Hi Everyone.

There is a post here that asks some questions from those who’ve had positive experience about our Free SEO services. Please kindly visit this page and leave your comment:

http://allmytricks.hubpages.com/hub/Can-they-optimize-your-blog-mastergoogle-review

Thanks,

Ali Husayni

Popularity: 4%

For anyone interested in doing business online, knowing how many individuals search for a specific keyword is crucial. If I’m selling kids shoes online and only 100 people search for it on Google, then most probably I’m not going to succeed – even if my site is ranked at the top. I’ll be lucky if 10 people out of those 100 buy my shoes.

To know how many people search for a specific keyword, there are many tools available. But the most trustworthy one is Google’s Adwords Keyword Selector Tool. Because it is pulling the data from its search engine.

In the SEO community, it is common knowledge that Google’s Adwords traffic estimation tool is at best inaccurate. But no one really knows how Google measures these numbers. According to Google, it is “averaging” each month’s search volume across its search engine platforms. But for a long time I’ve been suspicious that these numbers are not real. So, finally I decided to conduct a test.

I selected six websites that we have access to their Analytics data and are ranking within the top five positions on Google search results – world-wide – for somewhat competitive keywords. The tables below illustrates my findings.

The first table are the keywords in Exact format. Which means we’re only looking at Google’s traffic for these keywords when the exact phrase is searched for as well as the traffic for the same keyword:

The following table are for the same keywords but this time using the “Phrase” selection. In other words, the searcher could have used the same phrase in conjunction with other words:

As you see the number of people visiting the site is much less than the number of monthly search volume (Traffic Estimate) regardless of whether we searched for “Phrase” or “Exact” keywords.

It is less likely that less than 10% of those searching for any given search querry are going to visit the top ranking sites.

Therefore, my conclusion is that the Traffic Estimate is blown out of proportion. 

But by how much?

Looking at the numbers, we can say that these numbers are blown out of proportion by 3 times and up to 100 times depending on the search query.

Where is the success in SEO?

Another important factor is that we’re able to generate a few times more traffic to our clients’ sites than the total search volume for their main keyword(s). For example, doctorjennifer.com’s main keyword is Minneapolis Orthodontist. But this keyword only receives 58 searches each month (if that was accurate). On the other hand, the site is receiving over 1,000 hits through organic search results. The reason is that we are not just focusing on the MAIN keyword. We work on a pool of different keywords related to each site/business. Doctorjennifer.com for instance has over 100 keywords we’re targeting.

For those clients that care very much for having that top ranking placement on Google for their main keyword I have to say that that is not so important compared to being ranked for many of their keywords that may not be as popular.

In other words if our client is not ranking at the top for Minneapolis Orthodontist, they’re just losing a very small fraction of the search volume; however, there are 50 other keywords (Minneapolis Children Orthodontist, St. Paul Invisalign, Best Orthodontist in Eagan, etc.) that the client has a top five ranking. The site is going to get traffic and business from Google generated through secondary keywords.

We measure our success by the number of targeted visitors who find our clients’ sites using their keywords – main keywords as well as secondary keywords.

Popularity: 7%

Search engine optimization (SEO) was named that many years ago because “optimization” was pretty much the only thing that needed to be done. Today, optimization is only about 5-10% of the total SEO work. The rest lies with content development and popularity which we’ve discussed in part I and part III of these series.

Optimization means making a site “relevant” to specific search terms (keywords) so that Google or other search engines recognize these keywords and rank the site better for them. Thus, the term “relevancy” was derived from this notion.

Here I should note that most of the “black-hat” SEO concentrates on optimization. In a future post, we’ll discuss some of the no-no’s when it comes to Google SEO and  more specifically optimization for Google.

Our team’s focus is on Google optimization. Everything we do is approved and accepted by Google as explained by Matt Cutts through Google Webmaster Guidelines. And here is a glimpse of what our team considers best optimization practices that we conduct on a daily basis for our new client (not everything serves to better the ranks, some are simply for monitoring purposes):

1. Adding you website to our Google analytics and setting up the tracking code (to monitor traffic coming through your site).
2. Adding your site to our Google webmaster tools and completing the verification process (the reports through webmaster tools identify any optimization issues your site may have).
3. Creating a sitemap.xml file and submitting it to Google webmaster tools (and keeping this sitemap.xml file up to date).
4. Creating/updating the HTML sitemap page of the website.
5. Make sure the search engines are not blocked through no index Meta tag or robots.txt file or anything else that blocks search engines from accessing/indexing your website.
6. Exterminate any instances of duplicate content.
7. Remove any instances of black hat SEO (hidden text or link, <noembed> tags, link farming, Meta redirection, cloaking, doorway pages, long keyword-rich comment tags).
8. Redirecting the non-www URL to www version. For example, http://mastergoogle.com will be redirected to http://www.mastergoogle.com/.
9. Trailing slash redirection. In other words making the site pages consistent. For example all the pages should have the trailing slash at the end of the URL.
10. Creating keyword rich URL’s for all the pages.
11. One version URL for home page (Any references to index.php or default.aspx and any other versions of the home page URL should be redirected to the main URL: ie. http://www.mastergoogle.com/).
12. Building a blog for the site and hosting it on the site. Example: http://www.mastergoogle.com/blog/.
13. Creating and optimizing permalinks for blog posts.
14. Installing “SEO” plug-ins for the blog.
15. Installing a “Sitemap” plug-in for blog.
16. URL canonicalization for CMS website (Very important for eCommerce websites and blogs).
17. Adding your blog links to the footer links and/or top menus.
18. Adding latest blog post section to the home page (important for fresh content development – discussed in Part I).
19. Text optimization. Inserting the appropriate keywords in the right places.
20. Meta description and title tag optimization (unique Meta tags for each page is very important).
21. Image alt tag and co-text optimization (co-text is a notion we borrowed from linguistics to refer to any textual content surrounding an image or any specific keyword).
22. Domain renewal for 5 years or more.
23. Avoid excessive use of “Meta redirection” and use “301 redirection” instead.

Also note that Google web master accounts should be observed on a weekly basis to make sure there are no not-found pages.

Popularity: 6%

For about two months we’ve noticed a (Not Provided) item on Google Analytics traffic reports under “Traffic Sources/Google Organic” section. This is an article that has done a good job explaining it. The basic answer is that the keywords surfers used to find this particular site were not shown because the searchers were logged into their Google account when conducting the search.

Google wants to further protect their users’ privacy by encrypting their search results pages (through https://www.google.com).

In Nov. our site received 1,144 visitors from organic Google search which their search keywords were not shown (see below). This is 19.6% of our total Google organic search traffic.

Popularity: 9%

Many of my current clients lack sufficient number of positive Google Places reviews. If you do not have a Google Places listing, please read this post and watch this video first.

Popularity: 6%

Master Google team is proud to announce achieving another record in bringing organic traffic to our site using organic SEO. On October 18th, we received a total of 246 visitors searching on Google and finding us.

The most searched for keywords yesterday included free SEO, Master Google and Google SEO Blog.

This brings our total search visitors in the past month to 4,955. Our current Alexa ranking is 27,588. This is much better than most SEO companies world-wide.

Some of our clients also achieved a breaking record last month including:

www.immigrationman.com
www.drpamelali.com
www.aeortho.com
www.arubavilavacationhomes.com

Popularity: 2%

Here is a great discussion on search quality with Google and SEO. Dany Sulivan is the well-known SEO specialist along with Matt Cutts, Ben Gomes and Amit Singhal.

Popularity: 3%

Gmail, Adwords, Analytics, Google+, Places, Images and Videos are only a handful of services Google offers the business world. Small and yet successful businesses have long used these tools to further succeed in their ventures.

But Google also poses a big challenge for everyone who wants to gain business from them. It’s way too complicated.

Google adds new services way too often- sometimes faster than business owners can learn about them. Yet, many of its important features, such as its standard search, change drastically over time, making it difficult for companies to stay up to speed. Even JC Penny and Walmart couldn’t predict Google’s behavior and lost a great deal of business as a result.

One way to approach this obstacle is to identify which of these services is vital to your business and use it to your advantage.

Without a doubt,  Google Places (combined with organic SEO) is the most important for small businesses. Why? Because if your site is among the top five listings on Google Places, your customers will find you. It won’t matter if you don’t know how to use Adwords, Analytics, or Google+.

Being seen at the top of search results is equivalent to purchasing a large, eye-catching ad in your local Yellow Pages that everyone owned 10 years ago. If your ad was the first, your phone would not stop ringing.

If your business is listed high on Google Places, you will witness firsthand Google’s power to send customers your way. In a survey we performed, our clients that appeared on Google Places showed an increase of $45,000-to $274,000 in their annual revenue compared with when they didn’t show up on Google Places. On average, they spent just a small fraction of that money promoting their site. No other advertising method can beat that.

Now, the question is how to get on Google Places. Or, if you are already there, then how do you improve your rank to reach that number one spot?

If you are not listed, the first thing you ought to do is register your business with Google. The steps are simple and are explained in this video: how to get on Google Places.

If you are listed but you’re not at the top, then you need to improve your business’s reputation online. Here is the blueprint for accomplishing just that:

1- Get your customers to write positive reviews for you on your Google Places page. If they search for your business name along with the city you are listed under in Google Maps and then click on the letter associated with your business, a window will open at the top of your listing on the map that has a rating stars link. Clicking on the rating stars will get you to the reviews page. If you don’t have any reviews yet, then there will be a “write a review” link in this window.

2- Add the +1 button to your site’s pages and encourage your friends, family and customers to +1 your site. This will improve your site’s ranking on Google (for those who +1’ed your site’s page and those in their Google+ circles).

3- Improve your site’s link popularity. This means running a campaign that gets you natural, quality links from related Web sites. Since this is going to be the most important factor in helping you rank better on Google Places, I’ll explain it in greater depth in an upcoming article.

Keep your questions in mind and stay tuned.

Popularity: 17%

The previous Webinar by Sara Bryant on how to create ear grabing messages was a blast. Certainly on target as far as how to introduce and engage your customers to help you sell without actually selling.

This week’s expert of www.ask2achieve.com is Dr. Stephanie Sarkis.

Click here for a quick registration.

And here is the full message from Ask2Achieve.com:

“You know all those times when you sit at your desk, stare like a deer in the headlights at the pile of things you need to do, and think, “Hmm… I wonder what’s new on YouTube…?”

Dr. Stephanie Sarkis

That’s procrastination at it’s best. Keeping us from getting everything we need to do done, to make our businesses grow and thrive.

We all do it at one point… Even when we know the consequences of watching online videos of people giving ferrets a bath, when we should be completing those quarterly figures the financial guys are screaming for.

But you don’t have to be a procrastination victim anymore. On Tuesday, July 26, we will be hosting a free webinar called How to Power thru the 5 Types of Procrastination and Not Only Finally Get it All Done… But Get it All Done Faster and Easier.

In it, Dr Stephanie Sarkis will show you the five different types of procrastination, what triggers each, and simple solutions for each. And because it’s Ask2Achieve, she’ll also answer all your most pressing questions on how to stop putting things off, and get them finished. It’s invaluable information for any business owner or executive who needs a push once in a while… Or needs to push their employees.

So don’t put this off… Click here now to register for the free webinar. And start checking things off your To Do list. Also, at the bottom of her page, please post your question!”

Popularity: 2%

Being placed at the top of Google for keywords people search for definitely increases your site’s traffic. Here are some case studies on how ranking well on Google organic search results can do just that.

Mastergoogle.com

Given that SEO companies compete vigorously to rank well for our keywords, having any presence on the first page of Google for its related keywords and generating traffic is extremely difficult. But, as an SEO company that thrives by being able to rank its clients at the top of Google search results, we certainly have to prove it by helping our site rank at the top.

Google SEO Increases our site visitors by 198% since last year.

Mastergoogle.com is a domain we registered exactly two years ago. In the first year, 12,646 visitors found our site by searching on Google. This increased to 37,773 in the second year. And yesterday, we had the maximum number of visitors finding our site in a single day: 186.

This trend is not unique to our site. We serve many Google SEO clients that have trusted us with ranking them at the top of Google for sometimes very competitive keywords. Read more…

Mavenlive.com

Mavenlive.com is a unique and innovative physical therapy software that allows doctors and physical therapists to organize, modify and print exercises for their patients.

In the past year that we were working on their organic SEO, their site has witnessed an increase of 16,000 visitors. This is a 794% increase.

Google SEO Helps Start Up Company Increase Its Organic Traffic By 794% In One Year.

As a start up company, Mavenlive.com had to compete with well-established software companies on the first page of Google. Today, they rank #1 in Canada and #3 world-wide for their most important keyword: physical therapy software.

Read more…

Popularity: 10%