AESEO

When it comes to kicking off a search engine optimization campaign, many small businesses are skeptical about exactly what goes on during their campaign. Small businesses hire SEOs to help them market their products and services in their local market. For many, SEO has proven to be a successful way to reach new customers at a relatively low cost-per-acquisition. The process works by notifying search engines that your business website has relevant and informative content that should be presented within the search engine results page. As you climb your way in rankings, you will see more traffic to your website and you acquire new customers. There are many differing opinions of SEO and as an ethical organization, it is important to point out why and how SEO works.

To begin the SEO process, you will need to determine which keywords accurately describe your business and those keywords you believe people will use to find you online. To do this, you will need to use a keyword tool or hire a competent SEO who can recommend a list of keywords to you. Next, you will need to purchase a domain name or domain names that describe your business, so it is easy for your customers to find you on the internet. Once you have a domain name established, your SEO consultant can begin building links to it through a variety of ways. One of the most common ways an SEO develops links to your domain is through article writing and keyword blogging. The SEO will likely use a variety of tools that may not be disclosed to you because of their exclusivity and the SEO firm’s company strategy.

While the SEO is developing links to you domain, he/she will also perform an on-page audit to ensure your website is friendly to search engine crawling robots. This happens through optimizing the page titles, meta descriptions and content with keywords. However, you should be advised to not stuff too many keywords into your content or it will look spammy to search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Once you have purchased a keyword focused website from a domain name registration company, optimized its on-page elements like title tags, description tags and page content, the rest of your SEO process will rely on link building and continued optimization. Within a few months, you will see a bump in your search engine rankings and then begin to stabilize in the three to six month period.

Good luck with launching your SEO campaign!

There are several small businesses and bigger businesses alike in Denver, Colorado that hire a search engine optimization (SEO) consultant to try to better their business or attract new customers. When they make the decision to hire an SEO, they are not typically thinking of whether or not the work will be done in an ethical manner. Ethical search engine optimization tactics are important to your website and will help your business in the long run. When it comes to search engine optimization, it is well known that there are three types of SEO that can be done to help your business: white hat SEO (preferred), gray hat SEO and black hat SEO. Unfortunately, some SEO companies choose to work with black hat SEO tactics and the client sees the end result.

I am a DUI lawyer here in Denver, Colorado. Due to fluctuations of the economy and a lack of overabundant DUI cases, my firm was losing a lot of money. I decided pursuing an internet marketing strategy to have a solid online presence would be a great way to gain new customers and keep my firm alive. I started looking for an internet marketing consultant right away and came across a search engine optimization strategist who had proclaimed to have helped other DUI lawyers in Colorado. I figured he would be familiar with my business and could help me.

When I met the SEO consultant, he told me I would be ranked with in Google in no time. I told him I had read a little bit about how search engines work and how the SEO process comes into play. From what I had read, it seemed like it would take at least three months before I would see significant changes in my keyword portfolio. I took his word for it and sure enough, within three weeks I saw my site appearing in the second spot on Google, Yahoo and Bing. I was very excited until just a few days later, my site was gone. I looked through eight pages of search results and could not see my site anywhere. Additionally, when I tried to contact him about the issue, he would not pick up. I was very frustrated and had to cancel my next payment to him.

When you interact with an unethical SEO consultant, this is what usually happens. Your website will be ranked quickly and then it will be removed from Google’s index just a short time later. Unfortunately, this Denver DUI attorney worked with an SEO consultant who practiced black hat SEO.

We here at the Association of Ethical SEO (AESEO.org) do not advocate for black hat SEO because it is unethical and it is a quick way to get your site pulled from Google’s index. Hire an ethical Denver SEO company that is approved by us!

As any search engine optimization (SEO) firm should be well aware of ethical and unethical SEO practices.  Many of these practices exist and even some of the most experienced SEO professionals may not know they are considered unethical.  If you are an SEO company or a local business in Denver who is interested in hiring a Denver SEO company, there a few tips AESEO.org would like you to know.

When we think of unethical search engine optimization practices, we often think of spam.  Spam used to actually work very well for SEO and was a shady way to quickly get businesses ranked in the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.  Within in the last two years, these search engines have recognized spam content and have even banned websites using spam.  Unethical SEOs would pick up an exact match domain name and fill with the spam links.  In the past, this was recognized by search engines and often thought of as a nice way to reference viable businesses or information.  Now, search engines (namely Google) have taken steps to eliminate websites that are full of spam content.  These websites are commonly referred to as link farms and will likely get you banned from Google, Yahoo and Bing.  Another way SEOs used to spam was through keyword stuffing.  The keyword meta tag could easily be stuffed with an unlimited amount of keywords that were (and sometimes were not) relevant to the website they were on.  Again, search engines used to recognize it as a way of seeing that your site was a source for valuable information.  Now, Bing is the only search engine that reads the keyword meta tag and it is read for spam purposes.  If it is determined that you are keyword stuffing in the keyword meta tag, your website will likely be penalized.

Duplicate content is another area that SEO professionals need to be aware of.  Copying content from another person’s website to populate your website or promote your website is very unethical and can again lead to your site being banned in Google, Yahoo and Bing.  Stealing content is not only unethical, but it is also illegal in most cases.  In the past, websites used to use duplicate content to create more and more sources pointing to your website.  Internet marketers were able to get away with this until Google released a Panda update in February of 2011 that identifies duplicate content and either removes it or bans the website associated with it.

If you would like more tips about ethical SEO practices, contact a Denver SEO company.  Most any Denver internet marketing company should know and abide by ethical search engine optimization practices.

The question of link farms being ethical for search engine optimization companies and their clients has been going on for quite a while now.  The short answer and what every SEO consultant should know is no, link farms are not ethical.  Any white hat SEO plan will tell you that link farms are very unethical and should be avoided.  So, why are link farms considered unethical and bad for your client’s website?

Link farms are used to drive search engine optimization “link juice” to whatever website they are linked to.  They are most commonly seen on websites where the user has linked on several different keywords or has directed the footer links to an outbound website.  While using a link farm may boost your search engine rankings very quickly, it will be known that you were linking in an unethical manner.  In some cases, your website may become blocked from major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Unfortunately, we have seen Denver SEO companies use link farms to try to help their own websites and help out their clients.

“I signed up with a local internet marketing company in Denver to help me with my search engine optimization.  They promised me they would get me ranked for top keywords in my industry that would allow me to capture my competitions’ customers.  That was my primary concern and that is all I wanted to happen.

They began working on my account and within just one month I was able to see significant results.  I work in the roofing industry in Colorado and was ranking well for the top keywords being searched in Google, Yahoo and Bing.  I asked for a report to know exactly where the links to my company’s website were being built and I was told that I would not be able to see them because they were proprietary knowledge.  I wanted to know where my monthly internet marketing budget was being spent, but they would not provide me with the information.

After another month of working with this company, my website was banned from the major search engines.  I fired the SEO company and found out that they had been building links to my website from link farms.  They were also using my website to drive links to their own website.  I was spending my internet marketing budget for their benefit.  I thought this was unethical and it made me very upset.  From now on, I will only work with an ethical SEO company.”

Most any Denver SEO specialist will tell you that building links on a link farm is unethical and can create additional problems for your website.  Choose a Denver internet marketing company that abides by ethical standards and is recommended by AESEO.org.

AESEO would like to introduce our long-term Fort Collins SEO partners, FortCollinsSEO.net, a leader in local marketing services for the Northern Colorado.

Fort Collins brings over 30 combined years of experience in SEO Services and Consulting and are a proven leader in the Colorado market.

For more info be sure to visit them online at FortCollinsSEO.net.

We have all heard of White Hat, Gray Hat and Black Hat SEO (search engine optimization) practices, but what exactly does that mean?  How does an SEO company engage itself in an unethical practice of SEO techniques?  We approached a well known Black Hat SEO company in Greeley to research its practices.

Our case study began by contacting the company with a website we had built and asking them to perform search engine optimization tactics to it.  The website represented a fake HVAC company in Denver and we wanted it to be ranked for the keywords “HVAC Denver”, “Denver HVAC”, “Denver HVAC company” “HVAC company Denver” and a few keywords associated with the “Colorado”.  After an initial telephone conference with Jack Branner, the owner of the company we would be working with, we decided to meet him in person.

It was an awkward meeting and it seemed somewhat confrontational from all of the questions we had asked him.  We were asking questions about SEO that the average businessperson would not normally ask.  We asked questions about his on-page strategy and how he creates a link-building campaign.  He told us exactly what we wanted to hear and we decided to hire him.

We gave him access to our website and again confirmed the keywords we wanted to target.  Unfortunately, we did not notice any work being done until almost three weeks into our campaign.  When we questioned what he was doing, he told us all of the on-page elements had been optimized and that he had started a link building campaign.  After the first three weeks, we started to notice some changes to the website.

One of the first things we noticed about our website is that it now had outbound links to his website.  Although they were hidden to the average person, we could see it was a Black Hat SEO tactic.  He also creatively linked to his website through the footer of our fictitious website, which is another Black Hat SEO technique.  Once our contract was finished, we decided to research his tactics a little further.  It turns out he was taking all of our link juice for his own business and that our link building campaign was taking place on a few different link farms.  By the end of the campaign, our website was in worse shape and our rankings had not moved.  This the perfect case of how a Black Hat SEO company operates.

When choosing a Denver SEO company, you will want to thoroughly check them out and make sure they provide ethical SEO practices.

When discussing the individual elements of a webpage and how they correlate to search engine optimization (SEO), it is important to understand how all of them work.  When a search engine like Google, Yahoo or Bing crawls a website, it looks at a few different things.  Understanding these different areas of how a webpage is crawled is the best way to get the webpage indexed and ranked in a search engine.  When search engine crawls a website, it looks at titles, description, the footer and only in some cases, the keyword tag.

Titles

The title tag is very important for SEO and for viewers of your website.  The title will be in the top of the HTML document and will contain your keywords or what your site is named.  It is read by all major search engines and it is also viewable by anyone who visits your site.  To optimize your site, place the most important keywords of your website in the title tag separated by bars or hyphens.  For instance, if you are a plumbing company in Colorado, your title tag should read “Colorado Plumbing | Plumbing in Colorado | ABC Plumbing Company” or “Colorado Plumbing – Plumbing in Colorado – ABC Plumbing Company”.  This will help search engines read your site and it will tell anyone else reading your site what your company is.

Description

The description tag is also important for SEO.  This tag contains a short snippet of information that should be a summary of your website.  Search engines read the description tag to provide the most relevant result for someone when they are searching on Google, Yahoo or Bing.  Search engines will only read a maximum of 160 characters, so make sure to summarize your site in 160 characters or less.

Keywords

The keyword tag used to be important for SEO, but it is no longer used by Google or Yahoo.  Unfortunately, people began “stuffing” this tag with keywords and it became irrelevant to search engines.  Microsoft’s Bing is the only search engine to still use this tag, but it reads it as spam content.  If the keyword tag is being used and keyword stuffing is detected, Bing will likely penalize the website it is associated with.  It is recommended to not optimize or even worry about this tag.

While these are the most important elements of your website, there are still a few other tricks that can be done to bump it up in rankings.  Although we at AESEO.org cannot give away these tips, you can contact a Denver internet marketing company for help!