Your Daily SEO Workout

Posted on August 13, 2015 by Matthew Boley

What Are You Doing For Your Daily SEO Workout?

Recently I have talked with an overwhelming amount of companies in the past week and all of them had something in common. All of them did nothing daily for SEO. Now pending on your industry this is hard, so take this with a grain of salt. I don’t want anyone to feel like they have to do something everyday, but is your competitor? Is your competitor doing something daily that will make their website better, stronger, faster, and better for SEO?

So your probably wondering, what can I do on a weekly basis to keep up with my SEO workout?

1. If you own a website, why not engage in keeping fresh content on your website. Write something engaging that others would love to read about in your industry. Fresh, unique, and relevant content goes a long way in any industry if used correctly.

2. Are you brand building? Regardless of what anyone says always try to stay active on your social accounts which is know as social engagement, social media marketing, and social media management. Pending on your industry it’s generally not the best ROI. Social sites are very high authority and search engines can read links that lead to your site from these profiles. So in the long run this can help SEO. It’s not going to be a night and day difference, but it helps.

3. Networking yourself – now this might seem crazy in some industries, but a nice gesture goes a long way. Sometimes it can go so far it can lead to someone else posting about your company or what you have done for them. Now are you going to receive something in return every time no and you shouldn’t expect it. This is a very natural way for others to get to know you, talk about you, and again can lead to some links for your company or direct sales.

4. Take time to think about your next press release. Did you work for a new client you are proud of? If you did then tell others about it, don’t waste the opportunity you have to spread the word about your company.

5. Does your company give back? Think about how you can give back to the community that supports you. Do you offer a scholarship for your industry? If not, why not? Not only are you giving back, you are also obtaining a great natural backlink for your company. Do you donate? Donate to causes you are interested in and in some cases pending on what it is you may get a natural backlink from that as well. Please don’t take this the wrong way and think of this as just a back-linking method, it’s also great to give back just because.

It’s obvious there are many other methods and tactics, but these are topics you should actively be thinking about for your company. We have used this thought process for a long time and is probably the reason we are ranked as high as we are for 100’s of different terms. If you need help doing any of these please take a look at our page http://affordableseo-services.com/affordable-seo.html or call us to find out more.

Posted in SEO | Leave a comment

SEO Tactics To Stay Away From

Posted on August 11, 2015 by Matthew Boley

We Have Been Asked 100’s of Times Over The Years About Which SEO Tactics We Use And Don’t Use

The SEO industry has been giving a bad name for the many SEO’s that offer unethical tactics to a customer that doesn’t know any better. What generally happens is someone price shops for the cheapest SEO they can possibly buy, the end result is just that, they get the cheapest SEO. This however doesn’t mean that they get the highest quality or the most ethical tactics. A lot of times cheapest generally means the most unethical tactics you can possibly purchase on the market.

Tactics you want to shy away from at all times

Web 2.0 Links – If someone offers you a bundle of these links, it’s a bad idea to purchase anything from this provider. I am not saying web 2.0 are bad to post your blogs to, or post a few times on ever, but as a monthly tactic this isn’t a good tactic. You are most likely just adding spam to the internet.

EDU or .GOV links – Please stay away from these. Sure they may boost your authority up a little, but they are very unnatural. If you get a manual review by Google chances are you are going to have to remove or disavow these. These in my eyes are very spammy.

black hat SEO image - don't use this method Blog Comments – Unless you are truly engaging in a blog that is of interest to you don’t post, it’s that simple. Don’t hire someone to post 100’s of what they call “high pr links” for you. This is not only spammy, but could penalize your site in the long run.

Guest Posting – Most companies that offer you a list of their personal guest posting sites are generally grounds for getting you penalized. This will not end well, I have seen clients do this, I have seen other SEO”s do this, it never ends well and never will. Now, if for some reason you have something very interesting to add to the internet that is very informative and not spammy, then yes by all means add it on the internet in a proper area. This should not be a normal tactic. I feel maybe one or two on very high quality sites 75 DA or more is all you should focus on ever. If you are trying to get 10 + of these out you are just spamming and you will eventually feel the spam when Google finds out.

Social Bookmarks – If you are actively purchasing xx amount of social bookmarks you are just spamming and so is the SEO that is doing this.

Forum links – Stay away from these all together unless the forum is an informative place you are learning, or it’s your own forum.

Stay away from packages offering 100’s or 1000’s of links, this is a recipe for disaster and is spam.

Stay away from companies offering $99 a month SEO packages, this will never work. A press release costs more than this from Prweb. There are other high quality press releases that don’t cost as much, but in general it isn’t possible to ever get a quality SEO plan for a cheap price. Please note there is a difference in affordable like our company and a cheap company. We guarantee the best price for the ethical tactics that we provide. We can’t compete versus companies that don’t offer quality SEO tactics or long term plans. We are setup to offer affordable SEO services that are ethical only.

So What Should You Focus On?

Focus on making sure your website is free of errors. I have walked into billion dollar companies that claim they have the best SEO in the world and I find errors in the first minute that they had no clue about. These errors may be small, but they add up quickly. Make sure your are mobile friendly, your site is secure, you don’t have page breaks, you avoid duplicate content, you don’t have dead links on your site, you don’t have to many outbound links, you have no follow attributes on sites you do link out to, and overall just take the time to make sure your website is flawless. If you are going to optimize your website at the very least make sure it’s setup correctly.

Onpage SEO – many have no clue at all how to do this. A great example of one of the best onpage SEO structures I have ever seen on a large site is Diebold. The onpage SEO is almost flawless. There are a few errors, but not many.

Offpage SEO – build for brand purposes and authority purposes. Don’t worry about exact match anchor texts. These will come later on. Worry about rising above your competitors for DA and PA (both moz abbreviations). Be ethical about it. It’s always better to have 2 very good high quality links than it is to have 1000 lower quality links. The 2 posts will always outrank the 1000 links every time.

Purchase MOZ – MOZ is a great tool that can and will help your company.

Posted in Google | Leave a comment

Google Updates Local Results

Posted on August 9, 2015 by Matthew Boley

Google’s lосаl pack now hаѕ fеwеr buѕіnеѕѕеѕ lіѕtеd. Thе 7 results are now the 3 results.

On August 6th Google updated thе ѕеаrсh rеѕultѕ уоu ѕее іn a ԛuеrу thаt hаѕ lосаl іntеnt tо ѕhоw thrее local buѕіnеѕѕеѕ іnѕtеаd оf ѕеvеn. In thе lаnguаgе оf a local SEO еxреrt, thе 7-pack іѕ now a 3-расk.

Thе lосаl расk іѕ not juѕt ѕhоwіng fewer business listings, it іѕ аlѕо rеdеѕіgnеd to fіt mоrе with the mоbіlе uѕеr interface.

Hеrе is a рісturе of the nеw lосаl расk, displaying оnlу three results:

google-local-3-pack-hardware

Here іѕ a ѕсrееn shot ѕhоwіng whаt the lосаl rеѕultѕ lооkеd like lаѕt уеаr:

Cоmраrе that tо a zооmеd-іn vіеw of thе nеw lооk:

This оbvіоuѕlу wіll lеаd to fewer phone саllѕ аnd ѕаlеѕ for thоѕе buѕіnеѕѕеѕ that appeared in thе fоurth роѕіtіоn оr lоwеr. But it mіght lеаd tо more buѕіnеѕѕ fоr those іn thе fіrѕt thrее rеѕultѕ.

Thеrе аrе рlеntу оf local SEO experts talking about thіѕ nоw, including Matthew Boley. It’s obvious that now more than ever you need an SEO company that knows what they are doing or you can also give up and just use an affordable company for PPC management.

Wе еmаіlеd Gооglе fоr a comment оn thіѕ сhаngе and wіll follow uр whеn we hear bасk.

Pоѕtѕсrірt: A Gооglе spokesperson tоld uѕ:

Wе аrе constantly еxрlоrіng thе best wау tо brіng a bеttеr ѕеаrсh experience tо оur uѕеrѕ. Thіѕ uрdаtе рrоvіdеѕ people wіth mоrе rеlеvаnt іnfоrmаtіоn, including рhоtоѕ, rеvіеwѕ аnd рrісеѕ, for ѕеаrсhеѕ that have multірlе rеѕultѕ fоr a gіvеn location.

Penguin 2.0 Google Algorithm Changes

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Matthew Boley

Providing SEO Services Post Penguin 2.0

As the world’s largest and most powerful search engine, Google is able to dictate how SEO firms operate through tweaks to the Google search engine algorithms. Most of the changes are designed to keep black hat SEO firms from spamming links in an attempt to artificially inflate page rankings, but even the ethical SEO firms will feel the result of the latest changes. Adapting to the changes quickly and efficiently will allow SEO firms to continue to provide good quality service to their clients, and help end users find the information that they are searching for. In terms of changes to the Google algorithm in Penguin 2.0 there are several things to keep in mind.

Individual Pages

One of the most noticeable changes in Penguin 2.0 is to the indexing of individual pages. In order to be ranked, the page will need to have at least 900 words, but many in the top 3 were analyzed and had an average of 1750 words on the page, and the page will need to have much greater diversity than ever before. In terms of keywords and targeted anchor text, SEO firms will have to allow more diversity in the text of the content, often pushing the density of the keyword to 0-2.7% in order to get ranked. These numbers were derived from a case study of dozens of niche sites after the changes went live in Penguin 2.0, and all of the top ten sites for each niche in the case study used this level of density. This change is most likely to affect SEO firms that attempt to use aggressive link building in their content and spam keywords over and over in the content in an attempt to get the keyword indexed more quickly. Firms that use organic and naturally built keyword growth will not have much to worry about. It will be necessary to remind clients that moving up the page rankings takes time and that it cannot be accomplished over night. With the end of link spamming, moving up the ranks will take longer than some clients may by used to.

Quality Links

Another change that Penguin 2.0 brings is a significant change to the types of links that are indexed. Before the update it was possible to use very low quality links, such as those from social media sites, forum posts and blog comments to build the index for a site. Google recognized that these links did nothing to help the person searching for information and made the decision to start punishing SEO firms that relied on this type of linking service. Sites that rely heavily on low quality links will see their rankings plummet, but sites that are already using high quality links will not see much of a change. On the other hand, high quality links are now more valuable than before. When a site with a high Domain Authority links to a site now, the linked site receives a ranking boost. This rewards authorities on subjects that the end user cares about and devalues sites that do not offer much in the way of end user content. It is important to remember that Google is the most concerned with the person running the search at the end, not the SEO client.

Guest Posting

There have also been significant changes to the way that the guest posting services that SEO firms use to get their sites ranked up. Before the Penguin 2.0 update an SEO firm could post to any blog site and receive an increase in their rankings; however, the new Google update makes domain and page authority much more important in the development of web rankings. For the best results an SEO firm will need to make guest posts and press releases only on sites that have a minimum of 55+ PA and 50+ DA in order to see any real benefit. The bare minimum for posting should be 30+ DA, but anything lower runs the risk of being a wasted effort. SEO firms can measure the DA and PA of their targeted posting sites by utilizing the tools at SEOMOZ.

Duplication

Google is also pushing to eliminate duplicate content from website rankings and punish companies that rely on duplicate content to build their rank. Websites may find that their content has been copied by another site, and tools like Copyscape are excellent for finding the offending content on the web. If the Google web crawlers find duplicate content they will punish both sites, so it behooves webmasters to make sure that their content is protected and that there is no duplicate information on the main site.

Overall the changes to Google’s algorithm are positive for the white hat SEO firms, but can mean bad news for black hat spammers. Ethical SEO has always been about building quality content for clients, and now Google is rewarding sites for having that quality. With the changes in Penguin 2.0 end users will be able to find content more easily and the results that they see will be much more relevant to the information that they were looking for.

My name is Matthew Boley and I provided this guide as a way for an SEO firm and their clients to understand the changes that have been made to the Google algorithm with Penguin 2.0. For SEO information please take a look at our blog daily now, it will be updated with a new tip of the day or information that hit the world about marketing.

Posted in 2013 Google Updates | Leave a comment

How to Survive Google Panda’s Endless Updates?

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Matthew Boley

With the 24th change since 2011, Google has made it hard for webmaster to follow their SEO rules. While that might sound scary to some, here are a few tips that can help you master the giant Panda for good.

The Google Panda update has shaken the webmaster world ever since Google released the first update. Now many are left behind, feeling lost on how they can crack the super elite code to make owning and running a website worthwhile. With periodical updates, it now gives extra time for people to figure out how to crack the mystery before the next update comes in to shake things up yet again. This can be a problem for some who are lost in a sea of SEO or those who are newbies, but luckily some of the real core rules for SEO have not changed and will in fact help you survive or even thrive in the middle of all of the ongoing changes. Here are a few of the tips that still ring true today for good SEO firm practices.

1. Content is still king.

Yes, solid content without over stuffed keywords are key to ranking well with Google. Nobody wants filler or unrelated search results showing up when they seek info on Google, hence why they have cracked down on keyword stuffers and spam websites. As for what Google considers to be good content like quality guest posts, it will be around 400 words, keywords placed in a natural flow and content that is actually updated a few times a week at least. These rules seem to be what they have been using these guidelines when it comes to ranking websites for certain keywords. Long gone are the days where badly written content ranks high and as well as for standstill websites.

2. Spam links are a no-no.

Much like what you saw with content remaining king, many spam based websites with affiliate links only used to rank high. That is no longer the case since Google has clamped down on link spamming for higher page rankings and earnings for advertisers. Limit and be mindful of who you link to, including having paid-to-post links. This could hurt your ranking with Google if they catch you accepting paid links.

3. Follow their rules.

That means no malware or X-rated websites. Google has strict rules that range in a wide manner that include illegal to X-rated to malware and they should be followed. If you wish to maintain a decent page ranking within their search engine, you will then need to play with their rules for success.

4. No black-hat SEO.

You should already know this if you ran a website prior to Panda, but if you did not you will then need to remember only white hat SEO is needed. Google has a heavy hand and no patience for little errors that could be made by mistake. Learn how to practice white hat SEO and make sure that you follow those steps to the tee for best results, but also as a protection to make sure no black hat SEO is being used by mistake. Remember, Google has a heavy hand and that should not be ignored or downplayed especially after the Panda updates where made.

5. Update regularly.

This sort of goes with content is king, but that means updating at least twice a week. Google loves a regularly updated website so it can crawl the pages and share the latest info with their users. It may not sound like much or even that hard to do, but it can make up the whole difference with your relationship with Google.

6: Last, but certainly not least important is original content.

Do not use copyrighted, spun, or stolen material at all. This could cause you to be banned by Google and hurt your credibility as a webmaster. It is well known that can easily even result in lawsuits for you. You can always play it safe by using Copyscape or other related checkers to make sure that your content is original and also to make sure no one is using yours.

As you can tell, these six tips are simple enough to follow for even beginners. These six core steps are simple common sense that should have always been followed from the start, but sadly it was not. Instead keywords were focused on and it now seems like Google wants to go back to the basics. So that means the bottom line is that less focus on keywords and more focus on content in the future. This should help keep your website golden in the eyes of the search engine giant.

Posted in 2013 Google Updates | Leave a comment

A New Era Of SEO

Posted on December 29, 2012 by Matthew Boley

Google is changing their algorithm yet again in a significant way.

Over the past 3 days I have seen 17 threads alone on SEOMOZ, of many claiming that all of there rankings are gone. After researching this in depth for each domain I started to notice a simple correlation between them all. I noticed that almost all of them had a low amount of backlinks with anchor text that where their keywords or anything that would be considered Co-Occurrence as Rand Fishkin’s Whiteboard stated. All of the sites where ranking off of onpage SEO efforts and not direct anchor text backlinks.

This could relate to many different scenarios, but my best guesses are all of the following
1. Onpage SEO has changed in the weighting factor it once had.
2. Google is cross analyzing anchor > onpage even more now than what they already did.
3. Google is looking for Co-Occurrence even sooner than what we thought. Could there be a possibility that Google is analyzing the surrounding text in a sentence and factor the words in between each word that makes a keyword?

Theoretically speaking it’s possible that Google could be analyzing the density now of an article by it’s Co-Occurrence and not the exact keyword. If an article is truly about the keyword added to an article that leads back to a site, why wouldn’t Google just analyze the article and use Co-Occurrence to measure the density of an article? To me this would cut out irrelevant articles with anchor texts in them. They could then pull the keywords together that the article talks about by themselves and rank you up for the top density keywords they analyze in the article and by using your url attached to your keyword. So in all reality when they are calculating and analyzing the page they could replace your anchor text with the calculated density of your articles keywords.

To sum this up… When we all write articles we put our phrases in order and don’t talk about specific parts of our keywords generally in our articles, or if we do it’s not enough. Could it be possible that Google is starting to ignore exact match anchors more and more, like we all dreaded for a very long time?

This is actually a smart move on Google’s part, but is hard for us. This will force everyone to use the non promotional articles and can’t use articles such as “Hey here is this great company and oh by the way, they offer keyword here services” Now we will need a wiki type information article that is truly going to help others.

Again this is just a theory, but I do know that many are losing all of their rankings right now that optimized their site just for onpage SEO and didn’t pay attention that much to off page SEO. However some that did pay attention to off page are also losing their rankings, but not as many, this could just strengthen my theory of them analyzing surrounding text instead of exact keyword matches.

Thanks for reading this article and add or comment to this if you would like.

This article was written by Matthew Boley, Owner of http://affordableseo-services.com who enjoys giving affordable SEO services to small businesses that can’t afford the over priced SEO many firms charge.

Posted in Algorithm Theory | Leave a comment

Making Google Happy

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Matthew Boley

Hello my name is Matthew Boley, I am the owner of http://affordableseo-services.com.

I am writing this today to let everyone know how to make Google happy.

Most think that Google is trying to hurt us, or we need to hide something from Google. Most think they need to use all of these special tactics to diversify bad link types etc. The problem is with this, is that Google will always find what you do no matter how much you try to hide it. Google isn’t looking through a large list. Google finds specific sites that you post on, ban them, then analyze all the sites posted on that site. Google’s bot then sends you an automated message based on this.

Things you can do to make Google happy are the following.

Stop spamming to bad link type sites. Don’t use forum links, blog networks, blog commenting, or anything like this.
When you do submit to an ethical link type, make sure what your submitting is great content. Google is going to find out if your using spam spun content. Use unique content that is written by someone who knows what they are talking about.
Make sure your website has useful content on it. Often people make a website, start up a business, but don’t really have anything more than “by this now”. Google is looking for sites that give back to the community or the internet itself, not another buy this site. Have you ever noticed Wikipedia is number 1 for millions of terms. It’s because the are pure information and generally facts.
If you pick an SEO company to do your work, make sure they use ethical SEO services and not just tactics that get you ranked up.

Please stop back for more tips and thank you for reading this.

Posted in Google | Leave a comment

What is – SEO diversity – and why it is important

Posted on August 1, 2012 by Matthew Boley

My name is Matthew Boley, I am the owner of http://affordableseo-services.com and I am writing this today to let others know why Diversity is so important.

When we talk about diversity, many know that it means to mix something up. When we talk about SEO diversity it can mean many different things such as anchor text diversity, ip diversity, and domain extension diversity. I am going to tell you a little about each of those different types of diversity terms today.

SEO IP Diversity – When someone refers to this term, they are referring to the diversity of how many IPs your backlinks of your website have been posted on. For example, most people will keep writing articles on a great article site. That’s great that your writing articles for your site, but it’s not helping the diversity of your IPs. This means that you need to start posting on other sites to make sure your diversity of your IPs are broad. To figure out your diversity of your ips, I recommend using SEO tools like seomoz to figure this out. If you want to be very safe, I recommend state IP diversity and country IP diversity as well.

SEO Anchor Text Diversity – This is many’s fault world wide for SEO issues right now due to the new algorithm updates. Most people will build to the same anchor text over and over, because they feel it’s senseless to build to another keyword that they don’t want to rank for. This is a huge mistake for those that want to rank up in Google, because Google can analyze your anchor text diversity. If your building to the same keyword or sets of keywords over and over, the chances are you will most likely get caught and your site will get penalized. To be very safe, you should keep your anchor text diversity at a 4% rate depending on niche type and domain type as well. Those that have the exact domain match for their keyword can build at a much higher rate pending that they are using ethical link building tactics.

Domain Extension Diversity – Most don’t think about this, but it’s important to find diversity everywhere you can to make sure you SEO looks as natural as possible. When someone refers to domain extension diversity, this is referring to the actual extension of a domain like .com, .net, .us, .com.au, .co.nz, .ca, and many more. I personally like to take the extra step and build a few links to other domain extensions than just the same one over and over.

You may be asking yourself at this point, why you even need diversity, why is it such a big deal? Diversity can help save your website from getting penalized if a manual review of your website is in place. The main goal at the end of the day is to keep your website live in Google. Regardless of how ethical your tactics may be, it’s always a good idea to take the extra step to making sure your thinking of everything possible Google could look at. Just because you don’t spin text and you manually submit doesn’t mean Google will find all of your links ethical. Trust me when I say this, always take the extra step and make sure your diversity is very high on your website.

If you have any questions feel free to contact us.

Matthew Boley is the owner of Affordable SEO Services and enjoys giving great prices to those that need it.

Posted in Google | Leave a comment

What is a guest post

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Matthew Boley

I have received many emails now on others asking what a guest post is and what it can do for your business.

A guest post is an article placed on an extremely relevant website to the article and keyword your writing. For example if you owned a pet shop, your article would get written on pets and would be place on a pet related website.
How do we find the websites to post articles on? We search relevant sites to yours with in url language to figure out who accepts guest posts on their website, or whoever has a blog. If the site allows you to post a guest post we do, if they do not, we still contact them and ask. We take the time to find highly relevant websites to post on.
What else do you search for? We search for page rank, alexa rating/traffic the site gets, SEOMOZ rating, SEOMOZ authority, and the relevance of the website.

If your in need of guest posts please visit our guest posts page.
If you are trying to rank your website with guest posts they are great to help your rankings, but you can’t just build links to guest post sites. You need diversity among your platforms and submission types. I recommend that if your not performing SEO yourself to use our affordable SEO services.

If you have any questions at all please feel free to contact us.

Posted in Google | Leave a comment

How to optimize a web page

Posted on July 16, 2012 by Matthew Boley

How To Optimize a Web Page

Optimizing a page can be a hard task all by itself. We recommend analyzing the top 10 sites, it’s generally safe to say that if they are ranking well, Google has found their site to be a worthy site to place in the top spots. While on-page SEO isn’t everything, it does still count for something. All sites need to be well optimized so Google can analyze your website correctly.

What Should My Keyword Density Be At?

A good practice is never to over optimize your web page site. Placing to many keywords on your site, or better know as keyword stuffing can get you a penalty from Google. We personally recommend a 1.0% to 1.5% density at the max for your web page. Some niche types will allow you to go over this, but it’s not worth the risk in penalizing your website.

A good start in writing a well optimized page could be the following – Sometimes if the page is to small, it is ok not to place your keyword in every header tag on the page. This is just a good practice for pages that are 500 words or more.

<h1> Title of the page – Make sure you place a keyword you would like to get in the title </h1> This is know as your header 1 tag.
<h2> Title of another paragraph – Use your Keyword yet again somewhere in this</h2>
<h3>Title of another paragraph – Use your Keyword yet again somewhere in this</h3>
Place one image on the page and make sure your alt tag of that image has your keyword by itself in it.
Make sure your url has your keyword in it. If your keyword is one word it should look like this http://affordableseo-services.com/blog.html/ if it has multiple words in it, it could look like this http://affordableseo-services.com/how-to-optimize-a-web-page/ . Make sure you use the – in your url and not a _. It’s much better for SEO purposes to use the – to make clean SEO friendly urls.
Make sure your not using out of date code for your page like flash. Flash is neat looking yes, but it isn’t SEO friendly at all. Your better off using aAjax or other SEO friendly codes if you can.
If you want to make the best page possible and have extra time, you can W3C validate your website. You can do this by Googling W3C Validation Checker. You can try to fix it yourself if you are web savvy or you can hire it out to a company like ours and we can do it for you for a very affordable price.

If you have any other questions on how to optimize a web page, please contact us today or if you are looking for affordable SEO services, please let us know and we will be happy to help provide them.

Posted in Google | Leave a comment

Request Quote

Our Facebook

Newsletter