Convincing a Start-up They Need SEO

This entry was written by one of our members and submitted to our YOUmoz section. The author's views below are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

Hi there,
This is my first YOUmoz post, so please bear with me. Also, I'm based in the UK, so I'm aware my experience may not be that of people in the USA, for example. Do feel free to correct or add to this post, that's how I and others learn. :)
However, this topic is close to my heart and I'm experiencing this issue more and more - how to best help start-ups and especially small start-ups.
Premise One: Most start-ups don't seem to have funds
This is a huge issue for someone starting out in their own business. Clients that come to me often want to jump straight in and ask 'how much is this SEO stuff going to cost me?' I urge you don't answer this right away, but always bear in mind that new businesses may not have huge marketing budgets, but that you cannot offer your services for free.
Therefore, over the course of your prospect meeting or your first strategy meeting with your new client, you must gauge where they are at first in order to offer them a proposal that will assist them but not bust their bank account. Your role is to help them grow their business not to bleed it dry.
Premise Two: Keep It Simple
I have a client who is a sole trader - a consultant in the alternative medicine field. She really knows all about her area of expertise and how to treat different conditions. I don't know about these things.
Likewise you may know about web design, user engagement, data structure, link metrics (and so on) and your client may not. Occasionally you will get clients who are more clued-in on the basic principles of SEO, but for the most part they don't.
So it is important if you are to win the client or to gain more business from the client to keep it simple. Use terms the client will understand:

• In-coming links: 'links to your site from other sites'
• Anchor text: 'what text those other sites use when linking to you'
• Authority: 'how important search engines think your site is'
• On-page optimisation: 'making changes to your site so that people and search engines understand the page's content'

And of course the list goes on - but speak to them in their language and don't overwhelm them with data. What they care about is new business or providing more services to existing customers, so speak to them about these things.
Premise Three: Don't Do Everything At Once
Your services need to grow with their business.
Starting a new business is daunting enough, especially for a sole trader, a new small company or partnership. Don't overwhelm them with the many aspects of SEO.
Come up with a plan so that your support for the client is clearly structured and divided into bite-size stages. It's no good saying in your first meeting that you need to tackle the on-page optimisation, link building, guest blogging, tweeting, posting to Facebook, Stumbling etc. They already have enough on their plate!
What I'm not saying is ignore these things. Explain their importance but structure their SEO strategy - and remember that if it's gradually built up, it will appear more 'natural' which of course is much better received by search engines than an unsustained sudden boost.
Premise Four: Report Back the Results
Because new businesses have limited funds they want to see ROI - even if initially they see that in terms of search rankings or the number of visitors to their website. This is how they will judge your services. So report regularly to them - most of our clients want monthly reports, which is a reasonable expectation in my personal experience. But again don't flood them with stats. Key issues are likely to be:-

• Search engine rankings (especially Google) for the keywords you have helped them choose and maybe one or two they would like.
• How many visitors they've had to their website
• How many new visitors they've had
• How many other websites are providing traffic.
• If it's an ecommerce website, track revenue in Google Analytics - ROI in terms of sales is always a great selling point for your services.
• If a client's goal is enquiries via e-mail, ensure those are also tracked.
• And anything else that you think the client will understand and appreciate. And each client is different in this respect.

Final Premise: Enjoy and Don't Apply Pressure
Working on a new client's new business SEO should be a great experience for you both - build the client relationship so that you have repeat business, a better understanding of your client as a person and a business. Don't pressurise your client or prospect into taking your £1,000 package if the £50 package is appropriate.
And vitally - a happy client is likely to be a referring client, so build on the above principles and enjoy the ride.
Thanks for your attention folks!

Everyone Should Hire 'Social Media Experts'

I caught a post this week from Peter Shankman entitled "I Will Never Hire a Social Media Expert and Neither Should You." It's not the first of its kind, nor was it the best argued, but it struck a nerve and has made a number of waves around the web. Needless to say, as someone who employs multiple team members with a great deal of social media expertise, I strongly disagree with the substance and sentiment of the piece.
Here's Peter's argument in his own words:

No business in the world should want a “Social Media Expert” on their team. They shouldn’t want a guru, rock-star, or savant, either. If you have a “Social Media Expert” on your payroll, you’re wasting your money.

Diễn đàn sinh viên việt nam | Tạp chí làm đẹp | Rao vặt miễn phí | Rao vặt toàn quốc | rao vặt | Sàn bất động sản | Thiết kế website | thiết kế web | thiet ke web | làm đẹp | lam dep | Diễn đàn sinh viên| Sinh viên việt nam | sinh vien viet nam | dien dan sinh vien | dien dan sinh vien viet nam | goc lam dep | góc làm đẹp | thiết kế website trường học | thiết kế website doanh nghiệp | thiết kế website cá nhân | thiết kế website tin tức | quảng cáo google | Seo từ khóa | quảng cáo adword | trống đọi tam | trong doi tam | trong doi | làng nghề trống | rao vặt 68 | rao vat toan quoc | rao vat mien phi | rao vat nhanh | rao vat ha noi | mien phi rao vat | miễn phí rao vặt | mã nguồn mở | joomla | mua ban nha dat | mua bán nhanh | toàn quốc rao vặt | trống rượu | bom rượu | tạp chí đẹp | rao vặt nhanh | svvn | svvn online | hoa học trò | Sinh viên tphcm| Sinh viên huế | sinh viên hà nam | cộng đồng hà nam | diễn đàn hà nam | Diễn đàn rao vặt | dien dan rao vat |  thiết kế web giá rẻ | thiet ke web gia re | thiet ke website mẫu | tư vấn thiết kế website | tư vấn thiết kế website | Tin sinh viên | tin sao online | tin sao hot | sao hàn quốc | sao hàn | sao viet | sao việt | tạp chí phụ nữ | xinh xinh | tài liệu sinh viên | tai lieu sinh vien | tai lieu luat | tai lieu cntt | tài liệu cntt | tài liệu seo | tài liệu joomla | tài liệu maketting | nhà trọ sinh viên | sinh viên thành phố | sinh viên việt nam | diễn đàn sinh viên | dien dan sinh vien | sinh vien viet nam | sinh vien viet | sinh vien dai hoc | sinh vien cao dang | sinh vien trung cap | sinh vien hanh chinh | sinh vien luat | sinh vien dai hoc | sinh vien cao dang | sinh vien trung cap | sinh vien hanh chinh | sinh vien luat | rao vat | rao vặt | rao vặt miễn phí | rao vat mien phi | rao vat toan quoc | rao vặt toàn quốc | rao vặt nhanh | miễn phí rao vặt | mua ban truc tuyen | rao nhanh | trong doi tam| trong doi | trong truong | ban trong | co so san xuat trong|

Being an expert in Social Media is like being an expert at taking the bread out of the refrigerator. You might be the best bread-taker-outer in the world, but you know what? The goal is to make an amazing sandwich, and you can’t do that if all you’ve done in your life is taken the bread out of the fridge.

The full piece makes a passionate case, but an entirely false one. There's no evidence, only opinion; no examples, just speculation; no data, but loads of stereotyping. The author is certainly one of the premier benefactors of social traffic and of a new, more socially-connected web (Mr. Shankman founded and sold HARO, the service that connects journalists to subject-matter experts), yet he somehow manages to ignore the benefits social media has brought him (and his clients/company) to write a scathing dressing-down of anyone who dares claim expertise in this marketing discipline.
As with my arguments against Mr. Roadruck last month, I'm worried that I'm falling for trollbait again. But, the people who do great social media marketing deserve a strong defense, and I believe the evidence is almost entirely in their favor. Besides that, as an SEO, I've long felt the brunt of baseless attacks by ignorant skeptics. I feel both a kinship and a duty to stand up for those who've had their profession ridiculed.
Let's start by exploring the popularity of social media experts in comparison to another job role Mr. Shankman pointed out, traffic planners:

Social Media Expert, Traffic Planner trends

Social Media Expert jobs | Traffic Planner jobs

As you can see, there's a dramatic rise in interest and demand for social media folks. I don't think this is because companies are "wasting their money." In the current economic climate, corporate profits are at record levels and companies are hiring with a much greater eye to the bottom line than any other time in the past 20 years. These businesses are investing in high ROI projects + people, and social media is part of that.
The primary point Mr. Shankman appears to make is that social media skills and expertise are merely "common sense" that every marketing professional/department already has. Thus, there's no need to specialists or experts to assist in understanding the tools, opportunities or nuances of the field.
I beg to differ.
Product, marketing, engineering and customer service departments can all benefit from greater knowledge and understanding of social media, and very little of it is common sense. From knowing the difference between an original tweet and a retweet (on the basic end of the spectrum) to crafting lifecycle attribution by melding tools like Bit.ly PRO and Facebook Insights with analytics packages (on the advanced end), social media expertise more than just useful, but often critical to improving overall performance.
Facebook has 600 million users; Twitter's at nearly 200 million; LinkedIn is over 100 million; Blogs have hundreds of millions of readers and tens of millions of publishers; Tumblr alone has 250 million pageviews in a day and Disqus reaches 500 million visitors each month. Social's driving an increasing proportion of the web's traffic, conversions and value. How can anyone logically proclaim that experts are worthless?
As a thought excercise, I created the following chart highlighting some of the critical knowledge areas in social media:

NOTE: As I am not a social media expert, these are likely more illustrative than they are accurate

I don't see how Mr. Shankman can believe A) that these pieces of knowledge won't help organizations improve B) that such knowledge is innate and requires no specialization, research or study.
As further evidence, I'll call to the witness stand some exemplary individuals and companies that I've seen have a massive impact on improving KPIs, processes and internal use of social media. While I'm a passionate supporter of social media marketing, these are the true experts:

• Marty Weintraub of AimClear is one of the industry's shining stars. His research, clients and results speak for themselves. No one has ever seen Marty speak and not come away in awe of the passion, dedication and deep expertise he shines.
• Dan Zarrella of Hubspot has put together some of the most respectable and useful research in the field of social media and helped to turn HubSpot into a shining beacon of knowledge dissementation across the web. His presentations, webinars and data have made him the web's pre-eminent social media scientist, and someone whose expertise is backed by more data than nearly anyone else in the marketing field.
• Ciarán Norris of Mindshare Digital, whom I've known for years and who grew from a talented search marketer into an even more talented social and brand marketer. He now runs digital media marketing for Mindshare in Ireland and has helped dozens of big brands build remarkable, revenue-generating social strategies.
• Thomas Høgenhaven is currently engaged in a unique project to study and make recommendations around SEOmoz's internal social community, analyzing how users interact with each other, when high vs. low quality behavior emerges and how to encourage the former while minimizing the latter. I fully expect Thomas' expertise and his work will be invaluable to our community and to the long-term prospects of this part of our business.
• Jen Lopez of SEOmoz runs community management here at Moz. She's helped to scale our social presences, stayed in touch with events, questions and engagement across multiple networks and is directly responsible for a substantive portion of our traffic, conversions, retention and brand-building efforts. Her expertise spans tools, platforms, branding concepts, social launches and more. See, for example, the recent Mozcation program she's turned into an amazing outpouring of community effort and attention.
• Kristy Bolsinger of Ant's Eye View has consulted with dozens of local and national firms to help devise successful social media + web marketing programs. I've personally heard great feedback from folks who've worked with her, which is why I continue to refer those seeking consultants her way.

There are remarkable people with social media expertise. Some of them even use the highly appropriate title "social media expert" or "social media specialist." They provide a ton of value to the organizations they work with and neither Mr. Shankman, nor anyone else, should belittle their profession.
In fact, I recommend the opposite. Do as we've done, and hire folks with social media knowledge and expertise. It will open opportunities that wouldn't be otherwise available, and if your other processes around monetization and customer acquisition scale, social is a phenomenal compliment to whatever channels you're currently pursuing.
On a final note:

Mr. Shankman, if you despise social media expertise and those who earn a living from sharing that knowledge with others, might I suggest that you remove your "featured" listing from this directory of social media consultants? Also, let's get a beer sometime. I bet you've got a ton of social expertise that could help my company (totally serious - I'll even buy).

How Fast Does Your Site Load? How Important Is That For Google SEO?

It’s been many years that we have considered how fast a page loads as one of the on-site optimization criterium used by Google spiders. The faster a page loads, the better rank it will have on Google.

This was proven a day ago when Google announced that it is going to add “Site Speed” to Google Analytics results. Site Speed will measure and report how fast each of your Web pages will load (on average) when someone visits your site.

But why load-time speed is so important?

We know the sites that are very pretty and have sophisticated designs, such as FLASH sites, or sites that are image or video heavy load slower. On the other hand, sites that only have text and very minimal navigation (except through text-links) load the fastest – but text-only sites are boring.

With the Internet speed growing in average house-holds, you’d think sites that are more beautiful should get more credit by Google, but not so fast. It is true that we now have faster Internet speed around the world compared to a few years ago, however, as Internet users, our patience for loading pages has also diminished. We leave a page quickly if it doesn’t load within a few of seconds. Or if we really want the page, we are frustrated to wait.

According to Pear Analytics, In 2007 Amazon conducted a test to see how the speed of your page loading affects losing traffic. The results were astonishing. For every second that your site loads slower, you lose roughly 1% of your site’s traffic. This means if you have a FLASH site and it takes 20 seconds to load, you lose 20% of your site’s visitors before they even see your site. In sales numbers, losing 20% of your potential customers is HUGE.

So, our recommendation to you is to make your site load as fast as possible to increase your page-views, traffic and consequently sales.

Gaining a Record Number of Clients

Boulder, CO – SEO company Master Google has signed up a record six new clients in the month of April, demonstrating that their business is really gaining momentum.

“Our reputation is growing as a search optimization company that can really get results for your website and your business,” explains Ali Husayni, CEO of Master Google.

Businesses are increasingly aware of how important it is to optimize their search engine results and how critical their Web presence is to their overall success. “More and more businesses are realizing the power of SEO and the importance of Google in their success,” notes Husayni.

“Everyone wants their piece of the pie.”

The new clients are a diverse group of businesses, including a taxi service, a real estate agent training school, a pediatric dentistry/orthodontics practice, a printing company, a heating/air conditioning company, and a shoe company. This diversity is in keeping with Master Google’s list of existing and previous clients, which includes industries such as dentistry, vacation rentals, wedding photography, psychiatry, email archiving, gynecology, electric cigarettes, engineering, and many others.

Over the past three years, Web SEO company Master Google has doubled its revenue each year. The company is on track to do so again in 2011. “It’s important that we build a relationship with each client so that they understand what we’re doing and how we’re helping their business to grow,” Husayni remarks. “We will provide the same high quality service to ALL of our clients – old and new. We refuse to sacrifice the quality of our work just because the quantity of our clients has increased.”

Master Google turned away many prospective clients that it felt could not fully benefit from the company’s SEO services. “The qualification process is vigorous,” says Husayni. “We look at the prospects’ prior SEO experience, their competition on Google, how user-friendly their website is, and many other factors.”

For instance, Husayni recently turned away a Los Angeles dentist whose site was not up to the standards of the Web. “We told the dentist and his team that with their current site they could not benefit from a high Google rank because site visitors would be discouraged from contacting them. They needed to build a new site first.”

Master Google’s success is due to its utmost care for each and every client. The team in general and Husayni in particular ensure that everything they do will benefit their clients. “All search engine optimization firms can provide meta tag updates while inserting keywords,” observes Husayni. “But, Master Google will go the extra mile to really understand your business and tailor each strategy to your organization’s needs. That is why our company keeps growing.”

© 2011 Master Google. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Master Google are credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this document is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.

Google Ranks The Most Reputable Company In The US

Haris Interactive just announced the results of their poll yesterday, which indicates Google is now considered by most American’s as the most “reputable” company in the US.

Since 1999, the Americans have never had such a positive attitude towards “corporate” America.

Google ranked #1, replacing Berkshire Hathaway, which fell to the #4 place. Johnson & Johnson ranked second, followed by 3M Company at 3rd. Apple’s reputation is growing steadily since 2002 and is now #5.

The poll had asked 30,000 Americans to rate top 60 most visible companies based on their leadership, social responsibility, vision, emotional appeal, financial performance, products and services, and workplace environment.

This is another reason why being ranked on Google is important. The general public sees Google as reputable and it trusts the sites that rank well on Google.

What You Don’t Know About SEO

Los Angeles, CALIFORNIA - Over the past couple of months, we have discussed different areas of Internet marketing. We have shared information about social media marketing and search engine marketing, and in our third installment of this series, we cover search engine optimization.

SEO is the term used to describe how companies such as ours maximize the number of visitors to a website by getting the site to rank high on organic search results.

“It is imperative that the Internet marketing business you choose to provide SEM, SEO or social media marketing services is a reputable company that does not use black hat SEO techniques,” says Ali Husayni, founder of Master Google.

Following is a bit of information on how we help our clients achieve top SEO results.

Keywords
Most clients come to us with some idea of the keywords they want associated with their businesses.

“We work with the client to brainstorm keyword phrases and conduct research to get a long list of words potential customers likely are searching for,” Husayni says. “We also look at a client’s competitors to determine the types of keywords they are using.”

From there, we begin to review, categorize and compare search volume and competitiveness of the main keywords. Finally, we prioritize each client’s keyword phrases based on relevance and their propensity to drive traffic and sales.

Optimization
A variety of work is done to a client’s site when we optimize it. We create a sitemap.xml file and submit it to Google Webmaster Tools, and we create/update the HTML sitemap page of our clients’ websites.

We also make sure that search engines are not blocked through no-index meta tags, robots.txt files, or anything else that blocks search engines from accessing and indexing the website.

Google doesn’t like duplicate content, so we remove any duplicate content on our clients’ sites and replace it with fresh, original content.

We also remove any black hat SEO techniques that have been done to the site, and we create a blog for each client, as well as install SEO and Sitemap plug-ins. We add a “most recent blog post” section to the home page, which is important for freshening content.

“The list of steps we take to optimize a client’s site is much longer, but these are some general tasks that we do,” Husayni says.

Link Building
“Link building is a vital part of the overall professional SEO process,” Husayni says. Getting relevant links back to the client’s website is important.

Jolina Pettice, a senior account manager with TopRank Online Marketing, says “inbound links are like electricity for search visibility,” and we agree with her.

We build links for our clients by generating quality content, linking up with marketing partners and often through promotion via social networks.

Tie In Social Media Efforts
It was big news recently when Google and Bing disclosed that social links and social media influences have an impact on search results.

“Social media outlets such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo- just to name a few- provide additional ways in which our clients can get their information out to potential customers. The great thing about posting items such as videos, articles and press releases to these sites is that doing so provides relevant links back to our clients’ sites,” Husayni says.

Because so many people use social media these days, posting items via these outlets creates a number of opportunities for the information to be promoted by others when they choose to share it with their friends.

Google Places
If you are trying to be found by your customers/patients locally, Google Places is the answer. This doesn’t work for companies that have a national or international client base – unless they have physical office locations in major cities. But if you are a dentist in Augusta, Georgia, being optimized on Google Places for that city certainly will help you appear high in search results when people Google “Augusta, Georgia dentist” or something else along those lines.

“Google Places is tied in to SEO, but there are some deliberate steps that must be taken to achieve the desired rankings,” Husayni says. “We offer that service to our clients.”

Husayni recently created an informative how-to video on getting the most out of Google Places. “In the coming weeks, we are going to post this video, along with directions on how we get our clients listed on Google Places,” he says.

It goes without saying that optimizing websites for Google searches is the most important goal for SEO, and that point was driven home once again recently with the announcement that Google had been named the most “reputable” company in the United States by Haris Interactive. It was followed by Johnson & Johnson, 3M, Berkshire Hathaway and Apple.

“This news is just one more reason why being ranked on Google is important,” Husayni says. “The general public views Google as reputable, and it trusts the sites that rank high on Google.”

© 2011 Master Google. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Sinai Marketing is credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this press release is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.
-end-

$99 SEO Package Is Officially Launched – 100% Guaranteed

October 1st is when we promised to launch our $99 SEO package. Now, you can read more about it and sign up here.

For a limited time, we’re going to offer the full Web site optimization services to help your site/blog rank better on Google and the other search engines for only $99. The $99 SEO package is valued at $1,000 worth of SEO work so, you are going to save $900.

I am going to add a 100% money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied with the results after 3 months.

Don’t hesitate and sign up now.

If your site has a Google PageRank (PR) of 2+, then we can offer you the same service for free. Click here to learn more about our free SEO program.

If you’re not satisfied with our free SEO work after three months, we will send you a check for $99.

Google SEO Tip: Avoid Duplicate Content by All Means

Google rankings of many Web sites suffer greatly because of a phenomenon called “duplicate content.” Our recent client, cryoserver.com was penalized (red-flagged) for this particular reason prior to signing up with us. The site was ranked on page 13 of Google SERP’s for one of their main keywords.

Duplicate content refers to “substantive blocks of content” that match or are similar to “content within or across domains”, according to Google webmaster central. Google simply reduces the ranking of both pages/Web sites if it notices similar content being posted.

Here are some examples of duplicate content and tips on how to resolve them:

Mirrored Sites
Having mirrored sites refers to the same Web site being hosted on two or more different domains. This was basically what cryoserver.com had done. They had their site hosted on cryoserver.com as well as forensiccs.com.

Use a domain-level redirect from one domain to the other to resolve the mirrored sites issue. Also, use 301 redirects for any linked-to Web pages within the redirected domain.

We asked cryoserver.com to redirect the mirrored domain to the main one. After only one week, Google removed the red-flag and now their site ranks on the 3rd page (still some SEO work is needed to get them to the first page).

The same for-sale items on e-commerce Web sites
This is very common when it comes to e-commerce sites. Many URL’s are dynamically created and linked to from the home-page or other pages. Or simply, one product is placed within different categories. To resolve this issue, you should avoid dynamically building your pages and use different description even for the same products if they’re placed on different categories (having different url’s).

Copied text to be placed on competitors Web sites
If someone copies your text and place it on their site, your site could be penalized (flagged) by Google spiders for having duplicate content. This doesn’t happen too often, but when it does, it reduces your site’s rank on Google dramatically. To resolve this issue, you should contact the site that copied your text and ask them (by using all means) to remove the stolen text from their site. If they don’t comply, you should just rewrite your own content (painful, but it’s easier and less expensive than hacking the other site and removing your text).

Print-only versions of Web pages
Avoid print-versions if at all possible. If you cannot, use a “no-follow” tag wherever you link to a print-version copy of your Web pages.

Web pages that generate a mobile-friendly version
Similar to above, use “no-follow” tags so Google spiders don’t follow the link.

If you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to ask. We will respond to all questions in a timely manner.

20 Best Press Release Distribution Sites Revealed

Press release distribution was the focal point of 2009 link-building campaigns. Many high-end SEO companies used this technique to:

1- Provide their clients with a presence on Google News

2- Drive more targeted traffic to their clients’ sites

3- Obtain high-quality inbound links.

We were no exception. We used press releases extensively. We even spent countless hours researching and testing different press release distribution sites and prepared the list below. This list will help you identify the best press release distribution sites and only submit to those that are worth while – saving much time, money and energy in testing them yourself.

Note: you need a standard high-quality press release before submitting to these sites, or your release will be rejected.

We do provide a top-quality and inexpensive press release development/distribution service (it’s 100% custom designed to fit your needs). Click here to learn more.

Press release distribution sites – ranked based on the ROI we observed:
URL Google PR Text Links/URLs Allowed Pricing Options
MarketWire.Com 7 4 Depends on the distribution circle – $75 for the
advanced SEO package which includes text links within the content
NewsWire.Ca 7 Depends on the
distribution circle – also charge per text-link
Earthtimes.Org 7 5 Free
Prweb.Com 7 5 $80- $140- $200- $360
Pr.Com 7 5 free- $199- $499
Prfire.co.uk 7 5 free- $30- $75
Prlog.Org 6 3 Free
24-7PressRelease.Com 6 8 $49- $89- $139- $369
PrLeap.Com 5 8 $49
TransWorldNews.Com 5 8 $49.95- $64.95-
$99.95- $114.95- $999- $50- $65- $2,495
BusinessWireIndia.com 5 6 $112
FastPitchNetWorking.Com 5 8 $18 and up
Seopressreleases.Com 5 8 $49- $99
OnlinePrnews.Com 5 6 $12- $49- $349
Express-press-release.net 5 10 $29
Pr-USA.Net 5 8 Free
PressBox.Co.Uk 5 6 Free
PressReleasePoint.Com 5 7 Free
Live-pr.Com 5 6 Free
Impactwire.Com 5 6 Free
DropJack.Com 5 7 Free
WiredPRNews.Com 4 2 $19.95- $24.95- $1995
BigNews.Biz 4 1 Free
PressRelease365.Com 4 5 $24.95- $49.95-
$99.95
BeforeItsnews.Com 4 8 Free
Widespreadpr.Com 4 8 Free
Free-press-release-
center.Info 4 3 $2.99
FreePressrelease.Com 4 8 Free
FreePressindex.Com 4 1 Free
FreePressreleases.co.uk 4 8 Free- $50- $120- $230
PressReleaseSpider.Com 4 1 $4.95
FreePressRelease.Com.au 4 1 Free
PressMediaWire.Com 3 8 $30- $80- $149
PrWallstreet.Com 3 8 Free- $19- $59
InfoDento.Com 2 8 Free

Stay tuned for more link-building techniques/lists to emerge soon.

Google SEO Simplified – Part II (Links)

In the previous part of this article I narrowed down what Google is interested in into two categories: 1) content and 2) links. We discussed content in Part I and here we’ll focus on links.

Generally when we talk about links we mean any link that is either placed on your site pointing to another Web page (outbound) or placed on other sites pointing to your Web page (inbound). By “links” in this article, I’m only referring to the latter.

Google’s success has been mostly because of its decision to rate Web sites based on the quantity (as well as the quality) of the links they receive – much like the academia’s rating of a scientific article. The more an article is used as a “source” by other scientists, the more authoritative that article becomes.

Google uses the same rating method for sites: the more a site gets referred to by other sites, the more authoritative it is. In other words, the more links a site has, the better rank it’ll get.

Google’s principle is that sites with good content should naturally be used as sources by other sites. But the older Google becomes, the more difficult it gets for sites to naturally generate the needed link popularity in order to rank atop Google search results – despite the quality of their content.

On the other hand, Google fawns upon sites that engage in “black-hat SEO” to gain artificial link popularity. So, what are you to do if you want your site to compete for that 1st page position in a competitive market?

The answer is not simple.

First, you cannot just sit and wait for other sites to link to you. That simply won’t happen. In a world where there are thousands of new sites built everyday, your prospective site visitors have no way of finding you to read your content (unless you already rank on Google). Second, you cannot just write comments on 100’s of blogs or forums to gain the popularity you need (because most of these comments and the links you gain from them have “nofollow” attribute – meaning Google gives them no value. And third, what might have worked six months ago (in successful link-building techniques), may no longer be a good practice.

But there are other ways.

At Master Google, our R&D team works every day to find new methods/techniques so we can semi-artificially (and yet naturally) improve our clients link popularity and therefore their Google ranks. To help our readers, we share our newest techniques so you can engage in tried-and-true link-building campaign to help rank your site atop Google. And here is a list of what works for us:

Blogging: we build blogs for our clients and constantly keeping them up-to-date (with new posts) while linking from them to our clients’ sites.

Directories: we submit our clients site to many directories (that have a PR3 or more). Here is a list of directories we recommend.

Articles: writing/optimizing/submitting articles to reputable sites helps us gain link popularity for all of our clients. And here is a list of article submission sites with good page rank.

Press Releases: writing/optimizing/submitting press releases to news sites has huge benefit for our clients. We can improve their rankings immediately when we submit releases for them. Here is a list of SEO friendly press release sites.

Freebies: we offer freebies to those site visitors that link to our clients sites.

Competitors: we go after those sites that are linking to our clients’ competitors and request links to our clients’ sites.

Partners: we ask our clients to request links from their partners/friends’ sites.

All the above is much easier said than done. Engaging in all the techniques above requires months of hard labor and a complete understanding of SEO, and of course cash. Nevertheless, we’ve been able to transform local-small businesses into large-international ones in a matter of a few months by practicing what we preach.

So, if you’re someone who doesn’t have the money to hire a professional SEO company, then you need to learn the hoops of SEO. With hard work it’ll take you a couple of years to master the techniques and with investing some money and a lot of time, you’re able to rank your site above everyone else.

But smart business people who have financial backing delegate important tasks to professionals instead of spending years mastering what someone else already knows and instead focusing on YOUR business. If you are that person, fill out our form and I’ll be happy to look at your site and see if it qualifies for our Top of Google program.

Natural Link Building: Links from Blog Posts/Comments

One of our clients brought up an issue with me a few days ago. While trying to visit relevant blogs to his site and placing a comment there with a link back to his site, he noticed that almost 100% of these sites have a “nofollow” tag.
- Is it worth to place a comment/link where the link will have a nofollow tag?
- Are there blogs that do not have a no-follow tag for the comment sections? How can we find them?
- If leaving comments on blogs has no link-value, then why should we do it?
What is a nofollow tag?
A nofollow tag has the following format (HTML code):
rel=”nofollow”>text link
The nofollow tag indicates to Google (and other) spiders to not follow the link to its intended place. Thus, making such links value-less from an SEO point of view. The only intended audience for these links are human visitors who cannot tell the difference between a followed link and a nofollowed link (because the code is hidden in the back-end).
Now, getting back to the original questions. The short answer is that if you leave comments to get some link-juice for your site, don’t do it. You won’t get any SEO benefit from them. Because many black-hat SEO companies have abused the comment section of the blogs, almost all blogs have nofollow tags for the comment sections.
On the other hand, they don’t have nofollow tags for the main blog pages or other links on the site.
Instead of leaving a comment with your link in it, contact the blog admin and tell him that you’re interested in placing a link to your site on his blog/site.
Here are some tips to get the most benefit from your efforts:
- Check the blog’s PR (Page Rank). Sites with less than PR3 are usually not worth your efforts.
- In your first contact, indicate that you’re willing to pay a fee if necessary. Most blog owners crave for such business generating from their blog and most are honest people that will honor your agreement.
- Ask for a link on the home page. Home page links have far more value than links from the internal pages.
- Try to make an arrangement for a year at a time – the longer your link stays on a site, the more value it will have with Google.
- Pay monthly if you can.
- Give the blog admin the exact URL and anchored text-link to be used for the link.
- Also give him a description to go with/around your text link – a text-link without any text around it could be viewed negatively by Google.
- Varry your anchored-text as well as the URL for the best results.
- Monitor your link on a regular basis.
Still, visit blogs and leave comments with links to your site, not for the benefits of SEO, but for encouraging other blog visitors to visit your site. That generates traffic/customers and if you have excellent content, could lead to natural links for your site

Using Twitter for Marketing

“Experts are calling it the biggest marketing tool for your business since Google,” notes Ali Husayni of Master Google. Everyone knows they should be using Twitter, but how? A mere 140 characters doesn’t seem to be much of a marketing opportunity. But it can be very handy if you use it right.
Instant Information: Since Twitter is all about what a person is doing right now, there is no faster way to get the word out. When you tweet about a recent development, you are disseminating that information instantaneously to your followers. Twitter is perfect for people with Web-enabled phones and small screens; if an individual wants to contact people where they are at the moment (for instance, at a trade show or big event), Twitter can do it.
Faster than Blogs: Blogs are a great source of information about the latest happenings in a business. But getting someone to read your blog means enticing them to visit a website – and this extra step may be a deal breaker. Tweets get the information to the audience without requiring them to commit the time and energy to locate and visit a site. Businesses can use Twitter to announce a new blog post or webinar – driving traffic to their site. Think of tweets as little micro-blogs.
Following/Getting Followed: Twitter is all about building relationships. When you start a Twitter account, you can search for others with similar interests and “follow” them. They, in turn, can follow you – allowing you to build up an audience relatively quickly. And since Twitter is inherently democratic, it’s not hard to get fairly well-known people in a field to “follow” you.
Building a Network: As with other social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter lets you locate and join communities of people with similar interests. Once you have people who are part of a network, you can solidify those relationships by sending them emails, responding promptly to questions, and keeping track of retweets (and thanking those who retweet their posts).
Retweets: Twitter is democratic. Anyone can have an account and can tweet about whatever they want. But Twitter users need to make the content interesting so that their followers will want to share the information with their followers. “If you can do this, you’re harnessing the true power of Twitter,” explains Husayni, of the Google ranking company Master Google, known for its 1st page of Google program. “Not only is it democratic, but it’s viral. You write the tweet and let your Twitter network do the rest.”
Content: The best content is informational rather than overtly promotional. Don’t think of tweets as ads, but as informative posts. Instead of: “New product! Only 19.95!,” you should think along the lines of “We have a new product. Click here to learn about it and view pricing information.”
“People don’t want to send their followers tweets that feel like advertisements or spam, but they do want to share valuable information,” notes Husayni, an SEO Services expert. “Tweeters should be sure they only use the site when they have valuable content to share.”
Monitor: When using Twitter, it’s important to keep track of essential keywords so a company can read and react to the most valuable tweets. Any SEO consulting company will also advise that a business monitor its Web presence. Twitter is a great tool for seeing what is being said about your company.
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