Improve your sales online with SEO

Search engine optimisation is something that a lot of small, medium and large businesses will already be familiar with. The idea behind the discipline is to tailor business marketing strategies to the online world and this is a positive move for a number of different reasons.

Clearly there must be some clear motivation for the worldwide increase in internet marketing. The simplest explanation for the rise is that businesses are working hard to keep in step with the attitudes and behaviour of their customers. The internet has become more and more of a domestic resource in the last few years and thanks to social media, email and internet search, the general public now has a plethora of reasons to get online.

Businesses that ignore these trends are likely to miss out on a huge amount of potential traffic. However, it is important to note that having an online presence is not all it takes in order to profit from public fondness for the internet.

Without an effective search engine optimisation strategy, businesses often find that they don’t get the results they expect from their websites. This is particularly the case for enterprises that are just starting out, but it is also relevant for established businesses, because other companies that are especially adept at SEO have every chance of getting ahead of the competition.

The clear business value of using an SEO company is they constantly keep a track on the trends and changes in the search market to help maximise ROI. An example of the scale of these changes known as the “the Google Dance” can be seen by Google announcing it plans to make around 500 tweaks to the algorithm that it uses to rank web sites in 2011. Some of these may be small with little affect but others can dramatically change your web sites rankings.

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It is possible to put a certain level of SEO into practice without professional help, but if you want to muscle in on the major players in your area, then it makes sense to involve SEO experts in your campaign. Professionals can lend their own expertise to your company website in order to snare more traffic and secure greater prominence on globally recognised search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo!.
Obtaining a higher ranking from these search facilities is an excellent way of making sure you reach a wider audience – especially in the mobile age where prospective customers have uninterrupted access to the internet.

Guaranted Google Rankings

Many SEO companies entice new potential clients with the allure of guaranteed Google rankings. This type of guarantee seems attractive to the client because it appears to decrease the client’s risk. However, we believe guaranteed rankings are actually a very risky bet

 3 reasons why guaranteed SEO services are a red flag:

1) Worthless Rankings
Most of the time when an SEO company guarantees rankings, they’ll rank the client’s website for random keywords nobody is searching with any frequency. That means there’s no real competition for the rankings, so it’s pretty easy to gain exposure. But the reality is that, because very few people are searching these keywords, these types of rankings are virtually worthless for the client
The "worthless rankings" scheme is the most common SEO scam. The unsuspecting business owner is proud to have gained some rankings in Google, but isn’t attracting any new customers as a result. Instead, the client is only lining the pockets of the SEO company.

2) Promises They Can’t Keep
It’s unethical for SEO companies to promise that they can rank a particular website #1 in Google.
He explains, At the end of the day, SEO firms don’t decide – Google decides who is going to be on top. Of course at Scream Media we’re usually able to secure very profitable rankings for our clients. But we can’t predict or guarantee that Google will rank our client’s website on top

In fact in our experience, no serious SEO professional would guarantee rankings. "If you’re speaking with a SEO consultant who is offering guaranteed rankings, there’s a good chance that person doesn’t really understand how search engine optimization works. The fact is that there are no guarantees when it comes to Google’s current or future search engine ranking algorithms"

3) A Sign of Desperation
The third reason clients should avoid "guaranteed SEO" is because this offer may be a sign of desperation on the part of the SEO company.
"Whenever we see an SEO company offering ’guaranteed rankings,’ we assume it’s because they’re simply desperate to take on new clients. I imagine they’re doing whatever it takes to sign up a new client – and that would be a big red flag for me, if I were a prospective client"

Are All SEO Guarantees A Bad Idea?
There are certain guarantees an SEO company can make to its clients without being deceptive or creating conflicts of interest.

Scream Media provides the following guarantees to its SEO clients.

1. Timely. "We’ll get the work done on time and according to the specifications in our proposal"
2. Transparent. "We’ll be up-front and transparent with you about what we’re doing to help improve your website’s ranking in the search engines"
3. Accountable. "We’ll provide detailed reporting to show you what progress we’re making and to keep us accountable"
4. Reachable. "We’ll make ourselves personally available for a conference call every month to discuss your SEO campaign and answer any questions you have"

 "We believe this approach to ‘guaranteed SEO’ is professional, ethical, and much more effective for reducing risk for the client guaranteeing specific search engine rankings"

Twitter versus Facebook

Twitter Aggressively Expands Strategy, Should Facebook Be Worried?

Let me preface this by saying that in the end, this is not just about Facebook and Twitter. Both companies provide services and features that overlap with plenty of other players out there - companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and others. We tend to think about Facebook and Twitter, however, as the frontrunners when it comes to social networking.

Can Twitter give Facebook a run for its money? Tell us what you think.

It would appear that Twitter is getting more serious about competing with Facebook. Obviously there has been a lot of overlap between the two social networks (though neither actually likes to be called "social network"), but Twitter is getting a lot more aggressive in its strategy.

Facebook has certainly become a lot more Twitter-like over the years, particularly with its news feed feature, but Twitter has done little to become more Facebook-like. However, this week alone, Twitter has launched the new "follow" button which can already be seen right alongside the Facebook "like" button on many sites. It has also announced a new photo upload feature and search revamp to make results more relevant - both things Facebook offers.



There are way more people using Facebook than Twitter, but Twitter use is growing. A new report from Pew Internet finds that 13% of adult Internet users have used Twitter (up from 8% in November 2010), and that Twitter use is spreading to a wider range of ages. Those between the ages of 25 and 44 have experienced notable adoption growth since late 2010, though the younger the generation, it appears, the greater the adoption.
Facebook and Twitter both serve as online IDs, providing log-in integration on numerous web properties, and ID is really what it's all about. Google wants to be the ID too, and former CEO Eric Schmidt has been talking about the company's shortcomings in this department this week.

Watch to see how the online ID and mobile payments elements of our lives merge in the future (an area where Google is making bold moves with Google Wallet). This is another potential area where Facebook and Twitter could clash down the line (again, putting aside the rest of the players for a minute). Facebook already has its Facebook Credits. But Twitter for payments? Well, there's already TwitPay (which Eric Schmidt has reportedly invested in). And let's not forget that the recently returned co-founder Jack Dorsey does also run Square (which recently unveiled a very interesting way of paying with its card case). Things are moving much quicker and more aggressively at Twitter since his return. They've already got the ID part. It doesn't sound out of the realm of possibility for Twitter to get into payments does it?

Facebook wants to be considered more of a journalist tool and resource for news in general. It certainly can be both, but the mainstream news media is sure all over Twitter (and Twitter is all over the mainstream media). Twitter, and its more public nature simply seems to attract more of the breaking news - not only from actual journalists, but from citizens. This is nothing new, but it's one area where Twitter has an edge over Facebook.

Twitter is also making more moves in the monetization area. In fact, just this week, the company acquired two thirds of the AdGrok team to add to its revenue engineering team. Ironically, the other third went to Facebook.