What do you do When Project Budgeting is a Constraint for Your Company?
Budgeting Constraints
Have you ever declined possible clients because of low budgeting, such as a few hundred dollars a month because they want top placement but not willing enough to pay for it. How about possible projects where the client believes top ranking placement is the only measuring factor for their online business? O’, here is another good one. What about the people who believe hiring just any old SEO or Web Design company is good enough?
Well, let us just say you should choose wisely before moving forward with your SEO, Development and Design choice’s.
Although I have made a few exceptions to the rule for a few clients, I am upfront with them. I explain it is a long-term investment and a higher budget goes farther. But for the small business owners not able to pay for quality SEO service and web design, but willing to take the next step of at least trying to get their businesses off the ground, I try my best to help them get started by offering an inexpensive method of doing so.
Choosing a Pricing Model
Placing them on a performance based pricing model allows them to get some results while also being bound with the understanding; increased results equals increased budgeting for services rendered. This is a modest but effective approach to perform as an SEO company as well as providing a value to the client’s business with rewards. This allows for the client to feel more comfortable while also allowing for the client to foresee future expenses once results are met.
Of course the clients I work with understand that marketing efforts should also be done through other channels as well. This only adds to the pot. There are always areas for improvement with your marketing efforts and the sole responsibility should not be placed on the shoulders of the SEO company providing service.
I have had some come to me needing a new website design and SEO who just can only afford a small amount every month. If I find the project to be worthwhile or just flat-out a project I believe to be fun or interesting, I will bring them on board. I suppose it is a matter of preference of projects and the individuals I want to work with that comes to mind.
Being Selective
As a business owner, the affordability has not always been there to choose. So these budgeting constraints are well understood. Often incoming projects were thought of as just a way to increase profits, but as soon as I started to be more selective about which projects, it became clearer that it was funner, more interesting and created a more reliable Business to Business (B2B, or B2C) relationship for me and the clients.
Overall, this is a better route for choosing which projects while also providing a better work strategy and ethical business decision. Business has increased because of this re-thinking about selective project choices and continues to be rewarding in itself.
There are tons of do’s and do not’s when it comes to SEO, Development and design. It is highly recommended that you are selective as well when doing so. Do not settle for just any fly by night company saying they can get you top placement without doing the research first. Remember it is a long-term investment into your business. Would you go buy a new vehicle without knowing anything about the vehicles past history? You should of course answer “NO”.
Not Sure What to do?
If you are not sure where to look or what to ask, trying contacting a few local companies to learn their responses. You should get a similar response from companies that know what they are doing. No cheap gimmicky or false pretenses. Remember there really is not guaranteed search engine results. There are guarantee’s on work performed, but the perceived thought of guaranteed SEO is false, so do not fall for the sales pitch pitfall of guaranteed SEO.
Now, you can try to learn it and do it for free, but is it really free? The answer is “NO”. Yes you might not be paying for someone to help you, but in the long run you still are investing your time to learn it, apply it and understand it. For some it is just easier to find someone to help them along, while others just do not have the budgeting available to do so.
Conclusion
No matter what your situation might be, do some research and learn as much as you can about it before picking up the telephone and making a decision. Like our competitors, we aim to make it as simple as possible. Whether you need a new website design or SEO, pick up the telephone to speak to a representative. Our first time consultation are free. We can be reached at Link Worx Seo or (317) 614-7383
“Try and educate yourself first”.
Ten Best SEO Practices to Follow to Help Your Business
The Problem
Recently an individual was trying to understand why their website had been dropped from the search engine results. There are several factors that can cause your website to lose placement completely or drop significantly enough that you may need to search several pages back in the results to find your site again. There are some common reasons it can occur to website’s that should be checked in order to resolve the problem.
How to Solve the Problem
First, have you received alerts from Google telling explaining to you that there are problems with your website? If yes, then sign in to Google Webmaster Tools determine which errors are in need of attention. Assuming you already have established a Webmaster Tools account.
Second, you will want to check some other areas as well pertaining to your website. You might start with a website analysis which can aid in finding bad errors on the website. Some of the issue’s could be duplicated meta descriptions and titles, or sitemap has not been submitted. If you can not run an analysis you can also find out these same factors through Webmaster Tools as well.
Third, check for proper canonical usage on pages. This will help with indexing and allow your website to be more crawler friendly. It will also help remove chances of duplicated pages from been indexed by the search engines.
Fourth, take a look at the sites robots.txt file to make sure it is properly written. A properly written robots.txt file can provide guidance to the crawlers for indexing. This file essentially allows for more control over the crawlers by providing it some instruction on what not to index. By disallowing files and directories you can be assured the search crawlers will not send data back to the search engines for indexing.
Fifth, although tedious; remove any bad inbound links leading to your website. This is a time intensive process but will be to your advantage. There are various software vendors online to help you locate these unwanted back link’s. You might try Removeem or LinkDelete to resolve some bad links by getting those links removed.
Sixth, utilize the disavow tools available through Webmaster Tools to make suggestions to the search engines that you would like to have certain inbound links listed as non-valued links when determining your ranking in the results. This does take some time to complete but is another great way to notify the search engines you are being linked to from places on the web that you would rather not be linked from because of various reasons.
Seventh, check for duplicated content on other sites. us the sixth suggestion to remove links from those sites and you might take the next step to resolve the issue by notify the search engines that a site is violating policies. File a complaint through the process of completing a DCMA. If all else fails and the site webmaster is un-reachable or just flat-out not responding, the DCMA is the last possible solution to get it done.
Eighth, this is a simple one. Make sure your pages are being cached by the search engines. You can find this out by doing site:www.domain.com in the search box. Also you can use Webmaster Tools to control page caching and links pertaining to your site that need to be removed from indexing by the search engines.
Ninth, check for parameters inside of Webmaster Tools as well. By listing parameters inside of Webmaster Tools, you can notify the search engines that you do not want certain pages the utilize page parameters to be listed in the index. For example, .html is the same as .html?id=1. Although this is the same page, the search engines will treat it as two separate pages because of the parameter attached on the end. By listing this parameter in Webmaster Tools you are going to eliminate the duplicated page content, which of course will produce better results.
Finally, number ten. If you have migrated a website your might be more prone to check for proper page redirects. Proper redirects can provide several thing’s. It can help eliminate duplicated content, send old pages to the new pages and notify users of site changes. Such as; Page Not Found (404) or Server Error (503). This also gives the search engines some directions to follow.
Conclusion
Okay, there are ten areas to cover that will go a long way in providing a solution to achieve better search results. Some of these problem solving suggestions are technical and very time-consuming. So if you believe this is above you or you just do not have to the time to do it. Hire a professional to take care of it.
Problem Resolution List
Evaluate Website Problems
Note: As always if you feel this information is helpful, stop by and provide a quick review. It will benefit you and us.
“Follow the guidelines, one of the best solutions”.
New Website Design & Development From Link Worx Seo
What has the Agenda Been Like
Okay, recently there have been significant changes going on behind the scenes for the company. Not only has the company created new added features to the custom content management system, a new invoice system has been created as well. The new editions to the system required some intensive Cold Fusion Developing and some well thought out planning. The new edition, includes widgets that can now be used on blog pages created by the administrative users on the fly.
Webpage Creation With Widgets
These widgets can be stacked in any order as you see fit. The decision to change the stacking order revolved around a method know to many as A/B testing. If you are not familiar with A/B testing, it is the testing of more than one version of a web page. If you would like to learn more about A/B testing just search for it and you will find a ton of resources covering the topic. You can also add analytic code to track the different web pages on a three month timeline as well with GA.
By being able to change widget order and selecting which widgets you want for the new web page, you can gain more insight on what works best through various page layouts. Now unfortunately, we do not have a demo at this time; but have plans for one to be created in the future. Will keep you posted.
The widget implementation was a sophisticated but yet tasty addition to the management system. But it was decided that it was just not enough. Next, was the choice of being able to choose between a one column, two column or three column layout for the new web pages being created was a foot. Now this took some doing, but seem to be working great at this point. Although there was one last detail needing to be checked surrounding IE and styling. As we all know, IE is a real bare sometimes when it comes to rendering.
SEO Reporting
Webpage Layout Options
After that it was time to do those wonderful taxes. On top of all this, it was long over due to get the tax man up to date. After countless hours of tax forms for five years of taxes and some number crunching I am happy to say it is complete. During this time of making sure the taxes were done correctly, it was decided that a simpler way to bill clients and allow clients to see their billing invoices online was necessary.
Invoice & Reports
Once a user has registered for an account they will now have access to view able invoices and reports. Yet, although these reports are not full-scale graphical reports they at least allow for the client to see how their link building campaign is going. There are plans to add more features to the reports at a latter date, but some more research about a few Cold Fusion tags is going to have to be done first before venturing into the realm of development. Will keep you posted on this coming edition too…
International Formatting
Finally, during the process of all these development editions, it was decided to add some international formatting to the pages. If you happened to view a webpage and it was not found or was just a bad request to a page, my sincere apologize. There were a few unforeseen issue’s with time and date formatting that required some database changes that just had to be done along with some tricky select box manipulation. Along with this time and date formatting problems, it all had to be wrapped around a complex form that controlled the billing and different plan selection choices. Wow, glad I finished it.
New E-mail Design for the News Letter
E-mail Marketing News
Anyway, this forced some other changes as well. One change in particular I did not realize until just recently was the news letter being sent out. the HTML version and the inbox version were error prone because of time and date formatting problems. So another apology is in order. Now since the process of updating was taking place for the news letter, I figured what the heck why not just update the entire kit and caboodle.
So without further a do, magically appears a newly designed news letter. If you have seen or been receiving the old news letter, you are in for a treat. This baby looks great. Was worth the effort and time to revamp it. All known development errors have now been resolved and the new design is much nicer looking. The promise to provide e-books is on the way as well. At the moment the e-book landing page is not completed but will be hopefully this week sometime. Was in a hurry to push out the new news letter. So it was opted to show at least a coming soon page.
Conclusion and Feedback
Now since this post is the first one to go out on the new format we ask for your feedback. Whether it is to about a complaint or just to give props, bring it on… Well it has been another long day but a fruitful one. Hope everyone enjoys the new news letter and special thanks goes out to all our subscribers. Do not hesitate to let everyone know how to find us and sign up for the news letter.
“Long hours, but worth it”.
How to Improve Your NAP for Better Local Placement
NAP Time
Okay, Hopefully you are Awake.
The article is for sure helpful, especially if you are looking to increase your SEO Local presence. Some simple strategies for finding out more about your competition is to just simply locate the competitors on the local 7-Pack listing in the results and copy and past the address in the Google search window with quotes around it; like this:
“Link Worx Seo 2321 E 45th St, Indianapolis, IN (317) 614-7383“
This will produce a ton of results for the company being searched assuming the company you search for has done local SEO work. But something I noticed when using this technique to locate local citations of a business. When using the above method wrapped in quotes, the quotes are stripped off after you navigate away from the first page results. But rest assured, the results are still providing a powerful way to locate critical SEO citations.
Just make sure you use the correct company information for the results and do not worry about the quotes being stripped off. You will get different results if you do not use the correct NAP listing and quotes as listed above. An important part of the NAP is to make sure the address is the same on all of them, as this provides better results and no strength is lost. You will learn more about this farther down, so keep reading.
Local Keyword Triggering
Keyword Niche Triggering
You can locate a competitor through keyword triggering. The closer you are to a downtown areas, the better your local possibility will be on the 7-Pack results. Otherwise you are going to have to do more link building and put more effort into getting that local listing to the top 7-Pack.
Finding the Right Niche
You may be able to locate a niche when using different keywords during your searches. For example, when you search and no local 7-Pack is displayed in the results or a low amount of results in the 7-Pack are produced. You now know the niche because no results or little results are produced. To further add to this, you can use great keyword tools to locate niches and then try those niches in the searches to find out what is triggered for the 7-Pack.
Although the strategy above for finding out what the competitors are doing is great, there are some companies out there that can make it easier to find out what your competitors are up to. A few years ago I come across an article on SEOMoz and saw a company named White Spark. Great place to learning more about your competitors and local citations.
But for the freebie way of doing thing’s from the method above is the way to go if you are running on a tight budget. Although the service provided by White Spark is a not a free service for the most part, it is well worth the money spent.
Geo-Graphical Location
Google Maps
I briefly covered the ideal of business location and proximity to downtown areas. The “centroid” is the way Google identifies the radius from the center focal point starting from the center and going outward. This basically is how Google determines your point of business from the center of downtown. So, the closer you are to downtown the greater chances you will appear in the local 7-Pack search results.
Okay everyone, move your businesses to downtown…
Local Business Listings
There are all kinds of great websites to get your business listed in. You should be able to locate several of these sites by simply doing the searches on your competitors and paying attention to their listings. Of course the higher the quality the better the results. The relevancy is another contributing factor for these citations along with getting those much-needed local reviews. Not only does this provide stronger 7-Pack placement but building your brand reputation is extremely important.
Those local reviews can provide great insight to your customers as well as provide activity the search engines require when new reviews are posted. There are all kinds of ways to obtain reviews for your business, just take your time at it.
For all you drinking and driving people out there, here are you local check points to remember for local placement.
Local Check Points
Keyword Triggering
As for NAP, I am about to find out what happens to local listings when you go through and update the entire address to a new one. Have been doing it slowly over time to try to keep it natural looking, but limited data at this point to confirm any negative effects. Trying to prevent link churning. Link churning is when you change the anchor text on links. Link churn is allowed but you must do it at a slow pace to look natural.
An example of link churning, about a year ago I went through local business listing’s and the local search engine placements and changed a telephone number for Link Worx Seo. There were some unusual ups and downs to my placements. It was done fairly quickly and believe it was done to fast. These up and down fluctuation’s in the results were probably because of link churning. Not all business listing changes are going to directly affect anchor text, so just pay attention to the listing’s that change your anchor text and browser titles.
Hopefully, this gives you some good in-sight on how to change out your local listing’s or build on your local presence. If you need help working on your local business listing’s, as always just dial or e-mail.
“One more thing, leave a review if you like our helpful information”.
Are you Claiming Your Web Content to Prevent Duplicated Articles?
Claim Web Content
First thought that comes to mind. Try making use of the rel=author attribute. For example: a WP blog allows for authorship as well as sites like BloggerSpot and ArticlesBase.com. From experience it would seem that when sites are joined or for a better term utilized as assets to help the later of the sites, duplicate content does not pose to be a problem when you have the capability to claim the content.
Because of the push for rel=authorship, making sure you are claiming your content no matter what site it is placed on is very important. Because of this, there has been discussion on how helpful articles directories are now a day’s.
Another thought on this as well revolves around the rel=me attribute. If you will look at the example provided by Google. Website’s allow for separate author page profiles that directly link to the article and the article directly links back to the author page profile. This cohesive linking allows for Google to determine you are the author of the content.
So, how Important are Article Directories?
Well this is the tricky part. After some testing and further research, article directories would appear to be more susceptible to duplicate web content issues than earlier day’s. Although from what I can gather from my research, I am at the thought of Google having a cut off point for how many times an article can be posted on other sites before it is considered duplicate web content.
I have placed the same content on the sources mentioned above in the first paragraph and not received any notifications about duplicate web content to this point. Nor have I seen a decrease in the stats. It leads me to believe this is fine because of the rel=authorship has been established and is firmly in place to and from these article sites.
But on the other hand the fact of posting articles in directories is still a service provided by tons of SEO companies it raises the concern of whether these directories are harmful or not. Furthermore, I have posted articles in some of these directories and have seen no loss in the results from doing so. As well as noticing no harmful outcomes from posting to article directories. Secondly, I have never seen any alerts from Google or found these articles to be duplicate web content through CopyScape services.
But one thing to note: CopyScape is only matching a percentage of the words associated with your links beings scanned. So for example a previous article posted on Google+ shows as duplicated content on CopyScape when scanning the url. This is what is odd to me. The fact that the post is from a WP blog and is only a link posted on Google+ and not the content. This of course is the basic free rendering from CopyScape, but at this point I am not placing much faith into CopyScape.
Other than doing some checking with CopyScape, setting up Google Alerts is relatively simple and only takes a few minutes. This is just another one of those little tools in your arsenal that provides some more protection from those dubious web content scrappers and plagiarizer’s. Although I can not think of one right now, there are also places on the web you can find snippets of code that allow a web address to be attached to the content when someone copies it from the pages. There is also another script that allows for a popup message to show when someone tries to copy your content as well. This little script prevents the right clicking from the mouse on your page.
What Constitutes Duplicate Content or Spun Content?
Have played around with spun content from one unique article and four other articles that were generated from it, that were said to be unique. While the articles were spun from one unique article it would appear they are actually still unique for the most part. But I had to improve on the actual writing on each one that was created from the original. I believe this was one of the primary reasons they did not show as duplicated content. Did some extensive editing to each one of those articles. Here are some check points to help you…
If you Have any of the Below, you Were Most Likely hit by Panda…
You Should Properly Cite Articles or Content
Properly citing the article you are pulling the content from is necessary to avoid being penalized. Make use of the canonical method and anything you place on your pages that is not yours, place it inside of block quotes. The block quotes along with the link back to the original source page and canonical usage will prevent the duplicate content issue. Just in-case you did not understand canonical, it is placed in the top of the heading on web pages. Learn more about canonical here…
Although if you are searching for a way to do it quickly you could use that automated software option, but you will regret it eventually. Truth is, there is no real way to do it fast and actually should not be done to fast otherwise it will not look natural. Another reason to stay away from the automated software bundles.
“Leave your thoughts here…”
