To those who have never had their websites’ positioning in top search engines “punished” due to unethical SEO practices, you’re just in time. You’re in much better shape than those who have been victimized by unscrupulous SEO companies that will do anything to get their business – and anything to achieve top results – even if it means violating the major search engines’ acceptable use guidelines. Such methods are known as “black hat” in the SEO universe, and the top search engines rarely give second chances when such practices are employed. Pleading ignorance rarely works, as you, ultimately made the decision to employ such a company. It’s your website after all, right?

How Do I Know If My SEO Company Is Legit?

It’s imperative to screen your prospective SEO partner carefully, check references, confirm physical address and phone number and use any other means to verify credibility. While this still is not 100% foolproof, your chances of falling victim to the “quick strike and run” companies are greatly reduced. How can you further improve your chances of finding an ethical SEO company?

1. Ask questions. While “successful” SEO companies rarely give away the ingredients to their “secret sauce” (and understandably so), they should be able to answer general questions – without hesitation – about their practices. Here’s what we tell our clients: “We use only white-hat SEO techniques, primarily because we’re ethical, but secondarily, because we want you to be our client for years to come. The easiest way to lose clients is to ‘cheat,’ using bait-and-switch techniques or irrelevant content and inbound links to obtain quick results that will “impress” the engines for a few months – only to drop your site like a hot potato because the methods utilized have violated the engines’ acceptable terms of use.
2. Beware of “Guarantees.” In the world of organic SEO, there is no such thing as a guarantee. We don’t own the search engines – so how can we tell you how they will treat your website? How can 10 different companies “guarantee” their clients top placement under the same search term? Sure, we feel very strongly about our methods, but we’d never profess to “speak on behalf” of Google, Yahoo! or Bing. We can; however, assure you that we will do whatever we can, within the acceptable guidelines of “white-hat SEO” to provide the search engines with highly relevant content specific to your website. We can also show you what we’ve done for others, and invite you to speak directly with our clients for an unbiased testimonial of our services. Don’t just take our word for it!
3. Delete “anonymous” emails. Many of our clients receive dozens of emails weekly from “SEO experts” who guarantee No. 1 results. Well, we’ve already discussed “guarantees.” Now it’s time to consider the source and ask yourself more questions:

• If this company is so strong in organic SEO, why does it need to solicit me by email?
• Why is there no phone number?
• Why is there no company name?
• Why is this “expert” sending me an email from a “free” email platform (Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, etc.?) instead of a corporate email?
• How did this person find me? (Many times, it’s because you’re at least moderately positioned in Google already!)

“Cheap” Is Expensive

So many of our clients have fallen victim to the many email scams out there, as touched upon above. Unfortunately, such companies give our industry a bad name, and thousands of dollars – or even tens of thousands of dollars – are lost before clients come to us. If you want quality, LASTING organic SEO, accept the fact that there are no shortcuts and that you usually get exactly what you pay for. Cliché as it sounds, if it sounds too good to be true… It is!

Employing an ethical SEO company like Macronimous to help get you to the top – and keep you there – is the right move not only for companies that have been snake bitten by scammers, but first-timers who want to get it done right the first time. Call or contact us today to see what we’ve done for others – and more importantly, what we can do for you!

Thinking of what’s next? Do you want to leave the site with the results that you have attained and be forget SEO since you have got your results? Nope. You shouldn’t.

If your targeted keywords generates enough revenue then think of how much competitive your keywords should be and how many of your competitors will be using those keywords and working for good number of quality links for their site

Search engine algorithm gives better value for frequently updated site with keywords around the content and for site that continuously gets quality backlinks.

Watch closely you’re competitor and find out what they do to compete your site. Here are the factors that needs to be frequently monitored

(1) Content update - It is always recommended to fine-tune and update your content at least once in a month or two with keywords around meeting keyword density and keyword prominence.
(2) Brushing up your Keywords  - As always monitor your top ranking keywords and fine-tune it according to the number of total search results and compare with your competitors activity on those keywords of your target. Check out the areas in your content to know where you can focus your top keywords and build quality backlinks for those keywords as anchor text. Be sure to meet keyword density and do not stuff keywords.
(3) External site link juice - Check whether all the links build exits with time period, since some may be removed or moved out to some inner folder level and the algorithm might not identity those backlinks. So build equal and relevant links as an alternative to those links that had been masked and improve or retain the position with good number of quality links.
(4) Monitory traffic - Analyzing your traffic is one of the essential factor were you need to know how site performs with search engine organic clicks and directories or sites referrals. If you notice any drops in traffic, identify those area and work on them to set your goal.

And also here are the checklists that can help you to maintain SEO results and withstand the competition

(1) Check how your competitors rank in Google, Yahoo and Bing for your keywords?
(2) Have you updated your content that meets current target market and information?
(3) Are you tweaking your web site structure for search engine friendliness that meets current algorithm?
(4) Are you working on building quality links regularly?
(5) Are you optimizing your site with the current popular keywords?
(6) Are you analyzing you traffic to know from which location your visitors are coming from and optimize the site for those location based search engines?

These important factors and checklist will help you to measure the site strength and weakness of your site. Now you should have known that search engine optimization is not one time activity and search engine algorithm gets updated often and competitors fight for your top keywords position. Keep in mind, your website needs continues SEO in order to retain and improve your good SEO results.

Maintaining the SERPs (result/Postion) are equally important as your SEO process. Continuous SEO is within the process of SEO to generate continuous business queries to make. So keep up the good SEO, Always, do not think about stopping your activities.

Linkbait is one of the task in link building that takes both quantity and quality inlinks, relevant and irrelevant to your website through various types of tricks and practices.

The tricks and practices are vast enough and it can’t be covered as a theory since all these tricks would differ from person to person ideas and their needs. Few may try running a SEO competition, quiz or awards that represent their business website or blog and few may try writing negative contents on a branded company or about a high profile person around the web so that many would come forward to have the content link in their website or blog in which they may think such collections that would again get them linked from different website or a blog. This works as a chain.

Now one of the most adopted link bait technique is by providing free tools with a code embedded link back to your site or blog and this has been more successful. In fact many SEO companies do linkbating as a service in different forms

To linkbait or Not to Linkbait?

Many people goes with a logic Linkbait by default is something bad, is it so?

Before writing this post I just surfed web to find what bloggers and industry leaders have experienced about link bait. Few were moderate and few feels it has both bad and good

I would say it is how we use, see and perform to the web. We have lot of debate on this topic, still some say it as a spam technique and some say it as a quality information or link distribution. Techniques that are open and user favorable with a link falls under ethical and they are good portion of link bait and techniques that are off as said attacking a brand for their website publicity, hidden stuff and spamming through various means falls under unethical that results bad linkbait. As I have already told it is up to us whether link bait is good or bad. Besides I would like to get your opinion about linkbaiting techniques that you have come across or used