Random Order Weblog - Nothing’s too random!

Note: this post is a paid review of the ReviewMe.com site.

I was reading Aaron Wall’s blog over at www.SEOBook.com, and saw a new post about a service that he himself had actually released (I assume he is part of a team). The idea is a very cool one, and reminds me of what the founding principles for text link ads were just a few years ago. At that time, straight text links were really the key to high search engine rankings, and SEOs (as well as regular old web masters) were throwing money at anyone with a high PR site.

Today, what SEOs and site owners are looking for with regard to Google is a little more difficult to find. People are looking for contextual, relevant links that are incorporated into text and are on quality sites. Quality sites is no longer synonymous with high PageRank; today, the quality of a site is dependent on a number of factors, perhaps most importantly the concept of “Trust.” Is the site linked to by reputable sites? Does it have a natural linking structure? Or does it look like another SEOd spam site? The links you want are the ones from the most legitimate sites.

To the best of my knowledge, prior to the release of ReviewMe, no company has served as a facilitator for finding these kinds of links. I love the ReviewMe idea, which is essentially that blog owners could earn money by writing reviews of relevant sites on their blogs. The owner of the site being reviewed would then pay the blog owner and get a quality, contextual back link in return. All around a great deal, and a great company idea.

I have been looking for a while now for someone or some company to take care of some SEO and web design work I need done, particularly on some of my smaller projects that have literally dragged on for months simply because I have not had the time to deal with them myself.  While doing this, I have been frustrated by the fact that so many companies do either SEO or web design, but not both.  It seems to me that in the process of doing SEO you would be so exposed to HTML, PHP, etc., that you would, just by contact, have learned how to do web design as well.  Unfortunately that does not seem to (at least universally) be the case.

I have however found a few companies that are capable of doing both services.  Then, the issues is to find out if the company is good at both of them.  In my opinion, even if a company is good at one side, it is not a sure signal they will be good at the other.  For this reason it is my belief that you have to evaluate a company’s SEO abilities entirely independently from its programming or website design abilities.  The two are related, as I mentioned earlier in the article, simply because of a little overlap, but I do not think they are so closely related that you don’t need to consider them separately.

The other issue is, as usual, price.  Price is always a concern simply because of the wild variations you find when shopping on the internet—particularly for services like web design and SEO.  From my experience, price is really not at all related to quality.  Sometimes the best service providers also charge the least amount of money.

Lately I’ve been considering a number of companies to outsource search engine optimization work to for my new outdoor store site. The question is really two pronged: I’m looking for a good price and a good service combination (who isn’t, right?). Well there have been a number of companies that I’ve looked at, and a few of them stand out above the rest. The first is M4M | Multi for Media. M4M is a search engine marketing company that specializes in organic search engine optimization. Basically, for those of you new to search engine optimization, this means that they get your website to rank well in the normal results as opposed to the paid results you see on the right hand side of the SERPs.

As I evaluate all my options, I also spend quite a bit of time at the SEMPO page. SEMPO is the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, and they basically try to promote the SEO industry. They are a non-profit, so I feel it is relatively safe to assume their motives are good ones and that they will not push a bad SEO on me.

As I continue to look at other SEO companies, M4M looks more and more attractive. Their pricing structure is very straightforward and beats much of the competition. In addition, it seems they really know their stuff and would likely do a better job than most of the competition. This is, like I said at the start, what I’ve been looking for: an SEO company that does good work, and at a low or at least comparatively low price. Still, purchasing SEO services is so crucial to an online business venture that I want to make sure I’ve spent adequate time consider all of the possible options out there (and as you may know, there are a lot!).

Lately I have had a bunch of new business ideas and been starting numerous new websites.  When I’m doing this, I know that in order to make a profit the website will ultimately need to get traffic from search engines.   The big question is, then, whether I should try to do this myself or if I should hire someone else or even a search engine marketing company to do it for me.  The benefit to a search engine marketing company is the fact that they are experts in their field and they will undoubtedly know how to do the job better than I could.

On the other hand, I could save quite a bit by doing it myself.  The question, therefore, is whether or not I will be able to get as good of results by doing it myself.  If I could, it would probably be in my best interest to do so, because search engine marketing companies usually charge quite a bit for their services.  Sometimes, though, you can find a good one that will get the job done at a low price.

In the long run, at least in my opinion, this is a vastly superior option to paying for every single visitor you get.  If you go that route, the costs really never end.  If you have naturally search engine rankings the visitors come without a continuous or recurring price, other than building more links or paying any monthly fees required by your search engine marketing company.

In addition to this, there is a stability benefit.  When your traffic is coming naturally, I would expect it to be more stable.  This has, in reality, been my experience.  When I have bought traffic it has varied dramatically depending on market conditions and what my competitors have done.  For that reason, I’ve decided to allocate my search engine work to a search engine marketing company.

Lately I’ve been submitting to a lot of paid directories in addition to the normal free ones I use. The question with paid directories is, quite simply, whether or not they are cost effective. Well, as you would probably have guessed, some are, and some aren’t. It really depends on the price, and the quality of the back link you will be getting from the directory.

I found a post about the Strongest Directories in which the author looks at a couple of systems for ranking directory strength. The first system looked at the IBLs pointing to the directories and then checked how many of them were from apparent authority sites—this was based on whether or not the link came from the Yahoo Directory, DMOZ, or an .edu/.gov site. This metric lost much of its support after Matt Cutts publicly stated that .gov and .edu sites don’t inherently carry more linking power than other sites.

The author then looks at a new system designed by the good people at Seomoz. They have created a more comprehensive back link analysis tool that they use to assign sites a rating (termed Page Strength Score). This system actually seems to be a fairly decent representation of how Google might actually judge pages. How does this all tie in to the directory worthiness question? Well, the author of the post I referred to previously has used the Seomoz tool to check the Page Strength of all the directories from Bob Mutch’s popular comprehensive directory listing, and he then ranks them on his site in order of Page Strength. This way, someone like me who is trying to decide which directories to submit to can just run down the list, looking at the combinations of Page Strength and price, and make a decision on whether or not the directory measures up. It’s a cool tool that I’ve bookmarked and will use in the future.

Several years ago when I first began to work online I noticed that free web directories were a relatively untouched area in terms of building links to a new site. As most people who work in the search engine optimization and internet market fields know, building links to a website is probably the best way to improve your search engine rankings. Typical directories, such as the Yahoo web directory, generally charge a nominal fee for a listing. Sometimes, as is the case with the Yahoo directory, these fees are recurring, either on an annual or yearly basis.

Lately, however, there have been a growing number of web directories that offer free submissions. These sites have become increasingly popular as people have started to realize what a great source they are for building link popularity.

How do free web directories work? The concept is fairly straightforward. A free web directory is basically a collection of links to quality websites where the links are organized by category. This, in theory, makes it easy for people to find the kinds of web pages they are looking for quickly. And, again in theory, because these sites are all manually approved (that is, to be listed, your site has to be approved by an editor), the quality of the websites will be higher than what you might find in typical search engine result pages.

I personally submit my new websites to a large number of free web directories whenever I start out on a new project. It is relatively time consuming, but it generally seems to be worth the trouble because of the large number of inbound links you can acquire in a fairly short period of time. In my opinion, free web directory submissions is still one of the best ways to build links, particularly for new sites that have not yet become established.

If you want to make money online you really need to have a good understanding of how search engines work. You may think that once your site is built and your revenue generating ads placed, the search engine is going to do all the work for you and deliver targeted hits to your site.

It would be fantastic if that was true, but obviously it’s not. Instead you’ve got to use a good search engine optimization directory. This is an invaluable resource but finding a good and effective search engine optimization directly can be a bit tricky.

The best place to start is with a directory of directories. That sounds a bit confusing but it’s really not. A directory of directories is a directory that has a list of different search engine optimization directories.

What you need to look for when you are considering which search engine optimization directory to use is what you are getting for your money. You can find some that are free but really in this case the old adage of “you get what you pay for” is horribly accurate. You’re not going to see any substantial results and you’re going to have lost money.

Instead try looking through the directory of directories to find one that offers services such as keyword analysis and manual submission. You already know that with this kind of search engine optimization directory that you are going to be dealing with a living, breathing human being. When you pay for manual submission that’s what you’re going to be getting nine times out of ten. In the end this is going to drive more targeted traffic to your site which means more revenue in your pocket.

So before you hand any money over to a search engine optimization directory, check out what they promise you. Don’t pay for things that aren’t going to give you at least a fighting chance at the results you want.

If you own a business you know that the bottom line is well, it’s the bottom line. Making money is what your goal and if you can find a way to increase the chances of that happening, you’d do well to give it careful consideration.

TLC Marketing is a company that is working towards that goal for you. Anyone who has been in business longer than five minutes knows that marketing is essential to success. You can have the greatest product or service in the world, but if no one knows you exist, you’re not going to be increasing the size of your bank account.

You need a marketing company who has your best interest in mind. With TLC Marketing you’re going to find that. They can take the vision that you’ve got for the ideal customer and help you translate that into actual, living, breathing, purchasing consumers.

We all know how appealing incentives are. I use certain products just for the rewards that they reap me. I know others who are doing exactly the same thing. TLC Marketing recognizes that and implements an incentive based program to help drive customers your way.

They study your customer base and work with you to decide what your customers want. For me I know that if a company is offering a free golf lesson along with the purchase of a particular item or a free dinner after so many visits, they’ve instantly caught my attention.

Another idea that TLC Marketing uses is shopping programs. If you’re a woman you’re going to want to know more about that without blinking an eyelash. Women and shopping go hand-in-hand. They really are a marketing company that should be considered by any company looking to make a profit by appealing to their customer’s love of a better deal.

If you’re an SEO (search engine optimization) expert, or you think you are, then you should definitely enter the Carcasherdotcom SEOContest.  This SEO contest pays cash and prizes to the webmaster who is in first place on Google, Yahoo or MSN for the search term carcasherdotcom seocontest.  To win this contest, you’ll need to know a lot about search engine optimization.

So why are they doing this?  To find the best SEO expert, of course.  The contest starts February 1, 2006 and ends December 31, 2006.  Each month, the webmasters whose sites are in first place for MSN, Google and Yahoo win cash.  MSN and Yahoo wins pay $100, while first place on Google pays $500.  There’s a Grand Prize as well.  On December 31, 2006 the SEO expert whose site is in first place on Google will win $3,000, a 42-inch plasma TV and a $12,000 SEO contract for 2007.  The person whose site is number one for Yahoo will win $2,000 and a Sony PSP, while the person whose site is in first place on MSN will get $1,000 and an Apple IPod.  It’s completely possible for one person to win all three prizes, which is a neat aspect of the Carcasherdotcom SEOContest — all they have to do is be the number one spot for all three search engines.

With prizes like that, there’s no wonder that so many webmasters and SEO experts are taking part in the challenge.  If you want to enter, make sure you learn as much about search engine optimization as you can.

In the previous, and perhaps most famous SEO contest of note, the V7ndotcom Elursrebmem, there was one major and (perhaps) unforeseen benefit to the top competitors—individuals or companies looking to hire SEOs feel pretty confident that an SEO contest winner can do a good job.  For this reason, the top ranking SEOs also got a lot of outside business that was probably far more profitable than any contest prizes.

For some reason there are never enough hours in the day.  Here I am at 2:13 AM, writing in my blog and doing some last minute work before going to bed like everyone else in my house did two hours ago.  This is not an uncommon situation for me these days, and as a result, I have had to start hiring / outsourcing a lot of my online marketing, design and development work.

When I first started, I looked for web designers and web development companies on places like Script Lance.  It seemed like a great place that connected people like me (those who have more to do than they have time for) to get in contact with freelancers and companies that would be happy to take care of tedious work.  I started out by posting a few programming / scripting projects and, to my surprise, one of the mid-range bids came from a London based internet marketing firm called Web Design London.

How could London based internet marketing firms possibly be competing with the Indian and Asian freelancers?  Based on cost of living alone, I would expect the needs of a Londoner to far outweigh those of most Indian and Asian freelancers.  As I learned by posting my thoughts a popular internet marketing forum, it turns out they have been able to fill a niche of their own.   This “niche” is simply that they position themselves as a broker facilitating transactions and communication between busy, English speaking webmasters / marketers like myself, and talented Indian /Asian programmers, marketers, and web designers.

I always find it interesting to unintentionally stumble upon a very unique niche that still seems to operate on the fundamental tactic of most businesses—namely buying low, selling high, and taking advantage of some other factor, in this case English fluency and solid contacts.