« Return to Blog Homepage
4

Delivering SEO Services Just Got Harder

Filed Under » Tagged »

Posted by on Jan 18 2009

The SEO discussions are heating up. It’s early in 2009 and already everyone is talking about the changes we’re seeing in SEO. Some say it’s getting easier and some say it’s getting harder. Tomato or tomahto?

If you’re a large company with deep resources, SEO is getting easier because you have the resources to produce keyword rich content and user generated content on the social web.  You have the resources to study the changes and react to them favorably.

But, if you’re a small or mid size company SEO just got harder. It’s already challenging for smaller companies to write a lot of content and to produce rich media content such as video, photos and user generated content in social media.

Now that Google has personalized search results through SearchWiki studying your rankings is not as relevant as it was in the past. Producing incoming links is now harder because Google is favoring editorial links coming from user generated content which is found in social media sites like blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other Web 2.0 destinations.

So how does a business with limited resources win with SEO in 2009? Before I answer that, let’s examine why it’s important.  In July 2008 almost 12 billion searches were conducted in the U.S. according to Comscore. The sources of these searches were not limited to Google, Yahoo and MSN. They include searches on sites such as eBay, AOL, Ask, Craig’s List, MySpace, Facebook and Amazon.

Google continues to dominate search results with 61% of all searches. Google returns a variety of search results including blogs, Wikis, PDFs, social networking comments, video, photos and just about any frequently updated content on the web.

SEO services firms committed to winning for their clients provide free education through blogs, podcasts, newsletters, white papers and webcasts.

Small and medium size businesses should devote resources to getting educated through industry portals such as Sphinn and Junta42 as well as SEO services agencies who offer free education.

While the education process never ends, following SEO best practices will yield good results.  Follow these SEO best practices:

  • quality content
  • extensive keyword research
  • natural editorial link building through social media
  • clean website architecture with human readable URLs
  • quality meta data
  • internal editorial linking on important keywords
  • avoid SEO sales pitches that promise quick results

Delivering SEO services is not easy due to the number of variables that drive successful results. Businesses willing to commit to the hard work it takes and following best practices will enjoy quality traffic that can deliver sales results. And, that’s what makes SEO worth the effort.

Bernie Borges
@berniebay

4 Comments to Delivering SEO Services Just Got Harder

  1. by Dale Underwood

    On January 19, 2009 at 9:49 pm

    As a small business owner myself I'm personally interested in this post. I've often wondered if a new profession would develop out of the need for small businesses to "get the word out" in various media forms, especially blogs. I'm not talking about lurkers that lob blatant marketing pitches, but informed individuals that can match a company's value with a particular community and truly add value. Are there any "freelancing blog posters" for hire out there?

  2. by Bernie

    On January 20, 2009 at 8:36 pm

    Dale,
    Pay per Post offers bloggers for hire: http://payperpost.com/. I don't endorse them. I just wanted to point out that there is a market for bloggers for hire.

    I believe the best way for a business to create quality content is to create quality content and expose it to people who have interest in it. Let the quality of the content speak for itself and good things will happen.

    Oh, and BTW I'm not suggesting it's easy. I never said that. In fact the title of this post is that "SEO just got harder."
    Bernie

  3. by Justin Brooke

    On February 5, 2009 at 7:05 am

    This goes to show that quality contents that are posted in websites will strongly help in supporting the life of the business. Forget about content, and you say goodbye to the future of the site/business.

  4. by Hostgator Reviews

    On February 14, 2009 at 3:10 am

    Content is the key of success for any blog or website. Unless and untill you have good keyword rich content, how can you decrease your bounce back rates of visitors.

Leave a Reply

You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

By submitting a comment here you grant Find and Convert a perpetual license to reproduce your words and name/web site in attribution. Inappropriate or irrelevant comments will be removed at an admin's discretion.