By Andrew Gerhart

It is no secret that the search engine optimization industry has its fair share of phony companies that make claims of service and results of the same nature. The majority of the Internet community can identify the characteristics of these companies, their websites, and their claims and slogans, but there is still a considerate amount of people and potential SEO customers that do not know how to spot one of these companies. Below we will identify some of these characteristics and signs that will help you to avoid these companies and in turn avoid losing your money to these companies.

One of the easiest ways to spot a phony search engine optimization company is by their wild claims. Be extremely suspicious of anything that reads, “Guaranteed top 3 results, submission to 40,000 search engines, all for $50 a month.” There are three identifiers in this sentence that are dead giveaways, but some people unfortunately remain to be fooled. The first thing that jumps out at many people is “guaranteed”, and for obvious reasons. As many search engine optimization professionals will willingly tell you, there is no way to guarantee top placements in the search engines and directories because we do not control them. There are other guarantees that can be made like quality of service, increased traffic and rankings, etc., but the search engines have too much control and the search engine landscape shifts too frequently to guarantee top placements. The second part of this sentence that jumps out as a falsehood is “submission to 40,000 search engines”. A fact that is obvious to many, there are quite simply not 40,000 search engines to submit your website to. The fact of the matter is that there are less than 20 search engines and directories that are worth your time for submission. When these companies make claims to 40,000 search engines, they are including Meta Engines or portals, which use results from one of the major search engines like Google or Fast. The third portion of this sentence that should jump out is “all for $50 a month.” A low price such as the $50 example given should be the dead giveaway that this “service” is nothing more than a scam, and not a professional search engine optimization service. These companies can usually justify these low costs by using automated tools, which do more harm than good. A professional service consists of so many things, none of which cost $50 a month.

There are some signs that are not as apparent as the examples given above. One sign that it is not a professional optimization company may be their attempts to hide their optimization techniques and strategies. This does not imply that for a company to be legitimate they must plaster their techniques across their website for all of their competitors to take. Instead, if you are speaking with an optimization company, and they are hesitant, or simply refuse, to divulge their optimization process, there is a good chance that there is no optimization process.

One should always speak with someone at the SEO firm before making any final decisions. One of the most important reasons for speaking with someone at the firm is you need to make sure they have extensive knowledge of the industry, services, and production process. Inquire about different things and listen to their response. If this firm does not express knowledge of the industry and of SEO, then why would you want them to optimize your website?

There are ways to insure that you have made the right decision when selecting a search engine optimization firm. One way to gather the most information from all of the SEO companies is to produce a formal and detailed RFP that is then sent out to all the potential companies. This can be a way to get rid of the companies who make wild claims and do not offer professional services. There are two other surefire ways to stop a bogus company in their tracks: 1) ask to see sample search engine results, and 2) ask to for past and current client references. If the company cannot or will not product sample results achieved, then they should not be trusted. Also, if they do provide sample results, be sure that you are looking at actual search engine results and not Overture or PPC listings, which are normally labeled “sponsored results”. Client references are always a great way to learn more about a company that you are considering, as they can give great feedback, both positive and negative.

As more and more of the business world are coming online, business owners are realizing the potential of online and search engine marketing. The low cost of the Internet and promotion makes it easy for people to setup websites and market their scams through email or the search engines. While the chances of eliminating these scams are low, we can reduce the amount of companies and people that lose their money to these scams by education. Before making any decisions or paying any money, make sure to do your research and ask questions from multiple companies.

By Andrew Gerhart

If a new website project was placed before you, and it was your decision whether or not to launch the site before it had been properly optimized for the search engines, what would your decision be? Would you launch the site, or would you wait? If one was to research the pros and cons online, one would find many sources that advocate waiting to launch a website until it has been completely optimized. Within the current search engine landscape, this is no longer the case. Below we will discuss when it is best to launch a site before optimizing, when this can harm your site, what the ideal situation is, and the pros and cons for each.

If a website has been designed and developed, and is set to be optimized either internally or by an outside SEO firm, the best plan of action currently is to launch the site without optimization in place. Without further explanation, many people will disagree. Let me explain. Currently, one of the largest sources of search engine traffic is Google, for almost every website. If you launch your website when it has been completed but without any optimization in place, Googlebot will most likely crawl your website and index your pages within its next database update. If your website is included within the Google database, this means that Googlebot will be re-crawling your web pages. Once you have your website completely optimized and you upload your new pages, your listings within Google will update at a much faster speed than if you had waited to launch your site. With a site that is already launched, you can expect for the optimized pages to be picked up in the next update. With a site that has not been optimized, you will have to wait at least one more month. Whether your site’s goal is to increase sales, educational, branding, marketing, or any other, this is valuable time wasted.

Launching a completed site before implementing search engine optimization can be beneficial in other search engines as well. Inktomi currently requires you to register your web pages in their Pay-For-Inclusion (PFI) program if you would like to be included in their database, but it is widely known that many sites have been included for free into the database if they are patient. If a website is launched while the optimization work is still in production, this will allow more time for Inktomi’s spider, Slurp, to find your website and increase the chances that your website be included free of charge.

The time between a website’s launch and the time it is re-launched with search engine optimization implemented may also result in the site having a number of external links already established at the time of re-launch. We all know how important link popularity is, especially within today’s search engine algorithms, and the results of optimization efforts may be much higher with external links already established.

There are certainly instances when launching your website prematurely can have serious negative effects on your website’s standings within the search engines. If your website is not completely developed, with all content, images, and pages in place, you should not launch the site. This can have many negative effects, especially within the search engines and directories.

There is the chance that your website without optimization implemented will receive horrible placement within Google and other search engines that index the site without payment. Google or another search engine may not find enough content, keywords, optimized Title tags, or another variable that the algorithm calls for. You may find that your site is ranking on the 16th page of the results within Google and AllTheWeb (two of the last standing large non- monetary search engines). If this happens to you, don’t worry! While this may not help your search engine traffic or increases in link popularity, the frequency of search engine spidering and database refreshes will insure that your optimization changes will be picked up quickly and your pages will crawl from the depths of the search engine results pages (SERPs).

If your website does not have a search engine friendly navigation structure or linking structure, a visiting search engine spider or robot may not be able to find and index all of the pages of your website. A few that will hinder search engine indexing are navigations comprised of JavaScript links, Flash, enclosed in frames, and image maps. (Note: currently Google and Fast will follow Flash links)

Is there an ideal situation when launching a website? Yes, there is an ideal solution to this type of situation that will produce optimal results. When the website design agency is still producing the website, the search engine optimization firm should begin producing the Title, Meta, and ALT tags for each page of the website. The SEO firm should send these tags to the website design agency to implement into the site before the website is launched. While the website is still being designed, the SEO firm should begin to seek out external links for the site. Once the website has been launched and handed over the SEO firm for production, the website will have optimized some of tags that the search engines are looking for, and some external links will be established. This will hopefully result in the site being positioned decently and the search engine robots to return to the website, which means the SEO changes will be picked up quickly after the re-launch.

By Andrew Gerhart

As Internet users, marketers, and the general public become more educated as to the ways of the Internet, the search engine optimization and marketing industries have been slowly coming out of the dark. Many people are becoming more and more knowledgeable of SEO, but do not know what the process entails and what they should expect for results. Should you expect your 50 page website to increase its website traffic from 5,000 to 50,000 visitor sessions a month post-optimization?

While it is very difficult to pinpoint the results a given campaign will achieve, the old saying “You get back what you put in” applies to the optimization of any website. We will discuss below exactly what this means, and how it will affect the results you see from your search engine optimization campaign.

So, your boss came into the room and said, “What can we do to improve our visibility on the Internet? We need to increase our traffic and rankings within the search engines!” Being the educated person that you are, you contact and hire a search engine optimization company to take on this task. Below are the three different levels of results that you can expect and the reasoning behind each.

How to Achieve the Bare Minimum Results
Here are instructions on how to yield the minimum results from your search engine optimization campaign. Your search engine optimization company will want to make many changes to your website. They may want to change the website structure, navigation, ALT tags, Title tags, META tags, link titles, page copy, and much more. If you do not allow the SEO firm complete freedom or website changes, within reason, you may be limiting the results your website can achieve.

A professional SEO firm will begin the campaign with a keyword research phase, where they will research and refine a keyword list that will be used to optimize your website. While a good SEO firm will not attempt to optimize the existing website for keywords that do not appear within the current copy, they may make suggestions for additional keywords that could be targeted and could potentially yield more targeted traffic. If you do not allow your SEO firm to develop additional web pages and supporting content to target these additional keywords, you may be limiting the results your website can achieve.

There are other factors that may limit the results that your website and optimization campaign will achieve. One factor is the allotted budget for pay- for-inclusion (PFI) programs and directory registration fees. If you do not allot any money to be included in the PFI programs of Inktomi, Fast, and Ask/ Teoma, or for the registration fees at Yahoo! or LookSmart, you may be limiting the results that your website can achieve.

How to Achieve Average Results
Not impressed by the bare minimum results? Here’s how to achieve average results with your search engine optimization campaign. The results you will achieve are by no means bad, but at the same time are not the optimal results.

Just as with the process described above, you allow your SEO firm to make adjustments and revisions to the existing pages, but you allow the company complete freedom to make necessary changes that will help the website rank well for the target keywords as defined in the keyword research phase. The SEO firm will be allowed to make changes to the existing web pages, which may include changes to the navigation, web page structure, ALT tags, META tags, Title tags, link titles, page copy, and more. Allowing your SEO firm to make these changes to the existing pages will allow the firm to effectively target the keywords.

Just as within the process mentioned above, only average results will be achieved if your SEO firm is limited to working within the existing pages of your website, with no freedom to develop web pages and supporting content to target additional keywords as defined in the keyword research phase. By not allowing this production, you may be limiting the results your website can achieve.

If your budget allots some money for PFI programs and directory registrations, your results may increase but still may not be the best possible results. If your budget is limited for PFI programs and directory registrations you will have to decide what pages to submit, what PFI programs to join, and what directories to register your website with. Instead of submitting all of your web pages that have potential for rankings and increasing traffic, you may have to choose 5 or 10 to submit. Instead of submitting your web pages to the PFI programs of Inktomi, Fast PartnerSite, Ask/Teoma, and InfoSpider, you may have to choose one or two of the programs to join. On the same token, you may or not have money left over to register your website in Yahoo!, LookSmart, or another popular directory that has the potential to drive targeted traffic to your website.

How to Achieve Above Average Results
Still not satisfied with the expected results from your campaign? Here’s how to achieve the optimal results from your search engine optimization campaign. Allow your SEO firm complete freedom with making changes and adjustments to existing web pages of the site, just as described in the process directly above.

Instead of limiting your SEO firm to working within the confines of your existing web pages and the supporting keywords, you can achieve greater results by working with your SEO firm to develop new web pages, website sections, and quality supporting content for the targeting of additional keywords. For example, you may be effectively targeting “technology colleges”, but you may be missing out on targeted traffic from the keywords “technology training”, “computer training”, “information technology colleges”, “IT schools”, etc.

Through expanding and diversifying your keyword list, you can expose your site to increases in traffic, rankings and targeted visibility. Additionally, you will have strengthened your website’s position in the search engines. If you are limited to a small number of keywords, than your website traffic becomes at risk of losing significant traffic when a few keyword positions are lost. If your keyword list is more diversified, small slips in rankings can happen without creating a major setback.

A budget that fully supports registration of all web pages with PFI programs, as well as all directory registrations, will help to achieve premium results from your search engine optimization campaign. This may require planning your budget to allot for all web pages that have potential to rank well and drive traffic to be included in all valuable PFI programs. Make sure to research and read the current search engine news to be certain which PFI programs are of value and will yield a return on investment. This budget should also allot money for an annual Yahoo! Directory listing, a LookSmart listing, as well as any other directory listings that is of current value. As mentioned with the PFI programs above, read the current search engine news and research to determine which directories are of current value.

By Andrew Gerhart

As Google continues to reign as the top search engine referral source, we all continue to check our PageRank (Download the Google Toolbar to view a web page’s PageRank score). SEOs and webmasters scramble to increase their PageRank to a respectable score, anything above a 5, as we continue to analyze the workings of Google’s PageRank calculation and its weight within the ranking algorithm. It is not a mystery that PageRank has a fairly large role in Google’s ranking, but how much weight? Are there other variables that outweigh PageRank? Below we will discuss how much weight is given to PageRank, if PageRank alone is enough to rank, and more.

The Google algorithm takes many things into account when ranking web pages. Some of the variables for ranking in Google are:

• Page Title
• Link text
• PageRank
• Heading Tags
• ALT Tags
• Domain names
• Filenames
• Directory names
• Link popularity
• Keyword density

The weight that PageRank is assigned within Google’s algorithm has always been debated, and will continue to be as the algorithm changes from month to month. Google does not stick with one algorithm like other search engines. Instead, Google switches between a few different algorithms from month to month.

One of the main reasons that the weight assigned to PageRank is debated is because it is not uncommon to see a website with a lower PageRank outranking a website with a higher PageRank. When we see this, it means three things: 1) PageRank is not the most important factor in Google’s rankings algorithm, 2) a properly optimized website with an average PageRank can outrank a non-optimized website with a high PageRank, and 3) the on-page variables play a larger role in Google ranking than most tend to think.

We have seen evidence of web pages with a PageRank of 4 and 5 ranking higher than web pages with a PageRank of 8. The website with the PageRank of 5 was highly optimized and utilized all of the variables that Google takes into account when calculating rank. The website with a PageRank of 8, although carrying some of the SEO basics, was not highly optimized.

This is what happens to many corporate websites. The website ends up being awarded a high PageRank as a result of the high amount of websites linking to them, but they end up being outranked as a result of the lack of search engine optimization. When a website has a PageRank of 8 or above, it will not take a high level of optimization to obtain top rankings within Google.

PageRank is not the end-all-be-all of ranking within Google. One of the reasons is that PageRank is easily manipulated. For example, recently we are seeing companies selling links from websites with high PageRank. For this reason and others we realize that the PageRank calculation is not perfect. Therefore, Google cannot rely on a flawed concept for their algorithm - having a website’s score play a role in its ranking is fine, but the score should not be the basis of this calculation.

If you design or optimize your website properly, remembering all of the on-page variables and criteria, you can set yourself up for success. Once you have completed this task and your site has entered the ranks, you will realize if you need to increase your PageRank to battle in Google’s search engine results pages.

PageRank is part of Google’s method of ranking web pages. Google explains it best at their web site:

“PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.“”

It is important to remember that PageRank is but one factor Google uses to determine the rank of a web page in the search results. This is why you can find pages with a lower PageRank listed above pages with a higher PageRank. Google also factors in the content of the page and the pages linking to it.

Don’t become overly concerned about your PageRank. Focus instead on properly building a high quality site with loads of great content that serves your visitors well. If you do this, improved PageRank will follow naturally.

How Do I Find The PageRank of a Web Page?One way to get a general idea of your PageRank is to download the Google toolbar. This is a search tool bar that works with Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5 or later browsers. Included with the search tool is a small graphic display that shows Google’s ranking of a page on a 0 to 10 scale - 10 being the best.