Pros and Cons of Organic Search vs Paid Search

Unlike organic foods at your local grocery store, you aren't required to pay extra to reap the healthy benefits of "organic" search. So what are the benefits of organic over paid search?
Pros:
Greater Click-throughs: People trust "organically grown" search results more than they do sponsored results. While the engines business is supported by paid ads, many consumers prefer the organic search results. Due to the contextual nature of organic search, the listings can be more relevant and offer a greater depth of choices. Therefore, while paid ads can play an important part in your marketing strategy, ultimately it is the organic search results that will more likely yield the greater click-through rates when all other things are equal. Therefore, it's this type of listing that will maximize the traffic to your site whenever you climb to the top.
Power of Branding: More and more large corporations are investing resources into organic search to gain the marketing benefits of promoting their brand. For example, most consumers would expect to find Dell.com in a search for computers. If your company does not show up for the keyword results in which you'd expect to appear it can be embarrassing. Consumers may wonder if Company X is as important as they once were if they don't even show up in MSN, Yahoo or Google. Conversely, inserting your brand in the top search results can give the impression that your company is important. Therefore, smaller companies can give the impression of big business importance by securing aa better position in organic search than their larger rivals.
Greater Trust Equals Greater Conversions: Most adults learn to apply a healthy dose of skepticism when they see a commercial on TV, a banner ad on the Web, or a sponsored ad on a search engine. After all, we know those ads are commercially motivated and may not always be the most relevant product or solution for our needs. It may simply represent the company that was able to spend the most money to get their message in front of me. Sometimes bigger companies do offer the best products, but there's no guarantee. There's certainly not the same level of trust that we see from visitors arriving from organic search. Organic search can, of course, be commercially influenced. However, a recent survey shows that people tend to trust organic results compared to sponsored listings. On the whole, you should see more visitors from organic search converting to sales, assuming your rankings were for targeted, relevant keywords. In the business world, ROI, or Return On Investment, is king. Fortunately, organic search can give you the high ROI you're looking for or your boss is demanding.
Organic is Free: After all these years, it's still free to submit to Google, arguably the most popular of the organic search engines right now. Google has always been adamant about not charging for inclusion in its index of 4.2 billion pages. Most other organic engines will also index you for free, although some like Yahoo do have paid inclusion options. Paid inclusion simply guarantees your page will get indexed quickly and stay indexed for as long as you maintain your subscription, but does not promise a particular ranking. However, if you have a Web site with good quality content and links from third party sites, paid inclusion is "nice-to-have". It can be very useful in getting pages indexed or re-indexed quickly. This allows you to quickly test various page designs and to feed news and other time-sensitive content to the search engine as quickly as possible.
Cons:
Organic Rankings are Not Automatic: With organic listings, you cannot simply hand over a certain amount of money and be guaranteed to quickly and automatically achieve any ranking you desire. Instead, achieving positions in organic search requires the proper technology, skill, and know-how. There has always been a cloud of mystery around the process of achieving top rankings. How's it done? Where do I start? That's why resources like this newsletter and products like WebPosition Gold are essential to a business's success in search engine marketing.
Organic Rankings Require an Investment in Time: The age-old adage of "nothing worthwhile in life ever comes easy" rings true with organic rankings. While they are monetarily free, simply submitting your pages to the search engines is not enough to bring in a flood of new visitors to your Web site. Far too many businesses have been fooled into spending $49 or $99 to submit their site to "thousands" of sites, 99% of which are obscure names you've probably never heard of. The key is that someone doing a search on a major search engine must be able to easily find your Web site.
If your site is buried at the bottom of the list, or simply fails to appear in the first few pages of search results, you can kiss your chances of being found good-bye. The key is to use responsible best practices to create pages that are highly relevant to the keywords that apply to your Web site and the products or solutions you have to offer. . In other words, optimize your pages for search engine visibility and see how fast your position improves. To do this, you simply need to know what each search engine needs for maximum visibility. Then tweak your Web page's content while paying attention to off-page factors like the number and type of links coming to your page. Tune the pages of your site to the preferences of the major search engines and then watch your rankings and traffic climb.
While optimizing your Web site to rank well for organic searches takes more effort than simply buying an ad, it can provide your business with one of the highest ROI results that you're likely to find. Numerous studies have placed search engine optimization at the top of the list of the most effective forms of online marketing. Its low cost, high relevancy, and high conversion rates make it an ideal marketing vehicle for almost any business.
The catch? As with any area of marketing, SEO is a competitive field. Arming yourself with the best technology and knowledge is key to gaining a competitive advantage. Long-time readers of MarketPosition know that WebPosition was the first product on the market to track a Web site's rankings on the search engines and to help improve those rankings. That early lead has given WebPosition more time for its technology to grow and mature than any of its competition. WebPosition's Page Critic module contains a wealth of advice and statistics designed to move your site to the top of the organic search results. Not only that, it also tracks your rankings and gives you advice on how to achieve the best results in both organic and pay-per-click search engines as well. Therefore, you can capitalize on the best of both

What is "organic" search and how can it help your company?

The first time I heard the term "organic search" I immediately thought of organic food at the grocery store. So, is this organic search healthier for me? Will it reduce my chances of getting cancer? Not only can the search engines bring most of the world's knowledge to my desktop, but now they can prevent deadly diseases too! Imagine my disappointment when I learned organic search was simply the next new buzzword for the concept of pure, or crawler-based search. As some of our readers may find it challenging to keep up with all of the latest lingo, I thought I'd take a moment to at least explain the concept of organic search.
Organic describes a search that returns results by indexing pages based on content and keyword relevancy. This is in contrast to listings ranked based on who paid the most money to appear at the top such as those on Overture.com. Sometimes this is called "pure" or "natural search" as it is supposed to be "untainted" by commercial payments or bids.
Historically, Google has led the way in championing the virtues of natural or organic search. Its primary focus has always been to return fast, highly relevant results based on the content of the page, the relevancy of links pointing to that page, and other "objective" criteria. Sponsored listings have always been clearly separated from the organic search results on Google. However, many other engines have experimented with mixing the two types of search without clearly labeling which is which. This has been followed by public outcries, and at least one cautionary set of statements issued by the FTC in 2002.

How do you know what a search engine is really looking for?

By Brent Winters
Have you ever done a search and wondered how your competitors are appearing at the top of the results and why you are not? If so, you've taken the first crucial step into the intriguing world of Search Engine Optimization. An active curiosity will definitely serve you well in this field, paying huge dividends as you discover what makes each search engine tick.
The key factor to building a top-ranking page is to know what a search engine is looking for to determine each page's search position. Each engine is different, having its own unique set of preferences. Those in the business call this the search engine's "ranking algorithm."
So how do you know what each engine prefers to see? Start out by studying the pages that already rank near the top of the search results for the keywords you are targeting. What elements do the majority of these pages share in common? How are these pages different than the ones that appear further down the list? Don't look at the finished page in all its "graphical glory." Instead, view the HTML source code for each page. While it's not pretty to look at, this is what the search engine actually sees.
In your study, you might notice that the majority of the top-ranking pages contain the keyword in the page title. If you saw this, you could then reasonably deduce that the engine you're examining has a preference toward seeing the keyword in the title tag. Therefore, ensuring your pages also contain your best keywords in the title tag would move you one step closer to your goal.
Gone are the days of being able to propel your page to the top of the search results by simply changing one or two elements of your page. Today, you need to work on off-page factors like link popularity combined with on-page factors. To optimize on-page factors, you must ensure your page has similar elements in the HTML source code to other top ranking pages.
Am I saying that you should copy the content of your competitor's Web page and make it your own? Of course not. Rather than mimicking the actual wording of other top ranking pages, you should be trying to mimic the key statistical elements that the engine cares about. The closer that your page's statistics match what the search engine wants to see, the better chance you have of ranking highly.
So what are these "statistical elements" that influence rankings? They are such things as total word count, keyword count, and keyword prominence. Each of these elements are weighted differently for the various areas of the page such as the title tag, meta tags, heading tags, links, and so forth.
While you can compare your page to the number one ranked page for a given keyword, there are notable risks in this strategy. For example, if the page's content has changed since the search engine last indexed it, then what you are seeing does not accurately represent what the engine originally saw. You may see 3 keywords in the title tag and think that's what the engine wants, when it actually prefers only 1 instance of the keyword in the title. Since an engine may only re-index the page once every 3 to 8 weeks, the potential for the page's content to change during that time-period cannot be ignored.
In addition, the page you're looking at could be "cloaked." This is a technique used by some Webmasters where one page is served up to the search engine and a different page to everyone else. While this technique is often frowned upon by the search engines and can put you at risk of being penalized, it is still an all-too-common practice. Therefore, if the page you are looking at is cloaked, you are not seeing the same content that the engine saw.
What do you do to ensure you're getting an accurate picture? One common technique is to average the results. The idea is that most of the top ranking pages will be based upon the content that the engine saw. Therefore, an average of the top 5 or top 10 pages will give you a more reliable representation of what you should shoot for on your own page.
But, who has the time to carefully count each word on dozens of pages, for dozens of keywords and page areas, on multiple search engines? That's where having a good SEO tool becomes essential.
WebPosition Gold 3 offers a number of tools within the Page Critic module to specifically address these issues. Among other things, it offers three different kinds of page comparisons:
Compare your page to the Top 5 Page Averages: With this option, you can compare your Web page's vital statistics to the top 5 ranking pages across a wide array of keywords. The advantage of this technique is that since WebPosition analyzes hundreds of top ranking pages, the effect of individual cloaked or changed pages can be minimized. As there's less risk of "contamination" by changed or cloaked pages, I normally recommend people start with this option. These averages are computed and updated monthly as part of WebPosition's Page Critic Service so that the comparisons can be made instantly.
Compare your page to the Top X Ranking Pages for this Keyword search: More competitive keywords sometimes require a more focused approach. Rather than relying upon averages across keywords that have nothing to do with your industry, you can do a direct comparison for the keyword you are targeting. With this option checked, WebPosition will average the results of the top ranking pages for the keyword and engine you specify. This will tell you what your competition is using to gain their top placement.
While this strategy carries a little more risk of running into changed pages, it is much more focused, and therefore, can be more effective for competitive keywords. In addition, WebPosition contains proprietary technology to scan for indications of cloaked or changed pages. It will then recommend these pages be excluded from your analysis, thereby increasing the accuracy of your comparison. While there's no full-proof way to eliminate every cloaked or changed page, WebPosition Gold 3 performs several checks that go a long way toward accurate comparisons.
Compare your page to a list of pages: WebPosition's third comparison option gives you the ultimate in flexibility. You can choose to compare your page to simply the top-ranking page for your keyword, or even against a page on your own Web site. Or, you might focus your comparison to a specific list of pages, such as those occupying the 1st, 3rd, and 5th positions.
New to WebPosition Gold 3 are other accuracy improvement features such as the ability to exclude areas of the page that the engine is known to ignore. For example, why waste time optimizing the keyword meta tag for Google if Google is known to ignore that area of the page? Also new to Version 3 is the ability to ignore "noise words." Most search engines have a specific list of words it filters out such as "a, an, about, are, as," etc. If the engine does not index these "minor" words, then ideally you should ignore them as well.
As you become more proficient in SEO, you'll find WebPosition Gold 3's added power and flexibility in page analysis invaluable. Simple "search engine readiness checkers" may give you some basic pointers in regard to search engine optimization, but they will only take you so far. To truly compete in today's competitive environment, you must arm yourself with the "industrial strength" tools favored by search engine marketing professionals. Those tools include WebPosition Gold 3, WordTracker, and WebTrends.

Top 5 Tips for Successful Search Engine Marketing

If you are new to the Search category, you're probably familiar with the term "Search Engine Optimization" (SEO) and have seen or heard the term "Search Engine Marketing" (SEM), but are not exactly sure what Search Engine Marketing really means. More than likely, you've heard the two terms used interchangeably and may think that they mean the same thing. Though they are similar, there is a dramatic difference between the two practices. Knowing and understanding the difference between these two terms, and more importantly, knowing how to take advantage of the differences is the key to overall success in marketing via search engines.There has been a dramatic but subtle change over the past few years with regards to promoting websites via search engines. Rather than being two interchangeable terms, Search Engine Optimization is actually an element of Search Engine Marketing, with the other element being "Paid Search Media." It is those site owners and managers that truly understand this, and utilize it on their site along with all of the elements involved in each, that are achieving success on the search engines at a reasonable cost. Let's define the terms before continuing.
Search Engine Marketing: The act of marketing a web site via search engines, whether this is improving rank in organic listings, purchasing paid listings or a combination thereof, along with other search engine related activities. (Source: SEMPO.org)
Search Engine Optimization: The act of altering a web site so that is does well in the organic, crawler- based listings of search engines. Also called "SEO." (Source: SEMPO.org)
Paid Search Media: Advertising programs where listings are guaranteed to appear in response to particular search terms, with higher ranking typically obtained by paying more than other advertisers. Also called "Paid Placement," "Pay Per Click" and "Cost per Click." (Source: SEMPO.org)It is important to understand that there is no less value in performing Search Engine Optimization because of the rise in popularity of Paid Search Media and Pay Per Click (PPC) programs offered by companies such as Overture and Google (Adwords.) If anything, it has increased the importance of optimizing your web site, namely due to the fluctuating costs of PPC programs.The following tips will enable you to take full advantage of Search Engine Marketing. They will also assist you in achieving your online goals as rapidly as possible, and at a very reasonable cost.1. Understand your online businessThere are a lot of business owners that believe their offline business is the same as their online business; that the two mimic each other. Usually, this is only partially correct. This is especially true when it comes to competitor analysis. Many times the companies you compete with offline are markedly different from the ones you compete with online and visa versa.To begin understanding your online business, simply write a description of your company. Have your colleagues, family and friends do the same. If you own a brick and mortar business, ask your customers to describe your business for you. Most will be happy to provide feedback. You may find that many of the descriptions are similar, yet different.Next, go online. Search for your competitors' sites and pay careful attention to how they are promoting and positioning themselves in the marketplace. Use the information you've already gathered about YOUR company and refine it to ensure you are properly differentiating yourself. Take the time to integrate your own identity, as you now understand it, and based upon feedback from others.2. Understanding your online customerFrequently, your online customer's profile WILL be similar to your offline customer. You should use this information when performing optimization to your website and when buying pay-per-click keywords.It is important to understand that much like traditional, brick and mortar customers, there are different types of online customers. These customers will search very differently and can sometimes be segmented by gender, race, and income level. It has been proven that men search differently than women and further, older men and women search differently than younger men and women do. Two excellent studies have been produced recently that discuss the different types of searchers. Those studies are:
Enquiro's Inside the Mind of the Searcher (free download registration required) is a first of its kind study covering the types of searchers using search engines, what search results caught their attention and what enticed them to click on results.
iProspect's Search Engine User's Attitudes (free download) is an in depth study that reveals the relationship between profession, age, education, race and sex and how that influence a persons' searches.These studies will provide you with valuable insight to help you understand your customer base better. Once you have a thorough understanding of how your customers search, you will be better positioned to apply that knowledge to choosing the right keywords.3. Determining a successful conversionIf you were to ask most web site owners what they want from their web site they'd say "to make money". That generally rings true even if they don't sell anything on or through the web site. Understanding what the true purpose of your web site is the first step to determining what to deem a successful conversion. After all, conversions will determine the success or failure of your website as a business tool.If your web site is just brochure-ware, or used primarily as a promotion tool, a successful conversion may simply be traffic. Conversion may be measured as getting a user to browse through your web site, then filling out a contact form, placing a phone call or downloading a PDF.If you sell something through your web site then a successful conversion will more than likely be defined as a completed transaction, or "selling something." Remember, your web site may even have multiple types of conversions. It is impossible to determine the true success or failure of your search engine marketing efforts without first knowing what success is, as defined by setting standards of conversion for your site. Once you know what a success is, you can begin to track that success. Tracking is covered more thoroughly in Tip 5.4. Researching, Choosing and Implementing KeywordsResearching, choosing, and implementing keywords can be one of the most daunting aspects of Search Engine Marketing. It is also one of the most important.
Researching KeywordsNow that you have a better understanding of your customer, your online business, and what constitutes a successful conversion, you can begin to develop the best keywords to meet your goals.Fortunately, there are many well written tutorials and tools to help you succeed in researching, and choosing the right keywords. The August edition of Market Position has an excellent article on Choosing the Best Keywords.This article provides you with the following keyword techniques:
1. Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience.2. Target Niches.3. Brainstorm for keywords in your category.4. Choose only relevant keywords.5. Understand that keywords can have multiple meaningsWordTracker is an excellent tool to conduct keyword research. It provides you with the ability to determine exactly what words are being used in search engines to find the products and services that you may offer. If you haven't tried WordTracker yet simply download the free trial of WebPosition Gold 3 and click on the WordTracker icon.Choosing KeywordsOnce you've compiled a thorough list of keywords using WordTracker you must decide the ways in which you are going to use those keywords. Unfortunately most web sites do not have enough content, or aren't large enough to support all of the good, quality keywords you have found using these tools. Therefore, you should narrow your list. How?You need to consider the following for each keyword on your list:
Does this keyword support my online goals?
Do I have the content to support this keyword? If yes, then is my page optimized for it?
Do I have to create content to support this keyword? If yes, then is it worth the creation effort or should I buy it through PPC?
Is it a seasonal word? If yes, then should I buy it through PPC or Optimize for it?Pay Per Click keywords should be words that are seasonal, marginally related to your web site, or cannot be ranked for in a reasonable amount of time. PPC words will cost you more over a long period of time, so great caution needs to be exercised when participating in PPC programs. For an excellent PPC tutorial, see the WebPosition Gold 3 Page Critic.Once you have created your final keyword list and have determined how those words are to be used through either PPC or SEO, then you can begin implementation.If you have to build optimized web pages to take advantage of some of your selected keywords simply download the free trial of WebPosition Gold 3 and click on the Page Builder icon. With WebPosition Gold 3, you can build and upload your optimized content all with one easy to use tool.5. Tracking your rankings, website traffic and conversionsNow that you've completed the process of creating and launching your Search Engine Marketing program, you need to be able to determine if your efforts are succeeding. Of course, more online sales are an easy way to determine if your efforts are succeeding; however, there are many more metrics to analyze in order to get the most out of your efforts and money.It is imperative that you be able to assess how your web site is ranking for the words you've targeted. You need to know, for sure, if those words are successful and are converting. You also need to know whether your SEO or PPC efforts are bringing you the most traffic and conversions.Fortunately, WebPosition Gold 3 and WebTrends Analytics work together to provide you all the reports and answers. You can check your rankings across search engines and keywords, compare rankings to your actual traffic from those search engines and track conversions from your SEO and PPC efforts.

Google Increases its Index

Google claims it has increased the size of its index to nearly double its previous size. According to the tag line on the Google search home page, they are now boasting 8,058,044,651 web pages indexed.
Tracking a few benchmark sites does, in fact, show that the number in listings for these sites has just about doubled. Although the index has increased in size, there doesn't appear to be any immediate change in their ranking algorithm.
With that said, many predict that the increase in the index size is in preparation for changes to their ranking algorithm. The florida update is still fresh on the minds of many, as well as its impact on the holiday shopping season. Could we see a repeat this year? Not very likely. One thing is certain. -An algorithm change will come sooner or later.

Link Popularity Considerations

by Mark Nelson
Link popularity is the term used to indicate how many other web pages link to your web page and is calculated by counting the number of links coming into a particular page. This includes pages linking from within your site as well as from pages on other sites. Most search engines measure the link popularity of an individual web page as opposed to your entire web site. Often times you hear people talk about the link popularity of a site and this tends to lead to confusion about what it is and how it is actually measured.
The most popular search engines, including Google and Yahoo, have built in indicators on their tool bars that will give you a visual indication of the link popularity of a page. With that said, you should take caution not to focus too much on the particular link popularity measure from the search engine tool bars, but instead, use it as a general guide.
There are many in depth articles available that concentrate on the intricate details of link popularity for each search engine. however, we will focus here more on considerations in building link popularity as part of your overall optimization efforts and suggest a simple and effective strategy in increasing the link popularity of your pages in a way that will help maximize your keyword rankings.
There are at least four questions many people ask when first learning about link popularity and its impact on keyword rankings:
How important is link popularity?
How can link popularity be improved?
Are all links created equal?
Which sites should be considered when exchanging links?
How important is link popularity? The importance of link popularity to your site's overall visibility is usually about 30% of all factors affecting your keyword rankings. This percentage varies according to the particular search engine's emphasis on link popularity.
The value of link popularity cannot be ignored as part of your overall optimization efforts and a percentage of your time should be spent considering the linking structure of both pages within your site as well as the links on the pages of other sites that link to your pages. There are two components of link popularity. The first has to do with the linking structure within your site, while the second has to do with how many pages from external sites are linking to the pages on your site. It is best to focus on your internal linking structure first, then focus on increasing the number of links from external sites.
How can link popularity be improved? The first and best approach to building external link popularity is to build compelling and unique content that others will link to on their own, based on the intrinsic value of your product, service or message. When you take this rather obvious approach, you will be rewarded with highly relevant visitor traffic genuinely interested in the content you offer.
You will also be following the intent of the search engines that consider link popularity in their rules by providing unique and relevant content to search engine users.
Are all links created equal? In other words, is it only the number of incoming links that determines the impact to your keyword rankings? The answer is NO, definitely NOT. Many WebPosition users already know the reason for this and it has to do with the theme of your content. This is also where many people get into trouble when developing and implementing their linking strategy. The name of the link and the content on both the linking page and destination page play an important role in determining the relevancy of the keywords on the destination page. Let's illustrate this by walking though a simple example many of us have probably experienced.
Let's say you're looking for travel destinations in the Caribbean and reading a page that talks about the Caribbean and various vacation options in the region. You notice a link called "Cheap Widgets". You might think "ok, I just might buy one of these widgets while on vacation in the Caribbean". You click on the link only to end up on a page that talks about inexpensive ski equipment. Since it is unlikely you are going to go skiing while in the Caribbean and the link gave no indication of it pertaining to ski equipment, clicking on the link has probably been a waste of your time.
Many search engines will take the same view. Search engines will usually give more weight and higher rankings to keywords where the content on the origin page, destination page and the link itself are closely related. When you have a choice, always make sure the links coming into as well as going out from your page are related to the content on your page and the name of the link itself. Not only can this improve your keyword rankings, but it also helps to create a better experience for your visitors.
Which sites should be considered when exchanging links? Many sites will not simply exchange links anymore, but will want you to pay for a link from them based on their link popularity, as your site will most likely benefit from their link popularity. The subject of choosing which sites and pages to exchange links with (or pay for) is full of potential benefits and pitfalls. I will be covering this subject more in depth in the near future, so stay tuned.

Outsourcing a SEO program

By Bob Garcia, Director WebPosition by WebTrends
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an ongoing effort. The variables that influence search visibility and rankings are constantly changing: Search engines update their rules. Competitors constantly optimize their pages to improve their rankings. New players enter.
Without a SEO solution to keep you constantly "updated" on changes that could affect your rankings positively or negatively, you could lose highly targeted web traffic to your competitors. Your SEO solution can come in different forms such as using a software tool (like WebPosition Gold), using an outside vendor for your SEO efforts, or a combination of the former.
Several times a week we receive calls from firms who are looking for help with their search engine marketing efforts. Their reasons vary from, "I'm just too busy to stay on top everything" to "The competition is heating up online and I want to maximize the return on my SEO efforts." Before you charge ahead, you should take a few moments to more narrowly define your objectives and requirements.
Establishing your top priority and the time frame for achieving it should help determine your course of action and what type of search engine marketing help you need. For example, are you looking to:
1) Get an immediate bump in temporary traffic?2) Temporarily direct traffic to particular pages/areas of your website?3) Build a longer-term, lower-cost, sustainable source of traffic?4) Do all of the above?
Your answer to this question will help determine the proper solution. Temporary or tactical needs such as immediate traffic bumps or promoting specific areas of your website might favor solutions such as PPC or Paid Inclusion. If, on the other hand, your time horizon is longer or more strategic, an organic SEO resource is your best bet.
Although we strongly advocate balancing your off-line and on-line marketing activities, for purposes of this article, we will focus on how to optimally select an SEO resource to help optimize your organic search engine rankings.
Why focus on organic? Organic search listings generate an estimated six of seven commercially natured search referrals. JupiterResearch estimates organic indexes generate 87 percent of commercial referrals from search engines. Click here for more insight into search marketing.
As I'm sure you are aware, true search engine optimization takes many factors into consideration and a SEO consultant should be able to demonstrate their competence with:
Keyword research and selection
Writing and language skills
Linking strategies and tactics
HTML and website design skills
Tracking and reporting
If you're looking for a SEO business partner, finding a partner who has the required knowledge and successful track record in SEO should be your top priority. Beyond demonstrating deep SEO domain expertise, you should also ask any SEO company:
Where to locate SEO consultants?
1) Professional directories provided Industry organizations: SEMPO or SEOConsultants.com
2) Your business network - reach out to your professional network, partner companies and customers who may be outsourcing their SEO effort. Maybe your advertising firm, accountant, or attorney is aware of SEO companies.
What else should I focus on in finding a SEO company?
1) ROI! - Unless your sole objective is branding, ROI, return on investment, should be the top metric you are looking to achieve. Investigate the SEO company's methodology for tracking, reporting and delivering a real ROI. Keep in mind that optimizing your organic rank will take time. Generally speaking, allow 60-90 days for the results of a SEO program to appear.
2) Rapport and communication style - Since you will hopefully build a long-term relationship with your SEO partner, it's important that the SEO company can communicate effectively and in a timely manner.
3) Full disclosure - Ensure that they are willing and supportive of keeping you "in-the-know" on their SEO practices. Don't risk your brand and search engine marketing by being punished by suspect SEO tactics that some SEO companies unfortunately do employ.
4) Client references - Don't just take their word for it. Do some extra homework by interviewing at lest 3 existing clients to ensure you're talking to a reputable, professional outfit.
Additionally, you should learn as much as is reasonably possible about the SEO companies you are considering, including, but not limited to:
Amount of time they have been in the business,
Team size and profiles of key team members that will be working on your account,
Vertical industry expertise, if any,
SEO business focus: organic, paid or both, and
Tracking and reporting including types of reporting, e.g. ROI, and willingness to provide access to data and reports.
What will it cost?
Unfortunately, there is no typical fee structure or average cost we believe is defendable enough to present. Fee structures can vary from hourly to retainers to project/deliverable based models. Additionally, the underlying costs will be based on your requirements, geographic/market conditions, the reputation/notoriety of the SEO company, and how effectively you negotiated.
How to get the ball moving?
Step 1) Develop a RFP, request for proposal that includes your requirements and any other valuable context about what you're looking for. Using a RFP process provides a great tool so you can have a consistent and objective way of evaluating potential SEO partners.
Step 2) After researching and interviewing prospective SEO partners, develop a shortlist of 3-5 potential SEO companies. Share the RFP and inform them of a deadline.
Step 3) Evaluate the responses and decide which firms to focus on.
Step 4) Get references from the 1-3 SEO firms that are in contention.
Step 5) Have a final interview and decide.
Step 6) Stay involved! Continually evaluate the partner's SEO performance through the use of tools like WebPosition Gold to monitor your SEO performance independently, so you can objectively monitor that you're maximizing your ROI on your outsourced SEO activities.
Outside and in parallel with your SEO search, you should consider the following before outsourcing your SEO program as you want to ensure you can hit the ground running when you secure the services of a SEO partner:
1. Determine who will be making your website changes
2. Get organizational buy-in and interdepartmental commitment to the project
3. Establish your communication expectations for account management and geographic preferences for the outsourced SEO partner.
Lastly, a word of caution about "guarantees," as SEO work is really more of an art than a science and so many factors contribute to the effectiveness of search engine ranking that may be outside of the SEO company's control. Visit Google's article on SEO for their insights into the business.

Google Ranking Algorithm Change

A widespread shuffle in relevancy scores started appearing in Google around the beginning of February, and the consensus is that major changes have occurred in Google’s ranking algorithm. The weighting of back links appears to have been reduced while the weighting of on page factors appears to have been increased. Many agree that Google has been using Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) in it’s algorithm for quite some time, but in this recent change LSI appears to play more of a role in relevancy scoring. In general terms LSI allows for a better understanding of keywords within the larger collection of content on the page. To learn more about LSI visit http://lsi.research.telcordia.com/. The use of the Page Critic module in WebPosition has become even more important with this apparent ranking algorithm change.

This publication may be freely redistributed if copied in its ENTIRETY. Portions of this newsletter may be reprinted with permission
(c) Copyright 2004-2005 NetIQ Corporation.

Guidelines for successful indexing

Here are some recommendations that may help MSNBot and other Web crawlers effectively index and rank your site. We've also provided a list of items and techniques that MSN Search discourages.
Technical recommendations for your website
Use only well-formed HTML code in your pages. Ensure that all tags are closed, and that all links function properly. If your site contains broken links, MSNBot may not be able to index your site effectively, and people may not be able to reach all of your pages.
If you move a page, set up the page's original URL to direct people to the new page, and tell them whether the move is permanent or temporary.
Make sure MSNBot is allowed to crawl your site, and is not on your list of web crawlers that are prohibited from indexing your site.
Use a robots.txt file or meta tags to control how MSNBot and other web crawlers index your site. The robots.txt file tells web crawlers which files and folders it is not allowed to crawl. The Web Robots Pages provide detailed information on the robots.txt Robots Exclusion standard. This site may be available in English only.
Keep your URLs simple and static. Complicated or frequently changed URLs are difficult to use as link destinations. For example, the URL www.example.com/mypage is easier for MSNBot to crawl and for people to type than a long URL with multiple extensions. Also, a URL that doesn't change is easier for people to remember, which makes it a more likely link destination from other sites.
Content guidelines for your website
The best way to attract people to your site, and keep them coming back, is to design your pages with valuable content that your target audience is interested in.
In the visible page text, include words users might choose as search query terms to find the information on your site.
Limit all pages to a reasonable size. We recommend one topic per page. An HTML page with no pictures should be under 150 KB.
Make sure that each page is accessible by at least one static text link.
Create a site map that is fairly flat (i.e., each page is only one to three clicks away from the home page). Links embedded in menus, list boxes, and similar elements are not accessible to web crawlers unless they appear in your site map.
Keep the text that you want indexed outside of images. For example, if you want your company name or address to be indexed, make sure it is displayed on your page outside of a company logo.
Items and techniques discouraged by MSN Search
The following items and techniques are not appropriate uses of the index. Use of these items and techniques may affect how your site is ranked within MSN Search and may result in the removal of your site from the MSN Search index.
Loading pages with irrelevant words in an attempt to increase a page's keyword density. This includes stuffing ALT tags that users are unlikely to view.
Using hidden text or links. You should use only text and links that are visible to users.
Using techniques to artificially increase the number of links to your page, such as link farms.

Getting your site indexed on MSN

MSNBot is the MSN Search web crawler that automatically crawls the Web to add information to our search index. MSNBot crawls the web by looking for links within websites. So one of the best ways to ensure that MSNBot can find your website is to include valuable content that other sites will want to link to.

While MSNBot crawls billions of web pages, not every page that we crawl is indexed. For a site to be indexed, it must meet specific standards for content, design, and technical implementation. For example, if your site’s link structure does not provide links to each page on your site, MSNBot may not be able to find all of your site’s pages.
Make sure that your site adheres to our design guidelines, which will help you place important content in searchable elements of the page. Also ensure that your site does not violate any of the technical guidelines that can prevent appropriate ranking.

Find out if your site has been indexed
To see if your site is listed in our index, you can run queries in MSN Search using the URLs for each of your site’s pages as the search terms. If your site has recently been posted, or you have made changes to your site, it may take several weeks for your updates to appear in MSN Search results.

In the MSN Search box, replace www.microsoft.com with your site address to see if your site is listed in our index:

Submit your URL
Generally, if you follow our guidelines, you do not need to send your URL to us for MSNBot to find the site. However, if you search for your page URLs and your site does not appear in the MSN Search results, you may want to submit your site to us.
Submitting your site does not guarantee that your site will be indexed. It simply helps us locate your site so that MSNBot can try to crawl it.
Remove your site or web pages from the MSN Search index
To prevent your site or pages from appearing in the MSN Search index, use any of these methods:
Create a robots.txt file on your site and block MSNBot from indexing your site.
Add a noindex meta tag to pages that you do not want indexed.
Use a secure location on your web server to host the site (for example, require users to sign in or use HTTPS).

To have your site removed from MSN Search immediately, send mail to MSN Search site removal.

Remove the pages from your site.
Note that it may take awhile for MSN Search to complete an indexing update that reflects your changes.