Bad SEOs? What about Bad SEO Clients?

Author: Lee Rummage

You hear all the time about bad SEOs. Bad SEOs are offering worthless services, failing to deliver on their internet marketing promises, polluting the search engine results?well, a lot of bad things. But how much ever gets said about bad SEOs' spiritual counterparts: bad SEO clients?

As an SEO, I can see things from the other side of the table. You see, despite trying hard to make it clear I'm a good, ethical, results-oriented, smarter marketing, white-hat SEO, I have gotten no end of inquiries from bad prospective SEO clients. Sure, no one who gets cheated is ever entirely to blame, and some cheated businesses are entirely blameless. But the bad SEOs would have too small a market to stay in business if it weren't for almost-as-bad clients.

Shades of Bad SEO Clients

First, let me make clear what I mean by "bad" SEOs. Bad SEOs are bad because they either do unethical things to get e-marketing results, or because they consistently fail to deliver results. A good SEO delivers results and does it without trampling over other people's rights (like submitting automated comments to their websites or trying to get good sites de-indexed).

A bad SEO client, in turn, is someone who will only be satisfied (albeit temporarily) with a bad SEO. Because they refuse to consider ethical web consultants or smarter marketing strategies, they are creating markets for the e-marketing charlatans and black-hats. There are two basic types of bad SEO clients: crooks and fool--oops, I mean, ethically challenged and judgmentally-challenged.

Ethically-Challenged SEO Clients

I haven't gotten so many inquiries asking for out-and-out unethical services. Still, I've been asked about blog-sp@mming software and other shady internet marketing tactics a couple times. A colleague shared this gem with me: "Have you thought about just scanning a book from the library and using it for web content? Or is that too high-risk?" (Seriously, someone asked him this.)

Of course, judging from the amount of comment sp@m and SEO-motivated hacking on the web, there is plenty of demand for this stuff.

Judgmentally-Challenged SEO Clients

A much larger group of bad SEO clients are simply those who insist on putting themselves in the way of fraud. Yes, that's right: I'm blaming the victim. Someone who goes looking for a $5 gold watch can't cry too long if the watch turns out to be fake or hot. With SEO, there are a few more nuances, but it's the same essential idea.

The overwhelming majority of these judgmentally challenged souls are private individuals whose only business is the business-in-a-kit variety. Yet they are also sometimes representatives of actual successful companies. The real businesspeople tend to be quicker to let their misconceptions go (after all, they can afford the real SEO alternatives), but not always. Let's look at some representative types of this group, straight out of my own inbox (note: these are inquiries from prospects, not actual clients).

1. Something-for-(Little More than)-Nothing Clients

Really, I tend to think these people should be in the ethically challenged group, but maybe that's just the remnant of my work ethic making me be mean There are actually two kinds of these clients:

- The ambitious but cheap client: "I'd like to get to the top of Google for the keyword, 'mortgage' so I can turn over $100,000/month in revenue. I can spend up to $1,000."

-The Adsense-is-my-business-plan client: you wouldn't believe the numbers of inquiries I get from people who only plan to make money off Adsense or other on-site advertising?they don't even have a plan for getting repeat traffic, nor do they have content to synergize with the SEO effort. By buying promotional services, they would essentially be buying advertising in order to make money off advertising?you see where that could be a problem?

Another way of looking at it: why wouldn't I just create a site myself and keep all the profit from my efforts? In fact, most SEOs do have their own project sites, which are often monetized by Adsense. The money we could otherwise get from Adsense is one very low baseline for pricing our services. Legitimate SEO clients are typically selling goods or services at a profit rate that works out to ten or more times what they could get from Adsense.

In addition to the greedy, I also see a few other kinds of less common, but still problematic prospective SEO clients:

2.SEO-Starry-Eyed Clients: "Search engine traffic is definitely the best way for me to get pet-sitting clients in my tiny Himalayan village."

3.The Little-Knowledge-Is-a-Dangerous-Thing Client: "Don't tell me about keyword research, content, anchor text, or natural linking strategy, just get me the PageRank (or links, keyword density, or whatever the fad is)."

4.Gullible-and-Not-Letting-Go Client: "I know of at least two services that will submit my site to thousands of search engines for $29.95. If you can't do that, I'll take my business elsewhere."

5.I-Will-Never-Trust-SEO-But-I'll-Consider-It-Anyway Client: "No one can guarantee a good search engine ranking so this is all pointless?I'll just go with that $29.95 search engine submission package someone just emailed me about. At least it's cheap."

In short, if you are going to find good SEO web consultants, you need: 1) realistic expectations; 2) a realistic budget; 3) solid information. Don't expect something for nothing, do a little reading, and it's much less likely you'll fall victim to bad SEOs.

About the author: Lee Rummage is a good SEO and internet marketer. Check out his seo firm website at: http://www.onlinewebconsultants.com

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Top 10 SEO Terms Explained

Author: Ispas Marin
what does SEO means? Translated, SEO means Search Engine Optimisation. Everybody who has a site want's a lot of traffic on it. And the best way to get good targeted traffic is from Search Engines like Google, yahoo or Msn. But For your site to get the great traffic that you've always dreamed it must rank well in search engines. And this is where SEO comes up. SEO means optimizing your site in any legitimate way to have high rankings in the most important search engines.

I will try to give you a top 10 list with the most important terms meet in the SEO business.

1. Anchor Text. The anchor text is very important in SEO. It means the specific text for a hyperlink. Try to use as anchor text your most targeted keywords.

2. Ethical SEO. You can think about Ethical SEO as the opposite to Unethical SEO. It is SEO made without using any illegal activities that might get your site banned in the most important search engines.

3. Inbound links are links that point to your site. This are some kind of votes in your sites favor, from the search engines point of view. The more of these the better, obviously for traffic reasons, but also because they help build link popularity.

4. Keyphrase is a group of keywords.

5. Keyword is a word that is very important for your site. You keywords and keyphrases are the search terms that you want to rank high for.

6. Keyword Analysis means to analyze all the keywords that are related to your site and see which of them have more searches on search engines. You should optimize your site for related keywords that have the highest search rates.

7. The Link popularity is one of the most important thighs when it comes to SEO. Link popularity means the amount of links that point to your site. The link popularity while raise your site in the eyes of the search engines depending on the quality and quantity of the links.

8. META tags are special tags included at the top of a HTML page. Their purpose is to provide extra information about the web page. The most influential tags for search engine ranking are the Keywords tag and the Description tag.

9. Natural Links. SEO can come from natural ways too. This means that a webmaster on the net finds your site likes it and decides that it's quite useful for his visitors and links to it. This kind of links are called natural links and this are one of the most powerful links.

10. PageRank. It's some kind of ranking system invented by Google. The only real problem with PageRank in SEO is that is given much more attention that it deserves. The PageRank can bee seen with the PageRank meter included in the Google toolbar. You can think of it as a tool that measures the popularity of a wesite but only in the eyes of Google. PageRank is important but there are many other factors that are more important in the SEO process for the ranking of a website.

Meet the seo elite and this great seo book visiting this search engine optimization site.

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Gather Your Keywords to Improve Search Engine Positioning

We all do this - when we need to look something up on the Internet, we automatically fire up our favorite search engine. For many web surfers, their home page is already set to Google, Yahoo, or MSN. In that search engine we punch in a few words that relate to the information we need. Almost immediately we are overwhelmed with a batch of results. But how much of these results do we actually read through? The majority of web surfers scan through the first page or two, and perhaps even through page three. If a web site is positioned beyond page three they are basically out of luck. When web surfers punch in keywords related to your products and services, does your site come up within the first few pages of the search results? If it does, you're likely running a very successful business in which visitors come to you without much need to advertise.
Most web site owners haven't built their website with reaching search engine users as one of the site's goals. In this article I will pretend that you own a shopping web site called PrettyDresses.com. Your web site is very lovely, full of pictures of dresses in all the latest styles and trends. Anyone who has found your site is very impressed with the selection of products and beautiful pictures. But you ask yourself, why is your traffic so low? Why isn't anybody finding my site? What can I do? The answer is quite clear and the problem is quite easy to solve.

Almost without thinking, web surfers (more specifically web searchers) will pop open their search engine and type in something like 'evening gown'. As this is their first thought, it should also be yours. Does your web site contain the words and phrases that web searchers are using to find your products and services? Are those words found on your website many, many times, only a few times, or not at all?

On regular intervals search engines crawl the web, reading and collecting information on the sites they come across. As they come across your website, they look for what the most frequently used words are phrases are to determine just what it is that your web site is all about. The better your web site does at effectively using the phrases that are being searched, the higher up the list your web site will be displayed on web searches. If your web site's content does not match what is being searched, it will not be found. It is a simple as that.

It should be clear by now that you should be starting to put together a list of keyword phrases to include within your web site. This list should include your products and services and any related items. There are many people searching for dresses as you are reading these words. Do they all use the exactly same phrases - of course not. Your mission is to discover as many of these phrases as possible and which phrases or words are used most frequently. The list should be prioritized based on which words are used in searches most frequently.

Brainstorm. Sit and think about what your web site is really all about. Close your eyes and picture your website as a store with customers looking around. What are they looking for? What are they asking you for? "Excuse me, I'm looking for a...”

Think about which words relate to your products and services. What is another name for dress - a gown, evening gown, sun-dress, a cute black dress, etc.

Be sure to ask family and friends, and clients and associates. Which phrases or words might they use when looking for your products and services? You are soon to discover a pattern. The most commonly used search terms will start to emerge.

Which keywords do high end competing web sites use, that carry products and services that are similar to yours? Their research may save you some of your own.

Pretend to be different types of customers. Be a customer that knows exactly what they want and jot that down. Also be the customer that is just looking around, or looking for ideas. This second customer may use more generic terms, while the first customer may refer to specific items. What other types of shoppers can you pretend to be? What about a wealthy shopper versus a bargain hunter?

Are some of the words on your list often misspelled? If so make sure to jot down the incorrect spelling as well. Poor spellers also have money to spend.

Are your products or services focused on a specific geographical location? If so, be sure to jot down the neighborhood, quadrant, city, state, and even country. A visitor may not want to drive too far from home and may therefore search for 'dresses in south Dallas'.

Also be sure to include the different variations of your selected keywords - for example: dress and dresses.

Remember to keep a balance between keeping your pages readable by both visitors and search engines. An over-optimized page will include many, many keywords which will improve your positioning with search engines, but may sound like nonsense and unprofessional to a real human visitor. Don’t turn away potential customers after they’ve found you. Some search engines have been known to punish web sites that attempt to trick the system with keyword spamming on their web pages.

Now its time to get to work. Use these ideas in this article to optimize your web site's content. Be sure to include the words and phrases that your potential visitors have in mind. Don't forget about your web site's title and description meta tags, which are only read by search engines. With some hard work and careful analysis you'll be sure to see a lot more traffic in your future.

Article Source: http://www.superfeature.com

Chris Haney is the founder of The Coding Studio (http://www.thecodingstudio.com/), an innovative web design and development company, specializing in web design, web development, graphics, animation, flash and SEO.

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