SEO Pricing

The first thing you’ve probably noticed when doing some searching for SEO Companies is that most websites don’t disclose pricing information online. The ones that do are typically providing packaged based services. But for the most part if you want pricing information, your forced into either calling (and getting stuck on a long winded call about why their services are the best), or filling out a contact form and waiting for them to respond – which 9 times out of 10 results in them asking to setup a phone call, and still doesn’t provide the pricing information you’re looking for.

There are a few reasons that SEO companies choose to omit pricing details online and force you to call, or complete a contact form.

The first is because obvious – every site is different, thus requiring different services, which is fair enough.

The second is so that they have an opportunity to get a sales person on the phone and “Sell” you on why you should choose them.

The third is so that they can charge different companies different rates. Large enterprise sized companies will see a very number than what a small or medium sized company will see, even if the services being provided were to be identical.

Your time is best spent outlining the objectives and goals for your SEO campaign, and then contacting each company, requesting a proposal.  We’ll cover this more detail in the Finding the Details section below.

SEO Pricing Models

Here are some highlights from an SEO industry poll conducted by SEOmoz & AYTM Market Research that gives you a broad sense of what you can expect to pay for SEO and what pricing models are most popular.

While the Canadian component to the survey was small – 34 respondents, some data is better than no data.

Countries polled include the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy & the Netherlands, India, Australia and New Zealand.

For reference, data for Canada is the 4th column in all the screen grabs.

Monthly SEO Retainers

For the Monthly Retailer model, the most popular range that Canadian SEO firms chose was $2,500 to $5,000.00 per month, followed closely by the $251 to $500.00 range and then the $1,501-$2,500 range.

Hourly SEO Rates

And for those Toronto SEO companies that charge hourly for their services, which are few and far between, it would appear that there are two popular hourly rate categories: $76 to $150.00 per hour; and $101 to $200.00 per hour.

Web Marketing Toronto, for comparisons sake – charges $44/hour for initial SEO/Adwords services, and $39/hour for monthly services.  See more on our SEO rates.

Project Based SEO Pricing

For the most part you’ll find that Toronto SEO Companies are using a “Project Based” pricing model. This can mean they are using either a canned SEO Package, or a “custom” package or a hybrid of the two.

In the same industry poll an overwhelming number of respondents indicated that the sweet spot for most SEO projects was in the $2,500 to $5,000 price range, followed by $5,001 to $7,500.00.

SEO Toronto – Finding Details on Services

As with SEO pricing, finding information online on what’s actually included in the SEO services being provided by SEO companies can be a painful process.

Most Toronto SEO Companies are so vague online that even after reading their site you still don’t really understand what the specifics are in their SEO service methodology.  And even when you receive your proposal, details on what they are recommending and how much each component costs is often still unclear. To say the process can be frustrating would be an understatement.

Here’s our tip – don’t even bother trying to figure out what they include by reading what they have online – instead, skip right to a proposal request.  At the end of the day, you’re going to be making your decisions based on what’s included in the proposal anyways, so save yourself the time.

The only thing we’d suggest you look at with respect to their website is the quality of design and how user friendly it was. This will give you some sense of their capability.  If they can’t have a professionally designed, easy to navigate website, with at least some useful content, that should be a flag on the play.

Back to the proposal requests…If you get a SEO proposal that’s vague, doesn’t make sense, and feels like you’re looking at a schematic for a nuclear power plant, put it aside and move on to the next proposal.  Proposals should be laid out in an easy to read format, use common terminology, and take about 2 minutes to digest, front to back.

This is one of the reasons why you’ll want multiple proposals.

Toronto SEO Service/Cost Comparisons

To really know if you’re getting the best services at the best price, you’ll need to get proposals from some of the Toronto SEO firms.  This is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak and is what you’ll really be using to make your decisions.

First, take the time and get as many proposals as possible.

The easiest way to do this is to prepare some canned copy outlining what you’re looking for and send it to the SEO companies we’ve provided in this post.

What you’ll encounter with most SEO companies when you’re requesting a proposal, is a request to setup a phone call.  Don’t, not yet at least.  For now keep it strictly via email.  This will cut out the sale pitches and will keep you objective.

To avoid the phone call piece, give them all the details they’ll need so that there is no reason to setup a call to clarify things.  That being said, I can almost guarantee that you’ll encounter some SEO companies that won’t want to provide a proposal without being able to give you the song and dance.  Stand firm, and tell them they have what they need and if they want to be part of the RFQ process, then they’ll do what you’ve asked, if not – eliminate the from the process, we all know there are plenty of other companies here in Toronto vying for your business.

To help make this easier, we’ve provided a sample email that you can copy, paste and modify and send off for proposal requests.

SEO Objectives & Business Requirements

Here’s a list of typical SEO requirements & business objectives that you can use to create your SEO proposal request, followed by a list of Toronto SEO Companies, linking directly to their contact form, or contact page – we make it easy.

Again, make sure you send this out to as many of these companies as your time allows. Treat this process the same way you’d treat hiring someone for a high level position at your company.  Invest the time now as just like hiring the wrong employee, selecting the wrong SEO Company can be an expensive mistake.

Sample Email

To: Company Name

Date

Re: SEO RFQ

Please see the following information with respect to the request for quotation we require for our organization.

At this stage, we are just beginning the RFQ process and are gathering SEO proposals from various Toronto SEO firms.

Please note that at this stage, we are not arranging phone calls with vendors.

Once we’ve received the required proposals and have reviewed each, we’ll be arranging calls with the companies that we’ve short listed based on the contents of their proposal.

Should you have any questions, please direct them via email to: yourname@yourbusiness.com.

Site URL: www.yourdomainnamehere.ca

Business objectives: (modify as required)
- Increase search engine rankings in Google Canada for blue widgets and blue widget related keywords.
- To drive search engine traffic and sales to our online channel.

Key metrics: (some examples, modify as required)
- Organic search visits – Month over Month, Year over Year
- Sales attributed to organic search
- Keyword rankings

Other Requests: (modify as required)
- Social media component
- Analytics review & tracking setup
- Adwords account review & optimization
- Any other recommended items that will help us achieve our business objectives

Please include some specific examples of ranking and traffic improvements you’ve made for 1-2 of your clients.

Thank you for your time, we look forward to reviewing your proposal.

Warm regards,

SIGNATURE

If the company in question uses a contact form, copy and paste things in the Comments box most forms will use.

Answer any requests for information via email, and let them know that you’re not setting up any calls until you’ve received and reviewed their proposal.

And again, if they try to insist on a call – just end the process with them at that point. There’ll be plenty of time for phone calls when you have short listed some of the proposals you’ve received.

SEO Proposal Review Process

Use the following to weed through the proposals:

• How long did it take them to get back to you?
• Are they insisting on a phone call to be able to provide a proposal?
• Did their proposal contain the level of detail required to make a decision, or does it require back and forth trying to figure out what’s what?
• Is the pricing competitive and fair?
• Is it clear what you’re paying for and what you’re getting?
• What ranking examples did they provide?

Once you’ve gone through the proposals and create a short list, it’s time to either make a decision straight away, or setup calls with them to get a better sense of their experience, their process and to give you some instinctual feeling on them.

Make notes as you have your calls, then when you’re done with all the calls, grab a fresh coffee and go through the notes and pick your partner.

Hopefully that’ll be us, but either way, we wish you great success with your campaign and in general.  Enjoy the ride; it’ll be an interesting one that much is certain!

Toronto SEO Companies

Here is a list of 37 Toronto SEO companies.

This list includes all the companies that are listed in Google for common SEO search terms, as well as companies that aren’t. This is a fairly comprehensive list that eliminates the need to be going back and forth searching on Google and other sources.

Because we’d love to have an opportunity to provide you with our Search Marketing Proposal as well, our two main sites are listed at the top of the list.

Where possible, we’ve provided direct links to contact pages so you can skip right to the proposal request.

• www.seo-services-toronto.ca
• www.web-marketing-toronto.com
• www.dacgroup.com/company/toronto
• www.cstonecanada.com/contactus/
• www.outrider.com/about-contact.asp
• www.searchenginepeople.com/contact
• www.gshiftlabs.com/services/managed-services/
• www.poweredbysearch.com/contact-us/#
• www.convurgency.com/contact_us.html
• www.searchengineoptimizationtoronto.com/contact-us.shtml
• www.seologist.com/content/en/contact.html
• www.paulteitelman.com/contact/
• www.mindshark.ca/contact-us
• www.mdz.ca/contact-us/
• www.wisdek-seo.com/contact-wisdek.php
• www.nvisolutions.com/contact_en.php
• www.sonitekseocompany.com/Contact-us.html
• www.rtrk.ca/register/contactus.php
• 360.yellowpages.ca/en/solutions/search-engine-optimization-seo
• www.fissionseo.com/content/pages/contact-us
• www.allwebpromotion.com/contact-us.html
• www.ifm.ca/main/contact.htm
• www.seo.com/contact/
• www.seoservicescanada.ca/contactseoservicescanada/
• www.9thsphere.com/contact
• www.imcc.com/free-quote/
• www.beanstalk-inc.com/bsi/contact.htm
• www.tiptier.com/contact.html
• www.searchengineoptimizationcompany.ca/seofirm.html
• www.seoservicesplus.ca/contact-seo-services-plus.html
• www.6smarketing.com/contact-us/
• www.handsubmit.com/cgi-bin/itsmy/go.exe?page=11&domain=1&webdir=handsubmit
• www.seoservicestoronto.com/contact-us/
• www.getranked1st.com/contact-us/
• www.torontoseoexperts.com/contact/
• www.localfocus.ca/contact-us/
• www.ekkomarketing.ca/contact-us/

SEO Costs

Let’s compare SEO Services to something more tangible, like say your mechanic, plumber or electrician.  These are skilled trades that took the individual years to learn and as a result your typcial hourly rate for any of these trades is likely in the $50-$150 per hour range.  In addition, when they have to replace defective parts, you’re paying parts on top of that.

Similarly an experienced SEO specialist has spent years learning what works and what doesn’t and requires tools and other elements to achieve top rankings.  This is why rates for SEO services are $50/hour or more, it’s a skilled trade that’s taken years to develop (for those of us that actually know what we’re doing that is), this is why you won’t find SEO services that actually work for $10/hour.

That being said, you will encounter some pretty outlandish prices for SEO, despite the end product being essentially the same.  Just make sure you get more than one proposal for your campaign.  Given there are plenty of Toronto SEO companies make sure you obtain at least 5 proposals for your situation.  And make sure you get everything in writing – don’t get sold over the phone, be objective.

SEO Costing Scenario

Let’s look at the time that’s required to optimize the average 10 page website.

First you need to allow at least 2 hours for building the keyword list (so they know what they’re actually supposed to be optimizing the site for), if your site is more complex with loads of products, the keyword list can take several days to finalize – and it’s not a process you want to rush, as what you select here will be the foundation for all your other SEO efforts.  Picking the right terms that will result in profitable clicks is vital.

But for the sake of this example, let’s assume its a simple 10 page site with just a few products, or several services – in which case you’ll need to allow at least 2 hours to build the keyword list.

Then there’s the actual time required to work through the onsite SEO elements on each page based on the keyword list.  These items include META tags, content & headers, navigational issues & page/file names, image titles – the basics.  To complete all these items you can estimate about 30minutes per page.

So for the average 10 page site this means it takes 5 hours for the onsite optimization and 2 hours for the keyword list for a total of 7 hours.

Using our low hourly rate of $44/hour that’s still $350.00 after HST.

And this does NOT include any other vital SEO tasks such as:

• Creating your search engine marketing strategy (the how behind the what)
• Link building – neither the planning, nor the actual links themselves
• Setting up or reviewing Google Analytics
• Setting up Google/Bing Webmaster tools
• Running ranking reports to establish base line performance metrics
• Setting up, or optimizing Google Places for local search
• Setting up Google+, Facebook, Twitter or other social media profiles
• Monthly SEO services – content additions, monitoring, reporting, further improvements

If you belong to a vertical with even modest competition – a $350.00 campaign is NOT going to take a term to the top 3.  You’ll need other SEO elements or ongoing monthly SEO services to make this happen.

So if you see something online, or hear something from an SEO salesperson telling you that for a few hundred dollars they can get you top rankings, they either don’t know what they are doing or they are lying – as there are NO shortcuts.

Realistic Time Frames

Time to rank – this is another one that is all over the map from one SEO company to another. And again, the bogus claims out there about overnight, or even instant top rankings only add to the unrealistic expectations clients have.

Here’s the reality – how long it takes to actually rank in the top 3 depends largely on the state of your link profile.

If you use a tool like MajesticSEO and analyze the link profiles of the top 10 sites on the first page of Google.ca for your target term, and compare the average link building count for those 10 sites against yours, you’ll have a rough estimate in terms of how many links you’ll need to add to your profile in order to compete.  Keep in mind it’s not just quantity, but the types of links they have that also plays a role – but this should give you some sense of where you stand.

The more competitive your vertical, and the worse your link profile is, the longer it will take to fix it and build your links up to compete.  Keeping in mind you can’t just flip a switch and add 500 links to your profile without tripping alarms at Google that will result in either getting your site banned, or decreasing your rankings.  Links must be built up slowly so they look natural.

Outlandish SEO Claims

First let’s look at some of the ridiculous SEO claims out there as well as some of the archaic tactics still being used that fuel these unrealistic expectations:

• Directory Submissions – These haven’t worked since 2001.
• Article Submissions – This is what Google’s Panda update targeted.
• 350 Backlinks for $75.00 – Hmm, I have some swamp land for sale.
• Submit to 500,000 Free Sites Now! – Really?
• Optimize your website for just $50 – On what planet?
• Top Ranking in Just $100 – Wow, what a deal, now if they could learn how to write.
• We Make Your Phone Ring! – How, magic?
• SEO Experts from $10/hr – Right, experts huh?
• Vague details on how results will be achieved – Maybe they are magicians?
• No pricing information online, have to contact for details – What are they hiding?

If you’ve been looking for SEO services, you’ve likely seen some of these redonkulous claims, or worse.  And make no mistake, they are completely bogus and give everyone in the SEO industry a bad name. 350 back links for $75.00?  Directory submissions?  Really?  Come on.  Anyone with an ounce of SEO knowledge will laugh at these completely useless tactics, and those of us that have real SEO experience simply shudder when we see these.

And if you’ve used these tactics and have actually seen results, it’s likely because you’re in such a non-competitive category that simply changing your META tags would have seen the same improvements.

Summary

So what’s a realistic budget for SEO and how long should it take to achieve top rankings?

Again, using our 10 page website in a moderately competitive vertical, as our example, you should allow $700-$1,500 for the initial on site optimization efforts, followed by $500 to $2,500.00 (or more) per month for social media implementation and maintenance, and for building that all important link profile.

If you’re looking for SEO services and have $600 for a year, don’t bother.  Setup yourself up a Google Adwords account and spend it there.  It’s just not realistic and at the end of the day it’ll be a waste of money, as any one who will take your $600 with claims of helping you achieve top rankings, is a scam artist at best.

As for time – you should start to see improvements within 2-4 weeks, and the more competitive your target keywords are, the longer it will take.  SEO isn’t Adwords, something you run for a couple months, then shut off – it’s ongoing.

That being said, after the first 3-6 months the campaign should be making more than it’s costing – and if it’s not, something’s gone off the rails.  SEO should be your most profitable online campaigns.  So make sure you’ve implemented tracking so that you can measure, monitor and know how it’s performing.

If you’d like more information on search engine marketing pricing, including your short and long term strategy, contact us.

Good luck with your SEO efforts!

Logging into your Google Analytics, take a look at Traffic Sources – Search – Organic.
If you’re not seeing activity here you need to take a look under the hood of your site and see what SEO improvements can be made.

Here are 5 simple steps to help improve your site’s SEO

Step 1:  Edit the Title Tag for the homepage
Make sure the site’s MAIN keywords are in your META title tag(s).  Open your index page in your favorite HTML editor, or even in notepad.  Look for <title>Some text</text>  Edit this text so that it contains your keywords – Titles should be written as a summary, not a sentence. Example – ABC Widgets | Buy Blue, Red & Brown Widgets | Discount Widgets Online. Google recommends 70 characters – this is the max length shown in Google search results.

Step 2: Edit the Description tag for your homepage
Same process as above, but look for the <meta name=”description” content=”Some Text..” />.  This time write it as if you were writing a sentence describing your company.  Be sure to incorporate the keywords you want to rank for.  Example: ABC Widgets, find a great selection of red widgets, blue widgets and brown widgets – online ordering with free shipping.  Google recommends 150 characters – this is the max length shown in Google search results.

Step 3: Fix Duplicate META tags
Make sure none of your pages use the same Title, Description and Keyword META tags.  This is called duplicate content and you’re effectively making sure Google doesn’t rank any pages that use the same tags.

Step 4:  Content Additions
If your site is 5-10 pages with more images then text, it’s time to add some content to your site.  Start with the homepage and ensure there’s content written that contains the target keywords in it.  You want at least 3 decent paragraphs on each page.  More for information rich sections.

Step 5: Page name changes
If you’re not ranking for your core keywords it’s not going to matter if you change your page names (file names).  Now is the time to change them to ensure maximum results.

If you’re selling blue widgets and the page is about blue widgets, call it blue-widgets.html.  Use dashes, not underscores.

You’ll need to update your navigation and any other links pointing to these changed pages, then wait for Google to re-index and re-crawl the site.  Make sure you don’t leave copies of the old pages on your server.

There are a few easy techniques you can implement on your own.

Find more information on SEO at SEO Services Toronto or SEO Toronto and if you need help – let us know.

While the thought of this may scare some, I welcome it as it’s a great way to sort through the spam and for a search engine to finally have real meaningful indicators of a sites quality based on social activity.

For those that haven’t really been following things, we’ll take a couple steps back.

Google launched their Social Network, called Google+ aimed at competing with Facebook and Twitter in July 2011. Then in January 2012 they launched Google Search + Your World.  Since July 2011 the channel has grown to over 100,000,000 users – not bad for 8mths.

The real story isn’t Google+, it’s the introduction in January when they began showing Search Plus Your World results directly in the main Google organic search results.

When you’re logged into your Google+ account you get the full meal deal, but even when you’re logged out, cookies still enable a partial snapshot of + items.  Logged out, the system will show websites you’ve added to your circles and sites you’ve previously visited or +1′d on the first page.

To say this is a game changer would be a gross understatement.  And that’s still true even if Google isn’t yet using the full potential of the network in the algo – although that’s coming, trust me.  The only possible reason that they wouldn’t pursue this to it’s full extent would be if the adoption rates hit a wall and don’t continue to grow where they need them to be.  For it to really work well they need to have billions of people and businesses participating, not a 100 million.  While 100 million users may sound like a lot, when it comes to crunching data on the scale of their search algo, this is peanuts, and won’t even come close to providing the data they need to really make use of it.

That being said, Google.com is using it full on, while Google.ca is using a scaled down version – likely due to the fact that most of those 100M users are US based.  I experienced a good example of how much growth needs to happen with the channel the other day when I was setting up a clients business profile.  They happen to be located in Barrie, Ontario and I was trying to connect them with other related businesses and couldn’t find anything that I was after.  So I wound up adding the sites organizations I wanted to connect with through Google+ as links instead of being able to add them to Circles.

So it’s clear that they have to grow the channel a great deal to be effective, but given the massive reach of Google and the aggressive promotion they’re doing, I predict that the channel will hit 400M by the end of 2012.  Hopefully many of these users will be in Canada,  as the user base here is tiny, especially on the business side.

The Future of Google’s Search Algorithm  

In addition to using Google Search Plus Your World as a factor in SEO, I can see Google taking it even further by using a combination of their data sources.

These sources include:

• The search results
• Google Chrome
• Google Analytics
• Webmaster Tools
• Android Mobile

Combine this data and you begin to be able to paint a picture of user interaction with a given website.  Key metrics such as bounce rates, time on site, pages viewed, mobile activity, crawl errors, ecommerce sales and other data points could all be combined, crunched, and spat out in the serps.  We all know Google already has the data, and I’d bet that it won’t be long before we’re seeing this being used to rank the web.  While some speculate that they are already doing a scaled down version of this already, myself being one of them, a full blown version of this type of algo isn’t that far off.

The Impact to SEO

So how does this impact search engine optimization?  In many ways starting with the site itself. In this new era, we’ll need to consider the following:

• Site Design
• Site Depth
• User Experience
• Content
• Site Features
• Mobile Sites
• Social Activity

Site design – you’ll need to have an amazing design for your site. The more competitive your vertical, the better your site will need to be in order to compete and stand out.

Site depth – You’ll need to go beyond a simple 10 page site, or make sure that those 10 pages are stellar and give users something to experience and share socially.

User Experience – If you’re still using a poorly designed navigation system and make your users struggle to find things, you’ll be doomed.  You’ll need to build your site with your user in mind – and always be tweaking based on user feedback.  Consider this an ongoing, never ending project.

Content – You’ll need amazing first class content – and it has to be unique. No more getting away with using content scraped from your suppliers and manufacturers.  Anything that goes up on the site must be re-written for your user.  And the more content the better, provided your not forgetting user experience.

Site Features – Come up with creative features to serve your customers.  Make the investment in site technology as this will set you apart from your competitors more than anything else. If you sell electronics give users video, 360 product images, complete specs, and other useful tools.   Site features are what will lead to real social sharing, after all you need to give people something to talk about, something that makes them go, wow, that’s cool – check this out.

Mobile Sites – No longer an optional part of your online plan, a mobile version of your site is a must have.  People expect it, and if you don’t have it they’ll turn to a competitor who does.  While your mobile site doesn’t necessarily have to have all the same features of your main site, it does need something to make it stand out.  So do it right the first time and create something cool that people will actually like to use.  Things like stock levels, and interactive maps are good for mobile sites.

Social Activity – This is going to be the most important part.  And it’s not referring to you posting crap on your channel about what’s on sale, yes you’ll get a little engagement with this type of activity, but not the kind of thing that really moves the needle.  The important kind of social activity is when real users share stuff about you on their own. The best and most consistent social activity will come from an amazing world class site that has really engaging and unique features for your customers – plus new, unique products.  Contests, news, videos, images and local events are also good ways to get people to engage with your brand and subsequently your sites.

Google Search AI

In addition to the above changes to the way Google’s search algorithm works, Google’s also working at getting it to understand searches better – in essence making a thinking, or artificial intelligence algorithm.  This is something Google has been working on for sometime and various elements of it are actually in use today.  But the future version of AI, will truly understand what you’re typing in the search bar, and when combined with the Plus Network and their other data sources, it’s going to be a completely new search engine.

When this will come is anyone’s guess – while they are working on it, it’s likely to be years before it’s working well enough to see the light of day in a live, production environment.

It’s just another reason why we need to start thinking about building really robust, world class websites.  At the end of the day, your online success comes down to two things, the products or services your providing, and the way you’re marketing them.

Summary

Yes, you’ll still need to consider the basics of SEO such as onsite optimization – HTML, content, internal navigation, as well as traditional link building, but you’ll also need to start reinvesting back into the core of your online business – the site itself and the products you’re selling online.  It will require a long term plan and significant amounts of work,  but will also provide long term sustainable returns.

Making sure your SEO partner is up to the challenge is critical, especially when it comes to building your top level online strategy.  You’ll need to ensure that your plan includes not only the traditional SEO work items, but also the strategic improvements to your site and the way you communicate with your customers.

Your IT department may not like all the extra work you’ll be throwing at them, but your customers will thank you in a meaningful and profitable way, making your efforts worthwhile.

For help with your search engine marketing strategy, email sales@web-marketing-toronto.com, we’d be happy to work with you on creating an effective long term SEO plan.

Learn more about our SEO Services, rates and more at Web Marketing Toronto.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with Panda, here’s the types of sites that it targets, which according to Google’s numbers was/is about 12% of US search results.

• Sites that crawl and scrape sites, then use it on their own sites – i.e. comparison shopping sites.
• Sites that reuse manufacturer/supplier specifications and descriptions as the sole content on product pages.
• Sites that are copied versions of other sites, with either very little changes to the content, or no changes.
• Sites with thin content (small amounts) of content.
• Content farm sites – sites created around popular search terms, with little to no unique content of their own.

2011 & 2012 Google Panda Updates

Here are the updates made by Google’s Panda as confirmed by Google.

Panda 1.0: February 24, 2011
Panda 2.0: April 11, 2011
Panda 2.1: May 10, 2011
Panda 2.2: June 16, 2011
Panda 2.3: July 23, 2011
Panda 2.4: August 12, 2011
Panda 2.5: September 28, 2011
Panda 3.0: October 19, 2011
Panda 3.1: November 18, 2011
Panda 3.2: January 18, 2012

Panda Solutions

Based on experience we’ve had with being responsible for the SEO for one of the largest comparison shopping sites in Canada that was hit hard during the first few iterations of the Panda update, and what we saw work to pull the site out of Panda’s claws:

Adding loads of content, this included

Product guides – focusing on the main categories we built useful product and category guides designed not just for content, but to really help users.  We invested significant resources on this.

Category content – we also invested significant resources in adding content to Main and Sub-Category pages.

Removal of old pages – with this site we had 10′s of thousands of old dead pages that were still on the server – we deleted all of the really old pages, and served up a custom message for the rest.

Link building – we worked really hard building links from very high authority sites.  We linked to not only the main pages, but also the deep  content and used a variety of anchor text, including long tail, obscure model numbers.

Internal linking – we used all the content we were creating to deep link into product pages and deep content.

The one thing we couldn’t do, due to limitations with development resources at the company, was deal with getting more unique content on the product pages, which in my opinion was the real reason this site got the Panda slap.  Product pages were light weight, with little to no unique content, and worst of all there were literally, millions of pages.  So building manual content wasn’t an option.  And since we couldn’t get them to invest in the development that was required the impact wasn’t nearly as good as it could have been.

That being said, we helped them see about a 10-15% lift in overall search traffic from before the Panda update rolled out, to present.  Had we been able to address the product pages, I feel that would have been much higher.

If your site has been impacted by Panda, or any other Google update, please contact us for SEO help.  We have the skills and experience to help pull you back into the SERPs.

For more information on the Panda series of updates, check out Searchengineland.com.

Although we’re slightly biased as it’s one of our properties – we’ve taken great care to assemble information that’s actually useful to businesses that are beginning the process of optimizing their sites – either on their own or by having an SEO company do it for them.

Check out both the SEO Services Toronto page, as well as the SEO Tools & Resources pages for a fresh, honest take on where to begin.

The short answer is with 301 redirects.  What’s a 301 redirect?  It’s a server language that tells the requesting site that the site you’ve requested has been moved permanently to another address.  It’s like a redirect for your regular snail mail.  Using anything else for multiple domains will likely result in your site(s) being banned in Google and other engines.

Why?  Because it looks like something spammers used to do to game the system and wind up with more traffic for less work.

Read this short explanation on 301 redirects from Google.  If you still don’t have a clue, contact whoever is hosting your site and for a fee they’ll help set it up.

Check your current server response codes – just enter the URL and this will tell you what code it’s handing out.

Learn more about 301 and other server response codes and what they are used for.  Good backgrounder that anyone managing a site should read.

So go ahead and register those 20 other domains, just make sure you do it right!

Need help – contact Web Marketing Toronto.

The Search Quality Team bans Chrome, for using paid blog links, read the headlines.
Doing some research on the specifics of the posts, I can see why they would get busted, as the posts actually had a big ole “Sponsored by Google” at the bottom.  Not only that, but the posts were written in a very promotional way.

This looks like it’s more of an accidental case of someone in Marketing trying to use the blog channel as a means of promotion, which in my opinion shouldn’t be considered a paid link, but don’t get me started…

Either way, it’s good to see them taking the same stance with their own business arms, as they have over the last couple years with other businesses doing the same thing.  As they say, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

What this illustrates is the need for an expert to be handling your link building campaigns. Your back link profile has to pass the human evaluation litmus test.  If it doesn’t, it’s not a case of if you wind up getting busted and banned from Google, but when.  If Google doesn’t spot it on their own, how long will it take for a competitor to fill out a spam report?

All it takes is one sloppy link and it’s all over but the crying.

So don’t take chances with risky link campaigns just because they were cheaper. Plan things as if a human will be inspecting your link profile – if it can’t pass that test, then don’t do it.

Contact us if you’d like a link profile review conducted for your website.  We’ll do a link campaign risk assessment and provide you with recommendations and feedback on what you’ve been doing, how risky it is, and what you can do to fix it.

Link Exchange Requests

Back in 2001-2003 you could run a manual link building campaign that included requesting links from other webmasters – these were typically link exchanges – you put a link on your site and I’ll put a link on my site.  Many webmaster would respond and you’d get your link. Until some genius decided it would faster to automate these requests via email.  Nowadays these requests wind up in the junk box or simply get deleted.  If you land one link out of a thousand requests, you’re doing good.  Even still, these are exchanges, not one ways – which are far more effective then exchanges.  So in this writers opinion, the manual link building days are long gone.

Link Baiting

Build valuable content and they will come (or in this case, link).  This one still works really well, but it takes a long time to build the links – even if you have a real marketing budget.  At the end of the day you have no way to control how other sites link to you – in 99% of the cases the links wind up being www.yoursite.com, or Click here, etc, etc… Not terribly effective for SEO.

Article Submissions and Press Releases 

This one died about 5 years ago too and then died again (not sure if that’s possible), when Google rolled out Panda.

These days the only sites that actually use any of these “articles” are site flagged at Google as being article submissions, and even if they aren’t, webmasters aren’t using them as content sources any more because 90% of the articles are crap.  And those that do use the content remove the links you had embedded in the article, leaving you with no link.

But having said all this, articles are cheap and easy to do – and the links you do get certainly won’t hurt your site as articles can be great, but just put them up on your site, submit as part of your xml sitemap feed, or link to them from several places internally, don’t bother with distribution services.

Press Releases

Press Releases on the other hand can be a useful tool for link building. The only problem is you need to be a big enough brand, or have a news worthy release for people to care.  If you run a small business offering a common product or service – these aren’t going to work for you.  When they work is when they contain something newsworthy that media sources want to share with their audience.  So even when you are a big brand that has something newsworthy, it’s still only useful maybe once a quarter at most.  Not going to help in the long term to build links per se.

Internal Blogging

This one works and is a clear winner.  Down side is that it’s very labor intensive if you’re doing it in house.  There is some research work that you need to do before you can start blogging about your own product or service.  First you need to pin point what blogs are important – you’ll need a pretty sizable list to make any real impact.  And from this list you need to identify blogs that “no follow” their posts.  A no follow tells search engines not to follow any links within their posts, resulting in a that’s not as valuable as a do follow link.

Once you’ve whittled your list down to what’s left you’ll need to start blogging slowly – engaging and talking about other issues – with the occasion mention to brands, products and services – and in a very casual and discrete way.  You’ll wind up getting deleted if you’re transparent in what you’re trying to do.  Keep it natural and slow.  Then after you’ve established yourself as a contributor of useful content to the blog, slide in the occasional link in your posts.  Or write them in a lifestyle, non-promotional manner with a discrete link to your site.

As you can see this takes time and effort so if you’re looking for a fast solution to link building, this won’t be it.

Note that this also applies to forums – you need to establish a user identity before promoting your products or services – and even when you do, it’s got to look natural or the moderators will delete you.

Contests

These are great for driving traffic, but mediocre at building links.  Consider running a contest for your customers and prospective customers – then blog about it, make posts in contest forums and promote it on your site.  In addition to the links you’ll get you can also use this to collect email addresses and other information on potential customers – then market to them later.  As mentioned, the downside to contests is that it’s difficult to target your main keywords.  Contest tend to provide www.yoursite.com type links, not keyword rich anchor text links.  Having said that, Contests are a great traffic driver and are extremely effective in building your email marketing lists, so make sure they become a regular part of your marketing efforts.

External Blog Links

Instead of blogging yourself you can hire us to blog for you.  We already have tons of established bloggers so there’s no ramp up time to deal with, and we have thousands of bloggers working for us so it doesn’t take forever to build up enough links to impact your rankings.  The downside?  You need to have the budget to work with.  Expect to spend at least $750 / mth – and that’s the bare minimum.  The more competitive your search terms are the more you need to spend.  The upside?  They work really well and you can see ranking improvements as quickly as 2-3 weeks. While it may take some time to build the number of links you have, the advantage with blog links is that even after you’ve paid they remain active.  Most link campaigns stop the minute you stop paying – so they also provide the best value.

Text Link “Ads”

These are the “Recommended Sites” and other sections you see on popular sites.  The advantage with these types of links is that they are quick – pay your monthly fees and the links there almost immediately.  There are thousands of sites to choose from, some being quite valuable, others being complete crap. And contrary to what other may tell you about paid links getting you banned, as long as you only use branding related anchor text, the search engines won’t ban you for buying these types of links.

Note the important bit in the last sentence, carefully.

Because these links are so obviously paid links, you really need to restrict what anchor text you use.  Don’t go in guns blazing using keyword rich anchor text with these types of links.  If you do, and someone happens to submit a complaint to Google and they look at your link profile, it won’t take a rocket scientist to figure out your buying links and it’ll be JC Penny all over again.  So make sure you’re very careful with them.  We limit the use of these types of links whenever possible, the risk isn’t worth it these days, especially when we’re dealing with client sites.

The other drawback with these type of links is the cost. Expect to spend at least $1000 / mth here, depending on the quality of the site you want to use.  The better sites charge upwards of $300.00 per month for a single link.  The better the site, the more your link will cost.  You’ll also want to run a blog campaign and do other things to create some diversity in your link profile – keep your profile looking natural.

Create a Killer Website

This one will have the biggest ROI over the long haul.  Creating a site that’s visually stunning, content rich and feature packed is the surest way to generate tons of natural links.  Not to mention the obvious benefit of increasing your conversion rates and overall increased user experience.

If you’re still using graphic image text (Photography sites are famous for these types of sites), or have under 10 pages of content, even a non-competitive category, you’re living in the stone ages and it’s time to beef your site up.  Look at your competitors and think outside the box. What can you do, or what can you provide to your visitors to make you stand out from the pack?

Don’t just start banging out tons of pages of copy, instead think of and create useful creative and compelling content, what features if added, will increase the user experience? How about adding videos, forums, contests, or reviews, to name a few.

The more you invest in a quality site, the better your performance across all key metrics will be – natural links being part of that.

Web Marketing Toronto can help with link building for your organization, and do it in a safe, well planned manner that will never result in search engine penalties.

Contact us today for details.