Feeling lost in the crowd?Are you getting ripped off by your SEO and SEM Provider?hidden links
Have you found yourself paying an exorbitant amount for SEO only to find that the company you've hired to handle your optimization is working for your competition as well? Has this left you feeling lost in the crowd of your fellow competitors?
If you've never considered this, you should. Many SEO and SEM groups will cater to a specific market without regard to their actual clients. From even the most basic perspective, this is counterproductive. If you are trying to get higher in the ranks than your opponent(and they trying to get higher than you), ho wins with you both competing at the same optimization vendor?...
That's Right! The vendor wins twice! With both of you paying for his services, the effective outcome is for both clients to dole out more money and resources than needed and have a virtual stalemate as a result. Unfortunately, this is one of the main reasons people are left with a bitter taste in their mouths about SEO.
I'm writing this post today in response to a SPAM comment left on our site. It read "why not handle your own SEO before telling others about it?'. I did some further research of the IP and found that it was written by an individual upset with the progress we've made with one of his former clients page rank. I can understand that there may be some frustration with a competing group giving better results to his former client, but I don't think he understands why.
At Naper Design, we have chosen to only handle One Customer, Per Industry, Per Location. We have only one Dentist in Naperville that we impart SEO for, There is only on Interior Designer in the Naperville area that we are employed by. Yes, this does limit our clientele, but the reward is worth it. Not only are we relieved of the burden of apposing clients, our portfolio shows a dedicated practice to a satisfied client.
Like all sales, marketing, and business, everything comes down to a simple questions:
Will I provide the best quality service to a long term and valued client, or will I grab a mass of clients I don't care about and give them sub-par results?
When we began Naper Design, it started as a community oriented and group development project. We never knew we were going to make a company out of an organization of people who enjoy working with others. Now that we find ourselves competing with organizations in a higher level, we may decide to perch at the level we have obtained. While that limits our ability at growth, we don't have to become the scoundrels that pit client against client for a financial windfall.
We cannot emphasize enough the need to ensure that your SEO group have your best interest at heart. If you find that you are only paying to the same group as your competition, one of you might wish to move to a different vendor. Otherwise, both of you are likely to lose.
Now that this rambling is complete, I'm quite anxious to see the angered SPAM from my own competitors. I may actually let their post through this time.
Below are seo tips covering the basic seo steps required for your website to get found in the natural search resultshidden linksClimbing your own ladder of SEO Success
The first step when carrying out SEO on your website is to define which keywords or search terms you would like to be found under. We help you with the keyword selection and you approve the final list of search terms you want to target for your seo campaign. Keyword sources generally tend to include search tools such as Google adword keyword checker, overture and obvious keywords relative to your business. Most clients generally tend to already have an idea what they need to target for the SEO campaign and we elaborate further using the seo tools provided by Google.
Keyword selection is imperative for SEO and can often decide how effective your seo promotion will be long term. If the right keywords are targeted you will receive better conversions through your website.
Second seo tip is keyword grouping
Keyword grouping involves an analysis into the keywords which have been agreed you for the SEO package. This SEO process is to define which keywords are to be targeted on certain pages within your website. An old method many SEO companies use is to create a new page targeted for each keyword. Due to Google algorithm changes a more efficient way is to group keyword variations together and target these phrases across one optimized page. This reduces the risk of content repetition across a website which is essential for successful seo promotion. It is important to target key phrases on website pages with a relevant theme. For example if a keyword 'marketing' was optimized on a web page called 'web design', it will be a lot more difficult getting to page one in the organic search for 'marketing'. Try and call the web page a top phrase that variations can be written up in the body of text to compliment the web page name.
Unique content is key for seo
We create unique content based on the agreed keywords for your SEO campaign. The content generated is then placed onto relevant pages on your site. We ensure not to spam the keyword density of the keywords targeted as over optimizing can have an adverse affect on your search engine ranking. Unique content plays an important part in seo as should the content appear anywhere else on the internet Google refer to this as 'mirroring' and could result in no positioning depending on how much content is copied on your website.
SEO tips for a web page layout
There are areas with your web page layout to please the key terms you are targeting that makes your web page layout stronger than if they were not in place.
These areas are titles tags, meta tag descriptions, meta tag keyword placements, alt tags, headers (h1 h2). Ensure you do not repeat yourself page to page when placing in the coding of your web pages. To be stronger than the competition it is essential that every page in your website reads differently. The more specific you are when implementing these seo techniques the easier it is not to repeat yourself.
Backward linking is the seo tip that brings the whole seo process together
Backward links are internal links and external links. Internal linking is favored by the search engine spiders as they know they can trust the source, your own website as opposed to external linking. External links are governed stringently now by Google due to all the link farms used by unethical programmers and the difficulty in governing them. To appear high in the search results is not about budget, it is about what clever seo techniques are implemented for your website. Backward keyword anchor text linking plays a fundamental part in your website appearing on page one in the natural search results.
Website development is key for long term success in the search engines. Using the seo tips provided, you will need to keep adding new web pages, building folder structures around your targeted search terms and linking them together with the key phrases is key for seo to be a success. We explain in an 'easy to understand' way on all requirements. Visit our search engine optimization page to know what you can expect from Naper Design as a client.
In the past week, we have gotten much busier and are happy to announce the birth of a few websites. A new one to the group is for Distinctive Dentistry of Naperville. Their original site was lacking the back-bone needed to build a quality Natural SEO campaign. Seeing this, the teem offered to have us rebuild their site in Wordpress and to adopt directorie listing techniques t boost their site performance. Today the site was ready for personal launch. Much of it was based off of the Epsilon theme, but many changes had to be made to its code. The header had built-in scripting that was highly damaging to SEO value. There were other scripts throughout the php files that had to be either configured or completely replaced. While starting with a basic theme, one should always consider how useful the theme will be to completion. This one proved true to the task and we now have a working project for Dr Magno that we feel comfortable with sharing with our viewers. Please note, there will still be a lot of content changes and minor tweaks as we prepare this site to overtake its neighbors on the Google listings.
hidden links
Enjoy the before and afters:
Today we start our "Free Web Design Competition".
We are asking for submissions through our Contact Page.
hidden links
Basically, we are asking for people to write to us a basic email explaining why your business would be best for us to give a full design and development to. The business with the best reason and most compelling story will be given a full site design including SEO Pack and up to 5 pages and 5 post. The rules are simple:"
No Spamming
Honest Story...
Enjoy!!!!
With millions of competitors vying for the same spot, businesses want to know if it is possible to get top placement using Organic SEO Service.
hidden links
SEO generally refers to “natural” or “organic” SEO—meaning someone looking for a dentist in San Francisco types in “Dentist San Francisco” and finds several listings on the left side of the page. This is considered the most coveted place to be for several reasons:
1. The majority of search engine users (as many as 75% by some estimates) ignores the sponsored ad listings and only trusts the unbiased Organic Search Results.
2. A business listed in the sponsored listings is paying to be there—as much as $5 or $10 or$25 per click—and there is no guarantee those clicks are from legitimate customers.
3. By contrast, a natural result can be clicked on unlimited times by unlimited numbers of users at no cost to the site owner.
4. A high natural ranking means that site is really popular (at least that is the implication) and people like to be part of the most popular anything.
So top natural listings attract 80% of people searching, and cost nothing to be clicked, while sponsored advertisers compete for the remaining 20% and pay for every click—whether the new lead is qualified and ready to buy, or a six year old playing with her mother’s computer. Natural is naturally the place to be.
But how does a business get there?
Begin with these thoughts: "Size Does Matter and Bigger is Not Always Better"
A large company can completely lose track of the small businesses because their eyes are set strongly for taking up large contracts. The larger businesses are also far mre likely to overprice and charge for unneeded services. Pay-Per-Clicks are still more likely in the larger companies than the smaller groups that work local and small businesses. When searching, it is always advisable to choose a local group that doesn't have a load to heavy to handle. If they are overburdened, it's very likely that some of their clients are going to fall through the cracks.
If you have ever tried SEO and gotten poor results, you might conclude it is a waste of time and money to even try. You may have even spent a massive amount of capital on building a site, on;y to realize that the method used was not adequate for your business model. SEO is not the same for every website or business. Many SEO companies tend to try the same tricks for every client, regardless of their individual needs.
Of the thousands of SEO companies, you can bet that not all can really deliver meaningful results. And what is meaningful in a business sense? First page placement on relevant keywords is critical. The majority of users never go to page 3, and of those that do, almost none make it past page 4 or 5. So improvement from page 50 to page 5 might look good on an SEO progress report, but it means almost nothing in increased business results. Page one is the grail, but if promised by a company that is not there themselves, it's likely a scam.
So how does a business owner separate the myth from the grail? When selecting an SEO company here are some key questions to ask:
1. How long have you been in business?
2. What is your guarantee? (Listen for page one is usually a dead giveaway for a scam!)
3. What is the SEO campaign plan for the site?
4. Will you be shown how to improve and maintain your own score after the promotion period?(this one is crucial. Do you wish to be elevated to a point of maintenance, or to be trapped and addicted to the cost of their services?)
Locating an SEO company is easy. Search “(your location)SEO ”. Check the natural results. If the SEO Company is ranked well you know you have one that has been around a while.
On a regular basis, I will be updating this page with the most recent free directories that I've found on the net. I do not believe reciprocal or purchased links do much good with the new format for the Google Algorithm. As a result, I will only be listing directories that are free and have at least a Page Rank of 3. Should you choose to purchase, that would be your choice, but here in Naperville and Chicago, our SEO and Internet Marketing has been conducted in a completely free manner, yet we are quickly overtaking the web design and SEO searches for the area. It is good to consider, why pay for something you can get for free?
This list includes both the site link and the Page Rank of the directory:
Web design is tricky business. Often small things that go unnoticed turn out to be significant in impacting the overall performance of the website and further influencing crucial factors like website traffic, revenue generation and conversion figures.
Here are some factors that are often overlooked but are by no means unimportant and should be taken very seriously.hidden linksMystery Meat Navigation
This is the type of navigation where icons or pictorial buttons are used to represented navigational links. Unlike regular navigation links, they are devoid of text that defines its location. Therefore users are left to wonder the location by themselves. This handicaps the browsing experience because users are often unable to locate the designated look.
Mystery meat navigation require JavaScript and images in order to function. This also bloats the size of web pages and increases their load time. This further hampers the accessibility quotient of the website. Even if you decide to use images for link, make sure you complement them requisite text links as well in order to make the navigation menu accessible and usable. Smooth and flawless browsing experience ensures rich user-experience.
Page Titles
Page titles are the texts that is displayed on the title bars of the web browser. It is the 'title' of the web page and should define the contents of the same. Many web designers make the mistake of writing the website name first followed by the page contents.
Ideally, the title of the content should precede the name of the website in the title bar. This is because Internet users and search engines are able to locate the contents of the website more easily.
Contact Information
Websites are your corporate face on the world wide web. And it is very important to establish your credibility. One of the ways you can ensure this is by letting your audiences know that there is a live presence behind the online presence and providing them a point to get in touch with them. Providing adequate contact information not only grants legitimacy to your online business but also helps your visitors to communicate with you.
Provide your business address, relevant phone numbers and a mailing address. If you are concerned about undue spam, provide a secure contact form on your website.
Site Map
One of the oft-forgotten but extremely important feature of a website. Many web designers forget to include a site map on their website. A site-map lists all the links of all the pages of a website according to the hierarchy and order. A site-map acts as a links page for search engine pages to crawl and also aid estranged users to locate their exact positions on the website and navigate to where they want to go.
Moreover, sitemaps also strengthen the internal linking of a website and provides a defined structure for the same.
Standardized Markup
In order to ensure the proper accessibility and usability of a website, it is very important to maintain a standardized mark-up. Be it using tables for layouts or the proper use of line breaks, just about everything counts for proper markup. Use semantic markup that ensures forward compatibility.
Original Article can be found here
I am grateful to offer this article for repost. While posted originally at webdesign.org three years ago, it offers the best reason to look deeper into the site structure you;d wish developed in advance of the design. Those in Naperville and Chicago should take notice to these suggestions. Thinking of them in advance of a web design can save a lot of money and prevent buyers remorse when the site reaches completion.hidden links
Ever visited a site and wondered "what am I supposed to do?"
Ever got lost in someone else's tangled web?(if not, go to Aurora,Il homepage)
Often, people will create a site loaded with information, and present it in such a way that you have to work the site out before you can do anything with it. While it's necessary to organise your information into a logical structure, remember that people find it hard to comprehend anything but the most simple and obvious structures. You may say "Well, it's pretty obvious isn't it", but that's only because you know your site so well.
Often, I've wandered aimlessly through sites, not knowing how many levels there are to it or how much information there is "out there somewhere" on the site, and without any idea of what I've missed or whether I "took the right turn".
In this example, I've created a hierarchy that organizes a site with recipes, photos and stories. Each of these options is very commonly used on the web, and with any option, the items are all accessible, but what's the best way to organize those items?
One-Tier Site: All the information is on one page.Two-Tier Site: On the main page, there is a link to each of the six items. Three-Tier Site: On the main page, there is a link to a page for each category. These pages may have thumbnails or brief descriptions on them, and have links to the items in that category.
The advantage of a one-tier site is that there are no internal links, and there is no navigation. Everything is right there on that page. This is perfect for sites that have very little information on them, but if you have a site that's not minuscule, this would just create a totally disorganized "Wall of Text".
The two-tier site allows for a fair bit more information, but if you have a large site, it will confront the visitor with an unsightly "Wall of Links".
This site is a three-tier site. I chose that format when I created the site, as it works well. I have a main page, and then you can choose tutorials, articles, resources etc. and then you choose the specific tutorial, article or resource you want. The only problem is that you can't see the third tier from the first page. I sometimes can't remember whether something's a tutorial or an article, and visitors have to choose whether they want a tutorial or a resource without knowing anything about what they will find.
When I get around to redesigning this site, I'll to organise it with a Top-Heavy combined three-tier system, explained below.
Bottom-Heavy System:
This system combines the second and third tiers, with a link to each category on the main page, and multiple items (e.g. stories) on one page. This is perfect for if you have lots of categories, but with not much content in each category. If I tried to set Pegaweb up like this, every tutorial would be on a single "Tutorial Page". It would be about 800k, and about ten miles high. :)
Top-Heavy System:
As long as this doesn't create mass clutter on your main page, this option has all the advantages of two and three tier systems.
The links to each item are on the main page, but are organised into tiers on that page. There will be a fair few links on the main page, but the organisation of the site will be very easy to understand.
This is the system I intend to use when I redesign this site. On the main page, there will be tiers, with links to each individual tutorial, article or resource etc. If you look back up the page, you'll find that this system is very similar to the two-tier system - in effect, it IS a two-tier system.
The moral of the story is - design your websites to be two-tiered. Choose the bottom-heavy or top-heavy systems as necessary. Unless your site is gigantic, it's possible to keep your site two-tiered, especially by using the bottom-heavy system and creating/removing categories, to balance the clutter between your main page and the rest of the site.
This is a reposting of a 2006 article by webdesign.org. The value of this article is still very much a topic of relevance for web design in the Chicago and Naperville areas.
As of this morning, Naper Design is the #1 ranked site for the search term "Naperville SEO". In only 1 month and 12 days, Naper Design has shown the ability to use non-purchased SEO and natural feeds to build site traffic. Now our goal is shifting, to also add a top 25 listing fr Chicago. If anyone thinks that sounds like setting a low goal, please feel free to Google "Chicago SEO". The goal is not only reachable, but we hope to be listed within this ranking by early October. We will also be focusing on increasing our rankings for the search terms "Chicago Web Design", "Naperville Search Engine Optimization" and "Naperville Web Design".hidden links
Please feel free to verify the results. We were listed #1 this morning. As you can see, there is no login to Google, so nothing would be effecting the indexing based on preferences.
This is further proof that large cost, local SEO groups are charging more for their services than the average business should be paying. This is in no small part a benefit of the mapping techniques discussed
here
Ok, I said earlier today that I barely ever re-post another persons work, , but it's not often that I find two incredibly written and informative articles in the same day. I also haven't had the most time to look around for good info in a few days because of work. Either way, I think that this posting deserves a read as well. The suggestions involved are ones that are valuable to know and sometimes we need to focus on more ourselves.hidden links
Links within the posting have been left intact because of their weight and merit.
At the end of the post will be a link back to the author.hidden linksEnjoy
10 Tips to ensure better search engine crawling of your site
Even if you have an amazing site, sometimes you have to wait for ages to get some pages indexed and crawled on Google. Why does this happen ? I’ve found many people complain that after building a great site, and doing the standard chores, waiting so long for the results doesn’t make any sense. Certain things just don’t happen as planned. Like certain pages on a site, doesn’t get indexed and if indexed doesn’t get the right visibility on the search engines. Strange.
I can probably attribute all these problems to a couple of SEO factors. Let me try and explain them below.hidden linkshidden linkshidden links
1. Set a sitemap, with the right priorities
Setting a proper sitemap solves most of the problems often. But don’t take this lightly as we have many automated plugins to do the job. Many a times, the automated plugins need good tweaking to ensure that they have the right settings for your site. I have written several posts about sitemaps, like this one, check it out.
2. Publish articles regularly in a predictable fashion
This is not a way to “control” how often the bots visit you. Google has its own algorithm to find out when it should visit you, but publishing more articles in a regular fashion sure does give Google clues on what your posting frequency is like. Nothing wrong in publishing articles in random, but I’d suggest you keep it pretty much in a predictable fashion so we make the process easy.
3. Link well contextually and often between posts
Cross linking between pages contextually is a great way to make sure that the bots visit all those pages. Contextual links are given more importance probably than any other link on the site, so make use of them.
4. Keep the directory structure simple
If you have a self designed website, make sure you keep the directory structure simple and not too deep. Having more directories to crawl will make the job difficult for the bots. Keep it simple.
5. Block the unnecessary pages with proper SEO techniques
Along with making sure that all the pages are crawled, also make sure that the ones you don’t need to show up in the search results are blocked. (Like the TOS page.) You could use the Meta Noindex and the robots.txt exclusion protocol to get things done.
6. Make the navigation bar simple and accessible
Often I see websites with complex, fancy navigation bar annoying. I mean, it doesn’t have to be fancy to impress your visitors right ? You could use classy CSS styling to get elegant looks and still impress them. The problem with fancy navigation bars are that they often do more harm than good like not allowing proper crawling of the pages linked. There are various techniques you can use to make the navigation bar attractive and still allow smooth crawling, employ them.
7. Practice deep linking
Always practice deep linking (you shouldn’t be having a deep structure in the first place.) if you have a big and deep directory structure. Do not miss out linking to any directory/pages. Use clever linking strategy to link all the directories/categories and pages each other. If possible link to all the main category indexes right from the homepage.
8. Make use of proper anchor texts and internal text links
Linking to pages with images and other elements may also result in poor crawling of those pages. Use proper anchor texts to share the contextual factor among your pages and directories.
9. Keep the URLs simple and easy to remember
Confusing URLs are neither good for Google bots as well as visitors. Google bots love simple, meaningful URLs and visitors love URLs with recall value and those are easy to remember. If you don’t want to screw up things, keep the URLs simple and easy to remember (both for bots and humans). P.S – Google does not have any problems with seemingly confusing or meaningless URLs. They still make out the content from the page, however having meaningful URLs are a definite plus.
10. Use the homepage very well
The homepage as you know is likely to gather the most link juice and importance compared to other pages on the site. (This is just a general observation, but if a page gathers more links to it, it could also get more authority and link juice than the homepage.) Use the homepage well, and add more links to the inner pages from it, so they share the authority.
Essentially, factors like how fast to index, how often to index and how deep to index are decided by the search engines. But to a certain level you can control their crawling speed and frequency. The points above are good pointers to this, hope they helped you.hidden links
In recent years, the claims have been maid that a company can place you on the first page of search engines with a fair amount of ease. If such a day did exist, it has long since passed. Presently, SEO is a complex and time exhausting process. It does not have to be a pained task, but there is a requirement for time to be invested into it. Fortunately, blogs and CMS have become the favored manner of boosting productivity and traffic to ones site.
Becoming connected through other sites on line, along with key words tend to remain the only strong SEO theories that have true power above others. It's not to say that other methods do not work, but I personally try for the notion of free before anything else. A great article on SEO and Site Traffic was written by CNN Money HERE.
There are also various outlets of ideas in boosting SEO and Site Traffic. One group known as HubSpot utilize a website grading tool. The results and tips given after running your domain through this program are quite beneficial to the basic output of ones site. It would be highly suggested to begin small with steps like these. Anyone who's conducted your site build should have included Meta Data, Alt Tags and Key Words for at least your main page. It should be noted, if you have a Flash Based (Not Flash Included) website, you may be hurting on real optimization. Because of its layout, flash player sites have very little if any text to be indexed by search engines. They also take forever to load... Something the average visitor to your site may not be willing to wait through.hidden linkshidden linkshidden links
One posting a week will be geared toward site developement, SEO or Wordpress.
Thank you
Climbing your own ladder of SEO Success
The first step when carrying out SEO on your website is to define which keywords or search terms you would like to be found under. We help you with the keyword selection and you approve the final list of search terms you want to target for your seo campaign. Keyword sources generally tend to include search tools such as Google adword keyword checker, overture and obvious keywords relative to your business. Most clients generally tend to already have an idea what they need to target for the SEO campaign and we elaborate further using the seo tools provided by Google.
Keyword selection is imperative for SEO and can often decide how effective your seo promotion will be long term. If the right keywords are targeted you will receive better conversions through your website.
Second seo tip is keyword grouping
Keyword grouping involves an analysis into the keywords which have been agreed you for the SEO package. This SEO process is to define which keywords are to be targeted on certain pages within your website. An old method many SEO companies use is to create a new page targeted for each keyword. Due to Google algorithm changes a more efficient way is to group keyword variations together and target these phrases across one optimized page. This reduces the risk of content repetition across a website which is essential for successful seo promotion. It is important to target key phrases on website pages with a relevant theme. For example if a keyword 'marketing' was optimized on a web page called 'web design', it will be a lot more difficult getting to page one in the organic search for 'marketing'. Try and call the web page a top phrase that variations can be written up in the body of text to compliment the web page name.
Unique content is key for seo
We create unique content based on the agreed keywords for your SEO campaign. The content generated is then placed onto relevant pages on your site. We ensure not to spam the keyword density of the keywords targeted as over optimizing can have an adverse affect on your search engine ranking. Unique content plays an important part in seo as should the content appear anywhere else on the internet Google refer to this as 'mirroring' and could result in no positioning depending on how much content is copied on your website.
SEO tips for a web page layout
There are areas with your web page layout to please the key terms you are targeting that makes your web page layout stronger than if they were not in place.
These areas are titles tags, meta tag descriptions, meta tag keyword placements, alt tags, headers (h1 h2). Ensure you do not repeat yourself page to page when placing in the coding of your web pages. To be stronger than the competition it is essential that every page in your website reads differently. The more specific you are when implementing these seo techniques the easier it is not to repeat yourself.
Backward linking is the seo tip that brings the whole seo process together
Backward links are internal links and external links. Internal linking is favored by the search engine spiders as they know they can trust the source, your own website as opposed to external linking. External links are governed stringently now by Google due to all the link farms used by unethical programmers and the difficulty in governing them. To appear high in the search results is not about budget, it is about what clever seo techniques are implemented for your website. Backward keyword anchor text linking plays a fundamental part in your website appearing on page one in the natural search results.
Website development is key for long term success in the search engines. Using the seo tips provided, you will need to keep adding new web pages, building folder structures around your targeted search terms and linking them together with the key phrases is key for seo to be a success. We explain in an 'easy to understand' way on all requirements. Visit our search engine optimization page to know what you can expect from Naper Design as a client.
We are asking for submissions through our Contact Page.
Basically, we are asking for people to write to us a basic email explaining why your business would be best for us to give a full design and development to. The business with the best reason and most compelling story will be given a full site design including SEO Pack and up to 5 pages and 5 post. The rules are simple:"
No Spamming
Honest Story...
Enjoy!!!!
know if it is possible to get top placement using Organic SEO Service.
SEO generally refers to “natural” or “organic” SEO—meaning someone looking for a dentist in San Francisco types in “Dentist San Francisco” and finds several listings on the left side of the page. This is considered the most coveted place to be for several reasons:
1. The majority of search engine users (as many as 75% by some estimates) ignores the sponsored ad listings and only trusts the unbiased Organic Search Results.
2. A business listed in the sponsored listings is paying to be there—as much as $5 or $10 or$25 per click—and there is no guarantee those clicks are from legitimate customers.
3. By contrast, a natural result can be clicked on unlimited times by unlimited numbers of users at no cost to the site owner.
4. A high natural ranking means that site is really popular (at least that is the implication) and people like to be part of the most popular anything.
So top natural listings attract 80% of people searching, and cost nothing to be clicked, while sponsored advertisers compete for the remaining 20% and pay for every click—whether the new lead is qualified and ready to buy, or a six year old playing with her mother’s computer. Natural is naturally the place to be.
But how does a business get there?
Begin with these thoughts: "Size Does Matter and Bigger is Not Always Better"
A large company can completely lose track of the small businesses because their eyes are set strongly for taking up large contracts. The larger businesses are also far mre likely to overprice and charge for unneeded services. Pay-Per-Clicks are still more likely in the larger companies than the smaller groups that work local and small businesses. When searching, it is always advisable to choose a local group that doesn't have a load to heavy to handle. If they are overburdened, it's very likely that some of their clients are going to fall through the cracks.
If you have ever tried SEO and gotten poor results, you might conclude it is a waste of time and money to even try. You may have even spent a massive amount of capital on building a site, on;y to realize that the method used was not adequate for your business model. SEO is not the same for every website or business. Many SEO companies tend to try the same tricks for every client, regardless of their individual needs.
Of the thousands of SEO companies, you can bet that not all can really deliver meaningful results. And what is meaningful in a business sense? First page placement on relevant keywords is critical. The majority of users never go to page 3, and of those that do, almost none make it past page 4 or 5. So improvement from page 50 to page 5 might look good on an SEO progress report, but it means almost nothing in increased business results. Page one is the grail, but if promised by a company that is not there themselves, it's likely a scam.
So how does a business owner separate the myth from the grail? When selecting an SEO company here are some key questions to ask:
1. How long have you been in business?
2. What is your guarantee? (Listen for page one is usually a dead giveaway for a scam!)
3. What is the SEO campaign plan for the site?
4. Will you be shown how to improve and maintain your own score after the promotion period?(this one is crucial. Do you wish to be elevated to a point of maintenance, or to be trapped and addicted to the cost of their services?)
Locating an SEO company is easy. Search “(your location)SEO ”. Check the natural results. If the SEO Company is ranked well you know you have one that has been around a while.
free directories that I've found on the net. I do not believe reciprocal or purchased links do much good with the new format for the Google Algorithm. As a result, I will only be listing directories that are free and have at least a Page Rank of 3. Should you choose to purchase, that would be your choice, but here in Naperville and Chicago, our SEO and Internet Marketing has been conducted in a completely free manner, yet we are quickly overtaking the web design and SEO searches for the area. It is good to consider, why pay for something you can get for free?
This list includes both the site link and the Page Rank of the directory:
Here are some factors that are often overlooked but are by no means unimportant and should be taken very seriously.
Mystery Meat Navigation
This is the type of navigation where icons or pictorial buttons are used to represented navigational links. Unlike regular navigation links, they are devoid of text that defines its location. Therefore users are left to wonder the location by themselves. This handicaps the browsing experience because users are often unable to locate the designated look.
Mystery meat navigation require JavaScript and images in order to function. This also bloats the size of web pages and increases their load time. This further hampers the accessibility quotient of the website. Even if you decide to use images for link, make sure you complement them requisite text links as well in order to make the navigation menu accessible and usable. Smooth and flawless browsing experience ensures rich user-experience.
Page Titles
Page titles are the texts that is displayed on the title bars of the web browser. It is the 'title' of the web page and should define the contents of the same. Many web designers make the mistake of writing the website name first followed by the page contents.
Ideally, the title of the content should precede the name of the website in the title bar. This is because Internet users and search engines are able to locate the contents of the website more easily.
Contact Information
Websites are your corporate face on the world wide web. And it is very important to establish your credibility. One of the ways you can ensure this is by letting your audiences know that there is a live presence behind the online presence and providing them a point to get in touch with them. Providing adequate contact information not only grants legitimacy to your online business but also helps your visitors to communicate with you.
Provide your business address, relevant phone numbers and a mailing address. If you are concerned about undue spam, provide a secure contact form on your website.
Site Map
One of the oft-forgotten but extremely important feature of a website. Many web designers forget to include a site map on their website. A site-map lists all the links of all the pages of a website according to the hierarchy and order. A site-map acts as a links page for search engine pages to crawl and also aid estranged users to locate their exact positions on the website and navigate to where they want to go.
Moreover, sitemaps also strengthen the internal linking of a website and provides a defined structure for the same.
Standardized Markup
In order to ensure the proper accessibility and usability of a website, it is very important to maintain a standardized mark-up. Be it using tables for layouts or the proper use of line breaks, just about everything counts for proper markup. Use semantic markup that ensures forward compatibility.
Original Article can be found here
This system combines the second and third tiers, with a link to each category on the main page, and multiple items (e.g. stories) on one page. This is perfect for if you have lots of categories, but with not much content in each category. If I tried to set Pegaweb up like this, every tutorial would be on a single "Tutorial Page". It would be about 800k, and about ten miles high. :)
Top-Heavy System:
As long as this doesn't create mass clutter on your main page, this option has all the advantages of two and three tier systems.
The links to each item are on the main page, but are organised into tiers on that page. There will be a fair few links on the main page, but the organisation of the site will be very easy to understand.
This is the system I intend to use when I redesign this site. On the main page, there will be tiers, with links to each individual tutorial, article or resource etc. If you look back up the page, you'll find that this system is very similar to the two-tier system - in effect, it IS a two-tier system.
The moral of the story is - design your websites to be two-tiered. Choose the bottom-heavy or top-heavy systems as necessary. Unless your site is gigantic, it's possible to keep your site two-tiered, especially by using the bottom-heavy system and creating/removing categories, to balance the clutter between your main page and the rest of the site.
This is a reposting of a 2006 article by webdesign.org. The value of this article is still very much a topic of relevance for web design in the Chicago and Naperville areas.
Please feel free to verify the results. We were listed #1 this morning. As you can see, there is no login to Google, so nothing would be effecting the indexing based on preferences.
This is further proof that large cost, local SEO groups are charging more for their services than the average business should be paying. This is in no small part a benefit of the mapping techniques discussed
here
In recent years, the claims have been maid that a company can place you on the first page of search engines with a fair amount of ease. If such a day did exist, it has long since passed. Presently, SEO is a complex and time exhausting process. It does not have to be a pained task, but there is a requirement for time to be invested into it. Fortunately, blogs and CMS have become the favored manner of boosting productivity and traffic to ones site.
Becoming connected through other sites on line, along with key words tend to remain the only strong SEO theories that have true power above others. It's not to say that other methods do not work, but I personally try for the notion of free before anything else. A great article on SEO and Site Traffic was written by CNN Money
HERE.
There are also various outlets of ideas in boosting SEO and Site Traffic. One group known as
HubSpot utilize a website grading tool. The results and tips given after running your domain through this program are quite beneficial to the basic output of ones site. It would be highly suggested to begin small with steps like these. Anyone who's conducted your site build should have included Meta Data, Alt Tags and Key Words for at least your main page. It should be noted, if you have a Flash Based (Not Flash Included) website, you may be hurting on real optimization. Because of its layout, flash player sites have very little if any text to be indexed by search engines. They also take forever to load... Something the average visitor to your site may not be willing to wait through.
One posting a week will be geared toward site developement, SEO or Wordpress.
Thank you