• Unethical Washington-Based Company Gets Big Hand Slap •
• Cannot Offer SEO Services Anymore •

I just had to post this. YOO HOO! A Washington State judge has slapped the hands of a [expletive not inserted] web design firm that has bilked un-godly amounts of money from honest clients by promising top search engine rankings thru their SEO ‘magical’ services. Their poor clients believed the hype that for XX-amount of dollars, this firm could GUARANTEE top rankings. Read all about it here.

Oh, boy, this makes me sick as an ethical SEO consultant! RUN… do you hear me? RUN away from any firm or any SEO consultant that promises you this!! Nobody, do you hear me, NO BODY  can promise top rankings.

We have no control over the algorithms that the search engines use to determine ranking positions.

If I only had a tiny portion of the clients (and the money they paid for the deceitful SEO service), I’d be rich. I’d be sitting on a sandy white beach on a gorgeous island, sipping an iced tea.

Sigh … if you want ethical, honest, no-hype SEO services, then please contact me. I’ll be most happy to answer all your questions and even give you a brief overview of how we could work together to improve your website.

• Stay-At-Home Mom Says “I Need To Make Money To Help Support My Family” •
• In Addition, She Thinks Affiliate Marketing Will Be Her Focus  •

I always try my best to offer SEO help to internet newbies. I fully understand how daunting it can be to get your first website up and running and I don’t mean just the technical aspects, either. Choosing a domain name, which host to sign up with and such is very confusing too, to say the least.

Anyway … I received an email the other day from a young stay-at-home-mom asking for some SEO help and affiliate marketing advice. I thought this might be of help to others, so here it is, in an abbreviated version:

QUESTION: I have never had a website or domain name. Does it cost money to have one? I was thinking about appealing to moms and family since I have some experience being a mother and homemaker. I will think of a domain name and find all of the products I want to promote. I haven’t quite pinned a theme down yet though because I haven’t seen anything that just pops out at me.

ANSWER: Yes, ‘moms & families’ would be a great niche to target marketing-wise. There is lots of competition, but with research and such, you should be able to find a less competitive area within the niche of “moms & families” that you could probably do very well in.

My biggest suggestion is this: don’t jump in and register a domain name without doing keyword research into the niche that interests you. Because of the online success I have personally experienced and because professionally I am an SEO consultant, I will tell you that you HAVE to know what you want to target, meaning what niche you want to market to, before you jump in and buy a domain name.

Do you know what “niche” means? Do you understand that you have to find a smaller area of the great big theme of “moms & families” to try to sell to? Have you entered all sorts of different keyword ideas into Google to see what kind of other websites are out there, what they offer and such? These sites might very well be your competition.

Let me steer you to some FREE tools you can use to investigate further.

To research what keywords people are using, here is a free version of the professional tool most of us SEO’s and website owners use: WordtrackerFreeTrial.

In addition, to get a really good idea of why keyword research is so important … from the choice of your new domain name on to how you will structure your website’s theme, here is another FREE tutorial from Wordtracker that will really help you: Keyword Research Guide. Please make a point to read this. You’ll learn from it.

I think this is enough for you now. Please trust what I am sharing with you here. Read it all BEFORE you jump in and buy up a domain name and get hosting, etc. I can help make some suggestions to help you with that, too.

You CAN do this, but let’s make sure you do it RIGHT!!! You’ll never regret taking your time in the beginning.

• Have You Done A Great Job Writing Compelling Tags? •
• Title & Description Tags Need To Grab A Searcher’s Attention •

If I’ve tried to drum anything through my readers or clients heads about search engine optimization techniques, it’s how very effective optimizing each page’s title and description tags can be. Many times this basic SEO attention to each page can make a huge difference in the keyword rankings.

How about taking a look today at your most important keyword phrases and their ranking positions in Google. How are those keywords doing? Are they in the top ten?

Even if your keywords rank #1 … I strongly suggest you still keep an eye on the wording and keyword placement your competitors are applying to their titles and descriptions. Always keep a couple steps ahead of them. Never assume once you’ve achieved a top-ten ranking that you’re there for good!

Compared to your competitors’ titles and descriptions, how do yours compare?

Make darn sure you’ve written your titles and descriptions to be more compelling and interesting. You want to GRAB the searcher’s’ attention immediately while they’re skimming over the results.

A good thing to do is to ask a friend or two’s opinion on your writing skills. Let some other “eyes” read over your tags and see if what you’ve written really is compelling or not. They might even have a better way of saying what you need to say! And their constructive criticism will be well worth it. After all, you DO want higher rankings, don’t you?

Bottom line … if all you’ve done is merely stick your keywords within a sentence in your titles and descriptions, versus really providing the searcher with a compelling title and description, well hop to it! Rewrite your tags immediately before you add any new pages of content to your site. Put a lot of thought and consideration into your efforts this time. It’ll pay off many times over.