Why was this site created?

I created this site to prove my company's competency and theories in the field of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), to de-myth rumors about our industry and to help small/mid/large size companies choose a company to work with. By the way, the rumors mentioned below are not the only ones that exist but the ones that I encounter most during sales calls.

There's so much free information on the web about SEO. However, most of the information is redundant. Outsiders ask the exact same questions that have been answered a million times. I'm surprised Google hasn't created a "Q&A" section for SEO and just put an end to the repeated content on the net about SEO. That would help the public, seo companies, and business owners keep up with REAL updates, things that are REALLY changing in the business.

Please keep in mind, I'm writing this myself and will not have it reviewed, proof read or adjusted in any way shape or form. I believe the search engine will appreciate the relevancy without perfect gramm(ar) and rank this website because it is useful to those searching the topic. I'm not an English major and I'm not a skilled writer.

What is SEO?

I'm stealing this straight from Wikipedia "Seo, sometimes romanized Suh or So, is a common Korean family name". Yeah, that's not the SEO we're discussing here. There are a few definitions but this is my favorite

"This is a process to improve a website to promote key messages and making it more relevant to people surfing the internet."

In my opinion, that is the most accurate, however, not perfect, to me at least. My definition would be –

"SEO is currently a 2 step process that involves changing web code and content to help the search engine understand what your site's information is useful for and through other websites linking to you to show your information is popular, relevant and useful." THAT'S IT. NOTHING MORE. NOTHING LESS!

Notice I did not say "by building links". Also, I did not mention "traffic" or "visitors". SEO, by itself is a process used to show the search engine that your website and its content is useful and should be placed in their results/index. We all know the objective is to gain more visitors thus gaining more business but I point this out to help business owners understand that SEO Companies are responsible for helping you make your business more relevant through the SEO process, not to control demand for your product, not to control how many people are searching for your product and not to control how many people land on your website. There is a direct correlation obviously between how good someone is at SEO (big picture) and how many people end up visiting your site, to some degree.

It's my opinion that Google does not want you building links yourself by way of payment or barter. Google wants others to link to you because they found your information relevant, regardless of page rank (green bar on the Google toolbar). Deliberate link building, I BELIEVE, is found to be "manipulative" by Google. They want it to happen "naturally" or "organically" I believe that is why it is called what it is called, "ORGANIC/NATURAL OPTIMIZATION". By putting any effort into the process or directly manipulating where you link from (i.e buying the links), you are not REALLY organically/naturally the most RELEVANT or USEFUL website because you had a hand in directly manipulating links in an EFFORT to gain better rankings within the results.

Google's job is to present RELEVANT, USEFUL websites with RELEVANT, USEFUL content to the person searching on the engine. You're job is to make your site RELEVANT and USEFUL by changing code/content on your website and by making sure others link to you because your website is RELEVANT and USEFUL. Google, the machine, is a robot, not a human. It uses a variety (thousands in theory) of elements of your website and the links that point to your website to understand how relevant or useful your website and content is relative to any other website it could present during a search query.

And I digress. The point is, all SEO really is, changing code on your website and having links point to your website. I'm sure most would argue there are millions of ideas that could be presented during both of those stages but my goal is to educate on a high level, not get into changing alt tags, using deep links, etc… because I believe you could have a completely BLANK page and still rank high on Google. That's because I believe Google places more weight and emphasis on LINKS that point to your website than the stuff/code on your website. Let's not deviate and start discussing types of links, link farms, porn links, etc… because my goal is not to educate on what links may be, in THEORY bad or good. If you understand Google's job, there should be no question as to who or how to change your website code or build links however you deem fit.

"Google's job is to present RELEVANT, USEFUL websites with RELEVANT, USEFUL content to the person searching on the engine. You're job is to make your site RELEVANT and USEFUL by changing code/content on your website and by making sure others link to you because your website is RELEVANT and USEFUL."

How we believe Google ranks websites

and... How can YOU rank high on Google

We BELIEVE Google has a very logical ranking system.

Notice I said "how we believe. . ." because we aren't 100% sure other than what Google Webmaster Guidelines and historical data tells us. Google has not published a roadmap of their algorithm and we do NOT manually or DIRECTLY manipulate websites rankings in the search engine results. We perform the activities that we BELIEVE based only on historical data and previous results will give your website the best opportunity to rank as high as possible.

I already touched on this topic above but will recap here. We believe Google ranks websites based on how RELEVANT and USEFUL it finds your website CODE/CONTENT and by the links that point to you from other websites that also find your website to be RELEVANT and USEFUL. That's it!

But yes, there are things in "THEORY" we believe you can do on a more granular level to build more and better rankings (building pages for keywords, alt tags, short titles, deep links, etc…) but we're just sticking to how Google Ranks a site, what the search engine's job really is and what you should expect from your SEO Company. If you understand the search engine's job, you'll likely build a website OR pages of a website that tell the search engine about all of your products/services and I believe that's enough to get you ranked well.

MYTH #1: SEO is constantly evolving and changing

I BELIEVE this is BS. When I had to sell SEO for other companies many years back, I would tell potential customers that SEO is a changing, evolving business and they need us to stay on top of it for them. It makes them feel like they need an expert to stay abreast of the latest SEO techniques. Let me tell you what I recall changing over the last 10 years.

• When SEO was born, you could rank well by changing meta data and putting words on your website.
• Then, you had to start building links to get good rankings, specifically on Google

I'd like to add to this list so please do email me with what extraordinary, business altering, evolutionary "ranking factors or changes in techniques" that the search engines have undergone over the last decade. Please do not email me about the use of a pipe in the title tag, alt tags, deep links, etc… because I've seen websites that do not use any SEO, have flash, a site that is nothing more than a big image or even a blank page that ranks just fine on Google because of the links they've naturally (cough, cough….) acquired.

MYTH #2: ADD content and CHANGE content constantly -- its better!

Let me bust this thing wide open. This spread like a virus "you should change your content frequently and add new content whenever possible because it will improve your rankings". In the context of: will adding or changing content have a direct impact on keywords I'm targeting on OTHER pages? -- the answer is absolutely not. To clarify, if your homepage theme is "Chocolate Candy", changing content on that page daily will not move you up. Furthermore, I BELIEVE adding NEW content will have no direct impact on the homepage keywords and your positioning for those keywords. However, I do BELIEVE there are strategies such as deep linking that MAY improve your positioning for the keywords on the homepage, but not significantly and it will not be the reason you have top 10 placement.

To avoid any other potential confusion, adding content to your website MAY help you produce more positions and more traffic for additional keywords but has very "little to no" relation to the keywords you target on other pages of your website.

Guarantees -- There are none

I often have potential clients tell me that other companies offer a guarantee so we should too. We do offer a guarantee, sort of. We guarantee that we rank well. We guarantee that our clients rank well. We guarantee to perform the exact same activities/services on their website that we performed on our own and on our clients. Using logic, that's a pretty good guarantee.

That said, we do not work for Google, we do not have access to Google's library or index and we do not call them and tell them to rank you when you use our services. The only entity that can make a guarantee, I BELIEVE, is Google (or the respective search engine).

Does that make sense?

The process of retaining a SEO Company or consultant is similar to retaining a lawyer. The lawyer you retain may be an EXPERT in the field, may have won 100/100 cases he takes on and may have done a great job in the past but past performance does not guarantee a future result. That lawyer may go to court, present your case like he's done 100 times, may know the law inside and out but the judge may be in a bad mood and there's ALWAYS a chance you'll lose the case.

How to choose a SEO Company or SEO Consultant

There's no right answer here. I'm sure there are many wrong ones though. Here is what I BELIEVE:

1. Search on Google. If the SEO COMPANY or SEO CONSULTANT ranks high, at the very least he is competent to some degree in his field and that will give you a better "chance" to work with someone that will get you the results you desire.
2. Ask for examples of clients and results. Get a list of their clients and search on Google for their client's keywords. Make sure their clients rank high.
3. Google the SEO COMPANIES business name. I BELIEVE this is important. If others have been scammed, you'll likely find some information about it on Google.
4. Compare pricing. Compare pricing of the companies and their packages. I'm not sure comparing packages should really matter to you. The desired result does not change package to package. You're still after the same thing.

I wouldn't even bother asking for references. Who is actually going to give you a reference that is unhappy with their product or service? It's a waste of time, in my humble opinion.

Regarding pricing, I believe a company or individual can provide competitive rates without loss of quality. It depends on their business model, the resources they require to run their operation and their process. You'll probably find a smaller company charges less because they have less employees, less computers, less lights to keep on, less expenses and less resources in general, resulting in the "ability" to charge less. . . although they may actually charge more.

I might also ask the SEO Company/Consultant how they evaluate ROI (return on investment). I hate to even present this question because I am a firm believer that the results = ranking improvements and NOTHING more (when speaking on SEO specifically, not a combination of services). I might even argue that ROI could be how RELEVANT or USEFUL that company/consultant made your website relative to your offering over ranking improvements.

SEO -- The technicals (changing code & building links)

1) CHANGING THE CODE

I BELIEVE the main elements of code that should be adjusted on ALL of your webpages are

• Meta Tags (title, description and keywords) in that order
• Navigation/Text of the navigation
• H1/H2 Tag usage
• Content

There's logic to this. Title tags and description tags are shown in the search results. The navigation of your website helps the visitor find what they're looking for. H1/H2 tags are "heading" tags that are useful for helping the visitor understand what topic they are reading about. The content is the content, pretty self-explanatory.

But now really consider the items above. Doesn't it seem more logical now the process of "optimization"? It took me nearly a full year to stop and consider what the phrase "Search Engine Optimization" meant. It's like reading a book. All of those elements would seem extremely useful in creating a RELEVANT, USEFUL book. Therein lies the same logic I BELIEVE Google uses to rank a site. I don't believe in tricks or magic that others may claim to have to get your site ranked FAST.

[RISKY] I BELIEVE you could have a blank page and still rank high for competitive keywords which may not seem logical but is a result of Google placing great weight on links pointing to your website.

As an aside, we use the Google Keyword Research Tool for our SEO services. This tool is not just useful for picking keywords to put on your site but to gauge the demand for your particular offering. I'm trying to avoid being too specific on the process.

Here is a link to the Google Keyword Research Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

2) BUILDING THE LINKS

I BELIEVE our company have a great process for building links. All I'm going to say is I BELIEVE Google does not want you directly manipulating where you are linked from. They want others to link to you because they find your website/content to be RELEVANT and USEFUL. However, it's transparent that SEO individuals make a living by manipulating all SEO factors including links and so I will make the suggestion to find websites RELEVANT, even if just in a technical way, to yours, and reach out to them to see if they will link to you.

In the end, if you build a RELEVANT, USEFUL website, I BELIEVE Google believes people will naturally link to you, thus, in theory, improving your rankings (LOGICAL).

Here are the items we believe are important regarding link technical details in no particular order:

• The registrar information of the link
• The server details of the link
• The ip address (and variation) of the link
• The content surrounding the link, if any
• Up to date Page Rank # of the page you receive the link from (fast metric to measure how much authority a site has, regardless of theme)
• The number of links that point to your website
• The number of pages on any individual site that links to your website AND the pages the links point to
• The link TEXT and what it tells the search engine about your website and/or the page of your website the link points to (in terms of RELEVANCY AND USEFULNESS) does the link text tell the search engine the page on your website is pointing to is relevant about a particular offering/product/service? I BELIEVE it should.

Here are two recommended link building strategies to get you started on your way

1. Audit your competitors. Type in the keywords you want to rank for and note the first three websites that show up. Use: https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/. Input your competitors URL, click INBOUND LINKS and then choose EXCEPT FROM THIS DOMAIN from the dropdown. This will allow you to see all links from other websites that point to your competitors. You can manually reach out and request these websites link to you as well.
2. Generate a list of relevant keywords. Make a list of keywords that are related to your business. Search on Google, Yahoo & MSN for each keyword and manually reach out to all of the websites listed on the first 5-10 pages. Request that they link back to you.

Myth of "You NEED SMO - Social Marketing Optimization for SEO"

Companies sell SMO as something that will improve SEO/rankings. That's not always true. Not in most cases. The only thing SMO MAY do to help you is create links but because these links are easily manipulated, it is my belief they hold much less weight in the ranking process, naturally. Creating a facebook page will likely not have any DIRECTLY significant impact on your rankings.

[REPEATED THEORY] Remember, creating a facebook page is something you can EASILY directly manipulate and I BELIEVE that is why Google would give it less weight in the ranking process. Same goes for MySpace and all of those social bookmarking services.

However, I do believe social bookmarking links may be OK and have some positive impact on rankings. They are also pretty easy to build.

And Facebook for some businesses may be a great idea a great way to keep in touch with your customers, fast.

Measuring Success

To measure if SEO is working (of course I can always go back to my original argument of success being how relevant or useful your site is) most SEO Companies use a KEYWORD POSITION TRACKER/REPORT. You can search on Google and find dozens, such as the software "Keyword Position Gold". Some have more robust stats but to stay on topic, your goal is likely to make sure you are moving up from the ORIGINAL position before you started the optimization process.

Where was I for the keywords related to my offering?

Where am I now, after several weeks or months for the keywords related to my offering?

THAT'S IT!

By the way, I BELIEVE Google frowns upon automated keyword position updaters for the following reason. The software you use to update your positions has to run a search query on the Google engine. By doing this, it may have a negative impact on the accuracy of adwords reporting to the Google Adwords clients. Every time your report runs, it creates an "impression" for anyone who is using Google's paid search system.

Analytics

The only analytics I believe is useful to measure SEO is what I spoke of above, a keyword position tracker/report. However, if you want to measure the correlation between your positions and how many visitors you receive and subsequently how many visitors turn into customers, I have to recommend Google Analytics over any other analytics system. Omniture is $50,000 per year and Google Analytics is free. They do the same thing. Google Analytics is probably easier to use and does more for all I know.

Closing Statement

I BELIEVE that the only difference between Qualified Impressions and the independent SEO guys, SEO companies and SEO services is, that we have a different, more effective/efficient process or way of or guidelines to 1) changing code/content and 2) having others link to you because your website/content is relevant and useful.

There's much more to SEO but the goal of this site was to prove the competency on our part and de-myth some of the rumors that scare business owners and executives into thinking SEO is difficult. Try packing a parachute into a skydiving parachute container if you think SEO is difficult.

You can rank your website high on Google all by yourself or hire someone but in the end, regardless of the hype, you should now have a decent understanding of how to rank high on Google, without all the technical know-how.

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