Take the headache out of SEO

SEO, link building, website optimisation, article submission, directory submission, blog posting, the list goes on.

How many times have you sat at your PC and thought "OK I'm going to do some SEO for my site"6 hours later, you are still sitting there, your head hurts, your stomach is empty, and you have done nothing.

Search Engine Optimisation is a frustrating time consuming job. You can spend weeks working on SEO for your site, and your rankings are still no where near where you want them to be.

The most frustrating thing about SEO is you cannot really see the results of your efforts. It may take several weeks, or even months, before you see any change in your search engine rankings. So how do you know that what you are doing today, is going to benefit your site 3 months down the line? Well unless you are an SEO expert you don't.

So what is the answer? Well the answer is to outsource your SEO work to someone that specializes in SEO. Would you consider rebuilding the engine on your car? No, you would probably employ a car mechanic to do it for you. So do the same with your SEO.

How do you know which SEO companies are good at SEO, and which are just good at talking? Testimonials are one way. Don't just read the testimonials on their site, as most, if not all of them, are made up. Ask for telephone numbers of their clients and speak to them directly. Or ask them to show you results that they have achieved for their clients. If they will not give you this information just move on to someone who will.

A good SEO company will tell you exactly what they are going to do for you. They will try to explain SEO in a format that you will understand, not try to baffle you with tech speak.

Take SEO Unique for example, they are an SEO company based in London. They believe that the key to their success is customer service. They give their customers free SEO resources to help them understand what SEO is all about. They are also in the process of setting up a free SEO questions and answers section on their site.

Look for SEO companies like SEO Unique. Companies that are not afraid to explain SEO in lay mans terms. If you have a better understanding of what is involved, then you are in a better position to decide what you need. It is then down to the SEO company that you choose, to deliver the results that you are after.

Choosing an SEO company is very a difficult job, there is no doubt about that, but if you take a few of these pointers on board, then you should be better equipped to negotiate the minefield that is SEO.

Submit Your Site To Web Directories For Traffic And SEO

Some people love them, some people hate them, but, submitting your site to web directories can bring your site traffic, and help your sites SEO.

Submitting your site to directories is a time consuming job. There are thousands of directories where you can submit your site, and it would take forever to submit to them all.
Therefore you should only choose established directories, with good page rank and good traffic. Established high page rank directories, are well respected by Google, so getting your site listed there will get your site more Google respect, and higher listings within Google search results.

When submitting, pick the most appropriate category for your site. Google loves relevant links, so this is important. Use a good comprehensive keyword rich description for your site. This will help search engines determine the relevancy of your listing. If you write a good description, you will also have a better chance of getting your site approved, in the case of free directory submissions.

Paid directory submissions are also very good for SEO. Google gives more weight to paid directory submissions, as they are less likely to contain the spam that some of the free directories tend to get. A paid listing on a good directory such as Dirsensei Web directory is worth 20 or 30 free listings in my opinion.

The primary purpose of Dirsensei is to list the best quality family friendly websites available, and their directory is made available to users of all ages. Though they are a premium paid directory, they also welcome non commercial sites and list them accordingly. They prefer to list informative sites, and they are all nicely categorized. They also have a latest links page where you can view the latest sites that have been added to the directory.

If you have the funds available, then paid directories are the way to go, to benefit your SEO and generate the most traffic for your site. Lots of free directories get very little traffic, and have little or no page rank. When you compare those to Dirsensei with a page rank 5, and around 3000 visitors per day, you can see the benefits of a paid directory listing.

There is also the time factor to consider when submitting to directories, you may have to submit to 30 free directories, in order to get the same benefit to your site, that one paid listing may bring.

So whether you decide to go for paid, or free directory submissions, always be sure to spend time on your title and your description, to ensure the most successful outcome of your submission, for traffic and for SEO.

Google Bowling

I have recently been reading quite a few articles regarding Google bowling.

Now for those of you that do not know what Google blowing is, let me explain.

Its basically a process by where you try to get a competitors site dropped from Google, by getting hundreds or thousands of spammy links pointing to the site.

The idea is to make Google think that the site owners are trying to spam their site to the top of the search engines.

Now I have heard of companies that are apparently specialists in this field, charging a fortune to carry out this type of reverse SEO, to get sites dropped from Google. But I personally believe Google bowling is a myth.

Google does drop sites in and out of its index from time to time, but I don't think that you can affect a sites ranking by getting links to it from spammy sites.

This is the way I see it. A site owner has no control over who links to their site. If you get natural links from spammy sites how can you be penalized for it? If your site links to spammy sites, you can get penalized for that, as you do have control over who your site links to.

Google likes links from quality authority sites related to your sites content. Getting links from these sites will see your site listed higher in Google, getting links from spammy sites will not in my opinion get your site dropped, it will just not get your site listed any higher. Google will basically ignore the non relevant spammy links.

So if anyone approaches you and tells you they can get your competitors site dropped from Google by using this so called Google Bowling technique, then take it with a pinch of salt. Apart from the fact that it is highly unethical, its also highly unsuccessful in my opinion.