LUCID Public Relations » SEO Tips

How to hire an SEO company

Dan Sevigny — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:22:45 +0000

SEO means Search Engine Optimization – this is the process of making your site more accessilbe to search engines with the goal of increasing your ranking for certain keywords; Search Engine Optimization experts or SEO firms are the professionals that are employed to do this.

Before you run off and hire the first SEO firm you can find, there are some things you should know. Hiring the right SEO firm is essential, because hiring the wrong individual or company to do SEO for your website could result in penalties or even a ban from Google and other search engines. You need to find an SEO firm/person who knows what they are doing. This article will show you what questions you should ask an SEO company, what qualities a good SEO company has, and how to avoid bad SEO firms and SEO scams.

Questions to ask an SEO Company

This list of questions is based off of Google’s Search Engine Optimization article on the Google Webmaster Tools Help website.

Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?

The potential SEO company or consultant should have at least a few clear SEO success stories. The best answer involves not only verifiable keyword rankings gained for a website, but how those rankings converted into sales or other goals for the client. Ignore any SEO company that tries to impress you with #1 results on Google/Yahoo/Bing for keywords using more than 4 words. Focus on how much traffic they brought to the client and how that traffic generated sales, sign-ups, leads, etc.

Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?

The answer to this should be: YES, YES, YES.

Do you offer any online marketing services or advice to complement your organic search business?

Most legitimate SEO firms should (and do) also offer advice and/or management for pay per click services like Google’s Adsense.

What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?

You want an SEO company that is realistic with you about what you can expect. This is obviously something that is decided on a case-by-case basis, but I think most results can be expected within 6 months. Success can be measured by gain in traffic, increase in website conversions from search engines, or top 3 result presence for specific keywords.

Other good questions to ask an SEO company:

What are your most important SEO techniques?
How long have you been doing SEO?
How can I expect to communicate with you? Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?

Qualities of a good SEO company:

Honest & Transparent – Your SEO company should be able to explain to you in plain English what they are doing for your site (both on-site and off-site) to increase your search based traffic.

Communicative – You should be able to contact your SEO company with questions about your SEO project and they should have time to talk with you no more than 24 hours later. They should also clear any changes to your website with you before making them, ensuring that you understand what they will be doing before they do it.

How to avoid bad SEO companies and SEO scams:

There are literally hundreds of thousands of scams that have sprung up around Search Engine Optimization – in addition to that, there are hundreds of thousands of ‘SEO experts’ who, despite good intentions, just don’t know what they are doing. The field of SEO is not regulated by any official body and has not been (until recently) taught in any schools in the United States – as a result, anyone who knows how to use a computer can jump up and claim: “I’m an SEO Expert!” As an SEO firm we have been contacted numerous times by people who claim to be SEO experts who ask us questions about simple SEO related tasks that any real SEO expert should already know.

So, how do you avoid SEO scams and poor quality SEO imposters? Ask lots of questions when interviewing your potential SEO company (the list above is a good place to start, but also ask some that are more specific to your website).

Also, watch out for any individuals or companies who:

Send unsolicited emails about their services

Guarantee 1st page or 1st place rankings

Don’t have a website

Can’t give you references

Can’t explain their SEO methods

Good luck and remember: take the SEO hiring process slowly and seriously. Find an SEO expert who understands your business, your goals and has an established track record of success to show you.

SEO Help: Website not indexed by Google

Dan Sevigny — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:38:53 +0000

There are many reasons why a website can go unnoticed by Google and other search engines – I will go over the causes and, more importantly, the solutions to this problem.

1) Make sure you have properly attempted to find your website in Google search results
Go to Google and use the site search function – this will show you all of the pages that Google has indexed for the specified domain. Example: site:yourdomain.com – if nothing shows up, also try site:www.yourdomain.com , site:http://yourdomain.com, and http://www.yourdomain.com . The results are not likely to change, but it’s worth trying a few different ways just to be sure.

2) Was your site indexed by Google before?
If this is a new problem for your website, you may have been blacklisted by Google – if this is the case see our article about removing and avoiding Google Penalties

3) Is your site new?
If your site is new, it may take Google and other search engines some time to find it – post some links to your site on popular websites around the web and Google will follow those links to your site soon enough. Also, submit a sitemap to ensure that Google finds all of your pages. See the Google webmaster central article on creating and submitting a sitemap for more information.

4) Website has been around a while, but STILL isn’t indexed:
If your site has been around for more than a month and has still not been found by search engines you either need more inbound links or you have been hit by a penalty. Try getting some links to your website on other sites – if this doesn’t rectify the problem within a week or so, you are almost definitely looking at a blacklist problem. Rectify any violations of Google’s webmaster guidelines and submit a reconsideration request once you have made your site comply.

SEO Tip: Google Penalty – How to Remove or Avoid One

Dan Sevigny — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 05:07:04 +0000

Detecting and diagnosing the presence and cause(s) of a Google penalty or ban can be very difficult, but don’t worry it is always possible. Google provides a very thorough list of Webmaster Guidelines in Google’s Webmaster Central; we will touch on many of the points described there, but to get all of the info I suggest you read that article in full at some point.

Let’s get straight to it – if your website has stopped showing up in search results, has dropped for certain keywords or has experienced a large drop in traffic lately you may be worried that you have been penalized by Google. you may be right, or you may have experienced the drop in rankings for a variety of other reasons (which we will go over at the end of this article).

Has your site been banned by Google?

Double check by performing a site:yourdomain.com search like this one: for LUCID Public Relations. The site search will show you all of your website’s pages that are listed in Google’s search index. If your website doesn’t show up for this search, you have been banned and need to find out why, then submit a reconsideration request with Google (2-3 weeks processing time).

How can you find out if your site has been penalized by Google?

Search for your domain name (not a ‘site: search’ just the domain – example: http://lucidpublicrelations.com) in Google – if it doesn’t show up #1, you have a penalty. Jump to the Webmaster Guidelines List list below to see where you might be violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Next, search for unique page or article names – if your article titles are common, this may not work, but if you have an article or page with a name like “SEO Tip: How to Remove (or better yet, Avoid) a Google Penalty” this should work. For unique names your site should show in the first page of results. If not, Jump to the Webmaster Guidelines List.

Have your dropped off completely for your major keywords or have you dropped from first place/first page to 3rd page or worse? This is probably due to a devaluing of your inbound links by Google. Basically, Google has determined some of your links to be spam, advertisements or the result of SEO work. See the section below on building quality inbound links to avoid penalties like this.

Webmaster Guidelines List: Most Common Penalty Causes:

This list is not an official Google list of the most common Google penalty causes – these are the causes we have noticed from years of SEO work & through our discussions with other SEO experts.

1) Bad Link Building Penalty:

It can sometimes take Google a while to discover bad inbound links. The problem is simple – when Google devalues your inbound links your site loses authority for the keywords that those links helped you with (the keywords used in the Anchor Text or on the page the links pointed to).

Building Good Links:

Content of linking site should be relevant to yours

As a general rule, there should be very few other outbound links on any given page (as a general rule we use 25-30, but even that is a lot, shoot for 5-10 if possible)

Build links consistently, not for volume of links – If you are manually influencing the number of links that are coming in to your site, you want to give Google the impression that these links are being created naturally (through user interest in your content). Natural links will either build or remain consistent over time – avoid situations where you are building a large amount of links then dropping that number off in any given period of time.

2) Recently Changes Effecting Accessibility:

If you made and changes to your site and/or content recently, make sure that search engine bots can still see all of your content – you may have also dropped in ranking just because your content changes have reduced the relevancy of some keywords for your site. Check your website using a LYNX text-only viewer to see what your website looks like to search engines and other bots. If all of your content isn’t visible, you have some accessibility problems that need to be addressed. Make sure that your content is written in text, not in iframes, javascript or image based Flash on your website.

3) Duplicate Content:

Some webmasters have duplicate content problems without even knowing it – any time you have multiple URLS with the same information you are facing a duplicate content problem. Google created a short snippet of code that can solve this problem. In addition to using this code on sub pages, you should use it on your home page so that all versions of your URL point to a single, preferred version.

Example: http//:yoursite.com, http://www.yoursite.com, http//:yoursite.com/index.php, http://www.yoursite.com/index.php should all point to one version (usually http//:yoursite.com or http://www.yoursite.com) as the preferred version. This will clear up any possible confusion Google is having about preferred versions of your content.

See the full list of potential Google Penalty Causes in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines Article

SEO Tip: Google Local Business Center

Dan Sevigny — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:04:17 +0000

Getting listed in Google’s local search results is a great way to get your company increased exposure with a large local audience of potential consumers. Many business owners know how to set up a Google Local listing but very few know how to properly format their listing in order increase it’s prominence on Google maps and in search engine results. By the time you are done reading this, you will know how to properly set up & optimize your Google Local account.

What is a google local business center account?

Google’s Local Business Center is a directory of Businesses that are organized by location and keyword relevancy in Google Maps and in Google search results. Often times, you will see Google’s local business results above organic results in search engine results pages for search terms that include a geographic location (example: Santa Monica Dodge). The image below shows Google local business results on top of organic search results for the term ‘Santa Monica Dodge’.

You can see how important having a local business result can be – after all, even after getting ranked #1 organically, you can still get pushed down several result spots by a large local business listing. It is very important to get listed in these results.

How to set up a local business account:

Go to the Google Local Business Center and add your company to their system. Follow the simple set up instructions and include as much information as possible on your company (store hours, pictures, videos, descriptions, multiple phone numbers, etc) – this will provide search engines with more info on your company to rank you with.

Google Local Business SEO:

There are a number of factors that come into play when Google decides to rank your business in the local search results – these include (but are not limited to):

Using the target city in your business address:

The most successful local business SEO campaigns are actually located in the city that they are attempting to optimize for. This is not to say that you need to move your business, or lie about your location, just that it is a very important (if not the most important) factor in getting ranked in local search results. You can get ranked in the local search results for a city if you are in a city nearby (especially if Google Local has a small number of competing businesses for that city).

Getting citations or business mentions from highly accredited outside sources:

Perhaps the most important aspect (that is within your control) of getting ranked highly in local search results is outside citations. Getting listed with local directories and IYPs (Internet Yellow Pages) can be the boost you need to get to the top of local search results. These outside sources serve as votes of legitimacy for your business – make sure to include the same city, address and keywords you used in Google Local Business Center in each IYP or directory listing in order to get the maximum benefit.

Some of the most popular IYPs to get listed on:

Superpages
Citysearch
Yelp
Yahoo Local
InsiderPages
YellowPages.com
BizJournals
AreaConnect
MagicYellow
Switchboard
MerchantCircle
GetFave
Yellowbot
Yellowpages.Lycos.com
Kudzu
Discoverourtown
Loqal.com
Local.Ingenio.com
YellowUSA.com
IAF.net

Selecting the right categories for your business (when setting up your account)

Claiming/verifying your business ownership:

This is a such simple task to perform, yet is forgotten by many business owners – claim your local business listing! Simply find your business on Google Maps, and click on Edit (you may have to click on ‘More’ to find this). Next, look for a line that says: “Are you the owner? Claim your business” and click on the link to claim your business.

Next, Google will ask you if you want to edit your business information (update business name, contact info, payment types, hours, categories, etc), suspend the listing. If you are ready to go, simply click the box checking that you want to edit your business information, confirm the information listed there and click ‘Submit’. Google will send you a postcard with a pin number on it within 2-3 weeks; you can also verify your listing using the phone number you provided when you set up.

Good luck and remember, if you need help, LUCID Public Relations is only a phone call away!

SEO Tip: Using Description Meta Tags

Dan Sevigny — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:14:46 +0000

The description meta tag as we mentioned in our last installment of SEO Tips, is the only meta tag that holds any weight with major search engines like Google (keep in mind, it is not used for ranking purposes, rather it effects the way your site is seen in search engine results).

Description meta tags should be formatted like this:

It is important to keep in mind that you will need to use a different meta description for each page on your site (otherwise it is more or less useless to your users). The meta description should accurately describe the content of your page.

Why we choose not to use meta description tags:

When a user searches for something on a search engine like Google, they are looking to find a website that has content matching their query – or in other words, they want to find a site that is relevant to their search. You may notice that when you search on Google, certain parts of the description under each site listed are bolded – this shows the user that each site listed has the keyword they are looking for and more importantly shows the context in which it is used.

Consider the following search result for ‘LUCID Public Relations’ – this user is searching for our company. The fourth result down, lucidcommunications.ca has ‘LUCID’ and ‘pr’ highlighted, but given the context that both terms are used, the user would be able to tell that it is not a link to the right company.

Whether you decide to use meta description tags or not – just keep in mind that by not using them you are allowing Google more flexibility to show users why your page is relevant to their search (and keeping irrelevant clicks off your site, because they will bounce anyways).

When to use meta description tags?

We do think it is appropriate to use the meta description tag on pages that have little or no visible text (although this issue would be better resolved by adding more) and on pages that have only pictures (say, for example, an image gallery – but again, providing accurate text descriptions of each picture is probably a better way to go).

What is your preference for meta description tags? Why? Let us know!

SEO Tip: Don’t Worry About the Keywords Metatag!

Dan Sevigny — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 00:38:18 +0000

Keyword’s meta tags are (and have been) out for some time now. Google, the largest search engine on the web actually claims to ignore them altogether. In fact, for ranking purposes, Google ignores all meta tags – the only useful meta tag is the ‘description’ meta tag, which can provide a custom set snippet of your text in search engine results (the text below your link in search engine results).

We have a lot of clients ask us about their keywords meta tags – some of them have heard from confused SEO “professionals” that it is important to stuff as many keywords as possible into this meta field – this is actually the reason that Google and most other search engines stopped taking meta data into account – it was too easy to spam.

Stop getting stressed out about your meta tags – the only meta tag you need to worry about is the descriptions meta tag and even then, it is not necessarily all that important; We will go over the benefits and drawbacks of having one of these in another installment of LUCID Public Relations SEO Tips.

For your education and enjoyment I have attached a video from Google’s Matt Cutts below. Matt is the head of Google’s Web Spam team and is one of the leading authorities on Google’s search policies. Enjoy!