Any off-page optimization stuff is like the car accessories but the on-page stuff is like the engine. However beautiful can be a car’s accessories but it’s the engine which makes it running and worth. So the quality of the website and the way its optimized for search engines only will make your off-page optimization activities pay. Not just the META tags, the design, usage of scripts and images and the list go on.
Winning high keyword positions in Google not just involves solid relevant link building and gem of a content, it also involves several factors to be maintained in the website and in fact the effectiveness of the off-page stuffs clearly depends on the stability of website and its optimized pages.
Normally the SEO factors in a website will be disrupted when changes in the site are done without the knowledge of the SEO professional. There are certain factors which can disrupt long term SEO efforts in a second and nowadays with search engines getting smarter and smarter, big business towers can come down to dust.

1.URL – SEO’s Holy Grail:

One of the major search engine optimization benchmark is to increase the domain popularity of the URL’s and maintaining the stability of the URL is as important as taking care of your eye. The domain age I still a very important factor in SEO success.
There are many examples for URL tampering done by programmers unintentionally. Most of the time it happens while adding CAPTCHA images to HTML sites and without consulting the SEO professional the site is changed to .PHP. And here, if the change done is catched before search engines actually caches it then no harm is done but if catched late then the whole amount of SEO done is lost in a minute.

Programmers have a unwritten rule that when they work on sites which are currently undergoing SEO and if they are ask to do changes in URL, contact the concerned SEO professional at once.

2. META tags are not just words- they are identities.

After all websites are for making money and SEO undoubtedly is one of the effective ways of marketing and making money. Next to stable URL’s, the META tags are very vital aspects for SEO success. META tags are not just words, it is a kind of label about your website to both search engines and visitors. There are many instances of programmers not considering META tags as an important factor and removing or making changes to it without consulting the SEO professional. But they do not realize however beautiful the design is, it is the META tags that bring business to the website online.

“Websites without proper META tags is like a person without name.”

3. Flash is just flashy not fleshy:

Flash may be attractive but in terms of SEO it’s just nothing. Search engines can never read flashy images and scripts. The common mistake some programmers normally do is, they will add content in the flash images, which will be totally ignored by the search engines. Another drawback with flash images is the loading time of websites. It is certainly a concrete factor for search engine rankings. Using jquery, similar kind of attractive images can be done and it will be better for the sake of search engines too.

The above are some of major the factors which programmers should be aware before doing changes in websites that are optimized for search engines.

Ethical practices have no boundaries and the more ethical you are, the more benefits you accrue. Being an ethical SEO company, will not only fetch new clients but also make new clients as long-term clients.  The major advantage with long-term clients is they will help the SEO firm to expertise more about the business and it makes the SEO Company to even go for the domain based SEO service.

Most of the businesses outsource their Internet marketing objectives to specialized SEO companies because the only reason is Internet marketing is as tough as conventional marketing. So it is extremely important to partner Internet marketing companies with strong testimonials and more importantly companies which are ethical.

SEO companies should be considered, as a marketing partner of your business and the SEO firm should carry out the expectations of the business methodically.

Business owners should be wary of certain aspects other than the factors said in part 1 before partnering with an Internet marketing firm.

1. Check the effectiveness of the portfolio:

Many SEO companies claim to have achieved top rankings for ‘x’ number of keywords but the fact that is to be looked out is the competitiveness of keywords. Long tail keywords are generally less competitive and neither are they going to generate traffic to the site. There are many tools, which shows you the competitiveness of keywords and use them to analyze the competency level and the expertise level of the SEO Company. It is highly important for business owners who are in competitive business to check this because there are tons of SEO companies who are projecting these in such a way people are easily carried away.

2. Review the Testimonials:

There is a general adage:-

“A good word of mouth is bag of Gold”

Business owners should beware of companies providing fake testimonials and it is not only vital to check the effectiveness of the portfolio but should make sure the they are true.  The one best thing what you can do is to actually call the company referred in the testimonial and request for a feedback. There is no bigger testimonial required than a good word of mouth for an SEO firm and in that case any company and business.

3. Effective Communication:

Effective communication plays a key role in the success of an Internet marketing campaign and co-ordination between the business owner and the SEO firm is vital to reach the targeted audience. Business owners should be careful in selecting the SEO firms and they should make sure the SEO firm can be contacted anytime by any means in case of urgent needs. The other fact is that, the business owners are ones who are aware of the latest happenings in the line of their business and updating the changes to the SEO firm is the key to success. Also, the SEO Company should be ready to make the changes accordingly in their Internet marketing strategy.

If there is a slack in communication between the SEO firm and the Business then the website is the  “blind man in Amazon!!! “

4. Reporting and Reports

Reports and reporting on the other hand strengthens the relationship between the business owner and the SEO firm and also helps the business owners to assess the performance of the SEO firm. Partner with SEO firms who can provide customized reports based on the requirements of the clients and are also capable of analyzing the performance of the website and should be able to provide with suitable recommendations.

5. Technical support:

SEO not only involves on-page and off-page optimization processes it also involves certain design and development changes to be done in websites. A SEO company, which can help in development as well as in internet marketing, would be an ideal choice for business owners because there is room for flexibility. Search engines nowadays provides importance to loading speed and it is extremely important that your business website is hosted in good servers.

About us: “ Macronimous Web solutions, an offshore search engine optimization company is always proud to offer white hat SEO service for its clients. As we follow white hat SEO technique, we are esteemed to call ourselves as a professional SEO firm. Macronimous considers business of the clients as their own business and foresee the SEO process. This makes Macronimous very special because it acts as  a marketing team to the company indirectly. Macronimous has a team of SEO experts who are working hard to create a benchmark in ethical SEO. Clients can contact Macronimous web solutions for any SEO related aspects and the team are ever ready to serve the client needs. Macronimous updates the clients with the latest changes in search engines periodically and gives suitable solutions time varying.  Macronimous web solutions always feel proud to be a part of clients intellectual business partner.”

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!

1. Social Marketing: Facebook and twitter will rule next year (or next few years too). Every SEO company which helps their client to succeed online, should help them by letting them to consider these technology giants, which might take them to next level. Social media optimization will not replace Search Engine Optimization, but social media optimization should go in parallel with SEO.

2. Cloud applications and hosting: We started using invoice applications first (Freshbooks) and it ended up with cloud hosting. We moved our sites to cloud. Also helped clients to taste the flour of clouds. Web hosting with Amazon web services was a very different service we offered to our clients. Setting up their sites and web applications with EC2 were initially needed some learning with Amazon, but it became an expert service at the year end. In 2011 we will be providing setting up applications in cloud as a key service.

3. Social Media integration: We learnt FBML, Facebook SDK with PHP and started offering business pages and applications with Facebook , which will continue next year. Marketing those pages is another fruit to reap. Similarly Facebook Like button integration and Twitter API integrations are two important promotional services clients will require in 2011.

4. Blogging: Is blogging dead? No, it has come out in different format. Twits and Facebook status updates are micro blogging and People who do not want to write much, or those who like to share instantly use them. But, still business blogging isn’t dead. Macronimous helped serveral clients to start blogging. WordPress helped us much. We provide SEO friendly WordPress blogs by adding SEO plugins and basic SEO readiness setup as a mandatory feature along with every blogs.

5. Search Engine friendly coding: SEO readiness is no more a value addition. Every site we develop should be ready to for Search Engines. It begins with light weight coding and ends with Keyword setup. Making dynamic sites such as CMS driven content, ECommerce sites and Flash sites with PHP and .NET are offered by us as an expert SEO service.

6. HTML5 for Flash: We started offering HTML5 based presentations and sites. Flash was replaced by jQuery for many clients and they were happy too. By 2011, HTML 5 should be the standard, and Flash will move for interactive applications. The test results made at RWW in March 2010 was an eye opener. With full fledged CSS3 and HTML5, easy to create interactive web applications without Flash should be feasible.

7. Rich Internet Application – Flex was used much in few projects this year. We look forward to work on RIA based frameworks, such as Sencha.

8. PHP Frameworks: We used Codeigniter very much. But MVC is still not very popular, and framework based applications are relatively lower then non MVC based solutions like WordPress etc.

9. Smartphone and Tablet applications: We did much with iPhones this year (including 2011 World Cup Cricket app), moving to iPads. Android development for Smartphones and tablets will be our important strategy for 2011. By the end of this year, we see more Tablets, and thanks to iPad, which regenerated the new platform of business. Building portable applications for the mobile and tablet browsers is another channel. By providing mobile friendly websites we help clients become accessible everywhere. Sencha Touch nd dhtmlx’s JavaScript mobile UI APIs will be a part of the development in 2011.

10. Security for Opensource applications: Many of us believe that Opensource application based development cost is almost nil. This is a lie. The initial cost of a WordPress or Joomla based application/site development might be relatively lower than a closed, custom application development. But the real cost of ownership is affected by the security issues that comes with the Open standards, mainly when they are affected by Security attacks. We will work hardly on providing secure web applications when we develop them with open source in 2011. Even at this year end we have an important announcement with a  major security fix from WordPress.

11. Remote project management: Managing projects across the globe was a real challenge a decade ago. Using standards and web based project management tools we provide hassle free project management. Tools like Basecamp, dotproject and Eventum helped us much, and we are working with few cloud based PM and collaboration tools, github etc. Apart from this our agile based PM methods have had some customization. Part of that is a project closure questionnaire.

Overall, many easy and hard ways of learning helped our team to build the next year strategy very much. Leave your comments if you had such learnings to share with others. Looking forward to another technologically challenging year which helps us to help our clients.

Dilbert stripe: © Dilbert.com

Business ratings with Google hotpot:

Earlier directories like the yelp.com were giving reviews and ratings about businesses along with their contact details and it was a very successful and highly visited site until the Google hotpot.  The Google hotpot is the latest feature launched by Google that is mainly for ratings and reviews. The introduction of Google places and Google hotpot has already become a serious threat for the sites like the yelp.com. In general Using Google hotpot you can know information and current reviews about a place, a company or anything from general and third party reviews and recommendations about them from your friends.

Project your business with Google hotpot:

In case of an industry or any business firm the Google hotpot can play a bigger role. For any business to spread, a good word of mouth is required. Even though the best service you provide, a good review will definitely project your business in positive way. The biggest advantage of Google hotpot is your business website along with contact address and reviews. So the visitor will have a clear idea about your business standard and will result in increase in business. Videos, Images and other details can also be displayed in these Google Places and hotpot and hence the page is like a complete marketing presentation about your business. Since day-to-day visitors of search engines are increasing Google Places and hotpot should be considered as a blessing and you can say it is one of the best marketing strategies

1. Flash: When they ask for a fully flashed website, let them know the adversity it might make. By doing this you are helping them to establish the right online presence. Unless your client is Coca cola or Burger King ( I mean,  :-), an establish brand), they will really want to establish better Visibility to the Search Engines.

2. SEO – If a client just wants a website, let them know what SEO is and how it is going to help them. Make the site SEO friendly within the design scope (Eg. Image tags, XHTML validations, designing without tables, etc). Most of the clients will not say NO to make their site ready for SEO.

3. CMS – Ask how frequently they want to change the content, and if they do, let them do know how to do it themselves with a CMS. You may also need to let them know the advantages of fresh content. I believe instead of providing them a static site of 20 pages, you can introduce them Joomla and how to use it, for some additional but onetime investments.

4. Advantages of Opensource - Do they need a CMS or Ecommerce, You can justify why you charge less. Let them know that you can cut cost by using WordPress or Magento and still make their site professional. By doing this you are introducing standards – if your client goes to some other developers, it would not be difficult for them to take up the work.

I recommend you to keep a short write up (with some references) or articles on the above mentioned (you may keep that under your client section of your website) and ask the client to refer them. It also helps them to understand that you know what you tell them.

Keyword cloud represents most used keywords in a site visually, by showing it in different font sizes and it is known to be a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) term. It differs from larger to smaller in font sizes. Keyword that has been used more around the site and blog, which we call as keyword density, are shown in larger fonts. According to the keyword density the font size varies from larger to smaller. On looking at the keyword cloud size variation, users can see the importance of the keywords that relates to web site or a blog.

Benefits of keyword cloud

Keyword cloud is benefited to find relevant and useful web pages for user who looks for certain information. 

By using the keyword cloud, popular words (density rich words) are shown and it is as well clickable for users. When users find a keyword listed in keyword cloud useful then he will be going for a click on the particular keyword and he will be taken to the category search results page were all pages or blog posts will be listed related to the tagged keyword.

Make sure the keywords in the cloud section are not overlapped and ugly. Have it in a place were users could find it easily. The better option is to have it in the side bar of a site or blog. 

Keyword cloud generators

Here is a site that helps to generate a keyword cloud by mentioning your web link.

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-cloud/

WordPress Keyword Cloud generator plugin

The below WordPress plugin helps you to install keyword cloud to your blog or site

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/resize-tag-cloud/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/keywords-cloud-for-wordpress/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-tagging-plugin/screenshots/

How Keyword cloud will look like?

If you find any other interesting information about Keyword cloud, you may share through comments.