Tag Archives: search optimization
Expert SEO - How to Spot Reputable SEO Firms and Avoid the Scams
Posted on 25. Feb, 2009 by admin.
Search engine optimization is one of those unknown fields that has no established standards. Anyone can say they are an SEO or can do SEO work, but that does not mean they have the talent, time or tools to produce any results. There are also programs that claim to help search engine ranking. They do not work either. Period.
An easy way to spot an unknowledgeable SEO or a web designer who poses as an SEO is to ask them if they optimized your site when they designed it. They will answer, “Oh yeah, I optimized it.”
That is equivalent to saying, “Oh yeah, I’ve been working out.” Working out and SEO are never one time events. They are always on-going projects.
SEO SUBMISSION SCAMS
A lot of companies will also call people and tell them that they will submit their sites to 2000 directories, which will build their search engine ranking. It is a form of link campaigning–albeit lopsided and one-dimensional. The problem with these “auto-submissions” is that the directories to which they are submitting have safe-guards in place to reject these kinds of mass submissions. Now, here is the scam: the company has technically done what they promised they would do, SUBMIT your site, even though 99% of those submissions will be rejected and thus be of no use to building a client’s search engine ranking.
SEO KEYWORD SCAMS
Another prevalent scam in the industry is for SEOs to try to gull you into letting them pick the phrases to dominate. For instance, say you are a car dealer and your website is: www. myhondadealer.com
A scam SEO will come to you and say, “We can get you a #1 ranking for ‘Honda Dealer selling used Hondas in small town Nebraska” They can probably do that for you. Unfortunately, none of your potential clients are going to Google and typing in that phrase.
More sophisticated SEOs will come to you and tell you, “I will try to get you the ranking ‘Honda Dealer New Jersey.’” That sounds like a wonderful phrase to dominate, but their data has told them that no legitimate SEOs are going after that phrase; because, again, while it might sound good, very few people are actually typing that in. People may actually ne using either ‘Big City Honda dealer” or ‘Big City, NJ Honda’
What a legitimate SEO will do (like we do here) is to show you the actual data. We will show you the exact numbers of how many people per month are searching for the product or services you offer and what exact keyphrases they are typing in. We won’t go after any of the silly phrases above. We will show you the data AND LET YOU CHOOSE!
BLACK HAT SEO
There are short cuts that can be used to quickly build a ranking. These shortcuts involve “spammy” techniques that are referred to as Black Hat SEO. One of these techniques includes overloading a website with keywords. This works temporarily, but once the Google algorithm figures out what the site is doing, they will banish the site to what is referred to as “the Google sandbox.” This simply means that the site is marked to never be allowed to have a good ranking in the system and you will need to get your shovel out and dig your way out.
SEOs will sometimes do this because it is the easier than doing the work the honest way. In the long run, the hard, honest way is more effective and far more safe, but it does take longer. A few years ago BMW of Germany hired an SEO firm. This SEO firm applied some black hat techniques and Google found out. BMW of Germany was banished by Google and the auto giant spent the next few years and millions of dollars wooing Google to allow them back in to the system. Google finally agreed, but unless you have millions of dollars and the power of a automotive giant, you have to be careful to choose a Reputable automotive SEO Firm.
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Dealer.com Search Marketing Challenge Article
Posted on 12. Dec, 2008 by admin.
I recently followed an article written on a blog site by a popular blogger and SEO consultant regarding the merits of dealer.com and search marketing versus pay per click and search optimization. Many automotive marketing experts do not realize how quickly a blog post or search content can be picked up on the Internet.
The lesson that this blogger was teaching was to try to prove that dealer.com search engine marketing did not spend enough focus on search optimization and spent more efforts on pay per click or SEM. Pure Dealer.com agrees that good SEO can beat PPC any day of the week, and sometimes it takes a long time and some dedicated marketing efforts to win the search engine battle.
Then again, did dealer.com speak too soon when they opened up a public challenge to test the power of search marketing? Dealer.com is a very well respected company that has experience huge growth and obviously is well versed on how to market themselves so I guess that Google will decide who wins this battle.
If you google “dealer.com search marketing” or “dealer.com search engine marketing” we will all know the answers to that question.
Here is the full repost of the article, with recognition to the author and full post here:
Search engine marketing is a great way to generate immediate traffic. What is often overlooked by by car dealers is the real value of a well optimized site and an aggressive SEO campaign. A recent post I did about dealership web traffic I referenced another post from Dealer.com on Drivingsales.com and feel that it was misconstrued based on the replies by Dealer.com.
Pay Per Click advertising has it’s place like for special promotions or a fresh site. However at the end of the day there are so many studies out there that show that SEO provides better value than Seach Engine Marketing or PPC. One of the best explanations was from Hubspot.com.
Their simple study showed that ranking number nine generates the same amout of leads and traffic as the number two paid listing.
From the post at Hubspot:
Here are the key takeaways from the data and the images above:
1) Organic results get 75%+ of the attention. People don’t click on the ads nearly as much as the organic results.
2) The first organic result gets over 25% of all clicks. Within the organic results, the first result gets the most clicks by far - more than double the second result.
3) Within the ads, the first ad also gets the most clicks. But, since you pay per click for the ads, you should care less about volume and more about if the traffic will actually convert and what your cost per lead and cost per sale will be.
4) There are a good number of clicks on all top 10 organic results. Even the last result gets about 3% of people to click on it - this is about the same rate as the second pay per click ad, and unlike the ad, its free!
SEO wins day in and day out. Search engine marketing is an expensive way to drive traffic. Contrary to popular belief SEO can be almost instant and that is the real purpose of this post to show how fast I can get it to rank for certain terms. I bet it will be faster than the time it takes to set up a pay per click campaign. Should see results in minutes not in ages, the term used to denigrate SEO. I took it as a challenge from Dealer.com
I’ll report back with results.
- Published at : 12:45 pm Decemember 12, 2008
- Ranking #1 for : “Dealer.com Challenge - SEO vs Search Engine Marketing” 2:00 pm 12/12/08 < low value but indexed.
- Ranking Number #6 for “dealer.com seo vs search engine marketing” 3:45 pm 12/12/08
- Ranking #1 for “Dealer.com Search Engine Marketing” 7:00 pm 12/12/08
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Automotive Search Optimization
Posted on 08. Dec, 2008 by admin.
Many Automotive Internet marketing companies have shown that Organic search engine optimization is far more reliable in long-term, whereas PPC is reliable for companies who want to achieve top rankings on the natural ranking of organic search engine optimization, which helps to generate more traffic, and more revenues from your dealership web page.
Automotive PPC is emerging as a powerful form of Internet Marketing as Search Engine Optimization can be achieved over a period of time. Search Engine Marketing is a paid service offered for short term solutions. Many successful Car dealers and other automotive Business services are becoming aware of the recent years, and rest are focusing on the long term benefits of going through Organic Search OR SEO.
Automotive Internet Marketing uses both the power of Search Engine Optimization, Search Marketing, and other tools to help get more automotive leads.
Studies have emerged, helping business owners to kickstart their business from Google, yahoo, and other search engines. Search engine optimization is emerging as a new era of Online Business science, which can generate 60% of your traffic alone from search engines like google, and is bound to increase in the coming few years.
In the broader perception it has helped to build several successful automotive business portals online including such Powerhouses as Autotrader or CarsDirect or cars.com.
Search engine optimization is farther categorized into other categories including organic search, blog marketing, and ePress releases. Some would say social networking is a form of Automotive SEO. Organic Search engine optimization depends on major search engines either and the labour of your efforts and automotive search optmization (SEO) experts.
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Automotive Search Engine Marketing - keep it simple
Posted on 04. Dec, 2008 by admin.
Automotive Search Engine Marketing is a complex concept for some, but can be simplified into various components to make it more easily digestible. Here are the two main categories of search engine marketing for automotive dealers. These are not all the variations of it and do not account for services such as automotive blogs, automotive epress releases, car dealer social networking or other automotive marketing ideas.
Automotive Search Marketing
This is also known as pay per click or in some cases Google Adwords. This is in nutshell, paying for placement or online advertising.
Automotive Search Engine Optimization
This is what many dealers call the “free Google listings” or what appears as the search results on a search engine. It is often called Automotive SEO or car dealer search engine placement, or you may ask Google to tell you some “car dealer search engine ideas“.
Marketing your dealership to the search engines is a very important concept but also, and often, involves a good dealer web site design to make sure that the automotive search traffic you receive will vonvert. Your goal is to become your own automotive lead provider through proper automotive search engine optimization and marketing.
If you want a Free Automotive Marketing Analysis contact us and we will review your site, your search optimization visibility and provide you with some great reporting at no charge.
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