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The Hidden Cost Of Cheap SEO & Social Media Labor

The Hidden Cost Of Cheap SEO & Social Media Labor
Fact: All businesses, large or small, want to save money wherever they can. I understand this. I sympathize with this. I know how devastatingly costly it can be to launch, maintain, and grow a business. So why would you trust your website and your online reputation— the very first introduction your customers will have with your business — to an inexperienced amateur or a too-cheap scammer? In life and online, you get what you pay for. Still not buying it? Image Credit: ByronShell via Flickr What Happens When You Try to Take the Cheap Route 1. What You Get: Google Penguin. Google hates link spam. Buying links is the overt way to take the cheap-and-easy route in linkbuilding (and scheming link builders abound), but it’s not the only one. An experienced SEO may have a well-established network of connections to start a linkbuilding campaign, but you’ll pay for those connections. Don’t buy your links. 2. What You Get: Google Panda Cheap, poorly-made content does nothing. 3. What You Get: Errors.

Top SEO Gurus : They Dared to be Different If you don’t know these top SEO Gurus in the land yet, here is a shortlist for you. SEO has slowly and consciously come into our midst. It has proven to be a strong career that anyone could certainly learn, get into and succeed too. If you have an online business, you need to follow these top SEO gurus and learn from them. Do you have to be an internet and technical savvy to understand SEO? 1. Aaron Wall is considered one of the experts in SEO. Mr. 2. Rand Fishkin the force behind SEOMoz. Mr. 3. Matt Cutts has a Ph.D. in computer graphics from the University of Carolina. Mr. 4. Barry Schwartz is the writer/blogger of SEO. Brainy Barry graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of New York. 5. Ann Smarty is the owner of the popular MyBlogGuest and SEOSmarty.com. Ann is from Ukraine and holds a Master’s Degree in English from Harkivs’kij Nacional’nij Universitet im. 6. Michael Gray is the president of Atlas Web Services and has been working in the internet world since 1998. Mr. 7. 8.

Using Social Awareness Streams To Learn What People Care About It wasn’t long ago that knowledge about our world came from newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, and of course, person to person gossip, storytelling and family gatherings. The Internet changed all that. Today, a person wanting to know the latest buzz studies social awareness streams (SAS). In the Just Behave column, we’ve discussed information architecture as it is used for search engine marketing and usability. If you’re only interested in keyword research for page rank purposes, you’re missing out on what people really care about. Social Awareness Streams A recent paper called “Hip and Trendy: Characterizing Emerging Trends on Twitter” calls social awareness streams “a class of communication and information platforms”. We’ve learned to Twitter while watching our favorite TV shows or mourn together the death of famous people. A slew of studies have shown the global impact on information, communication and the media due to popular social networking websites. Detecting Trends

SEO Opportunities Begin Well Before New Website Development Launching a new site, or any major site update, for a large enterprise comes with some unique challenges. A short summary of some of the most common include those listed below. SEO Challenges: New Site Launch Or Major Updates Too many decision makers. The above misinformation deserves its own brief discussion. There are many other types of problems, but you notice that none in my above list have anything to do with the actual execution of the new website project. Ideally, it starts months before. Getting the best result depends on educating the people involved, and getting their incentives aligned properly. In addition to what you see in those two articles, below are two more ideas about speeding up the education process. Show Them Examples Of Failure I wrote about one example of this in my last Enterprise SEO column. As you can see, Pampers and Huggies are far and away the biggest brands in this space but do not rank prominently. Use Your Own Analytics Takeaways For SEO Project Planning

Infographic: The Death Of SEO, Failed Predictions Over The Years SEO has been declared “dead” almost from when it first began, as our post from a few years ago, Is SEO Dead? 1997 Prediction, Meet 2009 Reality, covers. Now, a new infographic is out looking at how SEO has been “dying” over the years. The infographic is from SEO Book and is interesting in that rather than taking a timeline approach, it instead shows examples of various types of people who’ve declared that SEO is dead and why they are, as the infographic puts it, “deluded.” The infographic is below; click to enlarge it: If you want the infographic for yourself, you’ll find it here: Infographic – Is SEO Dead? For our own reasons why SEO will never die, well, see our SEO Is Here To Stay, It Will Never Die post from 2010, which says in part: SEO is about understanding how these search engines get their information and what should be done to gain free traffic from them. People have had search needs since as long as they’ve been thinking.

SEO Techniques that Have Stood The Test Of Time: Part 1 of 11 — WSI Web Systems - Internet Marketing | Central Jersey I came across the article “55 Quick SEO Tips Even Your Mother Would Love” recently and thought it really hit the most important aspects of SEO. Then I saw when it was written – 2008! It amazed me that although Google’s algorithm has changed hundreds of time since then, basic SEO techniques have stayed remarkably consistent. It’s the devious methods of manipulating the results that have caused Google to make so many changes. Readers are still leaving comments which shows how well-written the original post was. 1. OK, so talking about Java script drop-down menus does sound a bit ancient (most new websites use CSS to create menus), but using ALT text for your image links is crucial. 2. “Content is king” has become a cliché, but is still true. 3. Does anyone else visualize a penguin dancing around here? 4. There is not really much more I can say about this one. 5. Look for Part 2 coming soon to your neighborhood!

4 Freeware to Setup Social Networking Website Here are 4 Free Software to setup social networking site. Using these software, you can set up your own social networking site like Facebook, Myspace etc. This comes handy if you want to set up an enterprise social networking website, or social networking site for your school / college, or social networking site for your community. You can control all aspects of such social networking website, including privacy. BoonEx Dolphin Sponsored Links BoonEx Dolphin is a free social networking software package that gives you set of tools to develop your own community and social networking site without spending any penny. If you an organization or event management group, than this web site is just apt for your prospective customers, as you can see your product popularity grow with your web site grow. This feature rich community-building software platform offers you all the software tools you need to build a community site. BuddyPress BuddyPress works on top of WordPress. SocialGo Elgg

Looking for SEO Specialists for Your Business? Few would argue that most businesses can benefit from improving their online presence. Even traditional brick and mortar businesses can benefit by attracting new customers looking for relevant services online. Because of this, the online landscape is becoming more and more competitive, and ranking on the first page of Google’s search results can be extremely hard in certain industries. We’re all busy people, just running the day-to-day operations of our business can take up more time than we have – so it can be difficult to give marketing and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategies the attention they require to be efficient. Handing over your online marketing to an SEO specialist can have great results, but can also be a risky strategy. Because of this, pretty much anyone can call themselves an SEO specialist and claim they can get you to the top of search results. Do you need an agency or a freelancer? Pros of selecting an SEO agency Cons of selecting an SEO agency What to ask them

HTML5 vs. Apps: Why The Debate Matters, And Who Will Win HTML5 is a new technology that allows developers to build rich web-based apps that run on any device via a standard web browser. Many think it will save the web, rendering native platform-dependent apps obsolete. So, which will win? Native apps or HTML5? A recent report from BI Intelligence explains why we think HTML5 will win out, and what an HTML future will look like for consumers, developers, and brands. Access The Full Report By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >> Here's why the Apps-vs-HTML5 debate matters: Distribution: Native apps are distributed through app stores and markets controlled by the owners of the platforms. In full, the special report analyzes: To access BI Intelligence's full report on HTML5, sign up for a free trial subscription here.

Is this the ‘NEW’ SEO? Subscribe to Noble Samurai News and get updates every time we publish a blog article. Register for a free trial of our Market Samurai Keyword Research and SEO software Get my free trial! Following the carnage of Google’s Penguin update and the release of their Disavow tool, I’ve noticed an interesting shift taking place in the SEO community. I must admit, when I hear a new idea for the first time, I usually take it with a grain of salt… BUT – when several people I respect start talking about the SAME idea – that’s when I sit up and take notice. Here’s What Happened… A couple of weeks ago, I watched a ‘Whiteboard Friday’ session by Rand Frishkin over at SEOmoz.com. Rand predicted that over the next 6-12 months there’d be a major shift away from ‘building’ links back towards ‘earning’ links, and suggested a number of cool ways to do this including: Participating in online communities that are active and authentic in a way that people notice you and link to your content organically. Warm Regards,

Bystander Effect - What is the Bystander Effect What is the Bystander Effect? The term bystander effect refers to the phenomenon in which the greater the number of people present, the less likely people are to help a person in distress. When an emergency situation occurs, observers are more likely to take action if there are few or no other witnesses. In a series of classic studies, researchers Bibb Latane and John Darley (1) found that the amount of time it takes the participant to take action and seek help varies depending on how many other observers are in the room. In one experiment, subjects were placed in one of three treatment conditions: alone in a room, with two other participants or with two confederates who pretended to be normal participants. As the participants sat filling out questionnaires, smoke began to fill the room. Example of the Bystander Effect The most frequently cited example of the bystander effect in introductory psychology textbooks is the brutal murder of a young woman named Catherine "Kitty" Genovese.

7 Link Quality Metrics That Matter The classic way that people have determined link value is by using Google PageRank. It is well known that Google doesn't use PageRank as a direct determinant of link value, but it remains convenient and available as a metric, so it's only natural that people continue to use it. If you're using Internet Explorer, you can get this information from the Google Toolbar, and third party tools that use the API can also display it: People often refer to the home page of the linking site when referring to the value of a link: "I have a link from a PageRank 8 site" means that the home page of the site containing the link has a PageRank of 8, though the link can come from any other page on the site. If one is forced to rely on PageRank alone, there is some merit to this as it may communicate something about the level to which a link can be trusted, but clearly you should consider the PageRank of the linking page as well. Google calculates PageRank for a page as soon as it discovers it. TrustRank

How To Use Personas & Scenarios In SEO Keywords keywords keywords. As SEO and search engine advertising professionals, we live in a sea full of keyword phrases. One of our jobs is to come up with keyword lists and apply them to websites. There are a number of free and paid keyword research tools at our disposal. Keyword research tools provide data. However, keyword research tools do not tell me why a web searcher formulated specific queries. A search engine advertiser’s opinion? I do not solely rely on data from keyword research tools when I come up with content, architecture, and optimization strategies. Personas, Scenarios, and Usability Testing According to Kim Goodwin, author of Designing for the Digital Age and a well-known UX (user experience) professional: “A persona is a description of an archetypal user synthesized from a series of interviews with real people. When you perform usability tests on a website, you present the same scenario to each test participant. Search Scenarios

Ramblings About SEO Key Interview Points I really enjoy speaking with Vanessa about search because of her perspective about how to do things. As readers of mine know, I am a fan of the trite old way of doing it – producing a great web site, making it search friendly, and then promoting it well. Vanessa is truly an industry leader in promoting this type of thinking. This is a great interview for you to read if you want to get a strong feeling for the philosophy that drove the Panda algorithm, and the implications of that philosophy going forward. Like any business, Google seeks to maximize its profitability. Motivations of Google Eric Enge: Let's talk about what Panda was from a Google perspective and what they were trying to accomplish rather than the mechanics of what they did. Vanessa Fox: I like that you addressed it that way because many people simply want to know mechanically what they did. This update took many people by surprise and, certainly, there are things to be worked out. Eric Enge: Right.

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