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guido65

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Where do you suggest looking for good quality links?

What is your general SEO strategy?

When starting a new site, what is your typical plan of attack from getting it indexed to getting it to rank for keywords?

How do you feel about recent algorithm changes @ google?

Hi Lighthouse,

Thank you for your questions, I will answer them for you.

Where do you suggest looking for good quality links?

Firstly you need to define what a good quality link is. In an ideal world you would want a link that is

. From a related website
. On a high PR (IE. Over 5) PAGE (not just domain PR)
. On a domain with good Moztrust/Trustrank
. Contextually inserted amongst a group of semantically related phrases
. From a website with high traffic (to refer traffic to you)

The reality is that these types of links are extremely hard to come by. Sometimes you get them but they are very rare. Even if you get a link from a domain that is high PR it is very unlikely that the page has PR. So you need to generate them yourself, some ways of doing this are

. Contacting webmasters and similar niches and offering content on thier websites in exchange for links.
. Utilising a high pr blog network (there are many).
. Getting content on high PR domains ie technorati and leeching off their trust and authority.
. If you have the budget, preparing and then aggressively marketing quality content to attract natural links.

However you should never wait for people to link to you, no matter how interesting and useful your website is, you need to generate the links yourself, the quickest a simple way is high pr blog networks which in my testing have yielded fantastic results.

What is your general SEO strategy?

Make sure that the website can actually be crawled (ie not blocked by robots.txt, robots meta etc), create a highly optimised page, aggressively build links to it with 90% exact match anchor text.

So if you want to rank for "how to become a millionaire" I would create a page on the website, optimise it perfectly for that keywords and then build links from a huge range of website on different block c ip addresses with the anchor text "how to become a millionaire" no matter what anyone says at the moment getting the correct anchor text in the backlink still makes a big difference (although you should mix it up a bit to look more natural). Also you always want to add original content to your site to make it as relevant as possible to the search engines.

When starting a new site, what is your typical plan of attack from getting it indexed to getting it to rank for keywords?

Social bookmarking gets pages indexed very quickly, so i always start with social bookmarking. Then I would do some foundation link building, directory submissions, press releases, articles submissions, blog commenting, forum interaction, guest blog posting, build up a good backlink profile. After this I would turn up the heat on the link building and watch the page reach the top :cool:

How do you feel about recent algorithm changes @ google?

I think Google have been under a lot of pressure to appear like they are cleaning up the search engines. People have been gaming Google for a long time and publications too important for Google to ignore started making a noise so Google responded. I see the recent panda/farmer as a good thing because in theory they are trying to clean up some of the low quality results however unfortunatley there has been a lot of collateral damage so webmasters who have spent years building up really useful sites with lots of original content have been causalities, which I think is sad. But in general i think it is a good thing but more to do with Google being pressured into it . Just my opinion.

Hope that helps.
 

guido65

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Hey all,

Just wanted to let you know if you need any SEO advice for you website online marking business, then I am here to help you (for free of course).

I got a huge amount of value out of the book and want to help fellow entrepreneurs.

Currently I run my own SEO business so I have a lot experience with optimising websites.

Currently working on developing a fastlane online business but more of that later.

So if you need any help at all just post in this thread and I'll point you in the right direction.

Thanks
 
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guido65

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My website is up and running. Since I really know nothing about getting the site noticed just pretend I am a 5yr old and tell me what to do. Thanks for the help.

Hi there,

1st you get the search engines to notice your website. So I recommend bookmarking your site on popular social bookmarking platforms such as

Digg
Mixx
Reddit
Delicious
Mr Wong

That will get it indexed quickly.

Then I recommend settings up your social media profiles

Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
YouTube

Then find relevant communities ie Blogs, Forums and start posting in them and adding some value. Most forums will allow a signature link and a blog comment will link back to your site. Find other blogs in your niche contact the webmasters and offer content in exchange for a link back to your site.

Join an answer site such as Quora set up your profile and answer questions.

This will help get your name out and promote your site.
 

guido65

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Hey guido65

Im not trying to burst your bubble but you said you had your own seo company right?

Do all seo companies use blackhat techniques?
Do you use blackhat techniques?

What do you think about article marketing to get traffic? I know this one guy on the warriorforum who gets more traffic through his articles then he does being number 1 on google.

Hi thanks for you reply,

In response to your post, yes I own an seo company, don't worry i don't think my bubble is burst! Lol

Personally I can't speak for all seo companies, some probably do things that maybe considered blackhat while most seo companies are involved in what would be termed gray hat. Its very rare to find a 100% whitehat company.

Onpage blackhat techniques such as doorway pages, cloaking, sneaky 301 redirects can get you in serious trouble, and I doubt there is a single seo company who would recommend these techniques as you could find yourself in real trouble very quickly. Offpage techniques like linkbuilding are more of a grey area, google says create good content and people will link to you naturally, which is fine, of course you should always create good content, but trust me, you should never wait for people to link to you. Even holier than thou rand fiskin of seo moz (who btw I respect) would advocate building your own links. To do seo and rank in the search engines you need links, waiting to get them is slowlane, if you are not building links, I promise you your competitors are, look at any keyword with any commercial intent and you'll see what I mean. Its all a question of how you get the links, creating and distributing great content can be very effective but it can also require a significant budget and there is no guarantee the content will attract links. Most SME's don't have the budget to launch a huge Pr or viral campaign, so you have to work within budget. Methods outlined before, press releases, article marketing, guest posting, directory submissions are tried and tested and would be considered whitehat and for low to mid competition keywords they are fine. Tougher keywords require tougher measures.

Personally working with clients, I always recommend creating a highly optimised content rich site, remember google wants to serve the most relevant result. So you always want to make your site as relevant as possible, also good content will attract some natural links. However the key is to combine a highly optimised, content rich site with well planned link building, that way you give get the best of both worlds.

You always want content on your own site, articled are fine but remember you don't control the asset. The article directory could remove your article. Always look to build up your own asset, ie your website.

Hope that helps, I don't really want to use the thread as a platform to discuss what is whitehat and what is blackhat, rather I would like to transfer my knowledge to help people get their websites ranking highly, attracting more targeted traffic and ultimately helping them make more sales and leads.
 

LightHouse

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Where do you suggest looking for good quality links?

What is your general SEO strategy?

When starting a new site, what is your typical plan of attack from getting it indexed to getting it to rank for keywords?

How do you feel about recent algorithm changes @ google?
 

guido65

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Can you recommend a tool for optimizing your ON-page SEO for your target keywords? Additional on-page SEO tips? Thanks.

Hi,

If you run a wordpress website then an excellent tool is SEOPressor Wordpress Plugin or another good tool is SEO Quake for Firefox, gives you a very quick look at the onpage SEO.

One of the best tips I can give you is, you want to make your page seem as relevant as possible to the search engines. Remember the search engines job is to give the user the most relevant result.

Now you might ask, how do I know what Google thinks is relevant for my keyword? Well Google actually tells us!

What you need to do is pick your target keyword and then type in your keyword into Google. Make a note of the "searches related to ....." at the bottom of the page. Then include them on the page.

After that click on "more search tools" then "Google wonder wheel" and again Google will show the EXACT keyword that are related to the keyword you are trying to optimise for. So make sure you include them.

That way you will have a webpage that Google deems to be highly relevant for your target keyword.

Hope that helps
 

guido65

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Sorry, but I have another newbie question --

Is there a *reliable* tool that shows you what page you're ranked on Google / Bing / Yahoo for certain keywords? The online ones I've came across don't seem to be very reliable / up to date.

Or, even better yet, is there a reliable tool that shows you *every* keyword that your website is ranked at across google / yahoo / bing? Like, if I could just type in my domain name, the tool would show me a list of keywords that my site is ranked for, and the positions for each keyword, for each search engine.

Thanks.


----
Edit: This tool seems to be the most reliable I've found so far, *if* you know the keywords you want to search for. But doesn't show you every keyword that your site is ranked for.
FREE Search Engine Rankings Check in Seconds

----

One of the best tools on the market in my opinion is something called SEO Software | Search Engine Ranking | Advanced Web Ranking, its really comprehensive and has lots of very useful feature. You can schedule ranking checks, automatically upload reports to cleints sites etx. There is unfortunately a cost associated with it it.

However there is a way to get the enterprise version (normally 300) absolutle free. All you need to do is write a review of it and send them proof. You can get someone on vworker or text broker for about 10 dollars. After a bit of back and forward with the compant they'll send you a license. Well worth half an hours effort. See Free Advanced Web Ranking License - Advanced Web Ranking for more information.

Regarding how much traffic a sites receives for its keywords, you can chechout SEM Rush SEMRush - service for competitors research, shows Google organic and AdWords keywords for any site or domain , have to go for the pro version if you want all the data and also be advised that the figures are not 100% accurate but can give you some indication.

Hope that helps
 
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biophase

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1) FrenchManicure.info
2) FrenchManicure.biz
3) French-Manicure.net
4) French-Manicure.org

Thanks!

I think all of them would work fine. But if french manicure is a highly competitive term, the exact domain match may not help you that much. You would still need to do some SEO for the new domain.

If it were me I would choose the .net and .org.

Edit: the term doesn't look too competitive based on the search results.
 

Irish

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Hi there,

pardon my ignorance but I'm pretty new to SEO and learning the ropes.

When you are talking about adding your site to social bookmarking sites is this simply a case of signing up to digg for example and digging my own website? What is the reasoning behind this? Wouldn't this just get lost in a sea of diggs? Am i missing something here?

I'm also a bit unsure on the area of links. From what I've been reading about SEO, links are important because they make your website look important. If say, I write an intelligent comment on a high ranking blog in my niche or write an article for a website in my niche and leave a link in the signature, it should get my site traffic. Is this correct? I should also email the backlinks of other sites in my niche to ask them to link to my site and link to them? Does these mean simply putting a page on my site with links or do I have to write an article and mention them or something? What is the norm here?

Lastly how important is facebook and twitter. I personally have never "got" twitter. I find it very hard to say something worthwhile in such a small space and from using it for personal use I found it very..well, boring. There is an awful lot of stuff being said without anybody really saying anything at all. I see facebook as pretty much the same. I also find it difficult to promote my business without it looking like everyone elses spam. Have you any tips for keeping your status updates fresh, interesting and regular? Tough question I know :rofl:.
 

guido65

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Hi all,

Apologies been extremely busy lately working with clients, I'm back now to answer you questions.


Hi there,

pardon my ignorance but I'm pretty new to SEO and learning the ropes.

When you are talking about adding your site to social bookmarking sites is this simply a case of signing up to digg for example and digging my own website? What is the reasoning behind this? Wouldn't this just get lost in a sea of diggs? Am i missing something here?

I'm also a bit unsure on the area of links. From what I've been reading about SEO, links are important because they make your website look important. If say, I write an intelligent comment on a high ranking blog in my niche or write an article for a website in my niche and leave a link in the signature, it should get my site traffic. Is this correct? I should also email the backlinks of other sites in my niche to ask them to link to my site and link to them? Does these mean simply putting a page on my site with links or do I have to write an article and mention them or something? What is the norm here?

Lastly how important is facebook and twitter. I personally have never "got" twitter. I find it very hard to say something worthwhile in such a small space and from using it for personal use I found it very..well, boring. There is an awful lot of stuff being said without anybody really saying anything at all. I see facebook as pretty much the same. I also find it difficult to promote my business without it looking like everyone elses spam. Have you any tips for keeping your status updates fresh, interesting and regular? Tough question I know :rofl:.

Social bookmarking helps websites/pages get indexed very quickly, also I have done extensive testing and personally found social bookmarking to give webpages a ranking boost. By all means sign up to them yourself for your own personal use however for SEO i'd probably outsource it as you want to have 100's of bookmarks from all different bookmarking sites for ranking boost. Its a real pain to sign up for 100 accounts. Many people offer social bookmarking services and many products such as SENUKE or Bookmarking Demon.

Yes links are very important. In fact the most important thing for SEO. Really you want to think of links in 2 areas, links for traffic/brand building and links for ranking boost. Ideally you want a combination of both. Writing a blog comment on a related website will get some nice traffic and help with your link diversity. Writing a blog comment on a pr6 page , that is totally unrelated to your niche and leaving the correct anchor text in the comment will give you more of a ranking boost, although likely very little traffic. There are so many ways to generate links here are a few examples.

. Directory Submisissons
. Press Releases
. Articles Submissions.
. Social bookmarking.
. Blog Comments.
. RSS Directories.
. Web 2.0 Properties.
. Video sharing sites.

The list goes on and on.

More and more research suggest Google are taking account of social signals for rankings (although a lot more testing needs to be done) therefore it practically mandatory to allow people to share your content around the web. You can use many programs to automatically update your Twitter and Facebook pages with interesting relevant content.

Hope that helps
 

Jonleehacker

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better yet, is there a reliable tool that shows you *every* keyword that your website is ranked at across google / yahoo / bing? Like, if I could just type in my domain name, the tool would show me a list of keywords that my site is ranked for, and the positions for each keyword, for each search engine.

The best way to do this is to use Google's Webmaster tools. For each domain that you have registered it will give you a very good list of the keywords that you rank for and your position in Google.

An alternative would be here: KeywordSpy put your domain name in and it will give you a list of keywords that you rank for, but you'll have to use the paid version to get decent info and even then it won't be better than about 65% accurate.
 

guido65

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Hey guido65.
How important is pr link for seo?
Can 1000 pr1 links beat 20 pr5 links?


Like this eg:
1000 pr0 links > 10 pr1 links?

60 pr 3 links > 5 pr 7 links?

200 pr 4 links> 50 pr 7 links?

If I put my effort and had 200 pr 4 links for my website then would that beat someone who has 50 pr 7 links?

Or another example, if I put 60 pr3 links for my website then would that be better then if another person had 50 pr7 links for his website?

PR is very important for link building. In short you need a mixture of both, but the reality is a couple of high pr links far outweigh thousands of 0 pr links.

So when building links you definitely want to get links on actual pages with a PR of 3+ but also it is good to get links from domains with high PR even though the page might be a PR O.

To explain you could easily get a link on an inner from Technorati which is a PR 8 domain but the link would actually be on a PR 0 page.

But also you could get a link on an inner page of blog which might be a PR 4 or something like that.

Experience tells me that you will still get good link juice from a link on a high PR domain even though the page might be a PR0. However for maximum SEO boosting try and get high PR page links as well.
 

Toiletcake

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Quick update, Guy has been working on the site. There is a little movement but its too early for his efforts to really take hold. Its only been 3.5 weeks. I will keep posting and updating.


April 14th- May 6th-

Keyword #5 Position 10 9

Keyword #6 Position 4 4

Keyword #7 Position 10 4

Keyword #8 Position 2 4

Keyword #9 Position 19 17

Keyword #10 Position 13 15
 
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Knowledge Kick

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I think the chart is off too because our website has over 15k dofollow backlinks from PR1 and PR2 sites in related industries, and several PR3 - PR6 links from unrelated industries (and directories) and the site still has a page rank of N/A.

But maybe they mean that each link needs to come from a separate IP and the PR has to be of that page, rather than of the site's home page PR. That may be why we are still PR N/A, plus the site is only about 6 months old; not sure how long it takes for the big G to calculate your pagerank.

Kwerner,

It is definitely the page the link comes from that matters in regard to your PR, not the site's homepage. As far as your PR N/A goes, that's only because Google hasn't updated your Page Rank yet, which they only do a couple times a year. If you do have all those backlinks then I would guess you will shoot up to at least PR2 when they do update it.

I heard it might be coming this month, but it's really hard to guess these days because they're doing it so much less often.
 

guido65

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Is it better to use web 2.0 properties as opposed to getting keyword domains and posting articles on them?

I have a 12 year old domain (money site) that ranks really well in 3 keywords. I want to rank better for about 10 more, I have a dozen articles for each keyword, and on the money site I have created a page for each keyword, that only links back to one or two pages of my money site. I also have keyword domains all registered over the last 2-3 years but never developed. I was thinking I would develop the sites with wordpress and put the articles on each pointing either at the home page of the money site and/or the keyword page. My keyword domains would be setup at a variety of hosts all over the globe so that won't be an issue (different IP blocks). Then I saw your post on the web 2.0 properties. So should I go my planned route with the keyword domains, or switch gears to the web 2.0 properties? (I have plenty of other aged sites that get crawled regularly so I can put in a link on those to get the spiders to the new keyword sites, so I am not worried about getting indexed).

The next question is should I place all my articles into Wordpress in one shot, so the sites will go live with 10-12 articles each, should I put out one article, wait until the site gets indexed then trickle the other articles one at time every 2-3 days or every 2-3 weeks?

The value in Web 2.0 properties is the fact they already have established Page Rank and Trust Rank, so by posting content on there and linking back to your website you are essentially riding off the link juice they have already established, which is the reasons most people believe it is effective for increasing rankings.

Yes by all means use your own keyword rich domains but be careful to cover your tracks also do the domains have any page rank? If not there is a little value in getting links from them. My advice would be to do both.
 
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guido65

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best free resources you would recommend to learn SEO?

Some of the best resources to learn SEO are

SEO Blog | SEOmoz Blog Featuring Search Engine Marketing Tactics & Strategies
SEO Design Solutions
SEO & Search Engine News : SEJ
Search Engine Roundtable ::: The Pulse Of The Search Marketing Community

There is enough information there for 5 - 10 years of reading.
 
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SirKonstantine

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Guido, What tools do you personal use for SEO?

I've been reading and testing stuff out and realized that a lot of SEO takes up time and I want to stream line this process.

I tried the trial of MarketSamurai and found that its not that good. Its slow and you can do all the stuff that it does by yourself with free tools like seoquake and G! keywords tool.

You mentioned bookmarking daemon, Glen from viperchill.com raves about this product. Do you think its a worthwhile investment and how should one use it? Should they use daemon on their money site as well as their web 2.0 sites and articles? or just their articles and web 2.0 or just their money site?

Do you use spun content and what program do you use for this?

Any other tools that you use (or have use but do not recommend) would be great. Thanks.
 

guido65

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Hi Guido,
1. Is it harmfully to rename page's url if the page has been indexed with Google?

2. If you've faced with the Opencart, give me a few suggestions to optimize cattegories. I'm bad surprised a cattegory's url and h1 is the same there. For example, if my page url is www.mydomain/goods%20stuff This means <h1>good stuff</h1> too. But how to change the h1 header and don't touch the url?

3. Can I use h1 twice on a page?

I'd be glad to know all it from your own experience.
Thank you.

1. If you rename the page that has been indexed then that page will 404 so you need to 301 it to show google the new url and pass the link juice.

2. Don't worry about h1 heading, it has been shown to have little if any positive effect on rankings.

3. Don't worry about h1.

I can show you many domains rankings for very competitive keywords that don't have a h1 tag
 
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semsniper

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Thanks for your replies, guys.
My main pr page has droped from 3 to 2. But pr of the 4 other pages have grown from 0 to 2.
I cannot understand why the main page is down. Please any ideas why it's happened.

To answer this directly, it could be a few things.
- A few sites that link to you had their pr dropped
- As the Internet continues to grow and more sites go online, pr spreads out and many sites will drop a bit.
- Your actual PR may have been 3.1 & it dropped to 2.9 (so not really a big drop, but since the visible PR doesn't show tenth of a point, we won't know for sure)

One critical thing to remember.
Your PR rank does not directly affect how you rank in Google, so don't get too caught up in the numbers game. Remember, that PR is strictly a calculation of PR sites that link to you.
Instead focus on where you rank & what your analytics tells you (visits, pages, bounce, etc)
 

semsniper

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I am doing DD on a niche website for sale, ranked 3'rd for the main keyword. I am trying to figure out how volatile is his #3 position.

Considering the details bellow,what is the chance to lose that #3 ranking? ( Assuming all of the current SEO is legit, and regular future SEO will be made) what probable scenarios will cause the website to lose it's ranking?

This is the data on this keyword and website:

- Only the target website and the website ranked #10 have direct match in domain name. (most of the other website have only on page match, or broad url match)
- Website is 4 months old.

Here is a chart with SEO data:
Hi David,

Generally, a bit tough to say how volatile a ranking is. It depends on how you continue the SEO and management of the site, as well as your competitors & any new sites that come on the scene. Obviously, if your competitors have taken note of your ranking, they will ofcourse challenge you.

One of the things that does concern me is the age of the site.
It's not uncommon for a new website to begin ranking pretty soon out of the gate, then a few months later drop into obscurity. Some may call this being sand-boxed. I'm not saying that will happen to this site, but it's certainly a possibility.

Another thing that concerns me is the number of pages indexed? Only one? am I reading that correctly?
Is that because there is only one page? I typically recommend at least 10-12 pages.

By having other pages they can help to support each other in terms of ranking.
These additional pages can also help you target other related terms. (I hate being tied to just one or a few keyword terms) for the reason mentioned above.

One other thing I should mention. Before you complete the purchase if that's your intention, be sure to get a copy of their analytics report. If they use Google Analytics, they can export you a pdf.
If it was me, I might ask them to give me read-only access to their GA account so that i can dig a little deeper than a pdf doc provides.

Once you have that, look for that keyword term & it's associated visits.
If it's only receiving 10 visits per month, then perhaps it's not as valuable a keyword as you or the seller thinks.

PS: Guido, sorry to hijack your thread :)
 
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Davidla

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Hi David,

Generally, a bit tough to say how volatile a ranking is. It depends on how you continue the SEO and management of the site, as well as your competitors & any new sites that come on the scene. Obviously, if your competitors have taken note of your ranking, they will ofcourse challenge you.

One of the things that does concern me is the age of the site.
It's not uncommon for a new website to begin ranking pretty soon out of the gate, then a few months later drop into obscurity. Some may call this being sand-boxed. I'm not saying that will happen to this site, but it's certainly a possibility.

Another thing that concerns me is the number of pages indexed? Only one? am I reading that correctly?
Is that because there is only one page? I typically recommend at least 10-12 pages.

By having other pages they can help to support each other in terms of ranking.
These additional pages can also help you target other related terms. (I hate being tied to just one or a few keyword terms) for the reason mentioned above.

One other thing I should mention. Before you complete the purchase if that's your intention, be sure to get a copy of their analytics report. If they use Google Analytics, they can export you a pdf.
If it was me, I might ask them to give me read-only access to their GA account so that i can dig a little deeper than a pdf doc provides.

Once you have that, look for that keyword term & it's associated visits.
If it's only receiving 10 visits per month, then perhaps it's not as valuable a keyword as you or the seller thinks.

PS: Guido, sorry to hijack your thread :)


Thanks for the response Semsniper.

Overall I reached the same conclusions you did, but the main X factor here for me is why do new websites get sandboxed? from what I've learned so far, it usually happens when some grey/black hat SEO is used (link farms, autoblogs etc). What other known reasons cause new websites to get sandboxed?
 

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Hey all,

I wanted to show everyone my 3rd update since Guido starting doing seo for my site. Its been 3 months of nice gradual work and you can see his efforts are working. My niche is a very competitive space as well.

April 14th- May 6th- July6th-

Keyword #5 Position 10 9 5

Keyword #6 Position 4 4 2

Keyword #7 Position 10 4 3

Keyword #8 Position 2 4 2

Keyword #9 Position 19 17 6

Keyword #10 Position 13 15 3
 
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S

stranger

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Semsniper, thank you for the real useful response.
Please my last question is;
Some pages of my website have urls with %20 and some others have - . Should i rename the pages with %20 or ones with - to do one standart at the website? Or don't touch it?
That's a stupid story why my site has both %20 and - urls.
 

semsniper

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Thank you for your detailed answers.

I'm a little confused. A guy who designed me the site says %20 means a space. When i create a new page i write 'fast cars' but into a browser it looks 'fast%20cars'. Please your comments?

Well, that's how the browser interprets the space by sticking in the '%20'.
But that's not how search engines see it.
That's not to say Google will toss URLs with a %20 into the trash bin. It will still be crawled and indexed, it just may not rank as high as if you had used the dash.

@mikemoseni - Are you asking me or the OP?

You'll get varying answers depending on who you ask, but I'll take a stab.

1) "good on-page SEO" can be somewhat subjective. For instance Guido things that H1 tags are not that important, but I disagree. You may think you have a well optimized site, but an experienced SEO can find additional improvements, not just on your current page set up, but also advise on site structure & the creation of new pages that can target either long tail terms, but also terms that you may not have thought of.

2) Ask lots of questions. Their answers can give you plenty of insight. For example, for me - when i reply to an inquiry or a client question, I try to avoid techy terms & use terms that the person can relate to & use plenty of explanations. Not everyone understands SEO, so if I've lost the person because they don't understand what I am saying, then they will never truly understand what I am doing.

Try to avoid pricing that is too cheap. Quite often "you get what you pay for" applies.

If you are US-based try to get someone where English is their first language. There are a Ton of outsourced companies from other countries popping up & although they can be good for certain types of campaigns, if their English is not their first language it will be easily identifiable in your content which will directly reflect on you and your business.

3) All firms are not equal & will not necessarily perform the same duties.
For example, some firms will demand full access to your site in order to make changes that they want to do.
And others will not. They will give you direction in the form of word documents & excel sheets & it's up to you or your developer to implement. I've been on both sides of these options.

Here are some questions to ask:

Will you edit my website’s content?
This relates to #2, whether they say yes or now, if they're not English-speaking you will probably not get the desired effect - The answer you get should be yes.

Do you work for any of my competitors?
This could be good and bad. Good, because they will understand your industry, but not so good because they can pass your campaign secrets to them. If the answer is yes, consider an NDA.

Will you show me regular reports & what kind?
Obviously you will want to see what they're up to and the progress they are making

Do you offer guarantees?
This used to be a big problem. I don't see it as much now, but some upstart SEO companies were guaranteeing first place results. Some were even bold enough to say that they had a special relationship with Google or they knew someone there. It is possible that they knew someone. I have a few contacts there, but in no way, shape or form will that help an SEO campaign. Remember that Google is one big automated program, so no single person at Google can work some magic to make your site come out on top. The only guarantee I have ever given is that the client will have a better campaign than before i came on board. 95% of the time, if a campaign fails, it's because the client didn't follow my instructions.

How are your results & can you show me some examples?
Self explanatory, I think. You want to see examples of rankings, but more importantly you want to see trends and reports from their Analytics program.

What kind of Industry-specific people or websites do you follow?
This will give you some insight into how they keep up with the fast changing world of internet marketing.

There's a million more, but it's a start.

4) Asking cost, is like asking how long a piece of string is.
It definitely comes in all shapes and sizes.

For me, my regular gig & specialty right now is the Non-Profit / Charity sector.
My base rate is $150/hr but usually charge by the project. I typically won't touch a client unless they have a budget of at least $50K per year.

Obviously that's for large organizations. I do like to help the entrepreneur however, so I will pick up freelance gigs here and there. It helps keep me fresh and in tune. In this case, i never charge by the hour, just on a per project basis. And it preferably needs to be a full-scope project. If you were to ask me to do a link building campaign, I would just turn that down because it's too narrow a focus.

Again, answers will vary greatly.... whew! long post
 

JoeV

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You can't deny it. You kind of admit it in your post. Google HATES automated links, spun content and fake sites. They are doing everything they can to punish sites that use these... so why use them? You know it will bite you in the a$$ eventually.

There are ways to rank well without automated links. What I find funny is people using automated links to generate thousands of links for keywords, but the competition is ranking for those keywords with only a few thousand links which were built over a year or two, not a week or two.

You DON'T need thousands of links in a couple weeks to rank for good keywords. People need to try to stop spamming the internet with links and garbage content and first do backlink analysis of the top 10 sites for a variety of keywords they want to rank for. See what the competition has and one up them by throwing in a few more high authority links or a better quality site.

People don't need as many links as they think. It is lack of knowledge that is fueling this and you know it. People do not even know how to do basic analysis of the competition and their marketing efforts to see why they rank. Instead they are taken in by the snake-oil salesman who is selling thousands of links and promising top rankings.

Google created this problem in the beginning. It was an arms race to get links. Today it is different. Quality content and links over link quantity. If you want to rank in Google in the long term, this is the direction you must go...
 
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hackersmovie

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Hey Ali, I wouldn't trust any software that "guarantees" any SEO results. They would seem suspect to me. I offer seo services and have helped several Fastlane members you can visit my site at: Gold Medal SEO Let me know if you have any other questions.
 
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JasonR

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Is there a *reliable* tool that shows you what page you're ranked on Google / Bing / Yahoo for certain keywords? The online ones I've came across don't seem to be very reliable / up to date.

SeoMOZ paid tools will also do this for you. They have a free 30-day trial.
 

theBiz

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hey guido get response im going to contact you when the time comes, thank you.
 
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Jonleehacker

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Just ran across this the other day would like to get your thoughts:

Moneywords: Your Key to the Keyword Kingdom – Part 2 | ClickBank Blog

it isn't the most detailed post... I'd probably want to see how much each keyword "costs" as a measure of commercial intent, but I think it is a useful starting point?

MoneywordMatrix-competition-latest.png


Do you use a system like this for choosing which keywords to target?
 

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