If you go to hire a carpenter to remodel the interior of your home, you can check to see if he’s licensed, right? You could also ask him for some pictures of his work, what professional associations or organizations he belongs to and how many years of experience he has. If he’s own a business, you could check the BBB rating and look up reviews online. By the time you check all of the facts about this carpenter, and maybe a couple others, the right one to work with becomes clear.

Not so with SEO! There are really no respected “SEO” licenses or certifications used broadly across the industry. Also, because SEO is so technical and dynamic, you really can’t physically examine the results of a company’s work. Not to mention, there are so many other variables per website that come in to play (budget, platform issues, corporate restrictions, etc) that it makes it nearly impossible to compare one SEO’s work against another.

When you talk with different companies, you could hear wildly different opinions on what tactics you should implement to improve your web visibility. Some make these claims just to make the sale, while others are simply mistaken or outdated in their approach.

What’s worse is that you never know what’s going to happen until you actually try it… which could cost you large amounts of time and money… and create a HUGE mess!

In an effort to help you avoid hiring a “bogus SEO” I have prepared a short list:

4 Claims and Tactics SEO Companies Use that You Should Avoid

While different companies will suggest various strategies and tactics, there are some claims and tactics they recommend which you should avoid focusing on at all costs. Here are some of those:

1) Focusing on organic rankings as your final results – Increased search engine rankings are always a good thing, but how valuable are they really?  If your SEO company helps you rank for many terms, but you receive few customers from those efforts, is it worth it to pay that company’s fee for those rankings? The real goal any SEO company should help you achieve is a great ROI on the dollars you spend with them.

*Don’t forget about our previous post: Why Tracking Your Organic Search Rankings Will Drive You Insane

2) Emphasizing keywords, not user experience – Your site does need to target certain keywords that have a high likelihood of converting. However, if keywords appear too often (“spamming”), that detracts from the message you attempt to convey to the visitors of your site. Within the content of your website, you should focus on the value you offer your visitors and how you can help them solve the problems they have. The keywords should appear too, but only where they seem most natural.

*Remember: The user should ALWAYS come first, SEO is second.

3) 1000’s of links, forum posts, and blog comments – Some companies promise to give you an outrageous amount of these types of links. At first glance, this seems good because your instinct is to think “more is better.” However, the algorithms have changed… a LOT. Several years ago, Google liked large quantities of links, but now Google focuses on quality.  Links are still extremely important for increasing your search rankings, but now it’s more important they come from quality websites topically related to yours. A small quantity of quality links will help your site more than a large quantity of poor quality links. In fact, a large quantity of links like this can actually get your website penalized.

*Marketing Tip: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

4) Large quantities of on-site content – Some SEO’s claim the more pages you have on your website, the better. Others recommend certain word lengths on each page, because they believe 1000-word articles outrank 500-word articles. In reality, content is viewed similarly to links by Google: quality trumps quantity every time.  If you want to, think of it this way: a quantity of quality content works best.

*Reminder: Content is still King, but it has to be the RIGHT content: 1 Gigantic, Huge, Monstrous Reason Why Quality Content is Necessary for your Website

Proceed with Caution Before Working with Any SEO Company

Because SEO lacks so much standardization, you’ll hear many ridiculous claims from the companies you approach, and these are just a small sampling of such claims.  If you start hearing your SEO company talk about using these tactics, you might want to consider moving on. Your search engine rankings, and your bottom line, will thank you for it.

Shameless Plug for Eminent SEO

We have had the opportunity to work with thousands of websites over the years. As the algorithm updates have dictated updated strategies, Eminent SEO has quickly adjusted to accommodate. Because we have access to thousands of website back-ends and analytical data we can generally anticipate a change and update our strategies before the general public makes sense of what is happening with just one site…

In other words: Our strategies are lasting, yet dynamic and built to grown with the algorithm changes.

Call us if you want to talk more on SEO. We love this stuff. (800) 871.4130

Google announced the release of Chrome version 27 today. The new version features:

• Web Pages load 5% faster on average
• chrome.syncFileSystem API
• Improved ranking of predictions, improved spell correction, and numerous fundamental improvements for Omnibox predictions.

Be sure to visit the Help Center for more information on the updated policies regarding the omnibox predictions and Chrome instant.

You can update to the latest release now using the browser’s built-in silent updater, or download it directly from google.com/chrome.

In no particular order …

1.      George Takei

I won’t forget how awesome he was as Mr. Sulu – helming the Enterprise through life and death Klingon jerk situations in weekly reruns throughout my entire childhood. Nowadays he is awesome on his Facebook Fan Page (Facebook.com/georgehtakei) rehashing his deep voiced coin phrase “Ohh My” and posting hilarious pics while fighting for equal rights and maintaining the same haircut since 1966. Seriously I get 2 LOL’s per day minimum and endless “Ohh My” shenanigans every trip in front of a mirror. Thank Him.

2.       Suck UK Punching Bag Laundry Bag

The dark ages ended one thousand years ago, yet they still claim it was impossible to carry laundry in a masculine way – until this bag. Every guy who owns one of these should give thanks for feeling like they’re filming an 3. Old Spice Commercial while doing laundry. There has to be macho cupcake bakery on the horizon soon, I can feel it, but hey… this post is about giving thanks…

 4.       The Cloud

There was a time when everything I purchased was real… those times are over.

My movies, music, pictures and games were on memory cards and discs. This would have lasted forever except for the fact that children wish they could fly. Since children can’t take to the skies themselves they make sure that your discs do… amazingly well. Most of the huge entertainment monopolies are getting their act together and more than just music is available in the cloud. Now I find myself passing on purchases if the content isn’t available for download. Forget about the disc I just want the digital copy. Recently my Android tablet took to the skies and even though the device was broken, all of my content, pics, settings and apps are available to me (through the cloud) when I replace it. All of my video games are now on the Steam digital delivery service and available on any computer that has internet. Toss That Kiddos!!!!!!! Oh Damn

 5.       Hovertrax Is Going Into Production Soon

This invention is amazing to me. You can roll around looking at other people walking with their own feet like a sucker while not feeling like a tool because this doesn’t have handle bars or wheelchair tires. I can balance, who da man?

Look at you using your feet. SUCKER!

 6.        Internet Food

Right now internet bandwidth isn’t at the point where we can download a 12 inch sub sandwich and that’s sad. You can, however, get ideas and recipes that you could never have imagined on your own. The resources have literally reached one billion. Pictures, recipes, tutorials, (epic) videos, forums, blog feeds…  All of the information is there for you and every angle is covered from healthy food to goodies that can double as transportation. I asked my mom why we never had certain things growing up and her reply was that she didn’t know or have access and that was valid. Now I’m thankful that excuse is gone and in my house all I have to say is “I’m lazy, cook these things for me.”

Every work day at Eminent SEO is an opportunity for me to be creative and work on tons of various ideas. That is something that I’m thankful for this Half Thanksgiving BIG TIME!

What are you thankful for? Share in the comments.

Ah, May… the month for Mothers!

A big Happy Mother’s Day to all you mommies out there! Here at Eminent SEO many of us are hard working moms and we know how much work goes in to being a mother!

A Fun Little Company Photo Shoot

Creative people spark creative ideas – this should come as no surprise, but how do you know when you’re working with a truly creative marketing firm?  At Eminent SEO, we want to highlight our creativity to make it more apparent to all our existing and new clients.  So, we decided to have professional photographer Bill Nash capture that aspect of our company’s personality in a recent photo shoot (you’ll be able to find this photo on our about page when it’s fully updated):

Why Creativity & Personality Sell to Online Consumers

Traditional marketing – where large corporations who were able to shout their message the loudest and get in your face with provocative ads – is losing its effectiveness.  In fact, Bill Simmons, of the Harvard Business Review, says traditional marketing is already dead.

Why is this happening?

It’s due mostly in part to the availability of the internet.  Prior to the internet, everyone had a television or radio, or saw advertising on billboards or flyers.  But now, with the internet available wherever you go, consumers can research companies, products, and services in their own way.  If they aren’t engaged nearly instantaneously, they move on to the next web site.  So, the key to advertising now lies in developing a unique, creative experience that almost immediately develops a personal connection with your online visitors.

At Eminent SEO, we use our creative personality to help you create a unique online experience for your online customers.

4 Tips for Creatively Engaging Online Visitors

In keeping with this newsletter’s theme, we figure it makes sense to give you a few ideas of how to quickly engage online searchers.  Here are a few ideas to help you get your own creativity flowing:

1. A Unique Web Design – Many websites you see have a home, services, about, and contact page.  This type of design does work, but in the web world, you can literally design your web page any way you want.  Check out this design at the Australian Census Bureau – who’d have thought a government institution would be able to show us something about creativity?

2. Show a Video on Your Home Page – Generally stated, video helps increase conversions.  With a short, but engaging, video on your home page, you stand to stick out from the crowd and provide your visitors with a unique experience.

3. Precision Targeting – With digital marketing, you can laser-target your market.  How?  By researching and targeting the right keywords (long-tail keywords), you have an excellent idea of what searchers are looking for and what type of content to create to increase conversions.  Your keyword might only have 200 searches per month, but if you convert 10 of those into paying customers, that’s much more valuable than driving traffic to your site with a higher search volume that has little to no conversions.

4. Social Media – Although your natural inclination is to think social media is there to promote your company (which it is), it works best as a listening tool.  You will learn the exact questions on your customers’ minds, you can ask them for feedback in the form of a survey and give them a chance to win a reward for participating, and you can also learn some of the exact keywords they use to search for your products and services by observing what they’re saying on your different profiles.

That’s All Folks!

We hope to have sparked your creative side in this month’s newsletter.  If you need a little help developing a more creative brand identity and online marketing strategy, feel free to call us at 1-800-871-4130 or contact us online.

But now, social has a lot to do with your search engine optimization strategy.  We’ll show 3 concrete ways in which it does.

Examples of how Social Media directly impacts SEO

Personalized Results

If there’s one big trend on the web, it’s relevancy, and personalized search is always more relevant to the searcher.  You see that icon with the circle around it?  If you search in Google and see that icon, it means it’s a personal search result you’re more likely to see when signed in to Google.

When you sign in to Google, it examines people who are in your Google+ circles, and whenever you type in a search term, you’re more likely to see a result from someone in your circles than any other search result.  For now, Google only does this for its own social network, but other social media websites are lobbying to be included.

This is also true for Bing. Because Bing is integrated with Facebook, when you are signed in to Facebook and you search Bing, guess what shows up? Social Results:

Follower Count/Social Shares

Google takes these two important metrics into account when deciding which content is more authoritative.  Follower count isn’t emphasized nearly as much as the number of social shares (retweets, Facebook shares, LinkedIn shares etc…) because it can be easily manipulated, but both metrics play a role in determining your search engine rankings.

Think of it this way:  say your content gets 100 social shares on average each time you promote it on a social network, but say your competitor’s only gets 5.  All other factors being equal, who’s more likely the trustworthy source of information?

Searching Directly on Social Sites

Facebook recently introduced its new “Graph Search.”  It’s slightly different from Google in that it searches your friends, places, interest, and photos to help you immediately find an answer to your question, rather than providing a link to a website.  Practically speaking, you might use Graph Search to look for “Chinese restaurants.”  Then, you can see which of your friends went to a Chinese restaurant near you.

Which are you more likely to trust:  a highly rated restaurant that people you don’t know on Google say is popular, or a Chinese restaurant your best friend recommends, whose tastes you know you like?

And the interesting part is SEO has almost no place in this type of search.

Build Your Social Media Following!

The most important takeaway from all of this is that being active on social media is essential to your search visibility now, and in the future.  At a basic level, develop a presence on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest, and give away interesting content you think will benefit your target audience.  It takes a ton of hard work to build and maintain your social media profiles, but it definitely helps increase your marketing ROI.  If managing your social media accounts is too much for you, remember you can always contact Eminent SEO for help. We offer a full array of social media services from banner designs to fully managed solutions.

While we may find entertainment and humor in Google’s suggest auto complete tool,  it also reflects, “fears, inquiries, preoccupations, obsessions and fixations of the human being at a certain age and our evolution through life,” says Marius B.

Reality is, we all are searching for similar, if not the same answers as Google clearly reveals.  Who knows how many times Google has seen these searches before? Hundreds? Thousands?

I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve had a new client come to me that has handed over their logins (user names and passwords) for their social sites and website and the passwords are super generic or even guessable based on some basic info I can either Google about the company or the owner.

image source: Intel.com

Tuesday, May 7 – is Password Day. lntel has provided a tool that can help you find out if your password is hackable or uncrackable. After I took the tool for a spin looks like I’m guilty of having a hackable password and would take someone roughly 2 hours to crack my password.

I think one of the biggest pieces of advice that Intel provides about picking a password that is going to take some time to adapt to, is moving away from just one password.

Take a peek at the, How Strong is Your Password? tool page – and let us know in the comments below – are you hackable or uncrackable?

Which one are you?

[click image to enlarge]

image via optify

Notice how that phone almost never leaves your hand or pocket and how every meal or sunset looks like an Instagram photo opportunity? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of those, you may be due for a digital detox.

An awesome new summer camp aims to help “grown-ups unplug, getaway and be kids again.” Camp Grounded, is a retreat organized by The Digital Detox,  in Anderson Valley, California, June 14th-17th .

This four day all inclusive  ”grown up summer camp”  incorporates a nostalgic 1970′s boy scouts camp atmosphere for 200 campers in a drug-and alcohol-free environment, who have a few basic rules to follow: no technology usage, and no work talk .

There is a strict disclaimer on the site, stressing that this is a summer camp and not a conference or networking event to “meet up or make contacts that further your career”, so don’t try and cheat the system!

If you’re not able to make the date for Camp Grounded, The Digital Detox has other regular monthly technology-free retreats, you can check out on their ‘Upcoming Retreats‘ page.

Biggest Mistakes He Covers In the Video:

• Is your site craw-lable?
• Are you including words in your content in the order of which people will search?
• Is your content compelling and marketable? Are you giving share value?
• Is your title and description maximized on your pages with most traffic?
• Not using webmaster resources and knowing how Google and SEO works.

This video is just another reminder that also supports our emphasis on the value of quality content that is optimized for search engines while adding value to your readers.

Enjoy!