap listing all your major pages makes the search engines happy. Make sure you have all your meta tags such as title, description, keywords... are all optimized. (Title = around 65 characters, Description = around 160 characters) Remember, your title and description should not only be keyword targeted but these are the first contact/impression anyone will see of your site - make sure you use them to draw and entice interested visitors to your site and content. Also make sure your title and URL are keyword matched for maximum effect. Having your major keyword in your Domain Name also helps, using a pike | to separate different elements of your title has helped my rankings, so too does having your keyword in the first and last 25 words on your pages.

4. Google will send you the most qualified traffic so concentrate the majority of your SEO efforts on Google. Don't ignore Yahoo! or MSN but Google is king of search so give it the respect it deserves. With its new browser, Google's influence will only grow stronger so you must optimize your pages for Google. Use Google's Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to fine-tune your pages/content for Google. I also use Google Alerts to keep up on my niche keywords and for comment link-building on the newly created pages Google is indexing.

5. Link Building is still the most effective way to boost your search rankings. Make sure you get backlinks from relevant sites related to your niche market and make sure the 'anchor text' is related to your keywords but don't ignore the text and overall quality of the content linking to you. The anchor text is the underlined/clickable portion of a link. Don't forget linking is a two-way street, make sure you link out to high quality, high ranked relevant sites in your niche.

6. Article Marketing is a well established method of getting quality backlinks and it still works. Writing short 500 - 700 word informative helpful articles with your backlinks in the resource box is still very effective for getting targeted traffic and backlinks. Longer articles have also worked for me and I use an extensive network of distribution including SubmitYourArticle, Isnare, Thephantomwriters... plus other major online sites. Don't forget the whole element of blogging and RSS feeds in your article distribution. And always remember you're also using these articles to pre-sale your content or products. Don't forget to leverage sites like Squidoo, Hubpages... to increase your rankings and traffic.

7. Onsite Traffic Hubs have worked extremely well for me. These traffic hubs are whole sections of your site devoted to one sub-division of your major theme. For example, if you have a site on Gifts, then wedding gifts could be a separate section. This would be fully fleshed out with extensive pages covering everything dealing with wedding gifts - a self-contained keyword rich portion of your site on wedding gifts. Works similar as a sub-domain but I prefer using a directory to divide it up, such as yourdomain/wedding_gifts. (Most experts suggest always using a hyphen in your urls but underscores have worked fine for me.) Search engines love these keyword/content rich hubs but keep in mind you're creating content to first satisfy your visitors.

8. WordPress blog software is extremely effective for SEO purposes. WordPress software is easy to install on your site even if you have no experience with installing server-side scripts. Besides search engines love these highly SEO friendly blogs with their well structured content and keyword tagging. I have at least one of these on all my sites to draw in the search engines and get my content indexed and ranked. I also use Blogger (owned by Google), Bloglines and other free blogs to help distribute my content.

9. Social Bookmark/Media Sites are becoming very important on the web. These include a whole range of social sites like MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter... media news sites like Digg, SlashDot, Technorati... you must get your content into this whole mix if you want to take full SEO advantage of Web 2.0 sites. You should be joining these sites and using them. It's time consuming but it will keep you in the swing of things. One simple thing you must do is to put social bookmark buttons on all your pages so that your visitors can easily bookmark your content for you. You can use a WordPress plug-in or I like using a simple free site/service from Addthis.com which gives me a simple button to put on all my content.

10. Masterplan! Many webmasters and site owners forget to develop or have an overall masterplan/strategy when it comes to SEO. You must have an understanding of what SEO is and what it can do for you and your site. More importantly, you just don't want SEO - you want effective SEO. In order to achieve effective SEO you must have three things: Relevance, Authority and Conversions.

First, your content/site must be relevant to the topic or niche area you're pursuing - your content must fit in and be related to all the other sites in your niche. That's why closely themed sites do so well in the search engines, they give only relevant content to what's been searched for or discussed.

Second, your content/site must be perceived as an authority site on your subject or niche. Establish this authority position and the search engines will love you and your content. One way is to develop this authority, besides offering superior content, is to form links/partnerships with other perceived authority sites in your field. Always strive to make your site an authority site - tops in your niche - the one site everyone has to check before drawing or forming a conclusion.

Third, conversions should be your main goal of any SEO efforts because you want to convert your targeted traffic into site members, subscribers, buyers or just repeat visitors. If you're into online marketing, conversions will be the most important element of the whole SEO process because you want buyers, not just visitors coming to your site.

Most of all, you must convince yourself Search Engine Optimization is not difficult, nor is it the equivalent of the online bogeyman as many would like you to believe. Used effectively, SEO can give you the targeted traffic you're seeking, just follow some of the outlined steps/tactics listed above and you will have SEO working for you and your site in no time at all.

Taken from Titus Hoskins

Labels: Search Engine Optimization, seo, tactic