What Is SEO and How How Has It Changed Over the Years? part -1

Many business owners will here hear the phrase 'search engine optimisation' (or SEO) from friends in the business community or even competitors and may consider it as a route to increasing sales, but what is SEO? Alternatively, a business owner may have tried 'SEO services' in the past and found it either didn't work as well as expected or was working, but no longer as effective - this article explains what SEO is, and why 'new' SEO is working better than ever.

I have been working in search engine optimisation and ranking website market, before it was even called SEO. Here are the changes in SEO since the start of the new millennium and what you should be looking for in the SEO services that your SEO Agency offers or provides.

We take a look back at SEO through the years and explain what SEO is today and how best to utilise it for our website.

SEO in 2000

Back at the start of the Millennium the 'big' search engines that most people were using were Lycos and Excite. Of course, back then a very small percentage of the UK population had access to the internet and those that did had a slow 'dial-up' system.

Websites were one or two pages with basic information to allow them to load quickly (within 20 seconds). SEO practices back then were to 'hide' as many keywords on a page as possible, so the website was found for those searches without making the page look to spammy for visitors.

In 2002 Google launched something called 'AdWords' and it was predicted to be the death of SEO, as people could pay for prominence, on the now the number 1 website for starting internet searches.

In 2003, Yahoo purchased Inktomi, AltaVista and FAST, which was basically the end of all of the 'smaller' search engines. Google started to stamp down on 'spam' practices and websites. At the same time Google realised that 'AdWords' were not going to kill off SEO and that in fact the 'natural listings' encouraged visitors back to their search engine platform. Google started to recognise 'professional SEO' experts and promoted good SEO rather than spamming SEO.

2004 saw the first website 'banned' from the internet as Google took action against websites that were spamming them. They also took legal action against the "SEO Company" responsible.

To rank a website in 2006 you just needed links back to your website and so buying links / link exchange was all the rage and most websites had a web page where they would list companies and links to their website (I am still amazed how many websites continue this practice).

Between 2004 and 2008 Google, now was the only real "player" in the search engine world, started taking action against poor linking practices and companies and started tightening up on spam and buying links. The 'Noughties" ended with all "naughty" SEO practices being practically stamped out, as Google concentrated on ranking websites based on their content and it's relevance to the search being carried out.


SEO in 2010

Between 2010 and 2015 we started to see the search engines take notice of 'Social Media' sites and soon the results were filled with Twitter 'tweets' in the results. (I can still see the face of one of my customers when searching Google for his business, and the whole first page of the search results were compiled of tweets of a Twitter conversation that two members of staff had been having about how terrible the company was!)

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All web2.0 sites list

Websites	Page Rank
http://blogpico.com/	2
http://iblog.at/	3
http://weblogplaza.com/en/	3
http://www.blogster.com/	3
http://publr.com/	3
http://www.yousaytoo.com/	4
http://www.mywapblog.com/en/index.php?	4
http://www.doomby.com/	4
http://www.mytripjournal.com/	4
http://2itb.com/	4
http://spiclick.com/	4
http://wikipages.com/index.php/Home	4
http://fotopages.com/	4
http://getjealous.com/	4
http://wallinside.com/	4
http://bloghi.com/	4
http://blurty.com/	4
http://iseekblog.com/	4
http://inube.com/	4
http://www.bloggum.com/	4
http://www.ewebsite.com/	4
http://business.blinkweb.com/	5
http://www.blog.hr/	5
http://www.devhub.com/	5
http://www.beep.com/	5
http://www.350.com/	5
http://www.blog.com.es/	5
http://www.punt.nl/	5
http://www.hazblog.com/	5
http://www.blog.hr/	5
http://www.blog.com.es/	5
http://www.alivenotdead.com/	5
http://www.doomby.com/	7
http://www.microsoft.com/	7
http://www.angelfire.lycos.com/	7
http://multiply.com/	7
http://www.squidoo.com/	7
https://www.yola.com/	7
http://www.jimdo.com/index.php	7
	7
http://www.tripod.lycos.com/	8
	8
http://www.tumblr.com/	8
http://www.blogger.com/	8
http://www.weebly.com/	8
http://wordpress.com/	9

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Top 10 Reasons Why Small Businesses Should Hire an SEO Firm

SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization, and it includes all the strategies and techniques that will lead a certain website to a higher rank and a better position in the search results of a certain search engine. Nowadays, SEO and marketing are inseparable concepts. This means that you need it in order to make your business more profitable and successful.

This is the time when, no matter the field of your business, you certainly have a pretty strong competition there. In these conditions, many business owners are happy to just keep their head above the water, but this is definitely not the key to success.

The question is how can you make noticeable progress and be successful if you have a small business? We will offer you an answer that has been already tested by a multitude of small businesses: hire an SEO agency.

1. SEO is not a piece of cake

After you read a few articles on the Internet, you may think that SEO strategies are not such a big thing. In fact, who cannot deal with keyword density, put out links and things like that? The truth is that SEO strategies are a lot more complex, and a successful one requires a lot of time searching the right ways to increase your website ranking.

Moreover, it is important to understand the previous SEO techniques and know why they failed or not. This will help you understand the actual and future SEO tactics. Concepts such as keyword density are history now.

2. Save time

SEO cannot be learned overnight. If you want someone from your company to understand the technique and be good at SEO, you have to provide him with a lot of time for research and study. Taking into consideration that your employee didn't know too much about SEO before, he will probably be overwhelmed by the multitude of old strategies that are no longer actual. If you convince all of your employees to do some research about SEO and apply some SEO strategies, this is nothing but a waste of time and money. Let your employees do their jobs, and hire an SEO firm.

3. Save money

A wrong strategy will fail and all the time and money you have invested will be wasted. Moreover, you will need some SEO software tools that may seem quite affordable at a first glance, but they are expensive if you calculate the costs. Even low-cost SEO software tools are pricey, and they cannot do the job of an SEO expert. Not to mention that you will have to learn how to use them on your own.

4. Search engines' algorithms are always updated

If an algorithm is updated, this means that, most probably, some of the ranking factors have changed. This happens very often. An SEO agency will always be aware of these updates, and they will change the strategies and techniques according to every new update. Keeping up with all the updates and knowing how to improve your strategy every time is impossible if you are not an SEO expert, so don't even think to try it.

5. SEO firms use professional analytics

SEO software and tools are crucial for understanding what are the suitable strategies for your website. You have to know what works and what does not work for you in order to improve your SEO tactics. Professional SEO analytics are expensive and hard to use; that's why you should think about hiring an SEO firm.

6. SEO experience is irreplaceable

No matter how hard you try to do quality research and improve your SEO strategy, you will never have the experience of an SEO agency. This experience is vital for providing successful SEO tactics and integrating your business into the search engine systems.

7. SEO agencies provide you quality competitor analysis

Competitor analysis is very important for the success of your business and for creating the best strategies. Keep in mind that an SEO agency has a lot of experience and it knows what worked in the case of other businesses in your field and what didn't. Moreover, they have a complete image of the area of your small business, and they know who your competitors are. If downloading your competitors' back link profile and analyzing their topical authority sounds strange to you, you should hire an SEO firm.

8. SEO experts bring you relevant traffic that increases sales

Some SEO techniques, such as link building, may have an effect on your page ranking, but they do not improve your sales. Furthermore, link building is not such an important ranking factor nowadays, because it can be easily manipulated. On the other hand, SEO experts are able to bring you relevant traffic, which has a high conversion potential. This means that those who are accessing your website are actually interested in the services you provide, and they are potential clients.

9. SEO firms increase your credibility and popularity

Being regarded as a credible company and gaining popularity are two essential keys to success. Applying the right SEO tactics means a lot of work, but it leads to success. SEO experts can make your business well-known on social media, increase your website ranking and so on. Of course, this is the result of a lot of hard work, knowledge, and experience. As you cannot have all these in an instant, it is better for you and your business to hire an SEO firm that will do all the hard work for you.

10. Weak and Negative SEO techniques will downgrade your website rank

The Internet is packed with negative SEO techniques, such as adding invisible text, spam links, and keyword stuffing that you may be tempted to try if you see that other strategies do not work. Even though all these can increase your page rank on the short term, they are very dangerous on the long term. Search engines will penalize you and your website rank will be downgraded. Then, it will be much harder to upgrade your page rank once again, so don't even think of trying these techniques.

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How to Improve a Website ?

SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization, and it includes all the strategies and techniques that will lead a certain website to a higher rank and a better position in the search results of a certain search engine. Nowadays, SEO and marketing are inseparable concepts. This means that you need it in order to make your business more profitable and successful.

This is the time when, no matter the field of your business, you certainly have a pretty strong competition there. In these conditions, many business owners are happy to just keep their head above the water, but this is definitely not the key to success.

The question is how can you make noticeable progress and be successful if you have a small business? We will offer you an answer that has been already tested by a multitude of small businesses: hire an SEO agency.

1. SEO is not a piece of cake

After you read a few articles on the Internet, you may think that SEO strategies are not such a big thing. In fact, who cannot deal with keyword density, put out links and things like that? The truth is that SEO strategies are a lot more complex, and a successful one requires a lot of time searching the right ways to increase your website ranking.

Moreover, it is important to understand the previous SEO techniques and know why they failed or not. This will help you understand the actual and future SEO tactics. Concepts such as keyword density are history now.

2. Save time

SEO cannot be learned overnight. If you want someone from your company to understand the technique and be good at SEO, you have to provide him with a lot of time for research and study. Taking into consideration that your employee didn't know too much about SEO before, he will probably be overwhelmed by the multitude of old strategies that are no longer actual. If you convince all of your employees to do some research about SEO and apply some SEO strategies, this is nothing but a waste of time and money. Let your employees do their jobs, and hire an SEO firm.

3. Save money

A wrong strategy will fail and all the time and money you have invested will be wasted. Moreover, you will need some SEO software tools that may seem quite affordable at a first glance, but they are expensive if you calculate the costs. Even low-cost SEO software tools are pricey, and they cannot do the job of an SEO expert. Not to mention that you will have to learn how to use them on your own.

4. Search engines' algorithms are always updated

If an algorithm is updated, this means that, most probably, some of the ranking factors have changed. This happens very often. An SEO agency will always be aware of these updates, and they will change the strategies and techniques according to every new update. Keeping up with all the updates and knowing how to improve your strategy every time is impossible if you are not an SEO expert, so don't even think to try it.

5. SEO firms use professional analytics

SEO software and tools are crucial for understanding what are the suitable strategies for your website. You have to know what works and what does not work for you in order to improve your SEO tactics. Professional SEO analytics are expensive and hard to use; that's why you should think about hiring an SEO firm.

6. SEO experience is irreplaceable

No matter how hard you try to do quality research and improve your SEO strategy, you will never have the experience of an SEO agency. This experience is vital for providing successful SEO tactics and integrating your business into the search engine systems.

7. SEO agencies provide you quality competitor analysis

Competitor analysis is very important for the success of your business and for creating the best strategies. Keep in mind that an SEO agency has a lot of experience and it knows what worked in the case of other businesses in your field and what didn't. Moreover, they have a complete image of the area of your small business, and they know who your competitors are. If downloading your competitors' back link profile and analyzing their topical authority sounds strange to you, you should hire an SEO firm.

8. SEO experts bring you relevant traffic that increases sales

Some SEO techniques, such as link building, may have an effect on your page ranking, but they do not improve your sales. Furthermore, link building is not such an important ranking factor nowadays, because it can be easily manipulated. On the other hand, SEO experts are able to bring you relevant traffic, which has a high conversion potential. This means that those who are accessing your website are actually interested in the services you provide, and they are potential clients.

9. SEO firms increase your credibility and popularity

Being regarded as a credible company and gaining popularity are two essential keys to success. Applying the right SEO tactics means a lot of work, but it leads to success. SEO experts can make your business well-known on social media, increase your website ranking and so on. Of course, this is the result of a lot of hard work, knowledge, and experience. As you cannot have all these in an instant, it is better for you and your business to hire an SEO firm that will do all the hard work for you.

10. Weak and Negative SEO techniques will downgrade your website rank

The Internet is packed with negative SEO techniques, such as adding invisible text, spam links, and keyword stuffing that you may be tempted to try if you see that other strategies do not work. Even though all these can increase your page rank on the short term, they are very dangerous on the long term. Search engines will penalize you and your website rank will be downgraded. Then, it will be much harder to upgrade your page rank once again, so don't even think of trying these techniques.

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What Is SEO And What Should You Know?

WHAT IS Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

SEO means search engine optimization. What that suggests is that if you have a web site, you can optimize your website so that it places in the internet search engine-- generally Google; Preferably, positioning your site on the first page of Google. If it does not appear on the first page, then your chances of being noticed through online search engine decrease significantly.

Now the concern is... just how do you get a website to rank highly or on the first page? I'll go over those now one by one.

The Three Essential Variables for Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

Many people make the mistake of that believing because they merely created a developed website, their site will automatically and immediately get found on the internet. Fortunately, when it concerns Search Engine Optimization, there are proven approaches to get results. Here are 3 important variables to stress over for your SEO:

Essential Variable #1 - Keyword Research.

Here's something that you need to realize. Websites do not rank. WEB PAGES do!! When pages rank, they place for a key phrase. If you think of just how people look for your business, than you will recognize that they search for key phrases. They might look for "Philadelphia plumbing professional," or "plumbers in Philadelphia," or "plumbing professional near Philly," or even "I need a plumbing professional for my home in Philly".

Therefore, when we say SEO "keyword" research, what we really mean is "key phrase" research as well. So depending on your business, you want to rank for the terms that people are searching for to find your business. Imagine if your homepage is ranking for "best cheese steak in Philadelphia."

Think you might get a high volume of visits to your restaurant? You bet you would since that term gets 5,400 searches per month in Google.

Envision if your homepage is placing for "optimal cheese steak in Philly." Think you might obtain a high number of quantity of visits to your restaurant? You bet you would because that term obtains 5,400 searches monthly in Google.

Essential Variable #2 - On-Page Optimization.

On-page optimization is simply the manner in which you structure your internet site, and also the little things that you do that make Google as well as the various other online search engine know precisely what your web site and/or webpages have to do with.

There are specific components that you could or could not have actually also become aware of, as well as this normally relies on if you created your very own site or otherwise.

Web page Title Tag SEO - If you look up a site in your browser, and you look up at the blue part on top you'll see text. This text in the blue matters because it's the TITLE tag of this site, and this is the first thing that Google sees to determine what your website is about.

Page Summary - Your page summary must also make it clear exactly what your website is about. If you do a search within Google, and you look at the search results, after that the text beneath each listing is the page description.

There are plenty of various other on-page optimization elements, however the three noted above are a good begin to understanding the importance of making your webpages relevant to the searcher's demand.

After you've got your on-page optimization complete, you'll move on to optimization OFF the page...

Vital Variable #3 - Off-Page Optimization

Off-page optimization is what you do away from your web page to obtain it to place. Among the quite distinctive components that triggers a page to ranking is the variety of websites it has connecting to it. These are called back-links. 

They're web links that aim back to your site from various other sites.

So let's look at another SEO idea. Who's one of the most authoritative people in the world? It's very easily the person sitting in the White House, The President of the United States. Now it doesn't matter what side of the aisle he's come from - the guy in that seat is one of the people who has the most authority in the whole world.

How did that person get there? By VOTES! They get voted into that position.

Online, Google considers your back-links as votes for your website. That is just one of the criteria it considers in order to whether or not your site is very important-- how many various other websites are indicating it. Each site is a ballot, and also it does matter which sites elect your website. Simply puts a site with a bunch of authority that elects your site offers you a whole lot longer juice than a spam-looking website with no authority at all.

There are lots of various other aspects to off-page optimization. The words made use of in the real web link itself pointing to your website, etc. But for now you should simply understand that to get your site ranked on Google, you'll need

1) The best keyword phrases.

2) On-page optimization (correct site framework).

3) Off-page optimization (websites directing back to your site, or web pages).

When it comes to SEO in Philadelphia, with so many companies competing with you for local keywords, it's not going to be a cakewalk!

That's really exactly what SEO is all about. That's even more or much less simply the basics of it, however look at the bright side: now you understand exactly what SEO is and just how important it is to passively drive paying customers to your business's doorstep!

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Top 10 Reasons Why Small Businesses Should Hire an SEO Firm

SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization, and it includes all the strategies and techniques that will lead a certain website to a higher rank and a better position in the search results of a certain search engine. Nowadays, SEO and marketing are inseparable concepts. This means that you need it in order to make your business more profitable and successful.

This is the time when, no matter the field of your business, you certainly have a pretty strong competition there. In these conditions, many business owners are happy to just keep their head above the water, but this is definitely not the key to success.

The question is how can you make noticeable progress and be successful if you have a small business? We will offer you an answer that has been already tested by a multitude of small businesses: hire an SEO agency.

1. SEO is not a piece of cake

After you read a few articles on the Internet, you may think that SEO strategies are not such a big thing. In fact, who cannot deal with keyword density, put out links and things like that? The truth is that SEO strategies are a lot more complex, and a successful one requires a lot of time searching the right ways to increase your website ranking.

Moreover, it is important to understand the previous SEO techniques and know why they failed or not. This will help you understand the actual and future SEO tactics. Concepts such as keyword density are history now.

2. Save time

SEO cannot be learned overnight. If you want someone from your company to understand the technique and be good at SEO, you have to provide him with a lot of time for research and study. Taking into consideration that your employee didn't know too much about SEO before, he will probably be overwhelmed by the multitude of old strategies that are no longer actual. If you convince all of your employees to do some research about SEO and apply some SEO strategies, this is nothing but a waste of time and money. Let your employees do their jobs, and hire an SEO firm.

3. Save money

A wrong strategy will fail and all the time and money you have invested will be wasted. Moreover, you will need some SEO software tools that may seem quite affordable at a first glance, but they are expensive if you calculate the costs. Even low-cost SEO software tools are pricey, and they cannot do the job of an SEO expert. Not to mention that you will have to learn how to use them on your own.

4. Search engines' algorithms are always updated

If an algorithm is updated, this means that, most probably, some of the ranking factors have changed. This happens very often. An SEO agency will always be aware of these updates, and they will change the strategies and techniques according to every new update. Keeping up with all the updates and knowing how to improve your strategy every time is impossible if you are not an SEO expert, so don't even think to try it.

5. SEO firms use professional analytics

SEO software and tools are crucial for understanding what are the suitable strategies for your website. You have to know what works and what does not work for you in order to improve your SEO tactics. Professional SEO analytics are expensive and hard to use; that's why you should think about hiring an SEO firm.

6. SEO experience is irreplaceable

No matter how hard you try to do quality research and improve your SEO strategy, you will never have the experience of an SEO agency. This experience is vital for providing successful SEO tactics and integrating your business into the search engine systems.

7. SEO agencies provide you quality competitor analysis

Competitor analysis is very important for the success of your business and for creating the best strategies. Keep in mind that an SEO agency has a lot of experience and it knows what worked in the case of other businesses in your field and what didn't. Moreover, they have a complete image of the area of your small business, and they know who your competitors are. If downloading your competitors' back link profile and analyzing their topical authority sounds strange to you, you should hire an SEO firm.

8. SEO experts bring you relevant traffic that increases sales

Some SEO techniques, such as link building, may have an effect on your page ranking, but they do not improve your sales. Furthermore, link building is not such an important ranking factor nowadays, because it can be easily manipulated. On the other hand, SEO experts are able to bring you relevant traffic, which has a high conversion potential. This means that those who are accessing your website are actually interested in the services you provide, and they are potential clients.

9. SEO firms increase your credibility and popularity

Being regarded as a credible company and gaining popularity are two essential keys to success. Applying the right SEO tactics means a lot of work, but it leads to success. SEO experts can make your business well-known on social media, increase your website ranking and so on. Of course, this is the result of a lot of hard work, knowledge, and experience. As you cannot have all these in an instant, it is better for you and your business to hire an SEO firm that will do all the hard work for you.

10. Weak and Negative SEO techniques will downgrade your website rank

The Internet is packed with negative SEO techniques, such as adding invisible text, spam links, and keyword stuffing that you may be tempted to try if you see that other strategies do not work. Even though all these can increase your page rank on the short term, they are very dangerous on the long term. Search engines will penalize you and your website rank will be downgraded. Then, it will be much harder to upgrade your page rank once again, so don't even think of trying these techniques.

Read More

Which is Most Important for SEO ?

What is SEO, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines.

You will get a lot of free targeted traffic from search engines. Who would not like to have a free targeted traffic?

Traffic means money for a website, if you don't have visitors to your website it does not make sense to have it.

Driving traffic to a website is not very easy, it's actually one of the hard part when you have your website. But if you know how to do Search Engine Optimization and your website has content that is useful and interesting, then visitors will come.

There are some important steps in doing the SEO of your website.

• Don't Forget your Meta Tags. Meta tags are very important, be sure to add the title, description and keywords tag. Make the Title precise, make sure that the keyword that you want to target exists on your title tag and keywords.
• Don't overdo your keywords, Search engines are intelligent now, if they see that your page is clogged with Keywords, they it will not index it.
• Make sure to use H1 tag, enclose your main keyword in an tag, search engine treats H1 tag as one of the important content within a page.
• Emphasize on your keywords, within the content, make sure that you emphasize (bold or italics) your keywords at least 3 to 4 times. Don't overdo emphasis also.
• Link Building, start building your link partners, find websites that have a high page rank and are willing to exchange links with you. Ask the web master of the website that you are linking with to use your keywords when linking to your website. Note that Search engine treats incoming links to your website as a vote. So the higher number of votes the better.

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