Affiliate Marketing Blog » SEO

SEO Proposal

Christoph — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 15:03:08 +0000

Sometimes I get those nasty friendly emails (through the contact forms on my sites) from so-called SEO companies offering me their services and how they could bring a certain website of mine onto page #1 in Google. Example:

We would like to get your website on first page of Google. All of our processes use the most ethical “white hat” Search Engine Optimization techniques that will not get your website banned or penalized. Please reply and I would be happy to send you a proposal.

Those emails go straight into my SPAM folder.

Now it seems like all these companies are out of work I am getting such a message every day from different “providers”. So, I thought “What the heck – it would be interesting to see such a proposal” and so I responded with an email saying “I am interested. Please send me a proposal.”

Now, this is purely for “entertainment” and so I was interested to see what they propose and how much they charge and how detailed such a proposal might. The response was … stunning. Nothing. No response. So, I did this with several providers and I am tempted to say in the backend it all goes to the same people because of the language used and no response what so ever. What is it with these guys? I thought they want some business?! Or does it take weeks to hammer out a proposal?

Anyway – I will continue this quest and maybe one company will finally respond. I might even sacrifice one of my websites that has not taken off and is not considered critical if someone responds and let them do some work – as a case study. Please note that if this happens, my requirement to them will be 100% white-hat work.

Make sure to use your Statistics to the full Extend

Christoph — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:32:19 +0000

Just a reminder to everyone to use your statistics of your website as much as you can. I know I am often too lazy for this, but when I finally do it I am always surprised about the results. Make sure to use the Google Webmaster Tools as well. There is great keyword information available.

As an example, the reports show you which keyword you are ranking for and (!) how many people actually click through to your website based on that keyword. Now imagine you are optimizing your rankings for “Keyword A” , but only 1% of the people that see your website in the SERPS click actually through. At the same time “Keyword B” with much less competition sees a click-thru rate of 32%. That gives you 2 options. Option #1 – you better go and check your Meta description as well as what excerpt Google actually shows to a searcher in the SERPS and then publish a better version for that specific page. Option #2 – why not start optimizing for “Keyword B” and pull in the traffic that way?

Example: I do not rank at all with this site for PPC Training. But at the same time I rank fairly well for SPEEDPPC Review. Internal linking is very important as well as external linking as you probably know. One reason why some bloggers do a monthly roundup of their postings with keywords they want to rank for. I might start doing that as well here, to improve the rankings for keywords I want to rank for.

Rodney’s 404 Handler WordPress Plugin – Be Aware of hidden link

Christoph — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 02:33:17 +0000

I have been using Rodney’s 404 Handler WordPress plugin on almost all my sites until today. While working on a site of mine I had to look at the source code of a page and guess what – a hidden link was showing up. I don’t do hidden links, but apparently someone else still thinks this is a way to do business on the Internet.

Rodney Shupe of shupe.ca is publishing his WordPress plugin with a hidden link back to his website. One of his other plugins apparently did the same, but it was uncovered and he implemented the option to at least turn this off. Well, even if that option is there, it still stinks.

This dude is putting other people’s hard work at risk by embedding a hidden link. We all know how Google hates that kind of stuff and I hope this posting helps to have Google delist his page from the index.Other plugins I use have a visible link and that is fair game, but this hidden stuff .. argh, burn in hell. Screenshot of Source code

I have submitted a report to Google’s SPAM team. If you are running the same plugin, please do the same through the Google Webmaster tools so that Rodney Shupe will no longer be able to get traffic to his website through spamming the search engines.

Yahoo! Directory Website Application Accepted

Christoph — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 04:14:47 +0000

I received word from Yahoo! tonight via email that my website has been accepted into their directory. The listing should show up in 2-4 days. So, this will be interesting to see if it can drive some traffic to my site – either directly from the listing or from an added trust factor for search engines. We will see how that goes.

I am also in the middle of a major deal. Too early to talk about details, but that’s why things have been a little bit quiet over here (and why this posting is more short and sweet …). Once that deal is hopefully completed I will provide more details and an analysis.

Crazy SEO Offer

Christoph — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:53:35 +0000

I was looking for some SEO work to be done and contacted a reputable company about one of their offers. After asking some questions, this is what I got offered. Just by looking at the steps they mention below, I really had to laugh. 4 articles per month? Basic submission to Ezinearticles and a handful of other free article directories? $600 per month?

With the basic option, we now hand submit four separate articles to ten different article sites. These sites are the basic sites, like you mentioned Ezine and such, with no specific focus. However, at each site we are careful to submit the articles into appropriate categories.

The advanced option requires more time with the ultimate goal being to have the four articles submitted to high-end industry specific article sites. If we are not able to get the articles accepted to industry specific sites (we spent up to 4 hours in this effort) we move ahead and submit them to the ten article sites used in the basic option. Once the articles are accepted and published, they are socialized on Digg, Mixx and Propeller, as well as bookmarked using several user accounts.

The basic option for article marketing is a flat rate of $600, and the advanced option is a flat rate of $950. These rates are per month, and we do still require a 3 month commitment.

Hm, let me think. Even if I overpay a content writer and pay $30 per article I would spend $120 per month. If I then either submit it myself or hire someone to submit the articles for me, this would be maybe 1 hour of time – value maybe $60/hr (I am generous here). Let’s round it up to $200.00 for the writing and submission of four articles. 3 month minimum commitment. Crazy, eh?! And this is not from some guy offering service at Digitalpoint.com or – this is supposed to be a reputable company here in the US (mentioned in many blogs, seen at conferences, etc.). Wow …

I do not mind paying for good SEO work and I am actually really looking for some (honest/white hat) SEO work to be done and I have up to $3,000 budgeted for this, but the offer above … I would consider that a ripoff.