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Building Traffic To Your Site | Mr-SEO.com

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Build Links With Great Content

Must Build Links!

Link campaigns can be effective. It is possible to request links and receive them–it happens every day. But for the same amount of effort expended, you could probably write new content for your site that would attract links without you ever asking.Search Engine Guide Blog, Jan 2009

Link building is indeed very important, however there are better ways than begging others to link to your site. In fact, with all the email we get, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get the attention of webmasters to consider trading links.

Everyone loves content not just the search engines. Make your content relevant to what your market wants and they will be all too happy to link to it for reference. For example: You have a website where you sell paint supplies. Create a page about different types of painting techniques used, make a video about some simple ways your products can be used, make a page about complimentary services or vendors your customers might appreciate - you get the idea. Think of how you can be helpful to your audience and they will be very appreiative and reward you with links because your content has real value.

~ Greg

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Website Usability – what does it mean for your revenue?

The true test of any marketing effort, whether online or otherwise is this: did it produce the desired outcome? Did revenue, leads, downloads or whatever your goal is increase as a direct result of this effort?

It is not enough to look at the site traffic numbers alone as they can be deceiving. It’s equally important to look at the performance of the website in terms of how your customers are reacting to many of the visual elements placed in front of them. Reaction is the first step toward interaction, which is the fundamental building block of business.

The number one flaw I see in website designs is this; way too much visual information. More information loses your audience. We are not becoming a society of scanners, we already are one. Each of us now has the attention span of a gnat , and with so many other sites to choose from, we have to find exactly what we want in the least amount of effort - therefore we scan.

In the bigger picture of marketing, the better we know our audience the better we can serve their needs. The days of doing things the sa

me ol’ way are long gone, and those that keep a “business as usual” mentality will die very quickly on the internet. Visitors coming to any website want things their way and if we are smart, we will adapt.

What can we do to adapt and learn what our visitors want? Do your homework and research. Careful analysis of your site traffic will reveal a ton of great insight, but knowing what to look for takes some practice as these numbers fail to tell the whole story.

Did the increase in number of pages viewed mean your visitors are more engaged with your site, or just lost? A high “time on page” can be positive for sales pages that require extensive copy but negative for pages designed to funnel traffic to another destination. The bottom line is that while numbers are necessary for understanding traffic patterns, they need to be examined in context.

Getting feedback from your target audience is also a great way to directly ascertain the effectiveness of site, page and navigational presentation. Survey your site visitors by enticing them with free downloads, subscriptions, or anything else in exchange for their opinion. Remember, you are asking them to take their time, which to most of us is a very valuable commodity these days. There are a number of panel groups who, for a fee, will make your site available to their members who get paid to visit and evaluate sites. This kind of feedback is very valuable if the visitors are representative of your market, however even if they are not your target audience you can still get some good insight on improvements.

Finally, you can try split testing or other forms of trial and error to test various layouts or ideas for improvement in achieving your goals. This method takes longer, but will teach you a valuable lesson as you come to understand how very subtle changes can produce significant results.

Understanding how visitors react to your site and making improvements accordingly is maximizing the potential of your existing traffic. For many businesses, this strategy can do far more for the bottom line than spending money on new traffic sources or increased exposure.

We welcome your thoughts on this topic – please share them so all may benefit.

Cheers –

Greg

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The “Web Guy”

Everyday it seems we have to contend with the limited knowledge of some “jack of all trades, master of none” hack with an outdated understanding of how SEO works. This person is known around our office as the “Web Guy”.

“My web guy suggested we do 301 redirects on every page”

Did he now?

“My web guy said we should dump these PR 7 URL’s because they have a question mark in them”

Hmmm, no kidding?

“My web guy wants to check your work and make sure your not doing anything that will hurt our existing rankings”

You mean the poor rankings you just hired us to raise?

We absolutely love the Web Guy because we can almost always pinpoint his attitude toward outside entities within 5 minutes of our initial meeting. The Web Guy thinks we’re pissing in his territory. The Web Guy knows barely enough to be dangerous and wants us to know that he knows what he knows as he thinks his knowledge stretches a lot further than it actually does (Whew! That was a mouthful). The Web Guy likes to question us on every point and wants definitive proof of why we do things the way we do. In short, the web guy is the sort of fellow that puts his arm around his girlfriend in the presence of other people…not because he genuinely wants to, but because he feels the need to “let everyone know that what’s mine is mine”. We’re not sure if the Web Guy is a designer, coder, programmer, network administrator or what, but we’re sure he’d have no qualms about putting all those down on his resume. We’re also fairly certain that he rubs vasaline on his chest, pats it down with coffee grounds and tops it off with a gold medallion prior to an open shirted night at the club, but that’s only speculation at this point.

Now, of course, this is a bit of a generalization. Not all web guys are “Web Guys”, and many have been quite helpful and pleasant. Some are just genuinely inquisitive and many ask if we can impart some details on what we’re doing so they can understand for future reference. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that and we love talking shop with anyone who isn’t combative about our company being brought in. But every once in a while, we do run across a “Web Guy” who genuinely works against his own best interests and is a serious pain in the ass in the process.

And when that happens, we’re lucky enough to have our own in-house foil, who we affectionately refer to as “Accounting Guy”.

“What? You got an additional charge on your monthly bill for all the excess hours we had to spend dealing with your Web Guy? Oh…right…well, that’s just our Accounting Guy. He keeps track of the consulting hours and bills according to our contract. Yeah…he’s a real stickler for noting the time spent dealing with Web Guy, but what can I tell ya…he pays for himself.”

Accounting Guy doesn’t come into play with most clients, and he never comes into play without a warning, but if called upon, he’ll be at every phone call with calculator in hand, an eye on the clock and a smile on his face. Accounting Guy loves to charge Web Guy for completely wasting our time at length, and he keeps detailed records of all of Web Guy’s long winded Q & A sessions in case there are any issues with the bill. Best of all, Accounting Guy never misses an opportunity to point out when Web Guy is working in a contradictory fashion to his employer’s wishes. Like Beyonce’ Knowles, Accounting Guy can be counted on to show up everywhere to point of nausea.

Once the employer understands how much Web Guy is costing them, they usually keep him on a leash and we simply drop the fees. If you experience the same situation, it’s important to introduce your Accounting Guy to the employer sooner rather than later. Don’t waste more of your time than is necessary explaining what you are doing instead of doing the actual work itself. It’s also not fair to the unknowing employer to present them with a bill for the excessive time you’ve been forced to waste on their Web Guy when a much earlier phone call from Accounting Guy would have likely solved the problem to everyone’s satisfaction.

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New Mr-SEO.com

Hello,

A lot has happened behind the scenes here at Mr-Seo.com. You may have noticed that there has not been much input from us, and for that we apologize. What have we been up to? Well, for starters, Joe and Alan decided to turn the business over to someone new, and that person is me. My name is Greg Gaskill, and I have been working with Joe and Alan for some time now migrating everything over to my ownership and management.

What does this mean for you? First, the things that won’t change - the commitment to bring the truth to the market of what SEO & SEM are and what they are not! As you know, there is a tremendous amount of disinformation floating around the internet. The one size fits all, or get your site in the top ten for $100 crap advice screws things up for website owners, and makes the real job of doing quality, sustainable work harder because we have to undo a lot of widely publicized but incorrect beliefs in order to establish trust with our clients. The cornerstone of Mr-Seo has been truth, and that will not change.

Ok, so what is new? A new website to Web 2.0 standards. Our blog, Podcasts and Discussion Board are now all served by our host, rather than somewhere else. With one login, in one place you can access all of our resources.

We also now offer our Complete Website SEO Evaluation Report - with a Better Than Free Special Offer. This report covers a ton of key areas which are critical to getting top ten listing in Google and other search engines. We give you the good, the bad, and the dirt on your competition, all in one in-depth report. The best part is that when you buy this report for $495, we give you $600 of our services free. We figured it was a great way to help companies find out what they needed to be doing, and then offer a great deal to have us do all the work - everybody wins.

We put in place a News Brief - Surviving Online, SEO and SEM trends. This News Brief is just that, brief - for the simple reason, we all are busy and really don’t pay that much attention to newsletters anyway. Why not just send you the stuff that is important, and forget the hype?

We put in place a simple questionnaire at registration for any of our services so we can better understand who you - our visitors are, and what you would like us to address on our website or in our News Brief. In addition, we will be emailing a questionnaire, and would really appreciate your taking a moment to help us understand who you are, and what you would like to get from us. Also feel free to post ideas and suggestions on our Blog, or Discussion Board. We strongly believe in supporting you, our audience and customers.

We are now monitoring and posting often to the Discussion Board and Blog. After all, these are only valuable if they are used regularly, so it is our commitment to you to maintain them with active participation.

In the near future, we will add some E-courses for SEO and SEM which you can opt-in to on our website, and in an email in which we will announce it to you.  The purpose of these mini courses, will be to bring awareness to various applications of SEO and SEM in addressing various business issues. We hope you find these courses helpful.

Finally, I would like you all to know that I stand committed to deliver quality services in a fair and ethical manner. It is my commitment to work with each customer to ensure that they receive the best we have to give them. We will be up-front about what we can, and can not deliver, what we can, and can not control, and in some cases we may need to advise potential clients that we can not help them. There is far too many con artists out there promising the world, and under-delivering, and I refuse to be one of them.

Best wishes to all for now,

Greg

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In Response to, In Response to, In Response to….

I’d like to thank Pandia for responding to my initial post on Indian SEO, as open dialogue is one of the things that makes the internet the exceptional resource that it is.

First and foremost, I want to state that I do not hold a person’s linguistic abilities against them, regardless of their ethnicity, race or country of origin. That doesn’t mean I would hire someone underqualified for an English speaking (or writing) position, simply that I don’t discriminate outside of the qualifications necessary for the work at hand. Furthermore, I failed to point out in my previous post (and in fact, did make a sweeping generalization to the contrary) that I’m sure there are some Indian SEO firms who do exceptional work. I have yet to run across one, but nevertheless…

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BlogRush a bust for wordpress

I have tried to install the blogrush code on this blog, with no luck. So I went to the site to see if they had an FAQ section or a contact us. They have video tutorials but nothing to help me with my problem. I did a quick search and found out I’m not the only one having problems getting the code to work.

Does anyone have any suggestions? It could be the type of template I am using or something else getting in the way of letting this script to work. I suppose blogrush is a long way from being where it needs to be for blogs.

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PPC Tips, Link Building and Site Exposure Podcast

Alan and I discuss some PPC problems we solved for clients and how they can help you. We also discuss link building and how to get your site more exposure to help with your overall SEO.

Listen to the sample below. You can download the full version on iTunes or via our SEO podcast page.

[audio:http://www.mr-seo.com/audio/9-20 sample.mp3]

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Bad SEO …

I took a look at Alan’s post and decide to dive in and see just how good these guys are since Pandia is touting their sponsor. I looked at one client they have listed in their studies. Site looks ok…oh wait, the title tag reads Send Flowers & Gifts to South Africa, Corporate, Wedding & Baby Gifts Store, South Africa Flower Deliver, Buy Gifts Online, Carol Boyes, Florists Cape Town & Johannesburg SA

Hmm… long. Amateur mistake trying to optimize one page for so many terms. How are the keyword tags you ask? Read the rest of this entry »

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In Response to “On outsourcing search engine optimization to India”

Joe pointed my attention to a recent article posted on Pandia titled, “On outsourcing search engine optimization to India“. I’m including the link so you can check it out at your leisure. This “article”, and I use that term loosely, has more holes in it than a pound of Lorraine Swiss. As a working SEO, I can tell you firsthand that almost all Indian SEO is remarkably cutting edge - for the calendar year 1995.

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Perfect Example of Why SEO’s Get a Bad Rap.

I received this in my e-mail today. This is just the kind of e-mail that tries to take advantage of a site owner’s lack of knowledge on SEO and one of the main reasons I started my podcast in the first place. These guys are charging people $99 a month for this “service”. “Disservice” is more like it. This makes people think their site will not only rank, but that sponsored search is the same as submissions and being Google and Yahoo certified makes it ok to give them money. If you ever wondered why SEO gets a bad rap, it’s because of crap like this!

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