Search Engine Optimization
The success of your website depends on it
Let us prove to you we can capture the attention of search engines
The website you are reading now has achieved an incredible position in Google search results. Your website can have similar results but you need a little bit of understanding to avoid problems especially with deceptive SEO companies. We will reveal to you in this article, their most effective trick.
What does your website look like to search engines?Search engines have designed robot programs called 'spiders' to roam the Internet finding websites and indexing their content. Follow the link below to see what your website looks like to the search engines. Just enter your website in the box that says 'Enter URL to Spider' (example: ultimatewebsites.ca). The simulator will show you what the search engines see and will index. Link: Search Engine Spider Simulator
Where does SEO start?
It starts with the search engines indexing your website. When people use search engines like Google, they are asking for information relevant to the words they type in. Google will scan its vast world wide index of websites looking for these 'keywords'. A list of links is then sorted and displayed beginning with the most relevant websites on the first page.
 This first page of results is the Internet's own 'Boardwalk' page, because it is the web's prime real estate. Since more than 60% of people use Google to search the web, and they rarely go past the first few pages of results, the first page of Google is like gold. We can help you get there without the monthly fees other SEO companies will charge you.
Watch out for the SEO scams which promise first page positioning on Google. Yes, they are able to deliver what appears to be first page positioning, but there is a catch. Keep reading and we will show you how some SEO companies do it and what the catch is.
It all begins with keywords?
If you sell financial planning services, then 'financial planner' may be the best keywords for your website. If you are a non profit private school in Toronto Canada, then your best keywords are likely 'Toronto private school'. Since our business is selling websites, we need to be relevant for this keyword.
Putting keywords into a Meta Tag and not in your content is not going to help you. Putting them into your content but not using them to their highest potential will handicap them. If you already have a website and want to know how effective it is with the keywords you have chosen, you should run a keyword density test.
What does keyword density look like?Search engines index content on every website they find and based on the number of times a word is used and how it is used, they give each word a higher or lower weighting. To illustrate this, the tool below builds keyword clouds for any website address you tell it to examine. It shows the weighting of each word by giving it a smaller or larger font size. Like an actual cloud in the sky, words that have more weight or density will appear much heavier just like rain clouds having more power over other clouds. Link: Keyword Density Checker - Keyword Cloud How do we know what keywords are popular?
Before designing your website, we first need to know how often people are searching for specific words or phrases. If it is not a popular word or phrase being searched, then we have to find keywords that are. This is where deceptive SEO companies begin scamming you.
The screenshot below displays Google's own tool for viewing keyword search volumes. When we ask for the search volume on the word 'websites' it tells us that 5 million people per month are typing just this one single word into Google. So we know it is very popular. Now we have to make our website just as popular with Google if we want to capture any of these 5 million potential viewers.
How many competing websites are out there?
Before we get started on the design, we also need to know who is currently on the first page of Google for the keywords we have chosen. Fortunately, this is very easy to find out by simply typing them into Google search. As you can see from the screenshot below, there are currently 283 million competitors for the keyword we have chosen, which is 'websites'. This number may change frequently as you will see in the screenshot at the bottom of this page that reports a lower figure.
If we want to be on the first page of Google results, our website has a lot of competition which means it has to be extremely well optimized for this keyword.
What does all this tell us?
Popularity of your keywords is important as is an understanding of your competition's websites. In our case, the single word 'websites' is very popular and we can also see that competition for this word is very strong. We can either choose a different keyword or make our website better than 283 million other websites.
After examining the top ten competitors on the first page of Google's results list we have determined we can do better by offering more relevant information for the word 'websites'. Once we examine your competition, we can offer you suggestions for the keywords you have chosen. Knowing your competition applies even more to the Internet.
How do deceptive SEO Companies get your website on the first page of Google?
There is not one first page of Google but rather trillions upon trillions. Every character you type into Google will give you a different list of results. The question is not "How does my website get on the first page of Google?" but rather "How does my website get on the first page of Google for popular keywords related to my product or service?"
Many deceptive SEO companies are selling the promise of being on Google's first page. Of course you can pay Google directly using their Adwords campaign but you have to keep paying to stay on top. If you want to save a lot of money, why not build your website so Google puts it on top for free. This is called 'organic search engine optimization'
SEO scammers fulfil their deceptive promise by isolating unpopular keywords and showing you the results of these worthless searches. It may appear as though they are helping you reach the top when in fact the search results are almost useless.
|
SEO Strategy or Deception
If a small business owner who is a carpet cleaner offered a cleaning process called dry foam shampoo, what keywords should he focus on for his website? We will use this example as we examine how SEO can help your website.
Why use SEO?
SEO is often unheard of or misunderstood by most website owners and as a result often misused by deceptive SEO companies. Most people do not have the time to know how to use SEO properly so they turn to SEO companies for advise. People pay these SEO companies for one reason; to bring eyeballs to their website. SEO companies should be doing this by:
-
Finding the highest traffic keywords their client's website can do well with.
-
Optimizing their client's website for these keywords.
-
Increasing link traffic to their client's website which also attracts the search engines.
When people visit a website, this is called 'traffic' and higher volumes of traffic is better. An SEO company can optimize a website for keywords that will be easy for them yet bring less traffic or words that are more difficult yet bring more traffic. With the promise of first page positioning on Google, deceptive SEO companies will focus on easy keywords to fulfil that promise. They can then convince website owners that with certain keywords their SEO expertise is working. The truth is the website owner has only wasted their money on bad advise.
What Keywords Would You Use?
If you were the carpet cleaner looking for SEO advice, what do the next few screenshots tell you? Lets take a look at the average monthly traffic volume of 'dry foam shampoo' since this is the type of service our carpet cleaner offers.
The average number of searches for the words 'dry foam shampoo' in each month for the previous twelve months has been 720. That seems like a reasonable number of people looking for this carpet cleaning service, but is there a better keyword? Now lets take a look at the number of searches for 'Carpet cleaner'.
'Carpet cleaner' is on average 418X more popular leaving 'dry foam shampoo' in the dust.
What About Other Websites Using These Keywords?
Traffic volume is only one side of the equation? There is also the other side which is your competition for first page positioning. To find out who you will be competing with, type both phrases into Google as shown below. The numbers circled in red show us how many websites on the Internet also have these keywords.
'Carpet cleaner' definitely has more competition but is it strong competition?
What Keywords Are Worth The Effort?
Our next step is to examine all the top websites on the 'carpet cleaner' results list and see if we can do a better job. Don't be fooled by the actual companies you are competing with because it is not the strength of the companies that matter but rather the strength of their websites in relation to the keywords you have chosen.
After inspecting the top 8 or 9 websites, we know we can eventually get on the first page of this list in Google, using the keywords 'carpet cleaner'. With this knowledge, we start designing the website.
By the way, Mike has done a great job competing and you can visit his website by typing 'carpet cleaner' into Google and looking for carpetcleaner.ca on the first page of results.
|
Deceptive SEO companies will not focus on popular keywords. Instead, they will focus on unpopular keywords which are much easier to compete against. In this case, 'dry foam shampoo' has very little competition which is great but would also yield far fewer viewers which is not so great.
Deceptive SEO companies do not stop there, they will also refine their search terms even more to make sure they get you on the first page. They often do this with flattery by including keywords such as your company name or product name. This usually assures higher positioning in Google's search results because it 'hides' competing websites from your view. As a result, you may be in the top of Google's search results list for the keywords they tell you, but if no-one is searching these words, what is the point? The money you pay these SEO scammers is wasted.
Top 10 SEO MistakesThere is a top ten list available at the webconfs.com website which helps you understand even more about SEO. Take a look through their list, which concisely explains what would also be our top 10 SEO mistakes we see on other websites. Link: Top 10 SEO Mistakes
The Truth!
The name of our product is 'Ultimate Websites'. If I type these words into Google this website is number one on the list. Is that impressive? Would you be even more impressed if I tell you that there are 20 million competitors for these keywords (which there are as of this writing)?
But this is not the whole story. What about the traffic? If I check Google, it tells me that on average only 420 people per month ever type these two words into Google. Not so impressive.
Now you know the rest of the story. Top of Google's list, strong competition overcome, but very few eyeballs. Now if someone is actually trying to find us and knows our name, then these keywords are useful, but it will not bring a lot of new traffic. So, what is one keyword we did focus on then?
The proof!
 Now that you know the truth about SEO and what some deceptive SEO companies will promise, let us prove to you what can be done.
Since the keyword 'websites' gets 5 million viewers per month, this is where we put our effort. As of this writing we also had 279 million other competitors for this word. How did we do? Type the word 'websites' into Google and find out.
Since we are based in Ontario Canada, you will see us on the first page near the top, if this is also the region you are searching from. If you are searching from other regions in Canada or the United States, we may appear slightly lower in rankings. This is due to how Google displays websites, based on the region the person is searching from. People searching from Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa will likely see different results. | 
