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Would You Let A Dog Or A Butler Market Your Website?
The latest news to hit the Internet's 'water cooler' is that Lycos and Ask Jeeves are to begin their own SEO services.. Search engine optimisation (or SEO) is any practice related to the end goal of improving your website's positioning in the search engines. The brief history of SEO is that it first started out solely as the remit of the developers themselves. This was back in the day when one person designed, built, maintained, hosted and marketed a website. The Ever-Changing Internet Landscape During the past few years, however, the entire Internet industry has divided up into a myriad divisions to such an extent that SEO is now a booming sector in its own right. Entering the term "seo" on Google returns nearly 20 million results! Now businesses recognise that it is no longer possible to expect one individual or company to possess all the necessary skills 'under one roof' to be able to achieve great results on the graphic design, technical construction AND marketing of their website. This has led to the trend of bringing in specialist search engine marketing consultants or companies to assist. As Google and the like are spending millions every year on developing their tools to accurately sift through the billions of web pages that exist it really is a full time occupation just keeping track of what has an effect on search engine ranking and which strategies work best. Everyone Wants 'Organic' Nowadays! Ask Jeeves and Lycos are now offering their SEO service to help companies get found in the 'organic' results of search engines. 'Organic' results are those results in a search engine listing that are non-paid. Almost all search engines now offer businesses the shortcut of simply paying to get an ad listed whereas as a latest study indicates that only 28% of searchers will click on an advertisement as opposed to one of the 'organic' results (on Google). This is the reason we're all fighting for high rankings in the 'organic' results. This demand from businesses is also presumably the main driving factor behind Ask Jeeves and Lycos starting to offer their own Search Engine Optimisation services. Money Well Spent? In short - I'm not sure. If you have a 50 page website, getting Lycos to provide you with SEO services will cost you a tidy $10,000. They also include the questionable tactic of re-submitting your website over and over to search engines which is both pointless and risky as some will act against those that submit more than once. $10,000 sounds like a lot to me for a service that is only dealing with search engines and which talks of 'recommendations' that you then have to implement yourself. Really though - it comes down to what you are trying to achieve with your website. My two cents on this is that the Lycos service doesn't devote enough attention to links - your money may be better spent on getting more high quality in-bound links or on a well-managed Pay Per Click Campaign. Ask Jeeves http://www.askjeeves.com Lycos' SEO Service http://ranking.lycos.com/sitesidemore.html Search Engine Users Survey http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/software/article.php/3348071 Michael Cheney is Author of The Website Marketing BibleTM. Take the Free 7-Part Course "Internet Marketing Made Easy" and get your free sampler of 'The Bible' here: http://www.websitemarketingbible.com/marketing/
MORE RESOURCES:
Mary Bowling SEO & Local Search Expert to Speak at SMX Local Mobile - Newswire Today (press release)
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RELATED ARTICLES
Goofy Mistakes that Hurt Your Search Engine Rankings One thing is for sure, you don't want to spend hours, perhaps days, months, or years on a website to have some stupid little mistake get your site dropped or never even listed in the search engines. There are a lot of rules that search engines have created to block out what they call spammers, so don't kid yourself by telling yourself you are not an evil spammer. Link Popularity Pitfalls As we all know Google uses their PageRank technology to measure link popularity by counting the number of inbound links to your web pages, and it is one of the many factors influencing your ranking. Most website owners do not utilize properly what PageRank they already have. What Is Search Engine Marketing? It's in our genes, we're driven to seek. We 'hunt' for food, homes, partners, jobs and lately - with the advent of the Internet - information. Optimize Your Site Pt2 6: The hidden benefits to having the right links. Every site online has an index or default file as its home page file. Top Ten Listing? Hmmmmmmmm This is my question.. Should You Be Linking for Traffic or Rankings? Just for a change, rather than a technical article, I would like to tell you a story. To begin, imagine your website is a little country bar, now let's go back to when the internet began, and reciprocal linking was being done properly. The Google Sandbox Explained Introduction The Google Sandbox is a metaphorical term to explain why most new websites have very poor rankings in Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). Very few people know for sure if the 'sandbox' actually exists, but it seems to be a filter added to the Google algorithms sometime around March 2004. A Naive Mistake Cost Me My Google Rankings Little do you know but you too could be making mistakes with your website that are costing you your search engine rankings.Goggle and the other search engines are constantly changing their algorithms to keep pace of search engine spammers. SEO Expert Guide - Black Hat SEO - Activities to avoid (part 8/10) In parts 1 - 7, you learnt how to develop your proposition, identify your key words and optimize and promote (for free) your site and pages on the world's search engines. You were also introduced to our mythical Doug (who sells antique doors, door handles, knockers, door bells or pulls and fitting services) in Windsor in the UK. Beyond Search Engines Some webmasters report that search engines account for 75% or more of their total website traffic. However, it's important not to become too dependent on search engines for new business. Google WebSearch? & Google Adsense - Yahoo! The makers of the world renowned search engine, Google, have taken things a step further to increase their user loyalty, grow their user base and at the same time reward websites for helping them promote their search engine. What a beautiful deal. Website Ranking With an Internet Marketing Specialist On the internet, competition is stronger than ever. There was a time where paying a few bucks to get in Yahoo was enough to generate substantial traffic but marketing websites on the internet got much more complex since. 20 Ideas for Creating Traffic Rich, Search Engine Friendly Pages Sometimes questions will arise around the subject of gateway information pages or doorway pages. People have heard that "doorway pages" are BAD and some have stated that search engines "hate doorway pages". When to NOT Hire a SEO and Why When you get an e-mail from SEO Company with content similar to this:"We submit your site on X00.000 search engines and directories?"Stay far away from companies which offer you to submit your site on thousands of directories and search engines. So, Where Has Your Search Engine Been Today? Visit Google, Yahoo, MSN or one of the lesser search engines, and you get a few million results for just about any search term. Despite this impressive depth of results, most users consider only a few of the WebPages being pointed to. Dont Get Banned by Google There are many Black Hat techniques that people use to try and influence Googles ranking of their sites, the simple thing to remember is that THEY DO NOT help your rankings, are simply a waste of your time and sooner or later will lead to a Google ban for your site. Sure there are sites that use these techniques and are getting away with it but they will eventually get penalised as Google always manages to find them eventually. Web Site Copy is about More Than Keywords Let's say you are writing a web site to sell beach homes on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada.You look for some good keywords and come up with 'Vancouver Island waterfront property'. Google, Yahoo! and MSN Line up More Goodies for Internet Users Internet users have never had it better what with Yahoo!, Google and MSN planning to roll out more goodies. Yahoo! is launching its Yahoo! 360 and Google has already made its beta version of the Desktop Search tool widely available for anyone to download it for free to enable one to search e-mails, book marked web pages, or content from your desktop with the use of keywords in the stored Microsoft Word or PDF files. Is Something Missing From Your Keywords Research? (Part 2) In my previous article, I raised the issue that proper keyword research must take into account countries. The reason for that was that the demand for keywords can vary between countries. Five and a Half Ways to Amp Up Your Search Engine Optimization Statistics show that 85% of pages visited on the Internet come from people who have gotten there from a search engine. Statistically, people look first at the top of the first page of the regular search results, then the bottom, and then they go to the sponsored listings.
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