Role Of a SEO consultant

There are so many posts out there to discuss what a SEO consultant should do, but this post will talk about what a SEO consultant must not be doing. A common myth that revolves around the developers is that,” SEO is another form of QA, SEO is just a quality checking process”.  But it is not, what SEO is. One main reason for this myth is, India doesn’t have a great  talent pool for SEO and it is not off shored as extensively as other areas, the reason sound valid, SEO is more of marketing and trust building which is very much GEO specific, unless and until you have the feel of that market you cannot do wonders. Sitting from India, it is not that easy to know how things works in European Real estate market. It need a lot of homework, it doesn’t only stop with Site optimization, it stretches beyond.

Developer’s  point of view:
From a Developer’s point of view, it still remains as another quality process, they dont know where a SEO comes in the SDLC. SEO is something, which directly involves a stake holder and a SEO guy, it doesn’t have anything to do with other roles in the Project management. And a SEO process should start from the day one of development, if not done, it is double the work for development. Just make one thing clear, before starting the development, Create sites for users, Search Engines will be attracted; if not, your site can never rise up the ladder. Search Engines, are not GODS, they are just a third party agent, who fetches you what you want. Have that in mind and create the code, make it clean and clear, that is all we need to do, SE is not expecting art out of you. In a real development environment, the first phase of SEO should be done by the developer itself, On-Site SEO must be a responsibility of a Developer. If this is carried out well, then there is no special effort need in the SEO cycle for this. Dont expect a SEO guy to instruct you for this phase, it is mandatory that you should follow these rules while development.

If SEO doesnt start in parallel with development, then it is gona be a re-work. There are some key areas where the development should be clear.

1. SEO guy will not clean the code, it should be done by the development(this whole confusion arises because of the fact that SEO is not carried out along with the development) . SEO guy will identify the areas to be improved, but he cant sit and implement that.
2. Both dev and SEO team should work hands to identify how best the SEO can be implemented for a particular project. SEO guys might not be aware of the technical feasibilities of a particular implementation, it is dev team’s work to figure that out. Say for example, lets take a site that is developed with Drupal, technically speaking, there are so many SEO friendly modules that are available in SEO which makes implementation very easy, like path module, both SEO guy and the dev team should be aware of this, how far we can utilize the path module must be known to the dev team and how effectively it can be used must be known to SEO guy. This parallel working will yield great results

Plan your SEO process, plan how this can go hands on with development. If this is done, then SEO will really work out.

Google Analytics – next big leap

Brett Crosby announced several Google Analytics features that is oncoming at the eMetrics Summit. The new update has amazing features which will be very helpful for SEO work.

Some of them include

1. Site Search Activity: This will provide a lot of information about the searches that are performed by the users in your site, with which we can actually draw a lot of info about key word and content seeked.
2.  Even Tracking : Using the new ga.js, we can explore event activities happening in your site and which will help us to know how are site is navigated and also how the components in our sites are accessed. and how well the user is utilizing our site. This is will help us to make our site more customized.
3. UI improvements on reports which will enhance the user friendly nature of the GA.

Suggestion:
Practically we face some difficulties when we practice SEO using Google Analytics(GA). I have a few suggestions, with which GA can reach masses. One of the main difficulty which we face is in the Traffic monitoring, at present thou we have good system by GA, it is manual, some one needs to sit with it and even automated E-mail delivery is not that effective. Why it is not effective is one, some one needs to assimilate and track the daily status thou they receive reports automatically and two as GA gives a dashboard, most of it turns Graphical. If i want to use these details as inputs somewhere, it is very difficult. Why cant Google provide these reports as a web service or may be in a RSS with which i can directly use them where ever i want.

We had one client, whose requirement is to get the data from GA or any other similar tools and publish that in his site in a specific style/standard. If GA provides a Web Service, this would have been an easy task for us, but since we get only email reports, some process needs to be done with that email, may be a script or a mail reader, which is not an advisable go. If GA comes up with some kind of Web Service it will ease our life.

Free Directory Submissions Listings

Here are some Directory listings where you can go and submit you site address as a SEO pract.
Some of them are paid and some are free, depending upon the requirement even reports can be obtained. Here is the document containg the list
directory.doc

HTML elements to Boost page Ranks

In order to tap into the power of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) elements, you first need to know what they are. In HTML, elements are bits of markup that tell a web browser to display or format parts of web pages. For example, <p> means paragraph, and <b> means bold – there are plenty more. These elements are used constantly when writing web pages. You should basically think of your HTML elements as the organizational and visual formatting of your HTML document.

By learning HTML, you can tap into the power of HTML elements and create a more interesting website as well as tipping off search engines as to what the most important information on your web page is. Many people starting out on the web just use ‘easy editors’ (also known as WYSIWYG for what you see is what you get) that show the page as it will appear, without ever looking at the code that the page is actually made from. This is fine if you intend to distribute and are only interested in the look of the page. Visually artistic people are often drawn to using WYSIWYG (pronounced wise-ee-wig) editors when creating their web pages because it allows them to see exactly what they are doing and frees them from the time consuming task of learning HTML.

Value of Links

As a part of sequel post, now i would like to share the value of links.

The Value of Good Link Partners.

As you already know, good link partners are vital to the growth of your website. Without good link partners you won’t be ranked highly in the search engines, and you won’t receive the traffic you need to gain new customers and make new sales. Building high-quality links to your website helps it to succeed.

Websites that maintain good incoming links will get many targeted visitors from their link partners. These link partners are also a good source of information and can offer value for the visitors that come to your website more often. The idea behind link partners is to find web sites with complementary content so that you enhance your web site. For example, if you sell computers, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to link to a site that sells printers.

Linking to your competitors is much more dangerous. The fact of the matter is that when you link to your competitors you are handing them your business. They may be handing some of theirs back to you, but the trade off simply isn’t worth it. If you are in a situation where it is your product or theirs, do not link to them. Aside from the obvious issue of losing business to their site, you may even lose the returning link if you don’t keep an eye on it.

When dealing with link partners, there’s virtually no point unless you get reciprocal links. These links make your website look good, as well as getting you targeted traffic from users clicking on the links. When you are optimizing your site for key words, however, it is important to link to sites that provide more information regarding the content that you have provided. In cases like this, the link is already helping you. If you get a returning link in addition it’s like killing two birds with one stone.

With good-quality incoming links, you will benefit greatly from the increased traffic to your site. Most major search engines’ rankings are at least partly based on the number of quality links pointing to your website. Google, HotBot, AltaVista, MSN, Inktomi and more all use link popularity in their formula for calculating rankings.

FREE Personalised SEO for you Site – With Reports

                          SEO – Search Engine Listing – PageRank – SEM
These are the Buzzwords which rocks the WEB 2.0 generation, almost everyone is blogging, almost everyone is involved in e-Commerce by one way or the other. Search Engines has become our Legal Consultants, we know everything from them. From Bussiness point of view, its very important for a vendor to get himself rated among the TOP in Search Engines, Unless your are rated, you are mated.Thousands and Thousands of Proucts, Lakhs and Lakhs of manufacturers, amomg them you have to hit the top or else you are out. So What can be done? Will SEO be a right Solution for this, Ofcourse it is not the ONLY soulition, but it should be the foremost solution, if you want to be there, you should have this.First Impression is the Best Impression! here it is first Click is your Best Click, if it favours you, then Good luck! else you have to suffer.
I dont go with clasiic economics or Bussines science, which says retaining a customer is harder than getting a new one. In WEBsense, eerything lies in getting te customer, making him open your page, that will do, it will pour you revenues. What can be done from your side to get that? its pretty Simple. You can actually order Search Engines to Crawl you page,after all that is what for they are designed.

Its not only for Commercial Sites, even for blogs this applies, even if you blog is a free blog, hosted by Blog Engines, some SEO stuffs can be implemented, Which i have tested with my blog and it have yielded amazing results. So Bloggers , i think you know the value of Clicks and ratings, Make everyone read what you have written about everything.

Here is one nice oppurtunity, you can test you site for SE compatibility. I will do that for you, Yeah, its completely free. I will give you a detailed analysis and a full fledged report for your Site/Blog.No hidden charges, All you have to do is, just contact me here with your details for your Complete Report

10 Excellent Tips for Raising Your Search Engine Rankings.

Search engine rankings are an important factor to consider when you have a website that needs more traffic. If your website doesn’t have a good position in the rankings then no-one will find it, so you need to make sure that your website is ranked highly enough to be seen. The other important quality to getting high traffic to your site is having a nice arsenal of links. The more links that you have to your site the more traffic you will get, but also, the more links to your site the more search engines like your site. Keeping a nice supply of links pointing at your site requires similar precautions and practices as getting high search engine listings.

Although no SEO company can guarantee a high ranking for your site, here are some tips for raising your search engine ranking. Using these tips will not get you to the top unless your site is the best out there, but they will at least put you into the positioning that you truly deserve. After all, the internet is basically a free market. You will naturally flow into the place that you deserve and many search engines try to insure that you do not rise above or fall below this position. This is why they are so strict, and this is why you must keep yourself on good terms with them.

The Importance Of Tracking Keyword Response Rates.

In today’s market, it’s crucial for every marketer to track keyword response rates. It’s simply the only way of tracking advertising results and knowing which of your keywords are working for you.

In the online marketing world, it’s just as important to track your ad results. Knowing the exact response rate to your advertisement lets you to figure out how well it performed, which can help increase your profits and lower your costs.

Don’t be afraid to change a poorly responding advertisement to try to make it work better. Pay attention to headlines, ad copy, graphics and layout, and then be sure to re-test the ad. You might also find that where your sites are running is the problem – try alternative systems. By the same token, you should test your keywords to make sure that they will work the way you want them to. They’re very similar to advertisements in that they either work brilliantly or not at all.

Search Engine Optimization Myths.

For as long as SEO has been in existence, there have been all sorts of myths about it, and the situation isn’t helped by the number of so-called ‘experts’ spreading them. Here’s a list of the biggest SEO myths:

You can’t optimize perfectly for every site

There are 10,000 search engines out there

PageRank is dead

Your should repeat your keywords 100 times on each page

Search engines don’t have time to ban you for bad SEO

You should submit your site to every search engine going

You don’t need content to get ranked high

Meta tags are very important

All you need is more links

SEO doesn’t require patience

New sites can’t get listed in search engines

You should have multiple domain names

It’s good to resubmit every week or every month

If you find companies that tell you any of these things, then you should run away as fast as you can. Don’t pay attention to the myths of SEO – the only techniques you should be using are ones that are proven to increase your website’s ranking.

There are a lot of unethical, unprofessional business practices in the optimization industry, and you need to make sure you have enough facts on your side to compare the services you’re being offered. To have a good SEO campaign, you can’t fall victim to the kind of big promises that are always un-promised in the small print. Don’t throw away your money: invest it properly in good marketing, advertising, and content.

When inexperienced and unprofessional optimizers scam uneducated SEO customers, it gives everyone who works in the field a bad name. If anyone tells you that it’s OK to keyword stuff, or that you don’t need PageRank – well, they’re just completely wrong.

If you’re trying to make money with your website, you need visitors, and that’s where SEO comes in. SEO is important because of the amount of competition you have. When you’re competing in a worldwide market, you need to stand out

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SEO tutorials:How to Evaluate Your Own Site’s SEO Profile.

Before you can evaluate your site’s SEO profile, you need to understand what an SEO profile is and how it works. An SEO profile for a website is just like a marketing plan or a business plan – basically, it’s a strategy document, putting your decisions into words. This is best performed on a computer program such as Microsoft Word as these programs do provide the best bang for your buck. All else aside, Microsoft does put out some excellent business oriented software so take advantage of it!

Writing your SEO profile should consist of the following:

An introduction – This should include a BRIEF description of your company as well as a purpose statement of some kind. If you can describe your company in a neat, tight format, you will be one step ahead of most in the SEO game.

Goals relating to your Search Engine Status – What do you want your page rank to be? Where do you want to be listed under specific key words? top 50? 25? 10? How many pages of your site do you want search engines to index? Do you want to pay for listings? These questions will get you started, but you must go more in-depth into your SEO goals. Also include the search engines and directories that you feel are necessities such as Google, DMOZ, Yahoo!, and MSN.

Information regarding SEO actions and achievements – This one is pretty self-explanatory. List everything that you do regarding Search Engine Optimization as well as any successes caused by these actions.