In my website and on this Blog, I’ve included a lot of information about website SEO practices that work, and a bit about those that don’t. I’ve also noted that there are many SEO companies who promise to get you a high ranking in Google by optimizing your website. As I’ve noted in previous posts, most of the companies who offer SEO services have little, if any, knowledge on what actually works well. For one, practices that used to work, such as keyword stacking on the pages, stacking keywords in titles, and stacking in descriptions and keywords metatag, are quickly losing their effectiveness as new algorithms are put in place to circumvent such measures. In fact, the reason the keyword metatag has so little value now in a site’s ranking is a result of the search engines attempt to provide more relevant results. Just know that many of the self-professed SEO Experts still use Blackhat techniques, which can not only hurt your ranking, but get your website blacklisted.
I’ve done a bit of research on these SEO companies (rarely a day goes by where someone doesn’t email me and promise to get me on the first page of Google…which I have been for several years), and while they all promise results, few note anything about what they do to get this ranking, few have websites, and even fewer still provide case studies, or any evidentuary proof that their services are of value. This is bad enough, but many of these companies will apply inline css code to their changes (which often invalidates the code), and then they charge the client a large fee, don’t provide reports on what was done or when, and what’s even worse, they charge an ongoing monthly fee. Why the monthly charge?
After I optimize a website, I recognize that the search engines neeed a month or two to respond to the changes, and then, only after careful assessment will additional changes be made if needed. Those who charge an ongoing monthly fee (assuming they had done their job correctly) are simply seeking to get rich by exploiting your lack of knowledge about SEO and rankings. If you’ve read some of my previous blog posts on the “SEO Experts” I am sure I sound a bit like a broken record, but since I care about the growth of my client websites I wanted to offer some sage advice, and a bit of information about my success with optimization.
Firstly, a website needs to have text content to be optimized well. I hear from prospective clients all the time how they want a clean and simple website. In effect they are telling me that they don’t want to pay much (who does), and the “simple” refers to the reality that they don’t have much by way of content ready. The problem is that a website, especially a home page, which has little content, won’t do well in the rankings. Why? Because there is little if anything for the search engines to index. The truth is that the more pages you have, pages with well written text “above the fold” (at the top of the page) the better your chance of having your content served up. If the content changes over time, … this will help some, if you get a lot of traffic, and they stay around a while, and if your website has been online for a long time, this is what will help get your site ranked highly.
So what do you need?
- A consistent domain name that is keyword rich
- Lots of pages with good keyword rich content that is proofed
- Quality inbound links (reputable websites linking to you)
- Internal links to your other pages
- Targeted page titles, page descriptions, and heading titles
- A website that has been online for some time
- Interesting and useful content to get new visitors and repeat visitors
As you can see I note “keyword rich” and “keyword targeted” often. As I’ve noted many times, a good keyword relationship is important, meaning that your targeted keywords (those likely to be queried in a search to find you) need to be relational to the key SEO areas. These areas include the page titles, the text headings, the description tag, and to a lesser degree the keywords tag. There are other legitimate techniques as well (such as quality inbound and internal linking strategies), but these are the most important ones. And remember, the only way a company can promise to get you on the first page of Google is by using AdWords, which can get expensive, and may not have a lasting ranking benefit.
When it comes to optimization, I use techniques which doesn’t cost my clients. I don’t like paying for anything unnecessarily (I have never paid for marketing), and since many of my clients are small companies, I recognize their need to keep costs down. For my clients I add the proper metatags to their pages, include a keyword targeted title (with regional specificity when possible), a keyword rich description, the keywords metatag based upon the words that related to the specific business, and I utilize heading tags. In most every case my client websites, many created by previous “designers” moved from a placement so low that it could only be found by searching their company name, to a first page ranking on Google in a span of a couple of months. For those clients who have a lot of competition in their industry, I provide an advanced optimization service wherein I provide unique keyword targeted titles for every page, every page’s description, keyword rich “alt” and “title” tags, and often rewrite the content on primary pages for the important keyword density relationship. These strategies work, and have been perfected by me over the 10 years I’ve been designing websites.
To be clear, I would never consider myself an SEO Expert if I couldn’t prove this claim, and so today I am providing you the evidence.
As most of my clients know, one service I offer is free analytics reports. I have them sent out each week as a PDF so that my clients, and I, can keep an eye on their progress. As you will see from the included image, each of these clients experienced improved traffic over the previous month. Some of my clients still have a relatively small number of visitors since they’re in a speciality market, but many get well over a thousand a month. I wanted to share this latest report with you to help illustrate some of my client ranking success stories.
click image to view larger
ACS Roofing (www.egroofing.com)
Rebecca of ACS Roofing came to me with a Joomla website that had been hacked. After the trojan removal process, I edited her existing website which the previous desinger had made a mess of. As for its ranking, it initially did well in Elk Grove (based upon the efforrts of a few SEO companies she had hired), yet very poorly in Sacramento. Upon my recent SEO changes, her site went from a Sacramento ranking in the hundreds, to the first page of Google. As the analytics report shows, her site’s traffic has increased by over 2,200% from the previous month.
Autobody Workshp:
ABW came to me with a website that was created in one of those hosting server simple website builders. The site’s ranking was very poor, and after my redevelopment they moved from a very low ranking to the first page of Google. They now get well over 300 visitors per month.
CCMCA:
Julie of the California Conference of Masons Association Contractors, came to me with a request for a new website. She noted that the previous quotes were much higher that what I charged her. After a few months the CCMCA website went from a poor ranking with few visitors, to well over 400 a month.
Four Seasons Painting:
Rich Davis came to me with a website created by one of the “do it yourself” website builders. As with most of these builders, the website was very simple in layout, didn’t look professional, and the company charged him a monthly fee to use it. His ranking was not evident in the first 20 pages or so using a logical search query. Since the redevelopment, Rick’s website is now on the first page of Google for “sacramento residential painters” and “sacramento commercial painters”. Other variations will provide similar results. This is important since few will search beyond the first page.
Gateway Community Charters:
GCC came to me with the need for website redevelopment. After my new design and optimization, their site moved from a low ranking to the first page in Google. They get well over 2000 visitors per month.
Gilchrist Golf Cars:
Derek came to me with a website that had been done in Front Page. I created an initial design a few years back, which drastically improved his ranking. Then Derek trusted me to do a redevelopment to bring it up to current standards, and since this, with a bit of additional SEO work, the website now gets well over 1,000 visitors per month, and he ranks #1 for most every related search city with golf cars or carts.
GNB Valves:
Amy of GNB came to me with a website that had a broken navigation, was visually dated, with outdated content. After the redevelopment their website went from a very low ranking, to a first page ranking in their market (industrial valves). GNB gets well over 1000 visitors per month.
The Highway 50 Association:
The hwy50 wagontrain website had a loyal following, yet few new visitors since the website was dated in appearance, and not effectively optimized. After my redevelopment and optimization, the site went from approx 20 visitors a month to well over 400.
Sam’s Signs and Window Painting:
Sam came to me with a website he had created himself. Again, no ranking. After a couple of months I had him on the first page of Google. A few months after that he was ranked #1 for anything related to sacramento window painting.
Stonehenge Signs:
Frankie came to me with a website created in one of those builders. This was a Joomla CMS clone with limited functionality, and a poor design. Frankie’s ranking was very poor. After a few months, Frankie now ranks on the first page, often #1, of Google for all relevant queries.
These are just a small sample to illustrate that good SEO practices achieve results. Not every company will get an immediate top ranking in Google, especially if the website is new, but by using proven strategies, then yes, you can get a better ranking than your competition. If your website’s ranking is low, contact me for a free assessment.
