All posts by myonecall

My One Call LLC is a Sales Acceleration Firm based in the Denver Area.

Co-Citations. Better than Title Tags

November 21, 2012 myonecall 2 Comments

In the new world of SEO, changes are happening at a break neck speed.

The Citation article, with no citations. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The latest (and most interesting) chatter is about co-citation as a new ranking factor. You can see the whiteboard presentation by Rand Fishkin at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/prediction-anchor-text-is-dying-and-will-be-replaced-by-cocitation-whiteboard-friday

We have noticed a clear change in local rankings (not just Google Places but blended and organic rankings) based on Title Tag usage. Because I am in a hurry (Thanksgiving tomorrow and all) let me just say your title tags may have diminished in value, and in fact may be hurting a sites ranking if they are spammy. They need to be looked at in concert with your URL descriptions and page copy. To much is to much. Those with ears will hear.

Now, Rand makes the point that c0-citation is a new and important ranking factor, somewhat like what title tags were. I agree. After looking at over 100 high ranking sites and the terms ( which have been bouncing around in the last 30 days a lot) I am convinced that co-citation is part of the now, and future.

Rand Fishkin gets Employee love... Uh.. Kiss? — Rand Fishkin gets Employee love… Uh.. Kiss? (Photo credit: Thos003)

So how can you start implementing co-citation in your web promotion. The good news is its a very natural occurrence. In a simple explanation, a co-citation lists a company’s name, and a service next to it. So, My One Call LLC is a Denver SEO, written in text on a decent authority web site can become a co citation. No need for a link, or spammy Anchor text. ( You can see my personal feelings about Anchor Text being a silly SEO tactic in other blogs on this site).

So using a co-citation in your bio’s and descriptions on forums, blogs, and high value directories is a much better tactic than using Anchor text.

Feel free to email me if you see these correlations in any of your rankings info@myonecall.com…. and thanks to the SEOmoz group for doing a superior job.

For those of you who don’t know, SEOmoz develops SEO Software, and provides a robust link intelligence API. I wonder if that is a tri-citation?

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SEO Analysis Denver

Google’s Top Down Search Navigation Is A Big problem

October 24, 2012 myonecall 3 Comments

Google’s Top Down Search Navigation Is A Big problem For Local Businesses. Google, tell me you’re joking!

Most Local SEO’s know the challenges that can come from Google serving up the wrong location results on local searches. In MANY cases Google is showing the searcher results (Maps and other) from towns or cities several cities away from the searchers town. The solution has been for the searcher to find the “location” box and type in their city or zip. In my very informal survey about 35% of the people I asked had no idea how to do this, even before the new Google search options bar changes.

Here is what the new Search Options (on top) bar looks like. Notice any thing missing? In this case Google Thinks I am in Erie . Some times Google thinks I am in Thornton CO. and sometimes other suburbs I rarely visit. I am in Lafayette CO.

So, where is the location box? You have to click on the “search tools” Tab to find it. How many searches will actually find the location tab, I haven’t a clue. I suspect, that if Google doesn’t move the tab to the first line on the main bar were it is visible we will continue to see local results (especially in suburbs) served up incorrectly. Seems like an easy fix, just have a little statement on top for searches that Google perceives a local intent, saying “We think you are in _____ < location. If not type your zip code here.

Here is what it looks like once you click on Search Tools.

So, what’s the solution if your business or client is in a city that has this issue? Use organic optimization and visibility programs, and Ad Words. Yes, I said Ad words. It’s increasingly becoming (for a local company) an important piece of catching all the traffic for your client.

Of the 4 ways a person can make a local search (keyword no local intent, keyword with major city, Keyword with actually city, keyword with zip) The new Google Search Tool Bar has an effect on 50% of those.

Tell us what you see in your area. If your clients or business (and their prospects) are based in a major metropolitan area (example Chicago, or Phoenix) then this isn’t going to be a big deal. If your business needs to be visible to prospects primarily within the city you serve (example Broomfield CO.) this is a big deal, and you will need a strategy to work with each of the local search types we defined above.

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SEO Analysis Denver

Google Places Ranking Changes

October 22, 2012 myonecall Leave a comment

Google Map Ranking Changes October 2012.

We have seen some interesting changes in the Google Maps rankings over the last week. The thing is, we have seen it on sites we track, and know that (in most cases) there haven’t been any new backlinks or any changes to the site itself in a while. This is wonderful because we know it had little to so with anything the client did, or we did in promoting the site.

I’ll make this short, because if you are reading this you may have seen the same thing, and want to know what is going on! Well, thanks to a very good Local SEO in CA. that I can not remember the name right now (but will come back and credit when I find it) we started to look at the meta titles on sites that dipped.

Sites that dipped used a location keyword twice in the title. Several had a location keyword in the domain as well. Maybe this is part of Google’s exact match domain changes. And maybe it looks at both the domain and the meta Title.

My bet is, if you have a site that has a location keyword in the Domain, and uses that same location keyword in the meta title, you have seen a drop in Google Maps ranking.

More to follow, and please let me know what you see.

The great

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Do It Yourself SEO, SEO Analysis Denver

How To Find Good Backlinks

October 18, 2012 myonecall 2 Comments

Denver SEO: How to Find Good Back Links

Finding high quality back links for local search engine optimization after the Google algorithm changes this year can be a very big challenge. Here are some tips on not only finding good links, but also avoiding the bad links that can hurt your site rankings.

First go search for your businesses key words. Now find the sites that in one way or another would allow you to add your site and go through the check list.

Tip One:If you would use the link if Google didn’t exist. This is huge. Good links stand on their own merit. Is this a site or page you would want your customers to see you on, and, is this a site or page that your customers might even see?

Tip Two: Does the page show up in searches for your keywords? Hey, if your customers are going to find you on the page they are going to use keywords for your service. Use multiple search engines for this.

Tip Three: Does the page have a Google Page Rank? If the Page rank is zero, move along. It’s a good sign it was penalized. SEOmoz recently did an excellent article on how many web directories that had been listed in their recommended list, as well as the Directory Maximizer (a separate site and entity) where banned or penalized by Google this year. You might be surprised how many on the later list were banned and penalized, as well as a hand fold from the SEOmoz list.

Tip Four: If your site has a blog, list it in the better blog directories. Search Blog Directories to find them. Or add your city in the search.

Tip Five: When you look at as many back links as we do (or any Internet Marketing company does) there is no question that a Dex listing will help your site. BUT DO NOT USE any of their services that require a tracking number. This can kill any ranking progress.

Tip Six: Go quality not quantity. Listing your site in every local directory you can find won’t hurt you (perhaps), but it won’t help you much either. Go with the Local directories where people will actually see you. Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yelp, Angie’s List are the main directories. Best of the web and a bunch of others won’t hurt, but we rarely if ever see traffic to a client’s site through those.

Tip Seven: Independent review sites can be excellent sources of traffic and good for your sites ranking. I will say no more.

Tip Eight: The harder the link is to acquire the more likely it’s a good link. Forums fall under this, and even a few blog comments.

Tip Nine: Use Google Plus both personally and for your business. Google plus is far more search engine friendly than any other Social media site.

Tip ten: Make sure your site has had an SEO review by a good SEO company. You can go through all of the above and spend hours a day for a year doing web site promotion, but if your site isn’t SEO friendly, its all for nothing.

Quick list of good sites a Local Site should be on:

Better Business Bureau

Google Places

Yahoo Local

Bing Local

Yelp

Angie’s list

DEXknows ( With qualifier stated above)

Blog listings Sites:

Bloglines

Blogged

Blogarama

I could go into detail about how to identify a good link from a bad, but that’s been written about extensively. If you want to learn more or go deeper into “How To Do SEO” I recommend :

SEOmoz.org (has a free and paid membership)

searchengineland.com

SEObook.com

If we can be of any help feel free to call. 303 500 3053

Visit us at http://www.salesjumpstart.net

Ex-Googler: “To Please Google With Your SEO, Forget About SEO”

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Tips on Selling More For SEO And Small Business.

October 8, 2012 myonecall 1 Comment

This collection of tips came through 20+ years of managing sales teams while developing more than $220 million in sales revenue.

I’ve been lucky in my life having worked around some of the more successful and talented sales professionals in the country. During the 1990s my sales force of 650 sold more than $80 million a year in recurring revenue for Telecom services. Since 2003, my company has averaged a 17-to-1 return on investment for every dollar our clients have spent with us. Based on these successes, here are some tips for business owners about sales, salespeople, and just plain selling:

1. Dogs have to like the dog food

Here’s an old sales story: A national sales manager is at a meeting with his sales managers from across the country. They have recently launched a new brand of dog food and the sales numbers are terrible. He is ranting and raving about how much marketing has been done, the dollars they’re spending, and no one is selling the new dog food. He asks the group what’s going on! And a small voice in the back of a very quiet room speaks up, “I don’t think dogs like the way it tastes.”

For success, start with your product. Make it taste really good. Too many business owners refuse to accept that a sales problem may, in fact, be a bad product or service. Honestly evaluate your products and services as well as your competition. Make yours better, faster, more affordable. Then go sell it!

Your sales staff will be more productive and your customers will be more loyal. See the end of this blog for some tips directly related to SEO services.

2. Most salespeople are like plumbers

Plumbers make more than many other trades. You know why? Because they do the stuff other people don’t want to do. In my experience, 75 percent of salespeople are in sales not because they are trained and passionate sales professionals, but because they will do the stuff other people don’t want to do: they will pick up the phone and make cold calls. You don’t have to be good at sales to make cold calls any more than you have to be good at plumbing to clean out a septic tank. Just make sure that when it comes to your salespeople, you hire the professionals that are passionate about their work; otherwise, you may as well hire a plumber.

3. Great salespeople work for high compensation

The average outside sales rep in Colorado earns around $58,000 a year before benefits. If you’re going to pay an average wage, expect average performance, which in sales means you should hire a plumber. If you want top performance, offer top pay.

4. You can’t hire commission only salespeople to sell your product

Commission only sales representatives must have the opportunity to make $1,500 a week, every week within their first month with your company. And they need to be paid quickly. Can your product support this? No. Stop thinking about hiring cheap sales help, and start thinking about how to make your product irresistible to buyers. Once you have an irresistible product you may be able to hire a commission only sales force because plumbers will be able to give it away.

5. The number one factor in achieving your sales goals is …

… a really great product or service. Period.

6. Most good salespeople are egotists

This is true. If you do not know how to manage egotistical personalities, don’t. Hire an experienced sales manager or a therapist to manage them. Some of the best salespeople I have ever worked with were pains to be around. They whined, they were always late, they didn’t come to mandatory training, and they didn’t play nicely with others. What they did was sell. All they needed was a cheer leader, not a manager.

Most sales managers only know how to manage plumbers because that’s what most salespeople are. Plumbers show up for meetings, fill out the reports, and struggle to make minimum sales; but they always have their shovel with them. The problem is you may be tempted to hire plumbers, because they’re easier to manage and will fit in with your company culture better. So if you are going to hire and manage plumbers, make sure you have a product that is irresistible to buyers.

I think I’ve made my point. Most sales programs are usually handed off to plumbers to sell. Your only chance for great sales success is to spend a great deal of time making your product or service irresistible to buyers. Trust me, in most cases, this is far more effective and a better return on investment than actually building a professional sales force with top notch management. Why? Because if your product is really good, you’ll attract the best sales professionals anyway.

This leads to my final point for today:

7. Great salespeople aren’t hired, they choose the company they want to work for

Given this, your job as a business owner is to build a service or product that is irresistible. Once you have that, your salespeople will become superstars (and you can throw the shovels away).

And, as promised for the SEO’s of the world. How can you build an irresistible service? Step One: Ask your clients what they feared most when signing up for your service. Then develop a 100% iron clad guarantee that what they listed , will not happen.

Steps 2-5 available by request.

Click to talk with Mike right now, or leave a message about this post.

Mike Bayes is President of My One Call LLC a business development firm based in Lafayette Colorado. http://www.salesjumpstart.net
303 500 3053 Ext 1

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SEO Analysis Denver

Why Google’s Geo Targeting in Local SEO is a Mess!

September 19, 2012 myonecall 4 Comments

Why Google’s Geo Targeting in Local SEO is a Mess.

A research paper recently stated that search terms using a local intent keyword (the city, or zip, or major metropolitan area as examples) where decreasing by 10% over the last year. Part of this trend may have to do with the search engines doing a better job over the last few years of displaying local information based on where they assume the searcher is located. In that, a large problem exists.

Today Google thinks I am searching from Northglenn Colorado, while Bing thinks I am in Arvada Colorado. I am actually sitting in my home office in Lafayette Colorado. This can have a horrendous affect on my local searches, and I do a lot of local searches.

Here is the screen shot of my browser showing Northglenn as my location in Google. To save time I am not showing the Bing Screen shot, but trust me it says and shows Arvada as my location. Note the location on the left side of the screen half way down.

Here is a Map of the Denver Metro area. Note that Lafayette (far north) is a long way (in local terms) from either Northglenn or Arvada. So, if I am searching for a local Plumber, or Chiropractic or Italian restaurant, Google and Bing will both show me results that are pretty worthless, unless I do add the local intent keyword (Lafayette).

I haven’t been able to find any great statistics (consistent) on the number of local searches with a local intent keyword, and those that just use the keyword alone. But the experts and my experience seems to call it about 50% of keyword searches for a local service will have a city in it. What that tells you is 50% (or a large amount at any estimate) of searches for local services get poor results when it comes to the search engines local listings. Perhaps that’s why Google started using blended results so much more frequently over the last 18 months. They realized that many of the local searches where getting bad results.

Google guesses at your location by thinking you are where your ISP local router, wire box or POP (old telecom term) is. That’s why they think I am sitting in Northglenn. A city I never go to or through. A few months ago they thought I was in Thornton Colorado. So not only are they wrong, but they even change how wrong they are every now and then.

As a company that does a significant amount of Local SEO, and a piece of that being listings in Google Places (Or Google Plus for Business) Bing and Yahoo Local this can cause a real problem.

If my local client in Lafayette Colorado wants to be visible in Maps for their area, then in reality, we need to somehow get the site ranking in Maps for cities 12 miles away. But that’s just for Comcast cable customers. If you’re with another ISP they may have you in another city. Pulling your hair out yet?

So if Google is demanding accurate NPA information (as they should) for business listings don’t they then have a responsibility to provide accurate search information when someone searches for a local business? Seems simple enough to do, they can have a statement on any search with local intent saying “We show your location as ______ (city). If this is not correct click here to change your location settings.

Until then, both Local SEO companies and their clients need to be aware that a top Maps listing in their area, may only be getting served by the search engines in locations far- far away, and have very little value. And we don’t even need to go into the Pay Per Click Ramifications, or at least save that for the next blog.

So, if you would do me a favor, feel free to add a comment below, and list the city you are sitting in, and then the city Google shows you in based on your browser. This might be very interesting.

If we can help you as a business with your web visibility, or if you are an SEO as a sales consultant, please call me at 303 500 3053.

How to Sell SEO

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Internet Marketing

Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Pay a Good SEO Company

September 9, 2012 myonecall 6 Comments

Top 10 reasons Why You Should Pay a Good SEO Company

Your prospects use the internet to find your services.

Your Revenues come from one or two primary sources, and the Internet isn’t one of them.

You have tried to get your site more visible on your own, but it’s not.

You have tried Pay Per Click and it didn’t work.

You have used a SEO company and never saw real results.

You would like new prospects to call you every day.

Your site was built by a friend of your sister who now has gone into real estate and doesn’t have time to make changes, but you think it’s a pretty good site.

You don’t have 16 hours a week to keep up on the latest SEO news, research, and changes.

You hate to work on a computer.

Because you didn’t build your own house or car right?

Reasons your shouldn’t hire a SEO Company

They promise you first position rankings

They are very inexpensive

They sent you a very impressive email sales pitch

Your sisters company used them for “Locksmith for your home in Garden City” and they are now in the 5^th position under that keyword.

Your prospects do not find your services on line.

They talk about really complicated Internet stuff and seem to understand the Interweb really well.

They know secret Google information because they worked there 5 years ago as an Intern.

They know secret SEO tricks they won’t tell you. (There are no SEO tricks BTW)

They have no references in your industry.

They can not produce 5 references from the last 12 months.

They won’t tell you who they have worked for based on client privacy. (Huh?)

What you are paying for when you hire an SEO.

NEW YORK, NY - MAY 17: Chelsea Rising watches ... — NEW YORK, NY – MAY 17: and Clear Vision into SEO (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Years of experience.

Constant research into changes in SEO.

A clear and proven understanding of White Hat SEO.

A long track record which recent success in generating revenue through the Internet.

Transparency and reporting.

A complete understanding of on site SEO, Social media as it relates to promoting your site, conversion tactics on your site, content generation, your link profile, and high authority site attraction.

What you shouldn’t pay for when you hire an SEO

NEW YORK, NY - MAY 17: People attend the 5th... — NEW YORK, NY – MAY 17: People attend the 5th annual Internet Week. Are you taking Notes?

Submitting your site to a bunch of directories every month.

Writing poorly written articles and spinning them on a bunch of Article sites.

A secret sauce.

Search Engine Optimization has changed more in the last year than in the history of the service. The proof that a SEO is worth its fee is if their clients have not suffered in the last year, and if it was local SEO, since April 2012.

Ask them for references from 3 similar industry clients who have used them for several years, and 3 that have started with them since April. Call those references and look for them on line.

Our company, My One Call llc provides internet visibility marketing for Attorneys, CPA’s, Residential Contractors, Home Improvement Companies, Publishing Company’s, On Line E Commerce sites, Professional services, and many more. We often get called in after a business has spent far too much money on sub standard SEO services. Using the above guidelines will save you money, and get you to the right Internet Marketing company quicker.

Call us if we can help. 303 500 3053.

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Do It Yourself SEO, On Line Reviews, SEO Analysis Denver

Is Google Penalizing Sites for Profile Behavior

August 27, 2012 myonecall 1 Comment

Is Google Penalizing Sites for Profile Behavior?

I think it’s true, Google is a profiler. Your back link profile, and timing of it all.

It appears to me that Google is now Penalizing sites based on Back Links showing up in unnatural “Batches”.
It seems logical that Google is grading your entire Back Link profile based on new logic that includes when and how often Links are acquired, not only the source of those back links.

If your web sites back link Profile looks like this: with the line representing a week or a month interval with very little new back links in between those intervals, you look pretty unnatural don’t you?

_____30 links__________27 Link___________30 Links ___________27 links

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - JUNE 06: Brian McClendon, ... — SAN FRANCISCO, CA – JUNE 06: Brian McClendon, Google VP of Engineering for Google Maps, speaks during a news conference about Google Maps o

Let’s say you’re Google. You really dislike any attempt to manipulate your algorithm. So you want to build in a bunch of signals that will tell you when a site is trying to unnaturally manipulate its rankings in your search results.

So you bring together your very talented spam group, and some of the best engineers in the world and come up with what you would consider sure fire signs and signals that a web site is trying to game the system, and you make some pretty big (and good) changes to how you rank sites. Many of you know these changes as “Panda”, and “Penguin” up dates. You can search either to find an abundance of SEO information about this. It rocked some of the SEO world.

But something that hasn’t been discussed recently showed up in a blog post at http://blumenthals.com/blog/ and written by one of the Internets best “local SEO’ guys, Mike Blumenthal.

It relates, in this instance to “Local SEO” and how Google perceives reviews posted in bunches. Basically there have been all sorts of problems recently where a business has several clients’ review them and it never shows up on their Google Places Listing. The Blog I linked to above, and response from Google explains that when they see a bunch of reviews come in at once, or over a short period of time, it can flag them as spam reviews because they assume the business has sent out a request for those reviews. Google wants reviews to be a natural occurrence. So reviews are good, requesting reviews are bad, and that’s how they assume you have requested reviews from your customers. And that is (in my opinion) exactly how Google feels about back links to a web site.

Now, those of us how have been in Internet Marketing and Web Promotion for long time understand that if you just throw 1000 links at a page over a short period of time, that you may get a nice ranking for a day or week, but the “bounce” effect will pull that ranking down pretty fast, nothing new there, but what does seem new to me is not only will throwing a bunch of links at one time hurt your rankings, but building links in “batches” may hurt your rankings as well. Isn’t that the same premise as getting a bunch of reviews at once… it’s just not natural.

Now clearly this will depend on the type of back links. It is natural, one would assume that if your blog gets picked up by a national site, or distributed by them to their national audience, that you will get a “Batch” of back links. Seems natural right? Happens to our site now and then, and we never see much happen in the negative way. Those back links all come from Internet Marketing type sites, and all quote the same blog or information.

But….. (drum Roll)….If those “batches” of back links are from less than high quality sites, (like free directories), or low value blog’s, or low value blog comments, or completely unrelated sites, or social bookmarks, I would assume Goggle may ignore them, or actually penalize your site rankings. Yes, I think they are now penalizing for Profile Behavior, as much as for the Back Links to your site.

And it seems to me that a profile penalty is about the hardest predicament to overcome. It’s kind of like having to walk around town with a convicted felon sticker on your head and Google is the Police.

So it all goes back to doing web visibility and PR as if Google Didn’t exist. In many ways the last year of changes to how Google ranks sites have changed how an SEO or a web master should view rankings forever. If your SEO is using 2011 tactics, you may be heading in the wrong direction.

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SEO Analysis Denver

Do Top Google Local Rankings Equal High Sales For Small Business?

August 23, 2012 myonecall 4 Comments

Do Top Google Local Rankings Equal High Sales?

As a business development firm as well as a Denver SEO we get to look at all sorts of data. One of the reports we run shows all of the Denver Metro Area construction permits issued over a period of time. We use this to help guide marketing efforts for clients.

I thought it would be interesting to compare the top ranked basement finishing companies on Google to the rankings of basement finishing companies by number of sales in Denver over the last three months. If top Google rankings for important (highly searched) keywords are valuable in selling more, then they should show up very high on number of basements sold.

Clearly this is a correlation, not causation, and we are only working with one type search-

“Denver Basement Finishing”. We are not looking at location based searches and rankings, like setting our browser to a suburb and searching “basement finishing”. We can however with relative confidence say that the top ranked sites we see are very well ranked in the other search types for local. Those being: just the keyword, keyword plus suburb, keyword + zip.

Here is the screen shot of the search “Basement Finishing Denver”

So the top Three Google ranked sites under this search are:

Finished Basement Company

Basements and Beyond

Elkstone Basements

How does this stack up to the number of Permits issued for basement finishing in the Denver Metro Area from June 1^st, 2012 through 8-20-12?

Top Sales of Basements in Denver

1.) Elkstone Basements with 15

2.) Finished Basement Company 09

3.) Tie. Finished Basement Company 05 and two others. (The Basement Company and RS Master Builders).

There are 258 total basement Permits listed from Contractors. These three companies sold 31 of those or 12% of the total. There are 174 different contractors on the report, these three only represent 1.7 % of all the companies on the report. The average contractor sold 1.4 basements. The top three in the Google results sold an average of 9.7 basements. That is 7 times as many as the average.

You can see the data we used at the bottom of this blog. Raw data sorted by Company name. You can pull this information from the www.constructionmonitor.com (not sure if you need a membership or not)

It also is noteworthy that Elkstone Basements (a client) does Pay Per Click on Google. We didn’t see the other top two in the Pay Per Click ads.

There are many other factors that could influence a basement finishing company’s sales. Some of those being other marketing they do, number of referrals they receive, competitiveness of their pricing, their sales process, and people just seeing their trucks!

But there is no question there is a very strong relationship between high Google Rankings and High Sales.

A note on the data: We removed home builders who had a basement permit, as these appear to be new construction sales and not in the same category as the others.

Here is the spread sheet info after sorting. Each time the company is named it represents a permit being approved for a basement. See it on Google Docs https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en&hl=en&key=0AhMCsU1ItecOdE5yNlg3M0kyY0dpOW5DbVpMY1lwQXc&output=html

Wouldn’t it be great if we had access to this type information for all types of business? We could make a strong case that web visibility provides a very strong return on investment, and in the world of SEO and Marketing, that is a case we are consistently trying to make.

Feel free to call me if we can help you with your Business development. 303 500 3053 . We work with Contractors, SEO’s, Web Design Firms, and Just about every type small company you can imagine!

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Trusted Back Links For Your Site after Penguin

August 20, 2012 myonecall 4 Comments

Trusted Back Links For Your Site after Penguin.

If you have been following this blog, and many of the better SEO sites on line, you know by now that with the recent (and not so recent changes) in the Google ranking systems that the more “trusted Sites” you have linking to your site, the better your site authority is going to be. There is nothing new in this, except that on August 10^th2012, Google made additional changes in its algorithm that in essence gave what they consider “trusted Sites” an even higher boast in Authority.

PageRanks-Example.svg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’d like to introduce some sites that I consider “trusted”. If you use them for your site, you will find they fall into the SEO philosophy we try to practice, that being, if you would want to add your site or get a link on a site even if Google didn’t exist, it’s probably a good idea to do so, and will meet the Google guidelines on quality links.

A few other considerations for a back link opportunity (and these all help in considering a web site or page trusted).

Will this web site provide additional traffic to your site, and will it be quality traffic. This principle in itself will knock out about 95% of the “directories” on line. Many, if not most were set up for SEO purposes. We have been tracking 100 + directories over the last 12 months to see what effect the Google Algorithm changes would have. The most basic research method is to look at the sites Page Rank in the past, and see if it has dropped or disappeared. Many of the directories once used in abundance by web masters and some a SEO’s have lost some or all of the Google page rank once reported. A sure sign the site is considered low quality by Google.
Would you be embarrassed if someone judged your business by it’s presence on this site. Or perhaps a better way to put it, would you be pleased to be found on the site. Now I know, most of the low value places you can list your site will never be seen by any of your customers, so this question is really an internal thought process, and it goes with the first point exactly.
Is it easy to add your site? There is a direct correlation between the ease of adding your site or information to a web site, and the value it offers your business.
Does this site relate to your business? Trust me, this is important, and it goes to the point number 1 again. Why are you adding your information to a site in a foreign country that has no relationship to your business?
Does this site have follow links? Who cares? You shouldn’t. Follow, no follow makes no difference if you are following the principle of using a site for great traffic or visibility.
Image of Google & Yahoo offices in Haifa. Both located in the same building (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There are more principles I will blog about later, for now I am due on a webinar. Let me give you a couple of sites we think you should be on, and you tell me if they make sense. I would also be interested in your thoughts on these simple principles.

We can start with some simple listing sites, and later we will go into directories, Social sites, forums and blogs. I want to give you what may seem to be obvious (or not) and some that are a little off the beaten track.

Site One: Google Plus for Business. http://www.google.com/+/business/

Site Two: http://www.ikarma.com/

I think you will find both sites fall into the parameters. I could pontificate on the reasons and the research, traffic and results from these sites, but I’d rather hear your thoughts, as well as your suggestions.

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