Garry Przyklenk outlines five giveaways that can help you identify SEO con artists. Read the article to get more advice on how to protect yourself from these tactics including:

The “Bait and Switch”

Where traffic is purchased from paid listings such as Google AdWords. In some cases the SEO Con artist might even rewrite the traffic coming from AdWords to make it appear as legitimate organic traffic in logs and web analytics reporting.

I’m quite sure this has happened to at least a couple of companies we’ve worked with including a past client. We ran their Google AdWords for years and they were very happy with the results. Then they had their web site redesigned by a new company who also did search marketing. Within about 8 months this new company was showing the customer how much the important non brand organic traffic had grown. At the same time our AdWords performance had declined. Hmm!

Looking closer, nothing matched up between the analytics reports being shown to the client and what was being reported by Google’s Webmaster Tools for organic rankings and clicks (Of course the Webmaster Tools reports were not being shown to the client).

Hijacking Affiliate Codes.

Similar to the above, the con artist rewrites affiliate traffic to make their SEO efforts appear to be generating better results than they are.

Social Media Smoke & Mirrors.

Setting up social media venues, such as a blog, and keeping it updated with low quality, cheap content which can sink your rankings and traffic.

Bare Minimum Meta Tags.

There are SEO companies that charge a fair amount to update meta tags only. This is just one, relatively minor task that by itself will not likely make much difference.

Here One Minute, Gone the Next.

Because these con artist don’t tend to stay in one place it’s not uncommon that they disappear quickly.

Read Top 5 Dead Giveaways of
SEO Con Artists & How to Protect Yourself

SEO by Phone with SEO Industry Expert George Aspland

eVision can help you with search engine marketing right over the phone. Using screen share technology, SEO industry expert George Aspland can answer your questions and help you determine steps you can take to improve your organic search results.

Learn more about SEO by Phone

The post Beware Of SEO Con Artists, Including The Traffic Source Rewrite Trick appeared first on eVision Online Marketing.

According to Google’s Matt Cutts “… the idea is basically to try and level the playing ground a little bit. So all those people who have sort of been doing, for lack of a better word, “over optimization” or “overly” doing their SEO, compared to the people who are just making great content and trying to make a fantastic site, we want to sort of make that playing field a little bit more level.”

What’s “Over-Optimization”?

At this point we can only read into of what Matt stated so far, “whether they throw too many keywords on the page, or whether they exchange way too many links, or whatever they are doing to sort of go beyond what a normal person would expect in a particular area.”

When Can We Expect This “Over-Optimization” Penalty?

It may already be starting to roll out as there have been recent reports of big changes in rankings by some. However, it’s unclear and likely will remain unclear until a large number of sites have had large changes in rankings.

What Can You Do?

We recommend not making any changes. As with all the big, newsworthy Google algorithm changes over the years there will lots of speculation on what’s being penalized as it becomes clear that this penalty is indeed rolling out. Most of the speculators will be wrong. Unless Google comes out and publicly states what is being penalized in this update it will likely be some months before there’s enough evidence across many web sites to “reverse engineer” the penalty.

In any case keep an eye on your rankings in Google’s Web Master Tools, perhaps downloading them weekly.

If you are an eVision client and have followed our advise you should have nothing to worry about as we’ve never suggested anything that should come even close to “over optimization” (in our opinion of course).

The post Google “Over-Optimization” Penalty Rolling Out Now? appeared first on eVision Online Marketing.

In this article, I’ve included some user generated content ideas as well as some ideas most useful for ecommerce sites including:

1. User Generated Content: Forums
2. User Generated Content: Videos & Images
3. User Generated Content: Ask For Feedback & Questions
4. User Generated Content: Article Submissions From Readers & Customers
5. User Generated Content: Reviews
6. Rewrite Manufacturer Descriptions
7. Add More Extensive Product Information, Images, Video
8. Buyer’s Guides
9. Training Courses

Read 9 More Content Development Ideas For Increased Visibility

The post 9 More Content Development Ideas For Increased Visibility appeared first on eVision Online Marketing.

• The continuing evolution of personalization.
• Progression towards Entity matching and away from the older model of matching keyword queries to text on a page.
• Content must be high quality and be shared socially.
• The importance of building a brand and generating a following.

Read SEO & Personalization: An Evolving Relationship

The post SEO: What it takes to do well organically today and in the future appeared first on eVision Online Marketing.

In the latest article I cover 10 more content ideas that should help improve organic visibility and often help increase conversions on a web site. As with the previous 10 ideas much of this content can be promoted via your various social networks.

Read 10 More Content Ideas To Improve Organic Visibility

The post 10 More Content Ideas To Improve Organic Visibility appeared first on eVision Online Marketing.

Much of this content can also be hosted or promoted on other web venues such as the social sites with which you participate.

Read 10 Content Ideas To Improve Organic Visibility

The post 10 Content Ideas To Improve Organic Visibility appeared first on eVision Online Marketing.

Now it can hurt your organic rankings too.

At the Pubcon Internet marketing conference this past November Google announced it would be updating its algorithm to reorder search results, dropping positions for web pages that “load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page. This new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads. ”

Google has been rolling out that algorithm change since January. Here’s Google’s announcement called the Page layout algorithm improvement

The post Too Many Ads at the Top of The Page Will Hurt Your Google Rankings appeared first on eVision Online Marketing.

First you create a LinkedIn Company Page (if you don’t have one already) then associate your employees with it. When you have updates to share ask your employees to share those updates too. Having employees share updates with their connections on LinkedIn can get your update in front of thousands of people who may in turn share it, bookmark it, Like it, link to it, etc.

How Marketo got their employees involved

After reading my article Jason Miller from Marketo got creative. Read how Jason got Marketo employees excited about participating on LinkedIn to help the company share updates and company news. Maybe you can employ what they did or something similar…

Read Utilizing LinkedIn to Improve SEO and Organic Visibility

Related Info

How To Use LinkedIn To Improve Organic Visibility. My article on Search Engine Land Mentioned above.

The post How To Get Employees Excited About Participating on LinkedIn and Sharing Company Updates appeared first on eVision Online Marketing.

1. Choosing The Keywords To Focus On
2. Prioritizing Your Keywords.
3. Check That Important Content On The Page Is Getting Indexed
4. Ensure The Indexed Text Is Unique
5. Try To Improve The Search Listings For The Keywords
6. Update Or Add A Headline
7. Optimize Existing Text
8. Look For Text In Images
9. Possibly Add New Content On The Page
10. Develop Alt Tags for the Image Links
11. Update the HTML Page Title and Meta Description Tag
12. Increase Internal and External Links and Social Engagement

Read 12 Steps To Optimize A Web Page For Organic Keywords

The post 12 Steps To Optimize A Web Page For Organic Keywords appeared first on eVision Online Marketing.

Code – Keep It Simple
Just because you can AJAX-up a page with accordions and fly-outs does not mean you should. The more code on a page, the more things that can go wrong from spider access to browser compatibility.

Web Design – Less Navigation Is More
Every page should not link to every page. You do not need a site-wide menu three levels deep.

Content – Engagement & Agility
Earning enough links to make a dent in your SEO requires a continuous stream of link worthy content combined with forging and fostering relationships with people who create links or influence lots of others through online conversation.

Update Your Content
You need high quality content. Update any low quality content of get rid of it

Read An SEO Playbook For 2012

The post SEO Playbook For 2012 appeared first on eVision Online Marketing.