The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

When people ask me what I do for a living, the inevitable followup questions will generally  lead to long explainations that leave the inquery unsatisfied. Basically, my first response is “Internet Marking”, which leads they that inquire to further do so with a question along the lines of:

“What does that entail?”, to which I respond, “Pay Per Click, Social Media Optimization and SEO.” To this they ask, “What is SEO?” and I tell them “Search Engine Optimization.”

Even to someone who is computer and Internet savvy, when I try to explain the specifics, they will usually just nod and smile, but everything goes right over their head. This isn’t because they aren’t intelligent or able to grasp the concept of quality link building, but more due to the fact that SEO can’t really be taught to someone in a college course or a weekend seminar, let alone within the twenty minutes on average that these conversations will tend to last.

Like many Search Engine Optimizers, I was given direction during the course of my training, and the rest was self-learned. Sure, the advice of learned others will always benifit those that learn, and instruction can provide foundation, but SEO is always changing, because the “rules by which we must play” are always changing. SEO is not so much a science, but more a type of branding.

Just as a brand is an idea communicated to the target market which associates a name, slogan or idea with your company (and hopefully results in leads, conversions and sales), SEO is the branding of search engines. We use creatively implemented tools to leave an impression on bots that crawl the web, and encourage them to tell the rest of the world about our client’s product or service when they search for related terms.

So yes, while the results of Search Engine Optimization are the sum of links pointing to a site, as well as the quality, quantity and variance of those links, the idea is not so simple in practice. To do this job right, an SEO must be an architect of the Web, constructing a functional, yet appealing structure that serves a purpose and leaves an impression on our target audience, via search engines.

To learn more about branding your company name using highly effective SEO practices, please consult an Internet Marketing Firm like Reciprocal Consulting.

I’ve discussed before how a relatively well-ranking blog can destroy your reputation by showing up in searches for your company’s name, but consider the alternative - a network of bloggers that increases your targeted traffic by 300% in one day. I wasn’t so sure this was possible, but I experienced this first-hand.

While comparing an eCommerce or strictly informational site to a personal one may not be the most suitable example, the principles are the same. As far as Social media Optimization and SEO are concerned, quality, varied, and extensive links can build your rank for certain keywords, and your page rank overall. As usual, I have to offer my disclaimer for the use of the term “page rank” as I am not referring to the little green bar that appears in your Google toolbar, or the number assigned by various spy sites. This is the number which you will never really know the value of unless you have a very good friend who works in the right office at Google. Don’t worry about it - Search Engine Marketing is based upon the focus on generating keyword links, not a popularity contest.

However, when it comes to onsite content, and well targetted keywords in the right niche, one post or update can win over an entire blogging community, as was the case for me just a few days ago. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again - it is a good idea to setup a blog for your company (or have an Internet marketing firm like Reciprocal Consulting do it for you). This is why…

I decided to embark on a project a little bit different from my usual pixel-based bead art. Don’t laugh, it’s perfectly normal for a 27-year-old man to make real-life pixel art using kid’s craft beads. Moving on, this new project of mine was a musical album, or rather a preview of an album in progress. For 6 or so months now, I’ve been posting to my own personal, self-hosted, Wordpress blog. During that time, I’ve done quite a bit of SMO for the domain, and I’ve managed to rank in the top ten for most of my keywords, number one for many of them. Still, I’ve never seen more than a few dozen views in a given day. In fact, just last week, I topped out at 79 visits. I suppose I thought this was decent for a personal blog.

Leave it to a guy who blogs for Wired.com, and in one day I managed to get over 1,800 visits to my site that day. Basically, I posted the links to my free album preview on December 2nd, the day that I got my 79 views, and the next day, this guy saw it, posted about it at Midnight on the 4th, and referred to me 75% of my views that day.  But that’s not the end.

For the next few days, I received anywhere between 182 and 437 visits, which climbed to over 3,600 on the fourth day. Apparently, the word was spreading.

The day after that, my servers were overloaded and I didn’t know why. My bandwidth was well under the limit. 20,714 views, in one day…that’s how. I couldn’t even post to my blog, there were so many people visiting - who puts their personal blog on a dedicated server? I didn’t, and I sure didn’t think I had to, either.

The point of all this is that many companies overlook the value of the Social Media as a tool to their advantage. Most of the time, an investment in Internet Marketing can be a calculated effort, which results in relatively expected results - not that there is nothing wrong with this. However, I believe that many businesses could benefit from investing in Social Media. An average campaign for Pay Per Click Optimization for one of our clients will drive a few thousand hits a day to their site, but receiving two weeks worth of targetted traffic in one day (without paying two weeks worth of clicks) can do wonders for your ROI. I wouldn’t by any means recommend giving up the PPC campaign, but using as many channels as possible is the best way to make the most out of marketing on the Internet.

I’ve been using Flickr! personally for the past few years in order to share my artwork through groups, individuals, and the handy RSS feed included in the basic Flickr! account membership. Although I am a member on many other Social Media sites aimed towards artists of different sorts, including deviantART, Myspace (music), and ETSY (although more of an eBay for crafts), Flickr! has thus far been the best catalyst for self-promotion of my work.

The beauty of a Flickr! account is that each photograph is basically treated by search engines as a separate web page, the main difference being the extension used. In the spirit of the structure of an search-engine-readable page, each image submitted to Flickr! contains a name and a description (which may contain links), much like a web page contains a header, title and body, which may include links. The reason for this special treatment is to make Flickr! submissions search-able in both image and web searches, as a means to encourage online sharing of photos.

Thus far, I personally have gotten a lot of attention and a bit of publicity by using Flickr! as a sort of gallery for my artwork. Likewise, many businesses have found Flickr! to be an invaluable means for Social media Optimization, or SMO. Unfortunately, as of recently, Flickr! has been cracking down and doing some searching of their own - for strictly business accounts using Flickr! for SEO.

Although only time will tell where the hard-working staff at Flickr! will draw the line between personal and business accounts, here are a few things to consider if you don’t want to find your Flickr! account deleted:

• Interact with the Community. Normally, I would say that it is better not to draw attention to an optimization based account or profile on any of these sites, since it may draw attention to the fact that you are not a personal user - however, in this particular case, it seems to me that a complete lack of interaction (via messages, comments, etc) would be a red flag to the ‘cleaning crew’ and may more likely result in account deletion than sticking out like a sore thumb (as long as that sore thumb appears to look like a natural human kindly interacting with other members).
• Use Links Sparingly. This may seem obvious, but when you split up 80 links between 80 photos, you may not immediately realize how many there are in total. While I personally do not get a lot of traffic to my personal blog through Flickr!, many businesses use it for that purpose. Be conscious of how many links you are throwing to the same URL - you should only place a few links here and there, and make sure the surrounding text is relevant but not ’selling’ anything.
• Post More Pictures. This does not mean you should post a ton of pointless pictures, but if you were only uploading pictures of products and linking each one to a product page on an eCommerce site, this would draw attention to the ‘misuse’ of the account, and blatant violation of Flickr! user policy. The key is to post pictures of many different things, all somehow relevant, but not all blatant image adverts. The more you mix it up, the more natural and ‘random’ it will appear to both human and bot browsers of your photostream.

These are a few things that I personally will be trying out to avoid getting my account deleted, but I would think that businesses would have to exercise more caution than personal users.

For more information on effective Social Media and Search Engine Optimization services, please consult an Internet Marketing Firm like Reciprocal Consulting.

I may be stating the obvious when I say that buying links can get expensive. I may also be doing so by informing you that there will come a day when this practice will no longer be effective for Search Engine Optimization. Well, that day may come a lot sooner than you expect. In fact, that day could very well be today.

As many already know, Google has pioneered the way for optimal search engine return. This wasn’t the result of investments or big spending, necessarily, but rather the result of a complicated algorithm which calculated importance, relevance, and the overall natural appearance of links to a given site. It should then come as no surprise that if a link looks bought, then it won’t do you any good.

Back in the hay day of SEO, metatags were sufficient to improve the ranking and serch query position of a website. Then the search engines caught on and that no longer worked. What came to follow was the random placement of links all over the Internet, from directory listings to link farms. This is no longer as effective as it once was, and Google has even penalized high profile websites for this strategy. What is needed, then, is natural links. An example of a natural link is a blog that is informative on a subject matter, linking to a business which deals in that subject matter. This could be the result of the blogger knowing the business personally, or because they simply have used their product or service, and were satisfied with the results. Either way, this link was not paid for, nor is it located on a site simply filled with other links on the subject; and furthermore, the link is surrounded by text pertaining to the subject, which adds relevance to the link.

However, for most businesses, there are not enough people out there who are willing to write about, and link to, their site for this completely natural link building to be effective. There is a very thin line between white and black hat SEO practices, but there are many ways to get natural links, without crossing this line.

Among these methods, many can be inexpensive or even free, but the process is very time consuming. There is a reason for this, as a search result should not simply show sites for businesses that spend a lot on an SEO campaign. If all one had to do was to buy as many links as possible, then that would be the case. However, what is required is a tactical, intentional, placement of links from quality sources. Although this can cost money, the more important part of any SEO campaign is the knowledge of how to do so, and the amount of time put into it.

Understandably, many businesses do not have the time aspect on their side, which is why there are Internet Marketing Firms to assist with those needs. Instead of spending an entire iMarketing budget on expensive links that do little to nothing for your site, consider the option of consulting and working with a firm that specializes in the area. Likely, your ROI will be much higher.

If I was to tell you that Jefferson Starship had a lot to do with the origins of SEO, you probably wouldn’t believe me. Well, according to Bob Heyman and Rick Bruner, authors of the book Net Results: Marketing That Works, this is their proof that in 1995, they coined the term “Search Engine Optimization” or SEO, as we say for short.

The main issue for me isn’t when or why they coined the term, the issue is Jason Gambert’s claim to have done so in a 2007 email. First of all, anyone claiming to have coined the term “SEO” anytime after 2000 is obviously out of the loop, since it’s been thrown around for over the past decade, at least. Out of the loop and out of his mind, if you ask me. Gambert has taken this claim to the US Patent and Trademark Office, where he undoubtedly was met with irritation, disappointment and resentment by many who believe otherwise.

Apparently, Gambert has filed this same (or similar) claim multiple times, tweaking the wording each time, often to non-sensical lengths. Something along the lines of “…and hereto, where as within a lack of void, without the necessary means to a necessary means to, aside from…” I imagine. Anyone who has seen a patent claim or document knows what I’m talking about. Essentially, he filed this claim so many times, the USPTO decided to let it through, pending no objections with proof otherwise.

Okay, so let’s just get a whole bunch of people together to slam their hands down on a desk, shout “OBJECTION!” and throw down some emails, web sites, books, newspapers, etc, from 2006 and earlier, the term SEO contained within. Unfortunately, it costs a good deal to object, or to get involved in this mess. While this will not stop many people who are outraged, the principle behind it is rather disheartening. If Gambert is simply attempting to get additional traffic to his website, then his strategy is genius…evil genius. If you disagree with his claims, the best thing you can do is NOT to link to his website in a story, article, blog post etc. If you are curious about this man, his website is www[dot]jasongambert[dot]com.

While the main issue isn’t the why, the fact that Jefferson Starship is involved, makes it mentionable. Long story short - 1995, a marketing firm, a band, a bunch of fan sites, unsatisfactory search results, a lot of keyword stuffing, problem solved…Jefferson Starship.

Obviously, keyword stuffing is no longer effective, and furthermore, considered extremely black hat in today’s iMarketing world. There are many ways to optimize your site for search engines, but the best practice is to find an Internet Marketing Firm with genuine practices, which involves relevant linking, quality links, and a knowledgeable staff - an Internet Marketing Firm Like Reciprocal Consulting is a good place to start. You’ll probably have a lot of questions, so don’t hesitate to ask.

1. Do you have your own blog already?
2. Is the topic of the blog relevant to your business?
3. Do you trust the administrator of the site not to altar your posts in a way that could damage your reputation or efforts?
4. Do you have enough free time to consistantly write blog posts?
5. Do you have enough content to consistantly post?
6. Are you a decent enough writer to not have your posts frowned upon when compared to the usual on-site content?
7. Are you sacrificing good content on your own blog for the posts on your guest blogs?
8. Is the information in the posts between your blog and your guest blogs varied enough?

There is no doubt that quality external links increase the importance of a site on the Internet, just as a home which requires water needs plumbing to flow from an outside source. The question as to whether or not internal linking on site is important is like asking whether a resident would prefer to draw their water from a well or have a working plumbing system that brings water to multiple faucets within their home. It’s pretty simple - internal linking is important, at the very least for usability, flow, and convenience of on site navigation.

But how important is internal linking for optimizing a website for natural search? Given the current analogy stated above, consider a plumbing system in a public place, such as a hotel, as its functionality for visitors can make it a more or less desirable place to visit, but more important, to stay. In a private home, only those who reside within will be affected by the current system, inconvenient for them if they cannot access hot or cold water from every bathroom, and convenient if they can. Having said that, if your site is strictly for your own personal use, then no, it does not matter if it works if you don’t care. However, if you plan to have visitors, which will be the case for 99.99999% of sites on the Internet, then it matters a good deal.

The whole idea behind optimization is making something better, but furthermore, making it the best it can possibly be. The optimal conditions of any system require no adjustments for full functionality, or very few adjustments, realistically. Given the nature of a well optimized site, it is no wonder that search engines are programmed to favor such convenient, well designed websites over those that lack the usability that visitors would prefer.

Internal linking structure, as a network of pipes, must therefore be overly convenient, as in, water being able to flow from each room to the next if there is a clog between the source and the destination faucet. However, there is a difference between overly-convenient and excessive linking, which can confuse things. The real life plumbing example of over-linking would be T-Pipes between faucets that link to rooms which already have ample flow from every other room. Too many links from one page to the next can confuse the user, and search engines.

In short, correct on site structure is considered by many to be among the top three important SEO friendly practices, and therefore should be given considerable thought. If you are unsure about how to acheive an optimal internal linking structure, consult an Internet Marketing Firm like Reciprocal Consulting.

Most of our clients have asked us to setup both PPC and SEO for their businesses because it is preferable to utilize more resources in order to get their website maximum visibility on the internet, but one thing that we certainly understand here at Reciprocal Consulting, is budget. While setting up both PPC and SEO campaigns may be optimal for most businesses, there are cases which may warrant one or the other to a greater extent, as various aspects of each type may hold more relevance to the site for which the optimization is being performed.

It is imperative to be well-informed of the differences between PPC and SEO, and which can be more beneficial to your particular business needs. This depends on a number of factors, but generally your niche is key, followed by what type of business it is, how grand a scale you intend to market to, and who your target audience is. These factors all determine which keywords will convert best, and are the backbone to any campaign, PPC or SEO.

With Pay Per Click, we utilize Google Adwords, as well as similar PPC services on Yahoo and MSN. A maximum budget can be set for such a campaign, and within that budget, we strategically bid on your keywords, targeting geographically and categorically, displaying custom ads based on the search terms entered. These ads appear on the right-hand side of the browser, under the sponsored ads of the Google search page. How it works is you only pay when a user clicks on your ad. The price you pay for the click depends on your bid, quality score, particular position of the keyword(s) in the results, as well as other factors. Ads may also be shown on the Google Content Network, featuring your ads on sites within the network, which contain content relevant to your site. These ads may also be filtered depending on which lead to more conversions and better costs per conversion.

With Search Engine Optimization, we use your niche to build links to your site, build actual page rank, and get your site to show up higher on natural search results for your best performing keywords. We also have writers on staff who utilize various article and press release sites to spread the word about your site, new products and services, as well as other pieces of newsworthy information pertaining to your business. It should be noted that there are many factors that determine page rank, and the Google toolbar does not necessarily accurately represent your actual page rank. The focus of any SEO campaign is relevant link building on a wide scale.

The differences between PPC and SEO are vast, even though the purpose of both are the same. Online visibility can be achieved in many ways by utilizing a lot of different resources, but it is important that you choose the correct methods for your particular business and its needs.

Linking is the key to any natural search-oriented campaign. While Pay Per Click increases the visibility of your website through strategic keyword building, natural search is a combination of on page and off page optimization. The main difference between the two, as to how you achieve a desired visibility status, is the importance of your site. A site of lesser importance, as determined by Google’s complex algorithm, can obtain the first position in searches utilizing a PPC campaign. While it is possible for the same site to appear within the top 3 for natural searches, it is less likely, and therefore natural search depends more on page rank for a site’s position. The similarity between the two is the keyword relevance to the search.

While it would be nice for your website to appear number one for every search, this is not practical. Via a PPC campaign, this mis-targeted traffic would cost you thousands, maybe more, as the majority of clicks would not take the user to a site relevant to that for which they searched. It would make no sense for a law firm website to show up in the top spot for a “heavy equipment training” search query. The purpose of search engines is to return relevant results, not just high ranking sites. The rank is factored in only to represent the importance and usability of the site itself, generally determined by relevant links. Here are four steps for building relevant links to your site, for free:

Social Media Optimization - this may not be the most efficient approach, as far as time is concerned, but the use of Social Media can prove very effective for the initial campaign. Simply, it puts your website on the map. The main quality to look for in a Social Media Site is the ability to add direct links with custom anchor text. This is possible through your profile, various groups, or occasionally, through message systems which allow users to contact each other, via their profile pages. It should be note, however, that many SM profile sites utilize no follow links, which will not benefit keyword relevance of links. Much like relevant pages on a website linking to each other, if only for ease-of-use, consider the network of pages linked to each other on a site such as MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog. It is important to exercise self control with such links, as irrelevant links may be read as spam or abuse of the site. Be sure to read the terms of use for such sites, as violation of such terms can result in the deletion of your account.

Forums - actively participating in forum discussions can increase the online visibility of your company greatly. Choosing a username on said forum that represents your company’s name or primary keyword will increase the relevance of posts, and posting within categories related to your business, its name or its purpose, will increase its importance. Much like social media sites, many forums will have no follow links, so use caution. The best way to utilize a forum is to set up your own. This gives you full control over comments, link properties, posts, and categories. Additionally, relevant traffic generally increases on forums as it allows others to participate in discussions and talk about their own interests in relation to your site.

Free Article and PR Sites - articles and press releases are a great way to build relevant links to your site, and its sub domains, as well as increasing your online availability through referred traffic. Additionally, you have full control over the surrounding text, and many free article sites allow you to include multiple links within the content. An article site might also feature a well-written, highly viewed article on the front page, and if nothing else, feature the submission in a category section related to your article or press release, which will have a URL containing very relevant text.

Blogging - much like article sites, setting up a blog is another good way to build links with more relevance and rank behind them. The only difference is, you can also optimize the blog itself, utilizing your social media profiles, and the articles/pr you’ve written. You may also include links to your blog from your site and forum posts. Cross linking relevant content on your blog and your site, as well as all other areas of the web you maintain, can be quite the task, but well worth the effort and time. Additionally, blogging allows for minimal effort in organizing, coding and optimizing content. Since posts are automatically sorted by date, category and tags, this is an easy way to quickly add content with little hassle; plus, adding images makes your blog more vivid, wont clutter the screen as much, and when ALT tags are properly used, will return links to your blog via image searches. Also, if said images are hosted on your site’s domain, this will add to the relevance of the blog to your site and the use of such images within your blog. You may be hosted on a Blog Site if you wish, but it is generally preferable to be self-hosted, as it implies that your site is more important.

These are only the basics of free link building, and as effective as these may be, there is only so much you can achieve with this method - it really depends on your niche. If you are fighting over less common, less desired, or more unique keywords, these tactics may be enough to put your site on the charts, even at the top spot in searches for those keywords. However, more competitive keywords require more variation, dedication, time, and resources.

When it comes down, most businesses don’t have the time or man-power within the company to embark on a campaign of such magnitude. Consider an experienced, well established, Internet Marketing Firm like Reciprocal Consulting to aid you in this endeavor.

It is no secret that images are a large part of any internet user’s browsing experience. Pictures of products, sports games, celebrities, and so on, are important for associating onsite text content with that which the text is describing. However, many tend to overlook images in SEO practice, which can lead to a few, though not detrimental, problems:

1. Believe it or not, the seeing impaired browse the internet, too. There are programs available to these people that will read the text straight from the browser, and having an image in a document without simple SEO considerations will diminish their experience. They will not even know the image is there.
2. Search engines cannot read image files. While there is a filename associated with every image on the internet, chances are, these filenames do not contain a sensible title or description of the image. More than likely, image titles found online have names including a string of numbers, letters or abbreviations for what is actually represented in the image.
3. Even image searches will not recognize images in raw form. You may have an image on your site depicting a celebrity relevant to the topic described in your content, but with no mention of the person, this will not be relevant to the image search. Many times, a simple image search can lead a person to your site when there are no other means to bring them there.
4. Various handheld devices and older versions of web browsers cannot display images. Although rare these days, there will occasionally be users without image capabilities in their web browsing experience. When this is the case, an empty box will appear in the images place the user will be left to wonder what should be contained within.

SEO is a kind of structure, much like any great work of architecture, with a foundation, supports, design and an overall sense of flow. Build a campaign up right and the result will be a fully functional and aesthetically pleasing site. While images may serve this appeal, the structural integrity of your site gains nothing from images with no association.

There are a few ways to associate text with your image, including surrounding text which relates to the image itself, but rather than interrupt the flow of the writing to include a shameless plug for the image, the best way to make your image visible to searches is via the ALT tag.

Here is your basic image tag: <img src=”IMAGE URL”>

And here it is with the ALT tag: <img src=”IMAGE URL” alt=”NAME”>

The addition of this tag, however, should most certainly not be used to stuff keywords. This practice has long been exposed and will achieve nothing at best. Worst case scenario, your site will be penalized for Black Hat SEO practices. You should also refrain from using the ALT tag to describe the image or relay information that the image itself does not convey.

Icons used on page, as well as images used in the site’s appearance, need not use this tag. This is what is referred to as eye candy, which is onsite strictly to better the appearance. Still, some icons which serve a purpose, such as an image used as a button, will benifit from the use of the ALT tag. A good example of this would be a “submit” button, should be tagged as such.

The importance of ALT tags with images is overlooked many times, and especially now with sites like Digg, Spinn, and other popular social media sites, it is important to practice using ALT tags on your site, and anywhere you share said content.

In case you’ve been dying to know the answer to this question, the answer is both.

A personalized, custom built Website gives a business many freedoms concerning structure, content, and additional applications, such as shopping carts, forms, dynamic flash interfaces, and more, plus a very fresh, from-scratch, start. While many of these things may be available on a self hosted Blog, there is a difference between having a recognizable format and having one that may very well cause a user to bounce from your page. Self hosted Blogs, while capable of hosting many things that a website can, have an expected format, and should be used primarily for content. Content refers to onsite, html readable text, and links. This includes headers, footers, side bars, body text, posts, etc.

Now, what is the meaning behind this question, and more importantly, why the need for both?

The simple answer:

Blogs are becoming increasingly popular, to the point of absurdity. Every other person who is active on the internet these days has at least one blog to which they contribute, and many have two or three. Still, some have more even than that! So why join the crowd?

First of all, all the well tuned on and off site optimization in the world will not turn leads into conversions. For your sites ROI (return on investment) goals, more than likely there is a thank you page, order confirmation page, or some similar page which contains a tracking code. This is how you tally conversions, and when pitted against clicks, impressions, or monthly budget (depending on your campaign), you can measure ROI. There is a key factor between the initial lead and the conversion: Your Website

I’ve discussed how your optimized keywords and on site content need to relate to eachother, but these things should also be related to the design and structure of your website. If a lead comes to your site expecting to find a list of available products, easy to use shopping cart and easy checkout, more than likely, they will not find this on a Blog.

Another example, on the flip side, is content. While your site’s page content is crucial to optimization, suppose there is a good deal more information pertaining to your business that you wish to share with your potential clients or customers. Having all this information on a website that is also being used for checkout and browsing may bog things down for the user because,  as I mentioned earlier, the quicker and easier it is for them to order and pay, the better the chance they will do just that. Adding a link on your site to a Blog about your company and it’s products, as well as news about upcoming products or services, is the best way to share large amounts of information without interfering with their shopping or browsing experience.

Additionally, having “sister sites” which link to eachother, one of which being a Blog containing feeds, news, links from Social Media Blog profiles, and lots of key content, is a good way to increase relevance and page rank, as well as targeted traffic. You can link relevant posts in the Blog to product pages on your site (and to other relevant posts within the Blog itself), give the user more opportunities to contact you with questions, and provide more than enough information that may already answer their inqueries.

There is a good deal of optimization that goes into a successful Blog (be it Sponsored Ads or Natural Search), but the beauty is, traffic coming to one site will lead to the other, and there is a clean, concise, well designed format which makes it easier for your leads to convert to sales.

A lot of people aren’t familiar with the method behind how Google ranks pages, which can generate a good deal of confusion. Often times, they think that a high page rank means that they will show up higher in search results for keywords related to their site’s content, but this is not neccessarily true. In fact, it is not uncommon for a page with a higher overall rank to show up below another with a lesser rank, for various key words.

The best example of this would be Google’s home page, which is ranked 10/10. If you search for “googly eyes” on Google, no page even containing a “google” related URL will show up in the top results. The reason for this is that the Google home page contains no content related to googly eyes and, furthermore, contains very little content at all. The Google home page contains next to no specificly targetted content, and yet the page is ranked 10/10. Of course, this is because Google owns many other sites, and therefore it is possible that a page beloning to Google, containing information about googly eyes, will return a related page from them, due to the general page rank of their pages.

While higher page rank does weigh in on search results, the relevance of your site to the particular key word or key phrase triggering a search is equally, if not more important - and it’s a two fold process. Even with a high overall page rank, if your on site SEO is well executed, just because you’re site contains “Teak Furniture” in the title bar, header tags, meta tags and body content, this does not neccessarily mean you will rank well for the keyphrase “Teak Furniture”.

Since inbound links generate rank, it is important to know what anchor text to use, and to which page those keyword links should point to. Also, where those links are coming from can be very important as well, as links coming from related pages are more beneficial.

If you are optimizing your home page, linking keywords related to your other pages is important, as they may contain more relevant information related to that keyword, and also because each one of those sub-pages are (or should be) linking back to your home page. Internal linking is not as important for page rank or keyword rank as external linking, but for navigation purposes, it is crucial.

So, in short, rank is measured in many areas, but two main ones to remember:

1. General Rank - Pages linked to you, whether they use your URL as the anchor text, a string of coded numbers that leads to your site, or what-have-you. This is measured by incoming links.
2. Keyword Rank - Before you even attempt optimization for your site, come up with a list of keywords - not too long, not too short - but all very relevant and specific to your site, what its purpose is, and what is contained within your on site content: title, headers, text, tags, etc.

Still confused about SEO? Have more questions about Internet Marketing? Contact Reciprocal Consulting fo any questions you might have. We like to talk about this stuff.

While Social Media Optimization may take a backseat to Search Engine Optimization, it requires an equal level of persistance to achieve your desired results. Just like SEO, SMO is an ongoing process, one which will not show immediate results. One of the biggest misconceptions concerning both SEO and SMO is that there is a definitive goal in mind. Sure, we aim to raise page ranks, and we certainly work towards getting sites to the top of search results for their niche and corresponsing keywords, but it doesn’t end when those goals are achieved, it must continue to be successful. Here’s why:

• Web crawlers gather a lot of information. This includes times, dates, and other facts about your site that are relevant to your sites statistics, not just inlinks and on-site content.
• Dates apply to rankings. The longer your site goes without new links pointing towards your site, the less relevant your site becomes to the current date and time.
• Rank is measured not just by the volume of links. A bunch of links from a few of the same sites will not do much good, as this points to only a few sites that consider your site relevant. Continually getting links means a greater chance of getting more links from a greater number of different sites.

Now, how does this apply to your Social Media profiles? Optimizing these profiles is the same process as optimizing your site, with one catch: You are optimizing more than one site.

I find that often times, clients of our Internet Marketing Firm are generally less interested in SMO than they are in SEO because it seems like a waste of time and money to them, but consider this: Inlinks from higher ranking sites will do more for your site than inlinks from lower ranking sites, correct? Therefore, properly maintaining and linking to a Social Media profile that links to your page, which raises it’s own page rank is helping your site by raising it’s page rank!

For more information on improving your website rank and importance, or for any other Internet Marketing inqueries, please don’t hesitate to contact one of us from Reciprocal Consulting.

Internet marketing takes years of experience to master and is constantly changing, therefore requiring dedication to continually grasp in full. However, there are a few basics that anyone interested in internet marketing should know. When it comes to understanding the fundamentals, it’s all in the terms. ROI, SEO, SMO, RM, CI, PPC, etc. These acronyms may mean nothing to most people but to us as an internet marketing firm they are our bread and butter.

Here is a basic rundown of our services and how they can help our clients:

• ROI (Return on Investment) - the key to any campaign in a simple question: is it worth it? The ROI is the net of what is spent on a campaign verses the increase of leads, sales, customers, etc. Depending on your niche, certain marketing campaigns may not be best suited for you.
• PPC (Pay Per Click) - refers to the use of AdWords campaigns on Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc. A PPC AdWords Campaign is the sum of keywords relevant to the client’s website, which are used to target potential customers through bidding for sponsored ads, reaching them on searches, as well as high-ranking sites relevant to the site.
• SEM (Search Engine Marketing) - encompasses nearly every end of internet marketing, more specifically as pertaining to a campaign utilizing search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN to reach a targeted audience.
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - process of optimizing on-site and off-site specifics in order to increase the relevance of the website to specific keywords and search terms, therefore increasing page rank and ultimately increasing online visibility in searches, essentially, making your site more popular.
• SMO (Social Media Optimization) - targeting non-search groups on social networking sites, such as Technorati, Digg, Squidoo and various blog sites. SMO targets those that may not necessarily search for your keywords because they already belong to an online community which shares information on those search terms.
• RM (Reputation Management) - various augmented forms of SEO and SMO which populate remaining ranking positions on searches for a site’s keyword set. While SEO and SMO may independently secure a top-ranking position, RM will help to populate the remaining positions in order to protect the site itself from high-ranking blogs or review sites slandering your good name.
• CI (Competitive Intelligence) - utilizing various resources and databases in order to compare your site to your competition. By pitting your site against other sites, we get a better idea of which branches of a given campaign are excelling and which need a boost.

These are just the basics. For more information about these services and others, please visit ReciprocalConsulting.com.

There are many ways to optimize your website through SEO and PPC, but even if your website is showing up at the top of search results, there are at least nine more ranking spots that could be pointing to you. So why bother joining the world of Social Media Optimization when you have the number one spot in search results?

• An added online presence through SMO says more about your dedication to the internet community, which in turn shows that you care more about reaching your customers.
• Depending on which SMO sites you utilize, you can reach potential customers outside of direct search results. If someone is searching Google for your niche they will be sure to find you. However, if they belong to a forum, online community or message board dedicated to that niche, they may not bother searching Google and, furthermore, anyone who finds you on those sites is guaranteed to show interest in your business and will subsequently be more likely to become a customer.
• When coupled with SEO, SMO can push your profiles, posts and contributions to various SMO communities to search results beneath your website. This is an additional protection that falls under Reputation Management, but it is just one way to protect your name.
• Having a presence on multiple SMO sites can generate more links to your website, which adds a layer of security to your top spot on searches.

Basically, Social Media Optimization is an extension of SEO that reaches a large number of more accurately targeted potential customers.

There are many things to consider before setting up an SMO campaign. Everything from which sites you utilize to what your avatar on your various profiles will be, these things all have an impact on your image. Also, choosing keywords wisely can become the difference between an excellent campaign and an ineffective one.

If you’d like to set up a Social Media Optimization campaign for your business, Reciprocal Consulting can help.

When evaluating site content, it’s vital to, have a look at the title tags when doing SEO. If the title tags don’t contain keywords relevant to the content of the web page, then it has a significantly lower chance of showing up in the search results. Unfortunately, many web designers these days don’t know anything about search engine optimization. A common misconception is that your site will show up for its keywords when you add them in it’s “Meta tags.” The truth is, that meta tags are one of the least effective things you can do to improve your site’s search results.

Below are a few guidelines for writing effective title tags, when we do SEO at Reciprocal Consulting, we evaluate many factor of “on-page” optimization, and help to make your site as search engine friendly as possible.

• Don’t exceed 10-12 words in the title tag.
• Make sure that the keywords you’re targeting are actually represented in content on the page.
• For more competitive keywords, keep it short and sweet.
• For less competitive keywords, or when you’re not targeting anything specific, shoot for the “long tail” by having longer title tags.
• Think about clickthrough rates and visitor perception - the title tag is the first thing they will see in the search results, so it helps if it has meaning, rather than just a bunch of keywords mashed together. You want visitors to click on the search result, not ignore it as spam.

Did you know that you can change your domain name and still keep your search engine rankings?

Changing your domain name is not something we recommend to do if it is avoidable, Google doesn’t recommend it either, but we recently pulled it off when we had to change our main website’s domain name from foremanpike.com to reciprocalconsulting.com.

The problem was that we had top rankings in Google for “internet marketing firms” and many other keyword phrases we were targeting. We knew that it was important to do 301 redirects, but what other factors were involved. Here are a few we had to consider:

• Domain “trust”
• Content changes
• Duplicate content
• Apache and hosting issues
• Sitemap issues

Taking those factors into consideration, we were able to move our site to the new domain name with only about a 30 day interruption in our rankings. In fact, we are now ranking better than ever with the brand new domain name! If changing domain names and keeping your search engine rankings is something you need help with, feel free to contact us about it.

There is only one guarantee an Internet Marketing Firm can make when it comes to Search Engine Optimization–you are not the only one aiming for those top spots. Any other guarantee you receive is more than likely the empty promise of an SEO Impostor. More specifically, these will probably be the words of someone who will take your money and disappear…

As a group of professionals with varied levels of experience and knowledge in the field, the team at Reciprocal Consulting can all agree on one policy when it comes to our relationships with our clients–honesty. From square one of a given SEO campaign, we aim to communicate our capabilities, our goals and our plan, all within the scope of reason. If we can’t make your website number one on natural search results, we wont tell you that we can, because that is not how a strong client-relationship is built–that’s not how Reciprocal Consulting became a reputable Internet Marketing Firm.

How does one go about finding the right firm for their SEO needs? Simply, by avoiding all the wrong ones. Here are a few warning signs to look out for:

One-Time Payment
This is the first and foremost sign of a clear fraud. An effective SEO campaign will require a constant effort and source of income. While this does not necessarily entail a large budget, it will require consistent communication between the firm and the client. Think about it; no marketing firm can predict exactly how much a campaign will cost from the beginning. This is a clear scam where the so-called firm will accept your one-time payment and vanish.

Guaranteed Number One In Results
While a guarantee that cannot be fulfilled may not necessarily be a scam, it certainly is not the sign of a well-informed or well-grounded internet marketing firm. Anyone who has so much as attempted to optimize a website for natural searches will tell you that a certain “spot” on the results cannot be guaranteed and the reason why is simple: there is no one secret formula. Each campaign has to be tailored to the client to fit their specific budget and their goals. Additionally, depending on the client’s specific niche and the competition for the keywords associated with that niche, it may take weeks, months, and even years before the client’s website shows up on the search results at all.

Increase Your Traffic Exponentially
Believe it or not, this promise could be true–which is exactly why you may not want it!
All traffic has one pro and one con. The advantage is that each visit is one more person who sees your site; the disadvantage is that each visit to your site is one more visit you are paying for! Let’s not forget that bandwidth is not free, so the key here is to make each visit count. This is the difference between Targeted Traffic and Spammy Traffic. The last thing you need is a large number of people coming to your site with no interest in buying your product, no desire to sign up for your newsletter and no need of your service. The idea behind increasing traffic is to attract relevant page views. SEO Fakes can indeed increase your traffic but chances are, the majority of these page views will not convert to potential customers and by the time potential customers “stumble” upon your website, your bandwidth has been exceeded.

They key to a successful SEO campaign is not an industry secret, it is purely based on relevance. The more relevant your keywords are to your niche, the more likely it will be potential clients who follow links to your site. Furthermore, search results are based on the relevance of each search term to your site.

Simply put, just because Nintendo Wii was the number one search on Ebay yesterday does not mean that linking WordPress blogs about the product to your website will increase your sales (unless, of course, you are an authorized Wii seller).