Archive for the ‘SEO Consultant’ Category
SEO Jobs
Friday, November 27, 2009 17:20 1 CommentHow to handle the SEO jobs?
Irish companies are still not 100% sure if to have the SEO outsourced to the specialist SEO Company, or to hire SEO staff directly, and have them work onsite. The constant barrage from the SPAM email offers from mostly Far East SEO companies and their low pricing and the high contract rates of the local Irish SEO companies and professionals mate things even worse! To outsource to an unknown company on the other side of the world, or to hire a local provider – who will in most cases charge you twice more?
The reason it is so hard to hire a SEO staff or engage a SEO company is that there is relatively little understanding on what SEO really is. It is not uncommon to hear the completely opposite opinions and definitions on what the SEO is. Some people bring in the pay per click (PPC) in it, some talk about on site and off site SEO, some talk about link building (now, how do you build a link?). The social media, made things even more complex lately.
So how do you hire someone not knowing nothing neither on what the task on hand is, nor the results that are to be achieved? You are quite likely to fail. If you stick to it, you are quite likely to fail a few times as well.
The same is true if you hire internally or a external SEO vendor.
Do it yourself SEO jobs are the natural result of this situation. You either try to do it yourself if you are a small company, or you ask the existing staff you have to learn and do the SEO tasks for you. That is even more often a recipe for the disaster. You are asking of your staff to do a SEO job that they have not been trained for and have no experience in it. Jet somehow you expect them to succeed?
Hiring for SEO jobs is tough.
The best peace of the advice is to get a the best SEO professional you can get – to help you and do the job interviews for you. Regardless if you are hiring an external SEO company, or a onsite SEO vendor, or the person to do SEO inhouse on your payroll. You are far likely to get the right one to do your SEO jobs than trying to asses the candidates yourself (presuming you are not a SEO specialist yourself!).
100 Best SEO Blog Posts
Thursday, November 19, 2009 11:16 2 CommentsI just realised I actually published 99 Posts on the SEO Consultant blog. So this is the 100th blog post. I thought I should do something special here, like an ‘Anniversary’ or something similar. 100 blog posts is a milestone for a blog. Not the first and certainly not the last milestone. So this blog post with the really fancy title: 100 Best SEO Blog Posts, isn’t really a list of the best SEO related blog posts. It is the 100 SEO blog posts that I wrote and published. Good or bad – you can judge yourself!
So here is the list of the 100 Best Blog Posts:
Are the Right People on Your Marketing Team?
Internet Marketing Strategy: Content
Senior Manager of Emerging Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing – How to start?
Facebook has 200 million active users
Twitter and European Elections in Dublin South
Search Engine Optimization spend is on the rise
Irish Internet Association Congress 2009
Social Networks will waste your time – if not used properly!
You Oughta Know Inbound Marketing
Recession is bad for Internet Traffic
Unique Web Content equals High Ranking in Google
Recession in the Irish PPC Market
Link Building is like Sailing!
Understanding your web site visitors
Search Engine Optimization is like Fishing
Search Engine Optimization is like….
Google Analytics Custom Reporting
Search Phrase in the Domain Name
Internet Advertising Revenue 2008
Search Engine Marketing in Ireland
Search Engine Optimization Cost
Doodle 4 Google by Google Ireland
Ireland Search Engine Marketing Report 2008
How Does SEO Fall Into Your Company
BLOG = Better Listings On Google
To Outsource SEO or not to Outsource SEO?
Outsourcing your web site SEO Service?
Driving traffic with inbound links
Alan Shortall & SEO Consultant
SEO Consultant first in Google Chrome
Google Chrome Browser is here!
Google doesn’t like Ciul as a Search Engine!
Blogging is a way of building the inbound links
Invert Pyramid – Writing for the Web
KeywordSpy – The Ultimate Competitor Intelligence Tool
Google PageRank (PR) Update – SEO Consultant down to PR 4
SEO Consultant is 4 months old today!
SEO: To Outsource or Not to Outsource?
Google Webmaster Tools – Visual Ranking Reporting
Irish Google speaks American English
Free SEO Tools: Stompernet Site Seer
SEO Budget? How much does it all cost?
Google Webmaster Tools the Judge of Google.ie Speed Test
Google Experimental Labs > Experimental Search
Dynamic MetaTags, Dynamic Title, URL Rewriting, H1, H2,… are all a MUST HAVE for any CMS today.
Google Webmaster Tools Gadgets Bug
There is no such thing as Bad Web Traffic!
Good Google Web Traffic and Bad Google Web Traffic
Google is showing different search results during weekends!
WordPress as a SEO Springboard
Search Engine Optimisation vs. Search Engine Marketing
Google: Search Engine Optimization
22 hours later – SEO Consultant in Google index!
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Reports
Why Social Networking?
Thursday, October 22, 2009 16:12 No CommentsSEO Consultant in the press again. This time in the InBusiness magazine by Chambers Ireland. Here are a few snippets:
Social networking websites have been around for quite a while now, with early models emerging in the mid-‘90s. Websites such as Theglobe.com and Tripod.com sought to bring online users together to interact with each other through chat rooms and shared personal information. However, no one could have been prepared for the rapid increase and popularity of sites such as Facebook and MySpace over the course of the last five or six years. Now, marketing and advertising professionals are jumping on the social networking bandwagon and offering clients online marketing packages which include profile pages on social networking websites.
According to Ivan Stojanovic, Founder and Director of SEOConsultant.ie, a consultancy firm specialising in online marketing and search engine optimisation, companies are in danger of being left behind if they fail to implement a social media marketing plan.“Companies staying away from social networking sites are going to get into a situation where their much smaller competitors all of the sudden become more well-known brands,” says Stojanovic. “The speed and reach of online social media is unmatched by anything yet,” he added.
SEO Expert
Wednesday, October 21, 2009 12:54 No CommentsLooking for an SEO Expert?
Or are you a SEO Expert yourself?
Not? Well everyone else seems to be? So what’s wrong with you?
In reality, everyone calls themselves a SEO Expert nowadays. There are no credentials required really. Most of us think that there is no experience really required. Kind of – you get up one day and decide – today, I will call myself a SEO Expert.
And the world all of the sudden seems so different to you. You are important professional now. People are very interested to hear what you have to say.
It feels great actually to become a SEO Expert all of the sudden. It is a life changing experience. You are invited as a speaker to pretty much any conference that you can think of. If you add a bit of the social networking in the mix of your expertise – you will have to run a busy schedule! You get invited to speak and are asked for quotes from the editors of the magazines you didn’t even know existed!
You can pick the projects you want to work on. Greed clouds your judgement and you tend to choose the SEO projects with the largest budgets. Months are passing, and your clients see no benefits from their investment in you – the SEO Expert of their choice!
Problems. Project cancelations. Clients asking their money back. You of course, the SEO Expert keep on explain them that it is either their fault or that SEO takes time.
In the meantime you are also realising what works in the sales process of the search engine optimization. It really is very cool how the phrases like
- First page in Google Guaranteed
- Page 1 ranking in 30 days
Open up the check books instantly. The Guarantee works somehow as the insurance to the buyer. It can only be a REAL SEO Expert offering 100% Money Back Guarantee, right?
Clients are piling up. There is a waiting list now. You think of the expansion. I should hire SEO staff to manage the demand! If the demand slows down a bit, you can always pour a few thousands in Google AdWords, and the hungry clients will come for your SEO Services.
Soon enough, this country is too small for you…. Expansion to Europe is on the cards. Or perhaps the Far East? Or should we do the IPO first?
Such is the life of the self proclaimed SEO Expert. Not easy really. Tough choices.
SEO Services
Tuesday, October 13, 2009 13:50 No CommentsConfused about all this SEO services you are being offered constantly? Receiving a million of SPAM emails a day from the Best Indian SEO Company? Talked to a number SEO companies and got contradicting advices? If you recognise yourself here – read on. This article explains what SEO Services really are.
SEO Services Basics
The aim of the SEO is to bring your web site more relevant visitors. Majority of the visitors to any site are from the search engines (with a very few exceptions). For the search engine like Google to bring you visitors the following must occur (in the following order):
1. Your web site has to have text
2. The text should be relevant to what your web site is about
3. The text needs to be presentable to both visitors and search engines
4. The search engine needs to find your site
5. The search engine needs to index your web sites textual content
6. The search engine needs to include your web site in the search engine results pages
7. Your site has to be ranked high in the search engines – to be find by humans searching
8. Your site needs to be presented ‘nicely’ in the search engines to invite humans to click on them in the listings
This is what needs to happen. The way to achieve it is the following:
SEO Services Tasks
1. Creating the content – copyrighting
2. Preparing he web site for the search engine indexation
3. Creating links from other web sites to your site.
The first two are called On Site Optimization Where the last one is called Off Site Optimization (it is not performed on your own web site).
This are the basic general tasks offered combined as SEO Services. Some companies claim to have some mystic knowledge or powers, and others will guarantee you top ranking in Google. The reality is that the more guarantees you get from a SEO company, the less likely will you be satisfied with their performance. Their performance – being measured in your web sites increase in the search rankings, and therefore increased numbers of visitors.
If the Internet is in the core of your business, it might be wise to hire an in house SEO consultant to perform your SEO Services. If you are a smaller company or the online aspect of your business is not of a great importance, you will engage with an SEO company that provides the SEO services. The SEO process is the same in both cases.
Online Marketing – Who cares?
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 13:12 2 CommentsThere are three basic stands you can chose when it comes to Online Marketing.
I don’t care about the Web!
You can simply chose to ignore it. Here are the reasons for it:
Your target market might not the using the Internet.
Your product or a service might not be applicable to be advertised online.
The scenarios above are less likely as days go by. So sooner or later you will have to face the fact. Internet is here!
I am monitoring it all!
Cybersleuth is by definition a person who searches the Internet for information about a company, both positive and negative, to keep abreast of public opinion by using the Web, Blogs and Social Networks.
This defines the ‘Passive’ activity on the Web. Cybersleuth absorbs information, cybersleuth is not a publisher.
Understanding your digital footprint is the core and the first step before you start managing it. You need to understand where you are, what the starting point is. You need to set your media marketing goals, and define a path how to get there from where you are.
Online Media Marketing Manager
Online Media Marketing Manager replaces the Cybersleuth with active publishing. Online Marketing is not just monitoring the media but actively publishing. Blogs, and Social Networks, Forums, Directories and all related web sites are the publishing tools. Your own web site is the main one tool an Online Marketing Manager has. Search engine optimization has the major role since it will help drive the publish to your site – traffic landing on the marketing messages you control and serve to your visitors.
Managing Search engine Results Pages (SERP) positioning of your site via the search engine optimization (SEO) most important task.
Social Media Marketing – How to start?
Friday, May 29, 2009 14:33 No CommentsHow to plan, start and organise your Social Media Marketing?
To market yourself you can use a number of online tools. Here are just the main ones:
1. Your web site
2. Your blog
3. Twitter
4. LinkedIN
5. Facebook
The list is endless. What will work for you might not be the best for everyone else. You need to understand where your target market ‘hangs out’, and use those sites.
Your Web site
Using one of those tools by itself is good. The true success in social media marketing is when you start combining them. Years ago, having a web site was enough. Then the search engines came and it was important that your web site is search engine optimised. Otherwise no one has seen it! Today, the number of optimised sites is so huge, and the size of the data published online that SEO itself is not enough anymore.
What become the powerful tool is the subscriptions to ezines and newsletters. You captured the web site visitor and he agreed to get an email whenever you decided to send one. It’s all great but we all started getting far too much mail we really wanted. As a publisher of a web site you always wanted to ‘talk’ to your visitors. Here comes ‘The Blog’…
Your Blog
Blogs are a bit magical from a number of aspects:
1. Interaction with the visitors via the blog comments is unique. The web site visitors can have their say on your web site! Unique.
2. RSS feed subscription enables everyone to subscribe to your updates and read them where and when they like, in a very manageable format.
3. From the search engine optimization perspective blogs are almost always performing better than your own web site. In majority of the cases a blog will attract a multiplication of the total number your own web site can attract.
So what do you do with all your blog visitors now? You get them subscribed to your feed or at least on Twitter. The best exit path from your blog after the ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Subscribe’ (or whatever is a conversion on your site) is ‘Follow me on Twitter’.
Let your visitors connect to you via LinkedIN. There you capture their name, phone, email and actually their whole professional life is logged there. It is quite easy to export your LinkedIN Contacts, and here is your perfect marketing list.
Similar to Twitter as it is another permission based (marketing) message broadcasting channel. Facebook is more ‘feature rich’ compared to Twitter. Get your web and blog visitors to Connect to your on Facebook.
So why getting your web site visitors to the social networking sites to connect to you? Simply to capture their details, and enable them to start and engage in the conversation with you. You then use the social networks to advertise your new products, special offers, services… and back they come to your web site and your blog. The big red ‘Buy now’ button is jet again in front of them. And again, and again…
Any of the online marketing tools alone cannot achieve anything similar by itself. Your offering will determine what will you use, but you have to use either a web site or a blog, and you have to use at least one social network. The choice what to use will not be based on what you like, but based on what your target market is using .
You Oughta Know Inbound Marketing
Thursday, March 12, 2009 13:23 No Comments+++ No Comment +++
Got to get my Stratocaster out one of these days…
Recession is bad for Internet Traffic
Monday, March 9, 2009 11:00 1 CommentAnyone who has a web site where the traffic is crucial to the success of the web site is pulling his hairs in the last couple of months. Why? On average the total amount of the Internet traffic is falling. If you monitor the web traffic of 100 or more web sites, you cannot not to notice the negative trend. And the general trend is a decline.
What does the recession have to do with it?
It is not really the question to answer. There are a number of the scenarios one can imagine:
1. There are less people working, so perhaps less people with the internet access.
2. People are more busy since their colleagues have been made redundant and their workload is spread on the remaining staff.
3. People just do not want to be seen surfing in the office – since they are afraid for their jobs.
4. People have better things to do but to surf endlessly.
5. …I am sure there are many more reason you can think of.
It is the first time in the history of the web (I am sure you like those ‘Biggest Recession’ phrases by now) that the overall Internet traffic volume is decreasing.
But don’t despair! If your traffic is falling, there is the SEO Consultant to get your traffic growing again!
Understanding your web site visitors
Friday, February 6, 2009 21:07 2 CommentsWhen you manage to capture your web site visitors, understanding how you did it is extremely important to base your future efforts on how to grow your web site traffic. Here are the basic questions you need to answer for each of your visitors:
Where did he came from?
What search phrase he used?
Where did he land on your web site?
The free questions above are the key of understanding your traffic. I lots of cases you will have to drill down further and answer questions like:
Where geographically is your web site visitor from?
What was your rank in the SERP for the phrase he was searching for?
How was your site represented in the SERP for the search phrase he was searching for?
Where did he go on your site?
Where did he go next?
How long was he on the site?
We all know that Google Analytics is the most used online web site log analyzer today. It is free, and Google is ingesting a lot in improving it constantly. But anyone who used it knows very well that although it is probably the best overall service it still lacks the capability to answer half of the questions listed above.
The result is that if you really want to understand your visitors you will have to use multiple web log analyzers. Especially if you have an active site where the content is dynamic and ever changing you will require a real time display of the activity on your web site to understand what do people actually read, when and why. The same article published in the different times of the day will not attract the same numbers of visitors. That and number of similar situations is where you are 100% helpless with just Google Analytics since it’s data is really far from real time, and is not even intended for such use (it is best used as an overview of the historical data).
There are number of tools that can help you to work with the real time data. You can analyse your raw log files yourself with software packages like WebTrends, or you can use the online services. There is a long list of them and each has a number of nice features so your choice will depend on what exactly are you looking for. The online web site visitors tracking services are usually free to begin with and then paid for when your traffic grows.
The ones I can recommend are StatCounter and the one with interesting features for bloggers is FEEDJIT.