What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Search Engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of redesigning/re-editing your website (code + content) and promoting your web pages online to rank your website higher on the search engine result pages (SERPs). Once you achieve a higher ranking, your customer traffic, brand and revenues will increase exponentially. The following figure illustrates the SEO ranking results for one of our clients as compared to their competitors:

Note: The search phrase "US Economy Risks" is one of the most valuable online media phrases in 2007-2008 for the business and finance sectors. The client's site ranks among the top 10 of more than 17 Million competing pages from leading global media and universities. (Note: Most recent page count is more than 68 Million). The client ranking is still in the top 10. With the first website referring to the client's article. 

SEO Vs. SEM

What is the difference between search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM)?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a form of paid search engine listing (see the figure above, on the top right section). SEM is an advertising program, in which you bid against your competitors to rent the Advertising space. Depending on your industry and how competitive your market is, the cost can be as high as $50 per click! The more competitive is your market, the higher the advertising rate (lead acquisition cost).

On the other hand, search engine optimization (SEO) is a form of online public relations and technical wizardry, where you are ranked as the most relevant site when potential customers search for a product or a service using related keywords. It is also called natural SEO or Organic SEO. Achieving a higher ranking in such a globally competitive market requires exceptional technology expertise, marketing knowledge and creative skills. The SEO cost is fixed, so after the initial investment is set, all your traffic is free. The best part is that your traffic can grow exponentially (no limit) without having to pay for each click. Your customer base grows while your online marketing budget remains the same. The key challenge for all companies is that SEO technology and online marketing is very difficult to master and the internet websites keeps growing and content keeps changing, so very few companies have the necessary expertise to rank your website higher and maintain its ranking.

Can a company guarantee first place ranking for all my keywords?

No company can guarantee first ranking for all your keywords. Google, MSN, and Yahoo spend tens of millions of dollars to develop and protect their ranking algorithms. A company that advertises such guarantees will face huge trouble with the search engines. Additionally search engines keep changing their algorithms every few months in order to protect against reverse engineering efforts. On the other hand, an expert SEO firm will have enough track record to show consistently higher ranking for their clients (for example top 10 results). In addition to our track record, and client references, Online Marketing Pro offers performance-based SEO services, thus eliminating the risks of overpayment for undelivered results.

What does SEO involves?

As an online marketing strategy for increasing the ranking of your website on search engines, SEO experts consider how search engine algorithms work, how your clients search for relevant products and services, and how your website is designed to meet the search ranking criteria. The SEO  process involves internal and external optimization efforts. Internal optimization takes into consideration the website design, including the content, the code, the navigation structure and many other factors. The external optimization involves the promotion of your website on the Internet to increase your credibility. From our experience a successful ethical SEO project requires the fine tuning of more than a 100 parameters, each with a varying weight. A simple change in one or more parameters in relation to the other parameters can result in altering your ranking significantly.

Advanced SEO efforts involve the analysis of online customer behavior, website content, HTML coding, information architecture, site usability, page presentation, structure, menus, content management systems, meta elements and XML sitemaps, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine fully indexing your site. A SEO project may also involve off-site (external) optimization and promotion efforts like social media optimization, relevant link exchange and ethical back links. Other complementary efforts may include adding unique content to a website, ensuring that the content is easily indexed by search engine robots, or making the site more appealing to users.

Without a doubt, an ethical SEO project requires a combination of technical and marketing genius along with a dedicated online promotion team. Technology or marketing experts alone will not be able provide you with the best results.

How much does a SEO project cost?

The duration and the cost of the SEO project depends on several factors including the number of competing pages, how popular the search phrases are, what is your target geographic market, and who are your competitors.  A SEO project can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $20,000 per month.

Which one is better for my company, SEO or SEM?

The combination of SEM and SEO can be very effective in lead generation and customer acquisition. However, if you have a limited budget or must to choose one over the other, here is one way to make a decision:

Comparison of cost/benefits between SEO and SEM:

• Let's say your monthly online marketing budget is $2,000 and the SEM cost of "pay per click" (PPC) bid is $1. For an SEM budget of $2000, you can expect to have 2000 clicks.

• If your SEO company can guarantee more than 2,000 clicks per month for $2000, then it is better to go with a SEO project. If not, then SEM is a better choice.

In general, if your market is highly competitive, then SEO is a much better investment. 

SEM and The Problem of Click-Fraud

Based on our experience, customers have been more satisfied with SEO than SEM, due to the rising costs of Pay per click (PPC) and the Click-Fraud issue. There are many stories of wasted SEM budgets that generate a lot of clicks but do not deliver any qualified leads or clients. The term "Click-Fraud" describes some unethical SEO marketing firms that use automated software to click on SEM Ads or use some pay-to-surf schemes to have users click on your Ads, although they are not interested in buying from you. This is done to generate income by the advertising websites. Even if there is no financial gain, your competition can use automated software programs to click on your ads to increase your cost. You have to be careful when investing with SEM. We recommend using web analytics to continuously measure the traffic, the conversion rate and ROI whenever you pay for SEM campaigns. Since SEO projects are fixed cost projects, they do not have the same problem as SEM because you do not pay per click.

Pay-for-Performance SEO Projects and Unique IP Addresses

To avoid the Click-Fraud issue altogether, Online Marketing Pro can work with clients to develop a pay-for-performance plan based on the number of unique IP addresses (unique visitors) instead of the number of clicks.

What is Ethical SEO?

Ethical SEO is the practice of designing and promoting your website to rank you higher without misleading or tricking the search engines by using illegitimate techniques such as paid link farms, keyword stuffing or hidden text. Ethical SEO takes more effort and expertise to achieve results, but at the same time it is very difficult to beat (it provides a sustainable competitive advantage). Any webmaster or SEO firm that promises you quick results (or short cuts) for cheap budgets is simply using illegitimate search engine spamming techniques (Blackhat SEO). Such techniques may rank you high for a week or so, but your website will be easily discovered, penalized and possibly even banned from all the search engines. Google, MSN and Yahoo continue to refine their advanced search engine spamming detection algorithms. More recently, Google has allowed other webmasters to report any sites that use paid links or similar unethical SEO techniques. So your competition is on the lookout for any unethical practices by your webmaster or hired SEO firm.  Like all fraudulent schemes, the end result is a loss of time, effort, investment and reputation.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Google Webmaster Ethical Guidelines

The following are extracts, verbatim, from Google's "Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Ethical Guidelines"

"...Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the "Quality Guidelines," which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index or otherwise penalized. If a site has been penalized, it may no longer show up in results on Google.com or on any of Google's partner sites."

"Quality guidelines

These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior, but Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites). It s not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.

If you believe that another site is abusing Google's quality guidelines, please report that site at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport. Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems, so we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. The spam reports we receive are used to create scalable algorithms that recognize and block future spam attempts.

SEO Quality guidelines - basic principles

• Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don t deceive  your users or present different content to search engines than  you display to users, which is commonly referred to as  "cloaking." 
 
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A  good rule of thumb is whether you d feel comfortable explaining  what you ve done to a website that competes with you. Another  useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this  if search engines didn't exist?" 
 
• Don't participate in link schemes  designed to increase  your site s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to  web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own  ranking may be affected adversely by those links. 
 
• Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages,  check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources  and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the  use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or  programmatic queries to Google.
 

SEO Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don't send automated queries to Google.
• Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords.
• Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Don't create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
• Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first."

(c) Online Marketing Pro
Las Vegas, NV, USA
contact(at)onlinemarketingpro.org | tel: (702) 294.2779

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