Self Taught SEO | Search Engine Optimization Blog

Writing a press release should not be for the purpose of SEO, but for the purpose of getting the word out about your product, service, or company. Sure, a press release should be optimized for search engines, but the intent for writing a press release should not be higher weighed on the SEO value.

Press releases are a great way to obtain backlinks, but the strength of these backlinks are not strong enough to take the risk of diluting your company message, because you want an extra syndicated (viral) backlink.

Have you ever came across a company putting out a message, but there was not anything happening within the company. It was dry and pretty lame. Normally, the target is the search engine and not the human, it contains good keyword density, but seems someone non-english may have wrote it or a content rewriter software. Anchor text links match the target keywords of the page, pretty well optimized press release, but it’s missing one thing! IT’S TARGET!

Not optimizing for your target audience can be damaging to your business. Press release still to this day are syndicated pretty well and even the worst of press releases receive many hits and views. Press releases are syndicated across the web almost instantaneously, so your press release can appear on thousand, if not millions of websites in a short time. The potential of turning a lead or sale, lies within the content of your press release not the optimization of your press release.

You should of course focus on optimizing your press release for ranking and link juice, so yes include keywords in the press release title, include keywords in the press release description, add a keyword in the body content every 200 words, add keywords to your tags, and add keyword to your images, but do this without losing your message. Talk to your audience and make sure your copy read in a way to entice your audience, not lose your audience.

I would have never believed it if I didn’t hear it from the horses’ mouth myself. It seems Yahoo! is more popular than Google and Google has confirmed this! At least Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool shows Yahoo! as having the most search volume.

Gmail has a new tips section which walks you through the features of Gmail in a fun series of martial arts classes.  Are you a Gmail Ninja?

I never realized all the features and uses for Gmail.  It’s been my favorite email client for the last few years but I rarely use all the available features.  I’m only a white belt!

Buying and selling user accounts may prove to be worthwhile if you can get over the unethical feeling.  Would you purchase someone’s Twitter account for the benefit of gaining their active friends list?  What about a Facebook or MySpace account?  How about a popular forum or discussion board account?  A new service, Assetize.com allows you to do just that.

I personally like the idea, because there is value in ownership of a popular user account, especially if it is highly targeted.  The problem is that you would have to filter and weed through which user accounts are actually value because many would sell profiles just for the sake of making money, without tending to the true value.  Such value includes targeted friends list, active community sharing, positive group participation, etc.

Assetize.com fits well with the business of buying and selling websites.  Because often when you sell a website if the buyer doesn’t take along the other commodities such as user accounts you used to build the website then you are left with many user accounts with inactivity — if you no longer have a need for the niche profiles.  This can be another way to make money from the sale of your online presence.  Check your TwitterValue and see if it’s worth a sale.

Google isn’t looking too sexy these days.  Are you telling me there are no keyword suggestions for a keyword term such as “Sexy Lingerie”?  I’ve never seen Google run out of suggestions for legitimate words.  I’m declaring this one a googlewhack! Even though its a little unorthodox, because it is not Google Search and it did not bring back any results at all.  Being officially googlewhacked on Google search means your query only brought back one suggestion. Okay, so I guess I was Google Zapped!

If clients took the time to understand exactly what goes into an SEO campaign then they would know that it is a lot of time and effort. Once in a while I come across clients who want to set up a commission-based or performance-based only arrangement. I do not have any problems with this type of arrangement, but most clients expect work now pay later services and fail to realize that this actually cost more in the long run (if goals are achieved).

Regardless if it’s commission-based, performance-based, or just traditional SEO services the SEO must be compensated for time and effort and the client must pay any upfront overhead cost, such as pay per click marketing budget, hiring for content writers, purchasing of link placements, etc. These associated cost cannot be overlooked.

Many times clients want to elect someone to run and manage their SEO campaign on a commission or performance-based preference because they’ve been burned in the past. Well, this is no way to protect yourself! Because, if you expect to see results before paying any money then you’ll either be waiting a long time with no results or you’ll rank high for low search volume keyword terms, by shady SEO who are out to only collect your money.

Any self-respecting SEO who understand the business of SEO and who is good at what they do will not take on a long-term project of growing your website for months, day in and day out without any compensation while they have paying clients that they need to also tend to. It just doesn’t make business sense. Clients fail to realize that SEO is an in-demad trade, the clients do not have the upperhand, the SEO does. There are only a handful of SEO who truly understand and know the core business of SEO, therefore the demand is there, but the supply is not.

True Story:

I had a lady call me about SEO. She first mentioned she only had a $200 budget and then she said she was only interested in performance-based services and will only pay when she was #1 for a multitude of keywords.

I politely explained to her, “first, your $200 budget is not enough for a full SEO campaign. $200 is only good if you need grunt work done, such as link building, page optimization, article written, etc. but not for a full SEO campaign where you track and yield results. Secondly, performance-based does not work in that manner. Performance-based means you pay a low retainer fee to start the project, as well as any overhead cost — then we agree upon specific milestones and if those milestones are met throughout the project lifecycle then you pay the amount we agreed upon for reaching each milestone — which in most cases cost more than the retainer fee.”

Needless to say, she took her $200 elsewhere. It always surprises me the lack of knowledge people have about the effort that goes into SEO and ranking websites, because if everyone thought it was so cheap and easy then why are there folks struggling everyday with getting traffic to their website. Why are companies pouring millions of dollars every year on search engine optimization.

Need to knows:

Commission Based – for every sale or lead the SEO is paid an agreed upon percentage of commission. In essence, the client is seeking an affiliate marketer who understands SEO. This is not a traditional SEO role. SEO get traffic to the site and affiliates know how to monetize off that traffic. Clients who are seeking commission based services should setup an in-house affiliate tracking program for their website or setup a third-party affiliate tracking program and track affiliate commissions in this manner.

Performance Based – for every milestone reached (such as achieved high rankings for specific keyword) then a payment is made to compensate the SEO for their efforts. While this may seem like a great solution for not being burned or shelling out any money until ranking is achieved, it is not. Upon going into agreement a retainer fee must be collected at start of project. The client must also pay for any overhead cost associated with the project. Then in addition to all of this the client will be responsible for paying for milestone checkpoints when achieved. If the milestone is not achieved then the client does not pay for any unachieved milestones. Clients who are seeking performance based solutions should understand the fee structure associated with it and understand it is normally a long term strategy.

Clients should understand that SEO is only a partial part of the sales process. It is not the sole component in making a sale. Most SEO campaigns are successful in the sense it does what it suppose to and that is deliver more targeted traffic to your website, if your website fails to make a sale then it is not always the SEO fault or the fault of the marketing campaign, because the traffic is there but something else is causing you not to make sales. Such causes can be the web design, many people tend not to make purchases on sites which are aesthically displeasing — this is because low quality is associated with scams, rip-offs, and schemes. When was the last time you made a purchase on a low quality website?

Additionally, many people do not make purchases on websites which they’ve never visited — it has been proven that people usually do not make a purchase until the third or fourth visit to a website. Therefore, if you do not have a well branded website then you should opt for a SEO brand marketing campaign before all else. Next, are you certain your website development tools and scripts are all functioning properly. Sometimes, someone is unable to make a purchase due to internal site issues which go unreported. You should do dummy run through test to check that your shopping cart software is functioning properly. Could it be the products or services you are offering are not of the best quality or useful for the mass majority of visitors? Maybe your offerings are killing your sales.

There are many reasons why a website does not make a sale, you should not put the blame on your SEO or leave it up to the SEO to figure out your business problems. It’s your business so deal with it! The SEO in many cases has done their job in achieving high rankings for your website, driving more traffic to your website, and increasing online visibility for your website. The SEO is not your end to all and not responsible for your business sales. Hire a business coach if you need help running a business and making your business profitable! Hire an SEO if you need traffic to your website and want to improve search engine rank for your website!

If you have a story or experience which relates then please share. Leave a comment!