Here’s what this means for you, as a user of Google. If you have a Google+ account and you stay logged in (as I do most always from my home computer), you should see your information across the navigation bar at the top of your page. Once you type a query into the search bar and hit ‘enter,’ if you have any personal results (such as acquaintances posting relevant topics on Google+), these will show up. For now, the search results aren’t commingled. If you look to the right of the screen, there’s an inconspicuous little toggle button where you can select “Show Personal Results” or “Hide Personal Results”. See the full explanation straight from Google’s blog.

Even if you aren’t logged in to Google, you’ll still see Google+ results on the right side of the page. In a small box, Google is promoting Google+ content under a People and Pages headline. Here, content is featured from Google+, including personal profiles and business pages, which is an incentive for people to use Google+.

Rand Fishkin, the CEO of SEOMoz.org, an SEO expert featured in a recent post about the importance of producing quality content, weighed in about Google’s SPYW on his blog.

“It’s my opinion that if [it] continues to roll out to all logged-in Google users and Google stays as aggressive as it’s been in the last 10 days with pushing Google+ for even logged-out users, the service will become a necessity for search and social marketers,” Fishkin says.

Fishkin also believes that marketers who don’t use Google+ are missing out on a huge platform, as Google is promoting its social application, Google+, through this new search feature.

Get Google+

If you don’t have a Google+ account, get one. As SEO Expert Ali Husayni tells us, Google+ pages for your business are absolutely essential.

“It’s a real step in the right direction. Initially, they said that they weren’t going to add that component, but they needed to have it from the get-go,” Husayni says.

Now that Google integrated SPYW into people’s searches, Google+ is even more crucial. For example, if I search for the term bicycles, and one of my friends on Google+ bought a bicycle from Bob’s Bike Shop and +1′d the store’s page, then Bob’s Bikes will show up in my personal results. As much as people like reviews, a review from someone you actually know usually goes further than a review written by a random person online. How do we know a random review isn’t one written by the business owner to promote his own business? It’s a given that we trust information more fully from people we’ve met and have a connection with.

Update Your Profile

If you have Google+, now is a great time to make sure your information is up-to-date. Since Google is pushing Google+ profiles to the top for users that are signed in, you want your content to be fresh, relevant, and accurate.

Get Your Customers Talking on Google+

Make it easy for your customers to find you by posting your content to Google+. Include a +1 button wherever you have other social networking buttons, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest links. Consider holding a promotion, such as “add us to your Google+ circle and you’ll receive an exclusive coupon code.” Having an incentive for your customer will bring your brand to the front of their brains, and having them add your Page to their circle or +1 you will be vital in their future Google searches.

For this new integration of Google+ into search results, Google is forcing us to get personal. Now’s the perfect time to be friendly in person and on the web. Having a strong SEO presence on your website and on your Google+ can help push you up to the top of the page.

Image Courtesy of GeekBlogOnline.com.

In the second installment of our two-part series, we’re sharing some helpful information on how you can tweak your site and hopefully restore your ranking. We’ll also discuss when to give in and hire a professional SEO web services company.

If any of the factors we outlined in our previous post describe your situation regarding lost Google rankings, fixing the problem is doable, says Ali Husayni, who develops SEO marketing plans for clients.

First of all, as we’ve said repeatedly through the years, you must write fresh, quality and unique content on a regular basis, as Husayni emphasizes. Search for your content online to make sure other sites are not stealing from your site. Simply copy a phrase, put it in quotes in your search box, and see what results you get. Let’s say you find that people have, in fact, copied your content. What then?

Mickie Kennedy, founder of the press release distribution company eReleases, offers some great tips:

Reach out to the blogger or the company that you feel has swiped your content. In a professional manner, explain that your material is copyrighted and they must remove it from their site or pay you for it.

Report a Digital Millennium Copyright Act violation. The DMCA outlines penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet. A simple Google search will provide you with a template to complete and sent to the offending party’s hosting provider.

Notify the offending party’s advertisers. Telling the advertisers about the offense could cause them to pull their advertisements and affect the blog’s revenue.

“Hitting someone in the pocketbook can be effective in getting your point across,” Husayni says.

Call in the Big Guns. You also should consider that at some point, you might need to hire a professional. SEO tactics and techniques change as often as Google changes its algorithms. Simply running your business likely keeps you busy enough, without also having to play “SEO expert” and trying to keep up with your website.

A business SEO specialist can monitor your site and work to get your site ranked so you can focus on your customers.

You always need writers who understand SEO and the overall SEO strategy, whether they come in the form of a consultant or are provided by a full-fledged SEO provider. Because content is important for a site, you need someone on your side generating that content for you if you don’t have time to handle it yourself.

At the end of the day, it is important to remember that your site must provide useful, helpful content if you expect Google to send visitors to it.

Google Panda image Courtesy of TechChunks.com

It can be frustrating to those who spend a great deal of time and effort (and money, if you’ve hired a professional SEO firm), to achieve their desired ranking, only to lose it when Google makes a few tweaks.

This was the case in February 2011 when Google launched “Panda.” It happened again in April 2011 when it rolled out Panda to all English language queries, in addition to making several small updates, according to an April 11, 2011 article posted on Search Engine Land.

Panda was designed to weed out pages and websites that were deemed to be of a quality below Google’s high standards, including content farms and websites filled with duplicate content.

In part one of this two-part series, we will discuss the reasons why your site may have lost its ranking. In part two, we’ll share tips on what you can do to get back your ranking.

So why did your website take a nose-dive after the Panda update? In short, it’s likely due at least in part to failing to observe best SEO practices. Why are we still talking about Google Panda almost a year after it launched? Because many sites have yet to recover from the change, says Ali Husayni, an expert in SEO technology.

There are several specific factors that caused websites to lose their rank after the Panda update. Chances are, you were guilty of one of the following:

You copied content from other sources: If you’ve copied one sentence from someone else’s site, you’re plagiarizing and Google will give you an F. Think about what your English teacher taught you in high school: if you’re going to use someone else’s words, you need to attribute them to the person who wrote them. When it comes to SEO, you need to take it a step farther and reword the information so that it doesn’t appear exactly as it does on the site where you got the information.

But your best bet is to not borrow a great deal of information from other sites. Think about it from Google’s standpoint: why should they rank your site higher instead of giving a high ranking to the site where you pulled your information? That’s obviously the site filled with relevant content. The idea is to generate your own original, relevant content that site visitors will find useful.

Your content was old and never updated: Google loves websites that are alive and kicking. If you launched a website in 2007 and haven’t updated the content or changed anything about it since then, Google likely will not perceive it as having useful information. Could you imagine a business search engine optimization site launched in 2007 and never updated? Yikes! Talk about out-of-date, useless information!

Someone else with a stronger site may have copied your site: In this case, Google probably thinks you are the one who plagiarized, and they’ve given credit to the other site. That sucks and unfortunately, there’s not a lot you can do except revamp your site’s content.

Tune in on Monday, when we’ll explain how you can restore your ranking.

A recent commenter posed this question: “Do Trackbacks and Pingbacks matter when it comes to SEO?” The short answer is yes, they most certainly do matter, to varying degrees. The long answer includes an explanation of what Trackbacks and Pingbacks are, and their overall place in your SEO efforts.

Let’s start with trackbacks. A trackback is simply an automated notifier sent to someone else’s blog any time you reference their blog in a post. By sending a trackback, you are creating a link back to your blog, which takes a very small amount of time to do when considering the benefits of it.

Image Courtesy of ITinfoOz.com

Now, on to Pingbacks. Pingbacks have more to do with author control and authenticity, as explained well by an SEO news reporter for Beanstalk-Inc.com in a recent blog post. Pingbacks were originally the response to trackbacks lacking authenticity. Pingbacks make it easy to notify a blog of your use of it just by posting its permalink in your blog post. Of course, there is some controversy over which is really better: pingbacks or trackbacks.

“Some feel that trackbacks are superior because the readers of Person A’s blog can at least see some of what Person B has to say before deciding if they want to read more and follow the link to the orginal blog source,” Beanstalk-Inc.com’s SEO News Reporter says. “Others feel that pingbacks are superior as they create a verifiable connection between posts. Pingbacks are akin to having remote comments.”

Whether using both trackback and pingback methods, or not having tried either one on a conscious level yet, our CEO, Ali Husayni, has advice for the business owner who isn’t yet using Master Google’s services for their SEO efforts. Husayni recommends his book, Google SEO Secrets revealed, as a good starting point for your entire website, including your blog. Still, Husanyni recommends professional help.

“Engaging in all of these techniques requires months of hard labor, a complete understanding of SEO and, of course, cash. Nevertheless, we’ve been able to transform local, small businesses into large-international ones in a matter of a few months by practicing what we preach,” Husayni says. “Oftentimes, smart business people who have substantial financial backing will delegate important tasks to professionals, instead of spending years mastering what someone else already knows and taking away the focus from their business.”

Fill out our form and we’ll gladly look at your site to see if it qualifies for our Top of Google program.

Image courtesy of Kanx.org.

“If a company is saying things that sound too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true,” Husayni says. “SEO doesn’t happen overnight. It’s an investment and an ongoing process for long-term success.”

Getting to the top of Google rankings is doable. In fact, Husayni offers SEO services for that, but the timeline to see results varies. Husayni explains that he cannot give a one-size-fits-all answer for exactly how fast clients will see results, since there are many factors are in play.

These factors include: the size and competitiveness of the market, the type of business, the number of keywords, the age of the domain name, how often new content is published on the site, and getting a site indexed, according to recent article by Search Engine Watch. After all, a website that has been flagged for violations in the past will also be in for a longer process to improve their previously bad rankings. Saeed Khosravi, the operational manager at Master Google, said that significant results can happen quickly for the qualified client, but that every client sees results.

“Significant results typically take three to nine months, but some clients see results much sooner,” Khosravi says.

Husayni and his SEO team have worked with some clients who saw big changes right away, but the majority of them take several months. See testimonials from our clients here.

“We don’t use deceptive tactics or marketing gimmicks here to sign clients up,” says Husayni. “We use clear communication, realistic timelines and show progress with weekly ranking reports.”

But what about accidental SEO mistakes? Avoid three common SEO pitfalls that often happen in the development part of your website, including: 404′s, server errors, and weird outbound links, as outlined by Glenn Gabe in a recent article in Search Engine Journal. A simple scan can help you determine if you have any of these errors. In this case, Gabe discusses a specific software for scanning a site, but whether using a tool or internal talent, Gabe points out the learning curve ahead when it comes to spotting bad SEO accidents just waiting to happen.

SEO Services Logo Courtesy of Content-Mag.com

“You can learn a lot by crawling a web site… [it is important to note that there are] three hidden dangers that can be uncovered.” Gabe says.

Let’s delve further into the three most common accidental SEO mistakes:

1. 404′s: To define it simply, a 404 is a “Page Not Found”. It is very important that you eliminate all 404′s, because Google will remove a a site from its index for such an offense, and you’ll lose valuable inbound links. Be sure to trouble-shoot, Gabe advises.

“For example, are powerful pages on your site throwing 404’s? Why is that happening? And how much search equity are you losing if they are throwing 404’s? As you can imagine, correcting pages that 404, that shouldn’t 404, is an important task for SEO,” Gabe says.

2. Server Errors: URL “error” messages for pages you didn’t even know you had is more common than you might think. The culprit: content management systems.

“Confused? They were too. In a recent audit, the content management system being used was dynamically building URL’s based on a glitch.  Those URL’s threw server errors.  And Googlebot was finding them too.  Not good,” Gabe says.

3. Weird Outbound Links: This issue, unfortunately, inches into scary territory: hackers. There are hackers constantly trying to get into every part of your website. Don’t avoid searching for these just because the truth could be a little off-putting.

“Here’s a simple question for you: do you know all of the pages you are linking to and from your website? Are you 100 percent sure you know? Are you hesitating?” Gabe asks.

Our advice here at Master Google: know all of the pages that are linking to and from your website, and don’t hesitate to find out if you don’t know. After all, you need to know what is going on with your website, right now. Of course, the best way to tackle these accidental SEO mistakes is to hire professionals with a track record, according to CEO Ali Husayni.

“Google needs SEO companies to better understand sites,” Husayni says. “In essence, we are enhancing the ability of Google crawlers to index and understand sites.”

But, if you are a hands-on type, learn to install and use Google Webmaster Central. This free tool can save you, big time.

Contact us to find out how our SEO services can help your site avoid these very preventable SEO accidents.

When basic image SEO is done correctly, an image like the one above can be an extremely valuable addition to a website (after all, I used an image Google search to find this image). According to Danny Dover, the lead SEO of SEOmoz.org, an image is only as good as the text supporting it. Dover delves further into his image SEO expertise in his video discussion on a recent SEOmoz.org Whiteboard Friday. In fact, Dover points out that search engines need text to help the images serve their intended purpose, and that well-developed sites tend to pay attention to image SEO. This newfound knowledge is a wake up call to this writer to implement those changes from this day forward, and I’m sure that it had the same impact on the plethora of other bloggers and SEO analysts who have read it.

“Besides just being useful for people, images are also, it turns out, useful for search engines. I think part of the reason behind that is that pages that are well developed tend to also have images on them because it helps portray information in a way that textual based content can’t do,” Dover says.

Click here to be directed to Dover’s video tutorial on the basics of Image SEO, in which he gives useful advice regarding image SEO. Here are a few pieces of Dover’s words of wisdom:

1. Alt Text: This is the text that will pop up if your image fails to display, either because of someone’s browser or the image disappearing. From an SEO perspective, you can save face, because alt text tells Google what that image was. Dover has a quick tip: keep them below about 140 characters.

2. Filename: The filename is also information for search engines and other technologies, but alt text is stronger for SEO purposes, especially when backed up with a filename.

3. Surrounding Text: This is often overlooked, but the text around an image gives Google an idea about the image itself. The surrounding text can either be a traditional caption, or it can just be the paragraphs around the image (like the picture in this blog).

4. Inbound Links: As with all SEO efforts, inbound links are very important. Dover has very specific advice: “It wouldn’t necessarily be inbound links to the image URL, although it could be, but what I mean in this context is links going to the page that has the image embedded on it. Just like in normal SEO, the anchor text of those inbound links and where they’re coming from and how many of them are, are all really important factors for image SEO and then SEO in general.”

5. Human Categorization: Human categorization comes from the early stages of developing recognition software. Google would hire people and they’d say, “label this.” In fact, Google was semi-famous for creating this game. It was called Google Image Labeler, and it would show you an image of, say, an apple, as Dover explains further.

“They would ask you in Family Feud style, which is a game show here in the United States, to list words that are associated with that object. You’d say something like apple, and you’d earn points if someone else also said apple. Maybe it’s red, Fuji, or Grandma Smith, or whatever it is. So other words that are associated with the image. And that way they could train their software to start to understand what general shapes and ideas mean within images,” Dover says.

While categorization has evolved, an eye for detail is still best done by the human eyes. But, at the end of the day, image SEO is the most effective as part of an overall SEO effort that is important to reach your desired customer base, according to Ali Husayni, the CEO of the SEO service company, Master Google.

“You may not have the budget for a full-scale SEO campaign if you’re just starting out, but some time with an SEO consultant to get you started may be within your budget and well worth the expense,” Husayni says.

The need for content alone, regardless of quality, is an old, outdated trend. Now you must set yourself apart to get those same clicks, according to Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOMoz.org, in a recent video. See Fishkin’s SEO advice below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“It used to be the case that on the web, there was a lot of missing information, information that needed to exist, so you could produce low quality content and get traffics and ratings.” Fishkin says. “[Now] you need to be something special to stand out from the crowd.”

Standing out from the crowd is made easier with a few extra steps to make your content of a higher caliber than your competition, according to Ali Husayni, the CEO of the SEO service company, Master Google.

“The industry is constantly evolving and SEO has grown to encompass much more than on-site optimization. It’s really only five or ten percent of the total work,” Husayni says.

After all, SEO now is all about generating useful, high-quality content on a regular basis, along with technical research for keywords relevant to the company, and a long-term link building campaign. No matter which part of the process you are in, a strong SEO effort has the constant need for the production of updated content with useful, relevant information in it.

The demand for new content, all the time, makes creating quality content tough, but worth it, for those willing to put in the work, according to Fishkin.

“There is a big opportunity for people willing to say, ‘I’m going to have the best reviews in the city,’ ‘I’m going to have photos,’ ‘I’m going to interview the chef’. That qualitative information can make a big difference.”

So remember, sometimes less really is more.

Ali Husayni, the CEO of the SEO service company, Master Google, has an answer to this question.

“Search engine optimization is like any other demanding industry in business,” says Husayni. “You don’t do it part time if you want to be successful.”

After all, when it comes to SEO, there is a big learning curve while acquiring skills, and it is an ongoing process, a fight to stay current. There are thousands of sites on the internet with tips, lists and tutorials about SEO techniques, including the Master Google website and blog, but search engine algorithms get updated regularly and without warning.

“The only constant about SEO is that it will change,” Husayni says. “One update can turn everything you’ve been doing on its head.”

Learning the basic concepts of SEO might not cost money, but there is still a cost. When a company or individual is wondering about whether they can do SEO on their own, they should carefully consider these questions:

• Do I have the time to keep up with frequent updates to algorithms and new techniques by reading blogs, breaking news and articles online?
• Do I have the skill level to research and write quality content for my site, including press releases and articles?
• Do I know where to submit articles and press releases or how to share new content on social networking sites?
• Do I have a good working knowledge of computer coding languages to manage and update the code of my site in order to implement new techniques while staying within Google’s Quality Guidelines and Terms Of Service?
• Do I have the stamina to continue doing this these things on a consistent basis?

If the answer is ‘no’ to any of those, the company or individual should consider hiring an SEO professional instead. Husayni works with small businesses frequently. In fact, it was his desire to help small businesses be able to compete with their larger competitors that have bigger budgets that got him into SEO in the first place.

“You may not have the budget for a full-scale SEO campaign if you’re just starting out, but some time with an SEO consultant to get you started may be within your budget and well worth the expense,” says Husayni. “Call the office for a free consultation to find out.” Click here to contact us about our services.

I am not the first person to investigate this issue. The picture above, ”Paper Blogs”, by Bookwyrmish, was featured in a recent post on the same subject, by Alexander B. Howard, the Government 2.0 Correspondent for O’Reilly Media. Howard cited two different experts arguing two sides of the issue. One argued that it was a waste of time, while the other said that he enjoyed interacting with customers, but Howard took the time to emphasize his own valid opinion that a blog should be a chance to build a community, not just to preach, which is why comments are so important.

“From where I sit tonight, whether you choose to have comments or not speaks to whether you want to create an online community,” Howard says. “which requires a human’s touch to manage and moderate, or to simply publish your thoughts publicly online, without making the necessary commitment of time and patience.”

Ali Husayni, the CEO of the SEO service company, Master Google, agrees with the need for a quality blog with equally as useful comments. Without an interactive base, readers have no reason to read and comment on your posts, and that will leave you link-less, without the SEO opportunities that every business needs.

“You cannot just sit and wait for others to link their sites to yours,” Husayni says. “That simply won’t happen. In a world where there are thousands of new sites built everyday, your prospective site visitors have no way of finding you to read your content [without search engine optimization].”

As for just how often to moderate your comments and how many posts you need to put up per week, consider these things to be a part of your overall marketing efforts. Stay white hat with these for optimal SEO. What exactly is white hat marketing? It includes quality content, site optimization, guest blogging, internal linking, and more. In our recent post, we defined white hat marketing and compared it to other practices. Check it out: Best SEO Practices: Black Hat vs. White Hat Techniques and the Gray Hat Area.

Let’s take a look at a few of the basics of white hat content: quality content, site optimization, link baiting, guest blogging, internal linking, and semantic markup. The differences between white, gray and black hat marketing efforts are described to perfection in the form of a clever picture titled SEO Wars: What Color is Your Lightsaber, featured in a recent article by Angie Schottmuller of Search Engine Watch.

The definitions of gray and black hat seo practices are also made more clear by this picture. The gray hat area of SEO techniques include: spinning/rewriting articles, reciprocal links, buying old/expired domains, and Google bombing/washing. Black hat techniques include: keyword stuffing, link farms, hidden text, cloaking, scraping, doorway pages, comment spam, and paid links/content+.

Keep in mind that both gray hat and black hat areas will hurt you in the long run, according to Ali Husayni, the CEO of the SEO service company, Master Google. Heed the warning of Google’s anti-spam strategy: they can distinguish between black hat and white hat SEO techniques, and your rank will rise and fall accordingly.

“The only thing not changing with SEO is that it’s always changing,” Husayni says. “Be diligent in keeping up with those changes as [you handle your] site’s SEO, or partner with a qualified SEO provider to handle that task.”

After all, the battle lines between white hat, gray hat, and black hat techniques are drawn quite clearly, so pick an SEO practice and stick with it, urges Schottmuller, using Star Wars as an analogy.

“Will you uphold the righteous values of quality content and serve as a SEO Light Jedi, or do you long to be a master of deception as a SEO Sith Lord?” Schottmuller says. “Perhaps you’re a SEO Dark Jedi – once believing in white hat tactics and now thirsting for the dark side. Or perhaps you’re a SEO Jedi Fashionista – knowledgeable of both sides, but discreet in practices to keep up appearances.”

Our strong suggestion: do your search engine optimization efforts justice by sticking with white hat techniques.

“Search engine optimization is the ongoing process of making a website appealing to search engine spiders and readers alike through the site’s content, relevancy and popularity,” says Husayni, who is president of SEO firm Master Google.

One aspect of this SEO process is called on-page optimization, which entails altering a website’s code to make it search engine friendly, explains Saeed Khosravi, the operational manager at Master Google. While the internet has list after list of tips or tricks for doing that, sorting out the tried-and-true SEO techniques from outdated and detrimental ones is a never-ending process.

“Google’s algorithm is updated frequently, so what worked last month might be obsolete today,” says Khosravi.

The reason the search engine algorithms change frequently is because they are making adjustments to more effectively mimic the human behavior of reading, analyzing and organizing content. Husayni says some updates are intended to thwart exploitative SEO tactics used by black hat companies.

One of these big updates rolled out in the U.S. in Feb. 2011, and Google began “rating” websites on their content and user-experience. According to a recent article by Search Engine Land, the focus of the updated, named Panda, was to reduce the prominence of websites that have thin, low-quality and duplicate content. It also targeted sites that come up short based on other site-quality metrics, such as high advertisement-to-content ratios.

Where To Get Started:

Husayni says what he has said from the beginning of his career in the industry: that an ethical SEO company works with the Google algorithm instead of trying to take advantage of it. Here are some simple, current, effective and aboveboard methods that Husayni uses with his clients, ranging from the medical field to real estate to heating and cooling:

Easy to understand navigation. This includes the top menu, footer links, breadcrumb navigation and HTML sitemap. Do not make content hard to get to or structure the site in a way that only makes sense to experts in the industry.

Automatically updating sitemap. Set the XML sitemap to update automatically to keep the navigation current and the latest content easily accessible to search engine spiders and readers.

Utilize header tags to organize information. According to 3Schools.com, Header tags are used to define HTML headings with <h1> defining the most important heading and <h6> defining the least important heading. Using tags helps lay out textual information for the reader.

Link to other useful places within the site. This is also called friendly interlinking. Website content is supposed to be helpful for the reader. Linking to a page that expounds on a topic, issue or technique mentioned on a different page builds an internal link structure that benefits the business, the reader and the ranking on SERPs.

Use consistent URLs. Stick to one version URLs, redirecting all the other versions to the preferred one. For example, redirect non-www to www, https to http, and the one without trailing slash to the one with trailing slash.

Be informative with URLs. A short, keyword-rich URL is much more useful to readers than one that uses an ID number or another ambiguous parameter. Keywords need to accurately explain the page’s contents in a succinct way. This information shows up in the SERs and helps a reader decide if the information is relevant, which means Google is also factoring this into their algorithm.

Put unique page titles and descriptions in the code. The page title shows up at the top of the browser window, but the title and description also show up in the SER. Accurate, informative and short information helps a reader decide if the page is what they are looking for.

For example, search for “Google free optimization,” with Google on your browser. In my search, the Master Google website listed as the third result after the ads. The page title and description, as well as the URL, all provide key information about what the reader will find on the actual page.

These SEO tips are designed to make a website easier and better for the user, not just make a page rank higher on Google’s search engine. Husayni says that on-page optimization is only about five to 10 percent of the total SEO work, so he will explain more on his blog in the coming months about the other components needed to create a site Google will love.

Be Aware of Common SEO Mistakes: SEOFailBlog.com wants you to know that they’re watching for a variety of mistakes. From incorrect footer links, to a Google related searches fail, SEO Fail Blog puts the spotlight on bad practices.

Understand the Audience of New Platforms: Google+ is an amazing new tool for communication, but one that clearly wasn’t appreciated by Steve Yegge, an employee at Google, when he accidentally told the world about his misgivings with the new platform a few months ago. In a memo meant for Google employees on Google+, Yegge forgot one important thing: to click private instead of public post when sharing a blog. Read the now infamous memo on TechnoBaboy.com. One of the most shocking excerpts is of Yegge’s complaint that Google+ is simply a “prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership, down to the very lowest leaf workers. We all don’t get it. The Golden Rule of platforms is that you Eat Your Own Dogfood.” Yegges was quick to post an apology. Let us all be considered warned about checking our settings twice.

Impatience With SEO Results: Quality takes time. Do not fear if a project has taken six weeks and the results are minimal. As you build links and prominence with Google, the people will click, according to Husayni.

“If people expect huge results in a very short period of time, they are bound to be disappointed,” he says. “Search engine optimization is an ongoing process that takes time, especially if the website has been in trouble for bad SEO practices in the past.”

Effectiveness with SEO pays off, after all. As it relates to Google search results in the orthodontic field, Husayni notes that, depending on location, there can be an increase in yearly income ranging from $50,000 to as much as $300,000.

“Americans performed 15.5 billion searches in 2010, and around 80 percent of customers research a product or service before making a purchase,” Husayni says. “So it doesn’t matter if you are offering dog grooming services, consulting or selling exotic cars, you want potential clients to be able to find you.”

“Different searches have different freshness needs,” says software engineer Amit Singhal on Google’s official blog. “This algorithmic improvement is designed to better understand how to differentiate between these kinds of searches and the level of freshness you need, and make sure you get the most up to the minute answers.”

Although the freshness update is estimated to impact 35 percent of searches (at least one result on the page), it will only be noticeable to the average user among 6 – 10 percent of searches. In other words, the update is more effective than will be noticed.

So how is freshness and relevancy measured by Google’s standards? SEO expert and Master Google founder, Ali Husayni, points to respective topics.

“For ‘news’ items, the later a page has been created and content developed, the better rank it will have,” Husayni says. “For other topics such as ‘historical events,’ Google may include old pages along with new analysis.”

Account Director at Punch Communications and Huffington Post blogger Philip Keightley explored the same question in a recent post.

“What constitutes relevance? In Google’s eyes, hundreds of factors, with freshness being a recent development,” Keightley says. “What constitutes freshness? Real-time social networks such as Twitter and to some extent Facebook and Google+ have added additional tools to Google’s armory, since it can now crawl the content from these networks and deduce which content people are interested in, what it is and if it is relevant for its search results.”

The freshness update has not only affected search results, but has already begun to affect the methods of developers and writers as well. Former Master Google writer Kristen Peters has expressed how the freshness update influences her approach.

“Google’s freshness update has certainly affected our writers’ methods here at Master Google,” Peters says. “We always knew that content was a huge part of optimization, but this development has made it all the more important to write quality blog posts more often and has encouraged us to keep an eye on industry news, as the timeliness of the content is also a crucial component.”

Keightley shared thoughts on the immediate future as well.

“This presents a number of opportunities to marketers, regardless of their size and ammunition,” Keightley says. “Essentially, by creating a digital social object, whether that is in the form of an application on Facebook, a microsite or even a blog post, the buzz around that content will have a far greater benefit in search.”

Husayni does not believe any one component to a site warrants particular care and attention, but notes the importance of general consistency as with such formats as blogs.

“Blogs seem to be an important part of any site because they get updated on a regular basis,” Husayni says. “I suggest site owners should write for their sites on a regular basis. The more fresh, quality and relevant content they post to their sites, the better chances of exposure and inclusion on Google search results they will have.”

© 2012 Master Google. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Master Google is credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this press release is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.

1. Understand the Importance of an Inbound Link. Inbound links are one of the key components to quality SEO, because it tells Google that your website is trusted and important. More links make you an authority. To further understand the anatomy of a link, see the full explanation in a recent article by Andrew Pitre on HubSpot’s blog. And remember, not all links are created equal.

“If you were to get an inbound link from a domain with lots of its own inbound links, like the New York Times, for example, you would get more authority transferred to your domain than if you got a link from my friend Brian’s blog,” Pitre says.

2. Target Blogs With Keyword Research. If you’re looking for a guest blogger, please skip ahead to the next step.

For the writers: what do you want to write about? Think of words or phrases that you currently want to be found under in a Google search. Search for these keywords on Google and determine the list of websites that you wish to write for. To further expand your horizons, use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, which will give a thorough list of the keywords from the previous month that relate. Another Adwords column also displays those keywords’ popularity for the last month, a very valuable tool in deciding which sites are worth your time.

Another option is signing up for a service like WordTracker.com, according to Ali Husayni, the CEO of the SEO service company, Master Google. WordTracker’s function is like the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, in that it helps you find and evaluate keywords.

3. Join a (Free) Service Like Blogger Link Up. BloggerLinkUp.com is a website that connects blog writers with website owners who need blog content. Each week, a newsletter is sent out with lists of requested blog posts, and writers wanting to be a guest poster. The form is the same, whether you are a prospective guest blogger or a website in need of a guest blogger.

4. Make Yourself Uncomfortable With Your Guest Blog Efforts (Within Reason). What makes you uncomfortable about writing or hosting a guest blog post? Change can be scary, but we need to try every serious idea we have at least once, urges Cathy Stucker, the founder of BloggerLinkUp.com, in a recent post.

“The problem is that too often we don’t try a second or third time (or even a first!) with marketing activities which seem difficult,” Stucker says. “I was terrified the first time I gave a speech. But I got up and did it anyway. You can, too.”

So, forget your fears, and remember, the worst thing that can happen with new content is that, well, you don’t receive any at all. Go get it.

© 2012 Master Google. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Master Google is credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this press release is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.

The most promising news is that of a Panda update, a search engine algorithm update from Google, which was initially released in the U.S. in February of 2011. It restructured parts of the algorithms to integrate a rating system of sorts for websites. One effective part of this update was penalizing content farms, which are typically sites with thin or shallow content, or sites with a poor content-to-link ratio.

Danny Sullivan, an SEO guru who heads up Search Engine Land, took to a recent article to define content farms as companies or people who look for popular searches in a particular category and generate shoddy content tailored to those searches, usually spending little time, effort and money to do so, with the sole goal of getting clicks.

McCreadie’s research further shows the ever-increasing intensity of the war between search engines and content farms, and, luckily for users, search engines seem to be prevailing. Ali Husayni, the CEO of the SEO service company, Master Google, agrees that search engines are winning, and improving the user experience in the process.

“This win against content farms is good news for reputable SEO firms that adhere to white-hat techniques,” Husayni says. “Many sites were hit hard by this update, but none of our clients lost rankings.”

This reinforces the point that Master Google’s SEO is on the right track and that good SEO services will continue to be in demand. Some critics of SEO have said that the industry is dying and losing relevance due to social media and networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+, but Husayni is adamant that they are wrong.

“The industry is constantly evolving and SEO has grown to encompass much more than on-site optimization. It’s really only five or ten percent of the total work,” Husayni says. “As long as we continue to grow with it, SEO will continue to be relevant.”

The vast majority of SEO is generating useful, high-quality content on a regular basis, technical research for keywords relevant to the company, and a long-term link building campaign to get the new information out to the readers who are searching for it.

Google’s search engine algorithms are constantly being refined to get more effective at mimicking human readers’ behaviors. Husayni says he is just glad that the updates continue to weed out the SEO companies that give a negative reputation to the industry he is so passionate about.

© 2012 Master Google. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Master Google is credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this press release is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.

1. Using YouTube for Video SEO: Do you have a YouTube business page yet? Don’t worry, an entire How-To Make a YouTube Business Page support forum has been established on the subject. Video SEO is all about original content, after all. Content that sets your business apart from the rest, when done correctly, will be more than enough of a reason for a viewer to click on your site, and to become a customer.

2. Read SEO News Daily: You are what you read, it’s true. Just ask Ali Husayni, CEO of the SEO service company, Master Google. Simply looking at sites that connect the latest trends of SEO, (like our blog), Search Engine Land, and SEOMoz.org, will keep you afloat in the world of ever-changing SEO tips and news.

3. Never Allow a Duplicate Batch of Information: It might seem like a time saver, but don’t be fooled by the idea that more content is better, no matter what. Less is more in this case. Duplicate content, according to Google webmaster central is simply described as “substantive blocks of content” or “content within or across domains” that are similar or the same. According to Husayni, this can mean the end of a website’s previously high ranking, as rankings will drop to 10+ pages due to such practices. While there are many other types of duplications, this is a big offender for many businesses.

4. Optimize Your Business Facebook Page: In a recent Search Engine Watch Article about Facebook SEO, Kristi Hines suggests approaching Facebook SEO in a fresh way. She asks users to imagine that a Facebook fan page is you or your brand’s website.

“If you want to keyword optimize your Facebook fan page… pull SEO elements from your page’s content for additional optimization,” Hines says.

Here is what Hines says your Facebook Business Page SEO should look like from an optimization standpoint:

SEO title: The name of your page plus | Facebook.

Meta description: The name of your page plus the About description of your page, followed by | Facebook.

H1: The name of your page.

The process is pretty straightforward, and much more accessible to small businesses now than in the past.

5. Follow the Trend of Finding time for SMM and SEO: Believe it or not, the two can be very happy together. According to a recent Constant Contact Survey, 45% of small business owners said that social media marketing (as part of site traffic generating) doesn’t take too much time out of their day to make it viable. This attitude is a complete reversal from just six months ago, when time was cited as a big concern against doing any type of marketing. But social media marketing only goes so far. The next step is SEO, which is going to drive targeted visitors to your site, according to Husayni.

“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,” Husayni said.

© 2011 Master Google. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Master Google is credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this press release is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.

But it’s time to face the facts: with over two billion videos watched on YouTube each day, video SEO is a subject that can no longer be ignored. Increasingly, SEO experts agree that a focus on online videos does wonders to increase site traffic.

“A video result in position 4 or 5 may get a better CTR [click-through rate] than a non-video result in position 2 or 3,” claims Dave Holland, co-founder of Smart Video, a SEO provider specializing in video optimization. A thumbnail of the video next to your Google search result instantly draws the eye of the viewer, enticing them to make that ‘click.’

And is it any wonder that, in today’s YouTube age, people are eager for video results? Every inquiry, from how to make chocolate cake, to how to turn your furnace pilot light on, has been converted to short, easy-to-read snippets. For literally every type of business, there are relevant video companions that can be embedded into your website. Are you a local veterinarian? Try featuring an adorable pet video on your site. After all, nothing draws an online crowd quicker than cute cats.

But do not just rely on linking to someone’s work. The best way to maximize your social media marketing and video SEO is to produce original content. Create a YouTube page and start uploading! Check out YouTube’s tips on how to make a great first impression for your channel. Video searches will increase YouTube page hits, which will then lead viewers straight to your homepage.

Though building a YouTube business channel is relatively simple, not everyone has the time or know-how to operate the site themselves—let alone actually produce the videos. This is why companies that specialize in SMM and SEO are vital assets to small business success. Along with Twitter, Facebook and the usual social media suspects, a user-friendly, informative YouTube channel creates the exposure necessary to remain on the surface-level amidst a sea of Google search results, instead of drowning on page 100.

With that extra online marketing money your company has saved up, you can follow the example of Best Buy, T-Mobile and Hot Wheels, who hired video content professionals to make their YouTube videos for them. Think hip, clever viral video meets online commercial, funneling thousands of viewers to company sites—successful Internet marketing in the hands of experts for less than the price of a billboard!

Perhaps the greatest advantage to creating original videos is the opportunity to go viral and all the fame that comes along with it. You may not recognize the name Tom Dickson, but if you’ve ever wondered whether that iPad you’re holding will blend, he is the only guy in the world to ask.

Going viral is rare, but you don’t need 20 million hits to be successful; video content always helps brand recognition and business credibility. Consistently uploading videos, acquiring a loyal fan base and placing expert talent at the helm will increase the traffic, integrity and ultimately the bottom line of any business.

© 2011 Master Google. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Master Google is credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this press release is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.

After all, as we mentioned in January of last year, SEO changes as Google’s search engine does, which makes it all the more important to stay with the trends. And not to fear, Husayni still remains optimistic that no matter how it continues to evolve, SEO works and will continue to work in the foreseeable future, even with the added features introduced by Google+. Here are some of the changes in SEO that experts expect to see in 2012.

Unique Content, in Real Time: While Google’s search algorithms continue to emphasize the performance of a website, it is even more important to provide new content, especially content in real time. Content that encourages feedback is timely, every time, according to marketing strategist David Meerman Scott, during a recent interview with Socialnomics.net.

“Social media gives us the ability to communicate instantly, yet most marketers have not developed the communication skills to address real time,” Scott said. “Marketers have been trained with a campaign mentality, spending weeks planning, designing and executing in a sequential manner… [using a] new mentality, infrastructure and workflow to meaningfully participate in real time,” Scott says.

Spend more time not only thinking about your target audience and what kind of content they need, but when they need that content. Timely content encourages engaged feedback from viable sites, which helps your Google ranking, according to Husayni.

“If you want to be on the 1st page of Google make an effort to create content that will get the users involved in a conversation,” says Husayni. “Respond to every comment you get on your website. Be nice and offer guidance. When other users see how responsive you are, they will visit your website more frequently as well.”

Focus on User Quality, Not Quantity: This much is still true regarding users: if your site is getting good reviews from users, it will improve your Google ranking. If it’s getting bad reviews, the reverse. But remember, more clicks don’t necessarily mean more customers or higher customer satisfaction rates. Encouraging good reviews by interacting with customers is more important than ever, according to a Fall 2011 Constant Contact Survey study. Sixty percent of responding businesses reported that they enjoy engaging with all customers and prospects who post comments on social media platforms, whether those posts are positive or negative. Consumer feedback can lead, of course, to a higher customer retention and satisfaction rate.

Social Media Continues to Increase in SEO Importance: It’s true that social media is one of the factors influencing natural search rankings for Google. So, more than ever, you must consider social media as part of your SEO promotion strategy. Try to get inbound links from bloggers. If you release a new product, you want to have someone influential twitter about it. Be sure you have a Facebook presence. 

Targeted Websites: Be aware of how your target audience does research and try to entice viewers like more traditional marketing strategies. SEO companies like Master Google note that Google is looking for those sites that are valuable to users. You also need to find the online communities that your target consumer frequents. This will let you reach viewers as a group rather than individually.

The Rise of SEO-Led Marketing Campaigns: Increasingly, all marketing will be driven by SEO. Radio, TV, and print advertising will all be part of SEO campaigns to educate the users about products and services. There is an audience that traditional media reaches, but you have half the chance of reaching as many of them as you would have 10 years ago, according to Paul Gillin, a respected social media marketing guru and Author of The New Influencers. After all, in the last eight years, we have gone through a shift in consumerism. We begin with a search engine, as Gillin points out in his forum at the SuperGenius Conference.

“We used to go to a library and browse, now we expect it to be there,” Gillin says.

With a search engine’s place established by expert after expert, SEO ranking is at the heart of the campaign, rather than being an afterthought, and that is the new normal.

Geography is Even More Important Than it Was Last Year: Google Pages is increasingly part of Google’s search engine results. Google is also working on ways to incorporate the user’s location into results. As more and more people use GPS-enabled phones for searches, geographical considerations will play an even bigger role this year.

© 2011 Master Google. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Master Google are credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this document is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.

Ali Husayni, the founder of the SEO consulting firm Master Google, helps businesses find those answers and establish their SEO teams while minimizing their risks and maximizing their return on investment.

“Putting together an in-house SEO program does not have to be a bumpy ride,” Husayni says. “Using an SEO consultant to get the team up and running makes the process smoother and faster, and you are much more likely to get effective SEO from the beginning.”

Getting Started

Before doing anything else, a business that wants to set up an SEO program has to research their market. Finding out who the competition is and how stiff it is helps with the next step of making a plan and budget.  After all, a business needs to ask questions, and lots of them.

The first questions to ask revolve around a business’s target market. Things to consider are varied, but of equal importance. For instance, how competitive is the market? How much investment is needed in marketing to stay competitive? How much effort is it going to take to rank within the top three? Top five? On the first page of Google search results?

After market goals are set, naturally businesses progress to questions about the goals for SEO. What will SEO accomplish for the company? How does the team know it is making progress? How will return on investment be measured? What strategies are in place to convert onsite visitors to sales?

While researching the market, read articles and news about the industry in general to learn the latest trends and happenings. After all. they will be affecting the SEO team the company is trying to establish.

In a recent article by SmartBlog, Simon Heseltine, AOL’s Director of Search Engine Optimization, recommends using sites like SearchEngineWatch, an online resource for news and articles on SEO, PPC and Social Media.

“The SEO community is also very active on Twitter, Google+, etc.  Follow as many as you can, listen and participate, you’ll find articles and news that you may otherwise have missed,” Heseltine says.

While a consultant will be the most efficient and helpful, Husayni says that SEOMoz.org, Search Engine Land and Matt Cutts’ blog (Cutts is the head of Google’s Webspam team), are all wise choices for resources to read up on.

“A consultant creates a customized strategy and roadmap for setting up the company’s in-house SEO,” says Husayni. “Then the team receives training and is guided through the process of fully integrating SEO into the dynamics of the organization, daily workflow and politics.”

Drawing up a realistic budget that takes into account the resources that will be needed is made simple by using the information gathered from the research about competition, the market, and the company’s SEO goals. Typically, two separate budgets work the best — one for labor, the other for promotional expenses, which included directory listings and press release submissions.

Decide On A Framework

The research should give plenty of information to work with for the next step of creating a framework for the team, though opinions often differ on how many team members are needed. There is no right or wrong answer because each company has specific needs and a certain budget. Some companies want part-time employees, some want full-time. Some want a one-person show, while other companies might choose to hire separate people for positions including tech, writers, a public relations specialist, researcher, and a number of other openings.

Bob Tripathi, an internet marketing business expert and SearchEngineWatch.com blogger, insists that passion can make up for lack of manpower in a recent blog post. “Much can be accomplished in a small to medium company by even an army of one,” says Tripathi.

Husayni agrees that a well-rounded SEO professional can accomplish a lot. However, he says, a person who both knows the technical aspects of SEO and is an effective writer is a rare jewel, which is why Husayni recommends one of each.

Assembling The Team Member (Or Members)

Now that the company knows what they are looking for, and how much they have to spend, they can start hiring the team. But what makes a good SEO expert? Businesses want people that are capable of running a full-fledged SEO campaign and running it well.

According to Husayni, the best way to determine that is to look at the applicant’s track record by asking them questions and scrutinizing samples of his or her work.

An SEO expert will have, at the very least, a proficiency in (X)HTML, on-site and off-site optimization, Java Script, WordPress and link building. They will also have examples of their successes. Questions about a hypothetical website can reveal gaps in knowledge or confirm the skills listed on the resume:

• What’s the most important factor in optimizing a site?
• What are three important things you change in a site when first optimizing it?
• What are the top three optimization mistakes an SEO guy can make?
• How do you plan to increase link popularity?
• How do you keep up with the changes in the SEO world?

Getting a good idea of an SEO writer’s track record, on the other hand, is just as important. This person will be developing content for the website and producing articles and press releases that act as the voice of the company. Copy that is easy to read and free of grammar and spelling errors is essential.

A writer needs to know how to create fresh, relevant content that incorporates the company’s keywords. Of course, the well-written information has to be put out there for the target demographic to find, so a writer that already knows industry leaders and ways to generate in-bound and out-bound links through content is a big plus.

“The big caveat here is when people know the right questions to ask but are not sure if the answers are correct or good ones,” says Husayni. A consultant can quickly assess whether a candidate is capable of managing an SEO campaign and getting results.

People who are looking for a general guide or description of characteristics an in-house SEO needs can check out a summary by Tribathi in a recent blog post.

Put In The Time And Be Patient

Time is often the biggest concern for businesses starting up an SEO program. They are impatient to get things up and running, and they want to get to the results part right away. But it takes time to hammer out logistics. It takes time to find and hire quality professionals. It also takes time to get results. The main thing to keep in mind is being able to trust each service provider, because one bad egg could potentially harm the marketing campaign.

“Each site claims it holds the mantle of SEO and is the expert on the subject, but only a few sites can be trusted,” says Husayni.

He recommends allotting one to two months for the hiring and training period since a hands-on and web-savvy individual typically needs about six-ten hours of coaching to understand the basics of best SEO practices.

“Hiring the wrong SEO team, or hiring the right team but not training them, means the company may lose its edge over the competition,” says Husayni. “Hiring a consultant or coach will save months and possibly years of headache.”

In-House SEO Success

Now, for the answer everyone is waiting for: when will the company see results?

Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. The length of time it takes to see results varies based on the SEO team, the market, the budget and the website. To put that in more concrete terms, businesses that outsource to Master Google can expect SEO performance to steadily improve over two to three months; optimal results usually take six months to a year.

In-house SEO is worth doing, which means it is worth doing well. The initial setup may be time-consuming, but with a clear SEO strategy, and patience, it is definitely worth doing.

© 2011 Master Google. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Master Google is credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this press release is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.

“For large companies with a large website and a big marketing budget, in-house SEO has been a no-brainer,” says Husayni. “Smaller companies are realizing that SEO is a force to be reckoned with, and that they need it to be competitive in their market.”

One example of in-house SEO and what it can accomplish is the Huffington Post, a news source with syndicated columnists, blogs and news stories. Due to the SEO work of their in-house team, Huffingtonpost.com made its name by outranking both print and broadcast news organizations’ websites, such as the Washington Post and CNN, even when these other sites were the original source of the articles, according to a recent New York Times article.

With results like this, business owners see the success of large companies. They also see their competitors doing well in search engine results (SERs), and are determined to get similar results. Some try outsourcing SEO first, but the average business owner does not have the knowledge to discern a real SEO expert from the con artist.

“They may try one or two SEO companies and get burned,” says Husayni, who offers free SEO consulting to qualified business owners. “There are a lot of SEO firms that make a client an SEO guarantee, including big promises about results and timeframes that they just can’t deliver on.”

A recent SmashBlogTips.com blog post about small businesses and in-house SEO makes a similar statement about scammers, adding four other reasons to get an in-house SEO expert: saving money in the long-run, reducing dependence, confidentiality, and individualized attention. The added bonus of having in-house SEO is avoiding SEO scam artists, which Husayni cites as the number one reason for the recent rise of in-house SEO.

“Instead of potentially wasting money on a company that doesn’t deliver, businesses are investing that money in an SEO team,” says Husayni, who offers a package for Top Of Google, or a 100 percent money-back guarantee.

But there are naysayers to the idea of in-house SEO, according to Bob Tripathi, an internet marketing expert and SearchEngineWatch.com blogger. Tripathi contends that in-house SEO is often undervalued because monthly SEO dashboards or quarterly business reviews cannot capture the intangible benefits it offers the company.

Beyond improving search engine rankings, which leads to increased visibility and more customers, Tripathi says that in-house SEO can provide unique thought leadership, unite departments, and attract outside expertise. The task of creating an in-house SEO program from the ground up can be quite overwhelming, though, which is why Husayni recommends businesses work with an SEO consultant or coach throughout the process.

Simon Heseltine, AOL’s Director of Search Engine Optimization, recommends that companies without experience in-house hire an SEO agency to help get the program up and running, as discussed in a recent SmartBlogs.com article.

“I’d say that for a company that is going to start an in-house team, they need to make sure that they know what questions to ask and what answers to expect,” says Heseltine.

Husayni says that utilizing a consultant helps businesses minimizes the risks of setting up an SEO team, and maximizes the return on investment (ROI), by showing them where to start, who to hire, what to focus on and how to measure success. Husayni expects the trend of small businesses turning to in-house SEO teams to continue, eventually becoming the industry norm. Because of this, Husayni is currently developing additional content on his website and blog, including how-to posts, top SEO secrets (that are actually just grounded advice from an experienced professional), and information about hiring SEO specialists, as well as other relevant articles.

“SEO is a dynamic industry, always changing, always presenting new challenges to overcome and puzzles to solve,” says Husayni. “This is just a new way for Master Google to help clients achieve and maintain their search engine results’ success.”

© 2011 Master Google. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Master Google is credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this press release is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.

Christmas lights, shopping bags, and endless family gatherings… it is a season full of fun, and distractions. Here at Master Google, we think that the end of the calendar year is the perfect time to plan your marketing budget for the new year. So, what’s the smartest budget choice in 2012?

Since marketing is all about getting to those wanting your product, no matter which marketing tactic(s) you choose, the web is the place for prospective buyers to find reviews and information.  A recent Pew Research Center Poll shows how consumers decide where to eat and what to buy:

• 51 percent use the Internet

• search engines – 31%
• specialty websites – 17%
• social media – 3%

 • 31 percent read newspapers

• printed copies – 26%
• newspaper websites – 5%

 • 23 percent take the word of friends/family/reputation

 • 8 percent watch local TV

Let’s take a look at just how effectively SMM, SEO and YouTube reaches target audiences.

The Skinny on SMM:

Its use is on the rise, and the cost is nearly nil for initial output, which has made it more popular. It’s viable, too, according to a Fall 2011 study done by email marketing provider, Constant Contact. After surveying just over 2,000 small businesses, they found that 81percent of them use some form of it. The most common SMM remarks were that it is “easy to use,” and “works with my customers.” Facebook was cited as the number one tool, followed by Twitter, LinkedIn and video sharing.

What to Know About SEO:

SEO works, when used effectively. Effectively is the key word, pun intended. When looking at the Google keyword tool in AdWords, for instance, many changes have taken place, with the addition of everything from mobile apps to Google+ features. The questionable accuracy of keywords, as researched in our current AdWords-Focused Article, puts SEO up to scrutiny. In light of these worries, SEO expert Ali Husayni gives us assurance of the continuing stability of SEO as a viable marketing tool, as highlighted in our recent interview.

“SEO, and Google SEO in particular, are still very solid marketing tools for any small-, medium- and large-sized business,” Husayni said. “We do realize that, since Google+ has been born, SEO has become even more complicated, but at Master Google we’re staying at the top of the game.”

Now, let’s move to the often-talked about, seldom-understood potential of YouTube.

YouTube’s Place in Online Marketing and Media:

The face of the media is changing, and Paul Gillin, a respected social media marketing guru and Author of The New Influencers, stresses the importance of being bold with the new opportunities presented by being able to target an audience. Using traditional media is limited, after all, according to Gillin’s forum at the SuperGenius Conference.

“We are seeing a collapse of mainstream media because it’s based on an economic model that is highly inefficient,” Gillin said. “If you’re interested in selling wedding gowns, in the past, you had to market to 100 percent of the population, instead of the one percent looking for a wedding dress. Now we can reach those people directly.”

Why is this industry expert a proponent of YouTube? For one thing, I found Paul Gillin there. (Fun side note: have you heard of Justin Beiber, the song Friday by Rebecca Black, Antoine Dodson, or Auto-Tune the News? They all have YouTube to thank for their fame.)

As for the smartest budget choice in 2012, we at Master Google say a healthy dose of all three. If you have any questions regarding your marketing, please contact us directly. Happy marketing, and happy holidays.

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.

According to Ali Husayni—industry expert and founder of SEO company Master Google—a newbie should do anything but give up.

“Without a strong SEO campaign, it is very difficult to compete in today’s market,” he said. “With the economy down, people spend their money wisely. Potential customers research anything and everything on the Internet before they contact any retailer or decide on services. If your site is not easily found, you are not able to compete effectively.”

I know what you’re thinking. “Okay, so it’s essential, but what is SEO, exactly?”

Husayni explained that SEO is “the art of changing sites and their popularity on the Internet so that search engines perceive them as highly valuable, thereby placing them at the top of their search results.”

What search engine should my SEO campaign focus on?

Now that we have established what SEO is and why it’s so important, it’s time to decide which search engine you should focus your campaign on. Husayni said that, while Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing do get some traffic, those search numbers are nothing compared to Google.

“Google receives more than 75 percent of the global search market and about 65 percent of the domestic market,” Husayni said. “Google is the giant of search engines. If you are visible on Google, you’ll be attracting customers.”

How do I go about initiating my SEO work?

This should all be becoming a bit clearer, but we still need a plan of action. Husayni advised that there are multiple ways to go about SEO, such as hiring a company to do the work for you, employing an in-house SEO professional or working with an experienced SEO consultant.

“The path you choose to take depends on your market, your budget and your level of Internet savvy,” Husayni said.

Small companies, he said, are better off hiring a professional SEO company who can place them at the top of search engines at an affordable price. On the other hand, a larger firm working with a bigger budget could benefit from having an in-house SEO team, supplemented with coaching help from a reputable SEO company to keep them in check. And, of course, the more ambitious business owner with minimal time constraints could learn SEO practices himself, though Husayni recommends receiving some guidance from a seasoned professional.

What do I need to know about SEO before I begin?

Even if you choose to hire a SEO company to do your optimization work, it’s still important to know the main elements that will help you increase your site’s ranking. Husayni said that the three most crucial aspects of any Internet marketing campaign are optimization, lots of fresh content and popularity, also referred to as link building.

“The optimization gives Google the information it needs to understand the theme of each site,” he said. “Content gives Google the impression that the site is being updated with valuable information on a regular basis, thus providing useful information for its visitors.”

But remember, “Google is a machine with limitations and language barriers,” Husayni warned.

“The only two ways for Google crawlers to determine if your site is valuable are by measuring how often you update your content and by gauging whether or not you’ve copied your content from elsewhere, or written it yourself.”

Google’s algorithm is always changing, too. For example, Husayni said that, with the development of Google+, the search engine has “added the +1 button to further determine your site’s usefulness.”

I’ve started my SEO campaign, but how long will it take until I see results?

After learning the basics of SEO and how to get started, you still have a long, albeit rewarding, journey ahead.

“While changes to optimization are viewed by Google almost immediately—provided you have quality back links—other SEO components are built over time,” Husayni said. “So, initially, when we optimize a site, there is a jump in its ranking on Google. Then, slowly thereafter, the site gets ranked better and better.”

And it’s a journey you have to stick to in order to see lasting results.

“Google revamps its algorithm every few months, making it important to stay on top of new techniques,” Husayni said. “And your competition is not sitting idle. They’re also doing SEO and, depending on how many resources they allocate, they could replace your number one listing in a matter of months. So, take a deep breath and get ready for a long SEO battle.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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.

But her trip wasn’t a total loss, because what we read in that article is worth re-printing. Or, should we say: pre-printing? Anyway, here’s what we found:

Google vs. Facebook in 2012: How Is the SEO World Changed?
by: Ali Husayni
February 12, 2012

If you haven’t signed up for Google+ and you haven’t migrated from Facebook, you’re among the remaining 35 percent of the social media late-boomers. Almost 65 percent of those who only used Facebook a year ago are Google+ fans now- while some still check their Facebook accounts.

Google once again has beaten another IT giant by building a more successful social media platform that is much savvier, easy to use and more intuitive than Facebook.

Only a few years ago, Google beat Yahoo! with its Gmail account and later bought YouTube to become the owner of the most visited sites on the planet.

As a result of Google+’s success, Facebook – which was at the top of the social media world just six months ago – lost more than 50 percent of its stock market value since July 2011.

So now the question is this: how does Google+ play into SEO, and how are we going to get our clients ranked at the top of Google (Google+ uses the same algorithm as Google search)?

How to Rank on Google

Since Google launched its new algorithm “Grizzly Bear” in December 2011, the results of every search you make today is unique to you and is based on the +1’s your friends, their friends, and friends of friends have given any particular website (given that you’re logged in to your Gmail account).

And in general, the more +1’s a site has, the better it ranks on Google.

This doesn’t mean the back-links have lost their importance, but rather, back-links now work hand-in-hand with +1’s.

SEO used to consist of three parts: content, optimization and back-links. Now +1 is another main factor in ranking on Google. Adding +1’s to your site is more difficult than the other three factors and thus “manipulating” Google SER’s is not as easy anymore.

Here is a short-list of what you need to do (in addition to what you already did) to rank better with Google:

1- Add the +1 button to ALL the pages of your site. Any visitor who goes to your site needs to have the ability to “vote” for your site.

2- Encourage your constituency (friends, clients) to +1 your site. This will increase the number of people you’re exposed to and therefore your +1’s will continue to grow.

3- Write GREAT content for your site and keep it up to date. As we have said for many years, become an authority in your field and be interesting for those who find your site.

4- Increase your site’s traffic in any shape or form possible. Run banner ads if you have to and sign up with Google Adwords. The more visitors your site gets, the better chance you have of getting +1’s.

The Future of Facebook Search

We expected Facebook to launch its search engine a while ago to compete with Google. But Microsoft took longer than expected to give the green light to Facebook and integrate its search algorithm with its partners’ social media platform. Now it seems to be too little, too late.

I conducted a few searches on FB search and compared the results with Google. Its weakness is that FB search only indexes sites that have been linked to from Facebook.com – leaving many sites out there un-indexed. Also, its algorithm is just based on the “likes” and on-site optimization and is leaving backlinks out. This is a fatal error of FB search developers.

I conclude that FB search is going to be a total failure just like Yahoo! and Bing and their merger. Google has more or less monopolized the search market, as well as the social media market. That, plus its advancements in word and spreadsheet processing, Google Maps, YouTube and their other FREE services, is going to guarantee their long-haul dominance over the Internet world.

But there are always ways to do things better, and Google needs to be very careful not to start late – as it did in the social media war. Google got lucky this time around, but it may not be so lucky the next time.

Click here to view the embedded video.

SEO for Google consists of three main parts: optimization, content, and popularity. By understanding these factors in Google SEO, you can rank any Web site at the top of the search results.

SEO is the term used to describe how companies such as ours maximize the number of visitors to a website by getting the site to rank high on organic search results.

“It is imperative that the Internet marketing business you choose to provide SEM, SEO or social media marketing services is a reputable company that does not use black hat SEO techniques,” says Ali Husayni, founder of Master Google.

Following is a bit of information on how we help our clients achieve top SEO results.

Keywords
Most clients come to us with some idea of the keywords they want associated with their businesses.

“We work with the client to brainstorm keyword phrases and conduct research to get a long list of words potential customers likely are searching for,” Husayni says. “We also look at a client’s competitors to determine the types of keywords they are using.”

From there, we begin to review, categorize and compare search volume and competitiveness of the main keywords. Finally, we prioritize each client’s keyword phrases based on relevance and their propensity to drive traffic and sales.

Optimization
A variety of work is done to a client’s site when we optimize it. We create a sitemap.xml file and submit it to Google Webmaster Tools, and we create/update the HTML sitemap page of our clients’ websites.

We also make sure that search engines are not blocked through no-index meta tags, robots.txt files, or anything else that blocks search engines from accessing and indexing the website.

Google doesn’t like duplicate content, so we remove any duplicate content on our clients’ sites and replace it with fresh, original content.

We also remove any black hat SEO techniques that have been done to the site, and we create a blog for each client, as well as install SEO and Sitemap plug-ins. We add a “most recent blog post” section to the home page, which is important for freshening content.

“The list of steps we take to optimize a client’s site is much longer, but these are some general tasks that we do,” Husayni says.

Link Building
“Link building is a vital part of the overall professional SEO process,” Husayni says. Getting relevant links back to the client’s website is important.

Jolina Pettice, a senior account manager with TopRank Online Marketing, says “inbound links are like electricity for search visibility,” and we agree with her.

We build links for our clients by generating quality content, linking up with marketing partners and often through promotion via social networks.

Tie In Social Media Efforts
It was big news recently when Google and Bing disclosed that social links and social media influences have an impact on search results.

“Social media outlets such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo- just to name a few- provide additional ways in which our clients can get their information out to potential customers. The great thing about posting items such as videos, articles and press releases to these sites is that doing so provides relevant links back to our clients’ sites,” Husayni says.

Because so many people use social media these days, posting items via these outlets creates a number of opportunities for the information to be promoted by others when they choose to share it with their friends.

Google Places
If you are trying to be found by your customers/patients locally, Google Places is the answer. This doesn’t work for companies that have a national or international client base – unless they have physical office locations in major cities. But if you are a dentist in Augusta, Georgia, being optimized on Google Places for that city certainly will help you appear high in search results when people Google “Augusta, Georgia dentist” or something else along those lines.

“Google Places is tied in to SEO, but there are some deliberate steps that must be taken to achieve the desired rankings,” Husayni says. “We offer that service to our clients.”

Husayni recently created an informative how-to video on getting the most out of Google Places. “In the coming weeks, we are going to post this video, along with directions on how we get our clients listed on Google Places,” he says.

It goes without saying that optimizing websites for Google searches is the most important goal for SEO, and that point was driven home once again recently with the announcement that Google had been named the most “reputable” company in the United States by Haris Interactive. It was followed by Johnson & Johnson, 3M, Berkshire Hathaway and Apple.

“This news is just one more reason why being ranked on Google is important,” Husayni says. “The general public views Google as reputable, and it trusts the sites that rank high on Google.”

© 2011 Master Google. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Sinai Marketing is credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this press release is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.
-end-

This was proven a day ago when Google announced that it is going to add “site speed” to Google Analytics results. Site speed will measure and report how fast each of your Web pages will load (on average) when someone visits your site.

But why is loading speed is so important?

We know the sites that have sophisticated designs, such as FLASH sites, or sites that are image or video heavy, load slower. On the other hand, sites that only have text and very minimal navigation (except through text-links) load the fastest – but text-only sites are boring.

With the Internet speed growing in average households, you’d think sites that are more beautiful should get more credit by Google, but not so fast. It is true that we now have faster Internet speed around the world compared to a few years ago, however, as Internet users, our patience for loading pages has also diminished. We leave a page quickly if it doesn’t load within a few of seconds. Or, if we really want to visit the page, we become increasingly frustrated as we wait for its content to load.

According to Pear Analytics, In 2007 Amazon conducted a test to see how the speed of your page loading affects losing traffic. The results were astonishing. For every second that your site loads slower, you lose roughly 1% of your site’s traffic. This means if you have a FLASH site and it takes 20 seconds to load, you lose 20% of your site’s visitors before they even see your site. In sales numbers, losing 20% of your potential customers is HUGE.

So, our recommendation to you is to make your site load as fast as possible to increase your page views, traffic and, consequently, sales.

Not only did our clients not lose their rankings, but the they have gained rankings instead.

Here is why: Google has traditionally devalued “duplicate” content. If your site’s content has been copied from any other site indexed by Google, your site would be penalized severely – even if portions of your site are duplicate. Read the blog post I wrote on duplicate content syndrome.

So, the respected writers needed to emphasize that the SEO companies that these mid-size and giant corporations are working with were not paying attention to this SEO-101 lesson.

I suggest they interview some of our clients next time, too.

Amongst the clients that gained in rank were www.mavenlive.com for their very competitive keywords including: physical therapy software.  Today, they’re ranking #1 in Canada and #3 worldwide.

We didn’t have a single client lose their rankings with Google.

The rest of the ad says:

“That’s how many links we’ve developed for our clients in 4 years. How many do you want?…”

Wow… catchy title and catchy ad (also has a good looking girl as a picture , which initially grabbed my attention). But wait a minute, in 2 years we were able to build our site , Mastergoogle.com, 60,000 links. I thought that was plenty until I saw this ad. So, immediately I thought, let’s find out how many links these people have. So, I went to Yahoo! Site Explorer Tool and looked them up.

I laughed even more. They have only 50 links. Then I removed the number of links that they are giving themselves. The count ended up at 32 links.

So here, I’d like to give them another link to make that 33.

See my other post on buying cheap links.

We’ve posted a lot of information about how to get quality links for your site. I’m going to make some videos within the next few weeks on this topic as well. Stay tuned.

Today, I was speaking with one of our prospective clients (whose site is constantly losing rankings on Google) and he asked me how much each back-link would cost. I gave him the answer and he was surprised that what I quoted him was a few times higher than what his current, so-called SEO company was charging him (I really appreciated his trust in sharing that information with me).

I asked him to send me the most recent report his previous company (ironically, based in India) had sent him. He did. All I had to do was click on the first link on the list and, boom, I landed on a link-spam/link-farm page (http://afaequipments.com/). I’m using a nofollow tag on this link so Google doesn’t penalize us for linking to this page.

Take a look for yourself. At the first glance, it looks like a legitimate business site. But only on the top of the fold. As you scroll down, you see a bunch of nonsensical text with over 150 embedded links in them.  My prospective client’s link (who is now our client) also has a link within this page. Google will realize this page is a link-spam page in one-tenth of a second.

Let’s assume this company charges $20/link.  Having 150 links on this page means they made $3,000, while giving their clients nothing in return, except for the chance of getting banned by Google.

I picked up the phone, called my my prospective client immediately and explained to him what he was getting from the Indian SEO firm. I compared that with some of the links we had built for one our clients and, a couple of hours later, he signed an agreement with us.

The links on the spam page each cost $20, but have absolutely no value. Now, let me tell you something even more interesting: I saw an ad today on my Facebook page advertising back-links at $0.15 per link. Oh, my God. You can only imagine what kind of links they would be. If I have time to learn more about spammy link-building techniques, I’d certainly research them.

This is not even “black-hat” SEO.

Guys (and ladies), if you want to purchase cheap links, please do yourselves a favor and save your money. Better yet,  pay for Adwords instead. At least that won’t get your site flagged by Google.

Link-building is a sophisticated process that requires both the knowledge of SEO and Google algorithms, and has to be done manually and correctly. Otherwise, it will either have no value for you, or will get you penalized.

I’ll offer my consultation services for free to my loyal friends. Leave a comment here or contact me through my Facebook page and ask me your questions. I’ll be happy to help you if I can.

Best,

Ali Husayni
www.mastergoogle.com

Q: Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?

A: Master Google’s search engine optimization service has many satisfied clients. Find out if your site qualifies to be ranked on the first page of Google by filling out the form on our site.  If your site qualifies, my administrative assistant will set up an appointment with you to speak with me directly. After our initial conversation, we will send you a formal proposal and a list of our current clients so you can contact them and hear what they say about our work.

Q: Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?

A: Indeed. Google uses software called spiders to find your site, read its code and content and rank it for your specific keywords. We follow Google Webmaster Guidelines to optimize our clients’ websites. Website optimization paves the way for Google spiders so they can easily read your site and find your important keywords. The optimization process involves modifying the meta tags of each page of your site to insert your specific keywords where appropriate. Also, we update other back-end codes such as alt-image tags, header tags, etc. We then insert your keywords within the body of your site’s content. We stay away from “black-hat” SEO techniques, because Google can easily locate any spamming optimization technique and penalize your site for using such unacceptable techniques.

Q: Do you offer any online marketing services or advice to complement your organic search business?

A: We offer website copy-writing, blogging, SEM, SMM and other related services which will complement our organic SEO work.

Q: What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?

A: Each client and their needs are unique. We carefully assess their site, keywords and competition and come up with a plan of action with realistic results. Our goal is to rank our clients’ sites atop Google search results under the organic listings. This is achievable from one to two months, to up to two years for some international keywords.

Q: What is your experience in my industry?

A: We have helped more than 500 businesses worldwide, and that number continues to grow.  We have experience in various fields, including real estate, medical, restaurants, software and car dealerships.

Q: What is your experience in my country/city?

A: Our client base is scattered all over the world, but our main client base is the U.S., followed by Canada and the U.K.

Q: What is your experience developing international sites?

A: We have worked with a few internationally based businesses. We will share our clients’ information with those prospective clients who qualify for our services and are serious about SEO. We will share a reference list soon after our initial client consultation.

Q: What are your most important SEO techniques?

A:  In the initial consultation, you will learn some of our secret SEO techniques. These have been used to rank our sites and those of our clients in top positions for very competitive keywords. You will also learn what you can expect from your SEO campaign, based on your budget.

Q: How long have you been in business?

A: Master Google is seven years old and Husayni has nearly a decade of experience in SEO.

Q: How can I expect to communicate with you? Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?

A: You will communicate with us by phone, email, and Skype. We have an open communication policy. We share all details of our work in monthly reports. After the initial consultation, you will receive an electronic package containing recent samples of our client reports, etc. We will share as much information about site changes as you would like.

© 2011 Master Google. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Sinai Marketing dba Master Google are credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this press release is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.

An article in the New York Times detailed the problems one consumer faced when she came across an unscrupulous business owner in her quest to order some eyeglasses. She was cheated and sought official help. The business welcomed negative publicity because any feedback- good or bad- helped with rankings.

While many respected SEO companies work with businesses to help them get top SEO rankings, the business featured in this article went another route – one that caused problems deliberately.

SEO service Master Google’s Ali Husayni says he has faith that companies that get attention due to mistreating customers will not succeed.

“In the long run, being  a reputable company that uses appropriate SEO to draw customers in goes a lot farther than treating customers poorly and trying to take advantage of the search system,” Husayni says.

Google addressed the problem in a blog, and provided tips on how to avoid experiencing difficulties. The blog points out there are things consumers can do to protect themselves, and that Google took steps to try and alleviate the problem.

“…in the last few days we developed an algorithmic solution (that) detects the merchant from the … article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely poor user experience,” says the blog. “The algorithm .. incorporated into our search rankings, represents an initial solution …Google users are now getting a better experience as a result.”

There are many consumer review sites available online, and the savvy consumer will conduct research to find out if others have had problems with a business prior to entrusting them with credit card information. As for the future of companies that seek bad postings to get higher rankings, Husayni says their standing on the Web is not solid.

“It is true that people have profited heavily by ‘tricking’ or ‘spamming’ Google in the past,” Husayni says, “but Google history shows that those companies and businesses never survived its algorithm updates. This case is a great example and a good reason why people should do business ethically.”

A better way to boost rankings, he says, is for businesses to seek reputable search engine optimization firms who use “white-hat” SEO techniques.

© 2011 Master Google. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Sinai Marketing dba Master Google are credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this press release is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.

Many people may think right away they can do it themselves. Why pay someone outside their company?

“That is very common thinking,” says expert Ali Husayni. “Business people often assume that if they have computer experts as employees, that’s all they need in order to obtain top Google ranking for their industry. But the reality is that businesses like ours are in operation for a very good reason. We are needed, and we make a big difference.”

Is this just a sales pitch? Not at all, says Husayni, who works to build trust with clients with his offer of a money back guarantee. There are many who have had a bad experience with an SEO company, or fear they might have the misfortune of ending up with a disreputable company.

Robin Bingeman, of Forensic & Compliance Systems (FCS), makers of Cryoserver, says he has had a positive experience in retaining an SEO.

“Master Google has expertise in SEO, and is a caring organization interested in our business and guiding us with optimizing our web presence,” he says. “We would highly recommend Master Google to anyone, including our customers.”

It is worth the effort to identify and retain a solid SEO company, Husayni says, because they really are a necessity. If you hire an SEO company, you will be given website traffic reports and ranking reports, letting you know just where you are in position on the search engines. If you have hired the right company, you will see improvements.

“It is as simple as that,” Husayni says. “But SEO itself is not simple. A good company knows what Google is looking for.”

There is a cost benefit to hiring an SEO service.  Clients are often provided with guaranteed rankings, and projected dates on when they can see success.

“Time is money,” Husayni says. “Clients can rely on a good SEO company to get rankings up within a certain amount of time, and often are provided with a guarantee of delivery on those improvements. It can provide you with peace of mind, for no hassle optimization. We combine our expertise and skill in Google ranking with the experience of working with our highly skilled writers to compile press releases and articles.”

“I see the business of my clients as my own business, one and the same, so I work hard for us all to obtain the best results,” Husayni says. “Their success is literally my success.”

A good SEO company makes it their job to stay up-to-date on what’s new in the industry, to help you obtain and maintain a higher ranking on Google.

“Most businesses have other things to worry about than how to rank higher on search engines,” Husayni says. “If you are not a builder, you are probably going to hire someone to build your house. If you are not a doctor, you are going to see a physician if you are sick. If you want higher rankings, see an SEO expert.”

“If you have hired a good one, you can just sit back and enjoy the benefits of higher rankings. It is well worth it to try.”

© 2010 Master Google. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Sinai Marketing dba Master Google are credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this press release is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.

“This car has no problems” they say, “I guarantee it won’t break down for at least another two years”. Then when you purchase the car, they have you sign an “AS IS” form.

“What is this?” you might ask.

“Well… this is what the state requires we have our clients sign because you’re buying a used car.”

Not true. They sell you the car “AS IS,” which means when you drive off the lot and the car breaks into two pieces, you’re the owner of the bigger piece. And this is only a small trick.

Covering the check-engine light with black tape, selling a car that has an engine with only three out of its four cylinders in working condition and pouring special engine oil  to cover up its noise are some of the other tricks.

But I’ve always believed honesty is more important than making a buck. And I tried to be different as a car salesman. I would tell the client if a car was having issues. I would tell them they could drive the car and, if it broke down within a week, we’d pay the repair fee. This attitude helped us sell more cars than any other lot on Colfax Avenue.

When I entered the SEO world in 2003, I realized a lot of the so-called SEO experts were acting like used car salespeople. The difference was that the SEO experts could get away with it much easier than the car salespeople, as most ordinary people have no clue about SEO (while many people know at least a little bit about cars).

I have previously written on how SEO experts try to trick you and the stupid mistakes people make when choosing an SEO company. These articles rest on just the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot more involved in the SEO process than the average person can ever understand.

Only a trustworthy company with a positive track record can help you achieve your SEO goals without giving you headaches.

Soon, I’ll write a post laying down some of the easy ways you can research an SEO company or expert before committing to them.

One: Trusting Your Web Designer

92% of Web designers claim they are SEO experts while in fact they only know bits and pieces about SEO. They read a few articles, make some changes to the site’s meta tags and claim your site is ready for Google. A few months later, you are frustrated at the lack of progress and what your Web designer tells you is that you have to wait as it takes longer for Google to rank your site.

The truth is your site may be “optimized” properly, but optimization is only 10% of the overall SEO work. The rest is hard-core link-building efforts to make your site popular on the Web.

Two: Not Looking At the Rankings of the SEO Company

If an SEO company knows its game, it ranks very well on Google for their important keywords. These keywords vary for different SEO companies; nevertheless they must have a strong organic presence on Google. If they don’t, you basically trust a cow-boy to fix your airplane.

Some important keywords for SEO companies include: SEO, Google SEO, SEO Company, SEO Services, Free SEO, Cheap SEO, Google Ranking, Top of Google, etc. (Master Google ranks on the first page for Top of Google, first page of Google, Google SEO guaranteed and many other keywords.)

Three: Not Looking At the Proven Results

Each SEO company should be able to show you at least ten local and international clients they have helped rank at the top of Google with the permission for you to contact them. The keywords they show you must be the most competitive for such clients (and not merely long-tailed keywords).

Four: Not Contacting the References

It is essential for you to pick up the phone and call a few of those clients listed as successful by the SEO company. You should ask them about the SEO company’s timeliness, its effectiveness, its ethics, and anything else you can think of. Conduct your interview carefully and then trust your hard-earned money to the SEO company.

Five: Focusing on Yahoo!, Bing

Yahoo! and Bing have a very long way to go to be able to compete with Google. Google has taken over 67% of the global search market. You could rank #1 on both Yahoo! and Bing and still lose a big chunk of your business to your rivals that rank well on Google.

From the SEO point of view, ranking on Yahoo! and Bing is much easier than ranking on Google. But those that rank well with Google also rank well with the other rivals.

When the SEO company shows you their successful SEO campaigns, be watchful. If they show you results from Bing and Yahoo!, then ask them what they have done in respect to Google. Tell them you care less for the other engines and you want your site to be at the top of Google.

Six: Not Having Guarantees in Place

If you sign up with an SEO company which does not guarantee your money back in case they fail, you’re wasting your investment. No one can guarantee your site’s ranking on Google, but good SEO companies guarantee to refund all or a portion of your money if your site is not ranked on Google within a specific time-frame.

An average time-frame for an SEO campaign to be fully successful is about six months. Low competition keywords can be placed at the top of Google within three months and international keywords could take up to one year to have the best results.

Seven: Paying in Advance

Never pay in advance for more than one month of work. Paying for a full-year of SEO work discourages the SEO company to put extra efforts in the beginning of the campaign. Therefore, your results will come later in the year. As a result you’ll lose valuable business in the first few months.

The best thing to do is to pay your SEO company on a monthly basis.

Eight: Not Seeing Ranking Reports

Most SEO companies have tools that generate automatic ranking reports. These reports show where your site is listed on Google for your specific keywords.

We provide weekly ranking reports, but you can ask your SEO company to send them to you daily, biweekly, or monthly.

Nine: Not Requesting  Google Analytics

Analytics is a free tool provided by Google, which monitors your site’s traffic, its origin, the keywords visitors used to find your site and many other pieces of information. Google Analytics helps you track the traffic improvements to your site as well as monitoring the success of the SEO company you are working with.

Ten: Not Asking for Solid Link-Building Tactics

The most important Google SEO technique is link-building. Although Google prefers that your links are generated naturally, but in today’s world very few successful sites are blessed with such links. For the rest, a successful organic link-building campaign is needed to boost your site’s popularity and thus your ranking on Google.

Ask your SEO company what they do to increase your link popularity. They may not share all the details as that could jeopardize their edge over their competition, but they can give you general ideas about what they do.

The SEO company should have at least two or three different ways of getting natural links for your site. You can read my post on some of these techniques.

As always, we appreciate your feedback and questions.

-          Keyword Analysis
-          Home-page Optimization
-          Weekly Ranking Reports
-          Google Analytics Setup

The work that each of these sites received was valued at $500. In return, we’ve placed a text-ad on these sites promoting our services, which also proves to be very valuable to us.

We’ve recently adjusted this service to only include sites that have a PR3 or more (check your site’s PR here). And now, in exchange for a link to our site, we now do the following:

-          Multiple Keyword Analysis
-          Optimization of your entire site, instead of just the homepage
-          Submit a XML Site Map to Google
-          Fix any Webmaster Central Errors
-          Lifetime Weekly Ranking Reports
-          Google Analytics Setup

The perceived value now stands at $1,000.

So, if you or your friends own a site or blog that has a PR3 or higher, you should contact us now.

The optimization work has helped everyone’s ranking on Google, Yahoo! and Bing. In addition, we have received many comments on our blog privately thanking us for our services. We also want to thank all of you for your support.

On the other hand, if you are serious about Google SEO and you want your site to rank atop Google, you will need many natural links pointing to your site. To encourage sites to link to yours, you need to have fresh, high-quality content and network with hundreds of other sites to promote yourself. This counts for over 90% of the work that goes into SEO and it’s what we’re really good at. Sorry, we’ll have to charge you for it, though.

So, please fill out the form on our home-page and we’ll be happy to look at your site to see if you qualify for our Top of Google SEO program.

In the previous parts of this article I narrowed down Google’s interests into three categories: 1) content, 2) relevancy and 3) popularity. We discussed content in Part I, and relevancy in Part II of these series.  Here we focus on popularity.

Popularity of a web page refers to the number and the quality of links pointing to it from other web pages on the Internet world. The more “inbound” links a site has and the more they come from reputable sites (in Google’s eyes), the better your site will rank. This is the most important factor in Google SEO.

Google’s success is mostly due to its decision to rate web pages based on the quantity and quality of the links they receive – much like the academia’s rating of a scientific article. The more an article is used as a source by other scientists, the more authoritative that article becomes.

Google uses the same rating method for all sites: the more a site gets referred to by other sites, the more authoritative it is. In other words, the more links a site has, the better rank it’ll get.

This aspect of Google’s algorithm is based on the principle that sites with good content should naturally be used as sources by other sites. But the older Google becomes, the more difficult it gets for sites to naturally generate the needed link popularity in order to rank at the top of Google search results – despite the quality of their content.

On the other hand, Google frowns upon sites that engage in “black hat” SEO to gain artificial link popularity. So, what are you to do if you want your site to compete for that #1 position in a competitive market?

The answer is not simple.

First, you cannot just sit and wait for others to link their sites to yours. That simply won’t happen. In a world where there are thousands of new sites built everyday, your prospective site visitors have no way of finding you to read your content (unless you already rank on Google). Second, you cannot just write comments on 100’s of blogs or forums to gain the popularity you need (because most of these comments and the links you gain from them have “nofollow” attribute – meaning Google gives them no value. And third, what might have worked six months ago (in successful link-building techniques), may no longer be a good practice.

But there are other ways.

At Master Google, our research and development team works everyday to discover new methods we can use to semi-artificially (and yet naturally) improve our clients link popularity and, therefore, their Google rankings. To help our readers, we share our newest techniques so you can engage in a tried-and-true link-building campaign that will help you improve your rankings on Google. And here is a list of what works for us:

Blogging: we build blogs for our clients and constantly keep them up-to-date with new posts, while linking from them to our clients’ sites.

Directories: we submit our clients’ sites to directories that have a PR3 or more. Here is a list of directories we recommend.

Articles: writing, optimizing and submitting articles to reputable sites helps us gain link popularity for all of our clients. Here is a list of article sites with good page rank.

Press Releases: writing, optimizing and submitting press releases to news sites has huge benefits for our clients. We can improve their rankings immediately when we submit releases for them. Here is a list of SEO friendly press release sites.

Freebies: we offer freebies to those site visitors that link to our clients’ sites.

Competitors: we go after those sites that are linking to our clients’ competitors and request links to our clients’ sites.

Partners: we ask our clients to request links from their partners and/or friends’ sites.

All of the above is much easier said than done. Engaging in all of these techniques requires months of hard labor, a complete understanding of SEO and, of course, cash. Nevertheless, we’ve been able to transform local, small businesses into large-international ones in a matter of a few months by practicing what we preach.

So, if you’re someone who doesn’t have the money to hire a professional SEO company (we mean us… lol), then you need to learn the ropes of SEO. With hard work it’ll take you a couple of years to master the techniques and, after investing some money and a lot of time, you’ll be able to rank your site above everyone else’s. Reading my ebook on Google SEO Secrets revealed will also help you.

Oftentimes, smart business people who have substantial financial backing will delegate important tasks to professionals, instead of spending years mastering what someone else already knows and taking away the focus from their business. If you are one of those smart business people, fill out our form and we’ll be happy to look at your site and see if it qualifies for our Top of Google program.

• What is Google looking for when indexing and ranking your Web site?
• Why is site X ranking number one while your site ranks on the fifth page?
• Site X is not even a good site, so why does Google think it’s better than yours?
• Is it even possible to rank your site above site X?

Google SEO is not magic. Google doesn’t favor any site over the others without clear and measurable calculations. But what are these calculations?

Matt Cutts, Google’s anti-spam guru and SEO spokesman, has said numerious times that Googlebots, or Google Spiders, evaluate over 200 criterium to identify which site should be ranked above the others. In other words, there is a clear formula that these Mega software follow and score each Web page by, assigning each site a number. This secret number sometimes correlates with Page Rank- a number from 1 to 10 given to each Web page by Google- but not always.

The list of what Google looks for on your Web page is secret, but I have narrowed down the most important factors to be what’s written on the site, optimization and inbound links. In other words:

Content + Relevancy + Popularity = Top of Google Rankings

Google’s job is to show search results for any keywords you look for. It is true that Google looks at your Web page as a whole, but, in reality, it’s mostly interested in the content of your site (i.e. text, videos, images).

You might ask “what should I change so that Google likes my content?”

The simplified answer is have lots of original, relevant and fresh content without any grammatical errors. This will support your efforts to attract inbound links.

Original Content

The most important factor is to have original content. When it comes to Google, content that is copied from other sites is a big no-no. I have seen many sites get flagged and unindexed by Google for simply having duplicate content. To protect your site if you have original content, search for it on Google to find possible sites that have copied your content. Sometimes Google makes the mistake of degrading sites with original content because others have copied it.

If you cannot keep up with those that tend to copy your text, you can solve this issue by rewriting your homepage content once a month. That way, you can ensure that you have original content at all times.

Fresh Content

Blogs and news sites are good examples of sites that have fresh content on a regular basis. But if your site’s content remains the same, it is a good idea to rewrite it at least once a month. Google announced in Nov. 2011 that it is now more interested in fresh content.

Keyword-Rich Content

Having your keywords mentioned within your content is also very important. If your site is about selling shoes, make sure you mention selling shoes or synonymous keywords within your content.

What you should stay away from, however, is repeating your keywords more than once. Google will quickly degrade your site if it feels like you’re trying to manipulate it in order to place you higher on the search engine results.

Clean Copy

If your site has grammatical or spelling mistakes, it will negatively affect your site’s ranking. The best thing to do is to hire an editor to review your site’s content. You can get this done rather cheap, sometimes for just $25 per page.

In the next part of this article, I’ll be focusing on relevancy, another important factor in Google SEO.

To rank your site, Google closely looks at the number of inbound links pointing to your site, the quality of the sites that have the inbound links, the anchored text links associated with each link and finally any traces of human interference to “artificially” increase a site’s link popularity (which will negatively affect your rankings).

I can go into a lot of details on each of the above, but for the sake of this post, I want to focus my attention to the press release development/distribution as one of the easiest ways to acquire quality inbound links for your site. My team has previously put together a list of press release distribution sites you can use for this purpose. Now, I want to give some advice on how to best use press release distribution sites to stay ahead of the game.

Please note that we use the following tips internally and have seen great success within the past few months.

• Hire a professional writer to write your press release. If your press release is not written in the format accepted by the news outlets, they will simply reject it.
• Ask your writer to write multiple versions of your press release. By multiple versions I mean a complete rewrite to the point that only the meaning is similar, but the content is completely different on each release. Much like the same news we read on Google News from different sources.
• One of these versions will be posted on your site as the source and the rest will be distributed.
• The other versions will be posted on a different press release distribution site. This will help you to avoid duplicate content on your releases thus increasing the chance that they will be picked by Google and ranked better with the engine.
• On the bottom of each release, you should include a copy-right sentence to avoid readers to copy/use your press releases.
• Link to the original post on your site (as the source) as well as your site’s homepage or the internal pages from these press releases.
• Your anchored text links should be different, yet contain your main keywords in them.
• Avoid multiple keyword text links. It’s best to link only one word to your site.

Like always, we appreciate your comments.

- Is it worth to place a comment/link where the link will have a nofollow tag?
- Are there blogs that do not have a no-follow tag for the comment sections? How can we find them?
- If leaving comments on blogs has no link-value, then why should we do it?

What is a nofollow tag?

A nofollow tag has the following format (HTML code):

<a href=”http://www.website.com” rel=”nofollow”>text link</a>

The nofollow tag indicates to Google (and other) spiders to not follow the link to its intended place. Thus, making such links value-less from an SEO point of view. The only intended audience for these links are human visitors who cannot tell the difference between a followed link and a nofollowed link (because the code is hidden in the back-end).

Now, getting back to the original questions. The short answer is that if you leave comments to get some link-juice for your site, don’t do it. You won’t get any SEO benefit from them. Because many black-hat SEO companies have abused the comment section of the blogs, almost all blogs have nofollow tags for the comment sections.

On the other hand, they don’t have nofollow tags for the main blog pages or other links on the site.

Instead of leaving a comment with your link in it, contact the blog admin and tell him that you’re interested in placing a link to your site on his blog/site.

Here are some tips to get the most benefit from your efforts:

- Check the blog’s PR (Page Rank). Sites with less than PR3 are usually not worth your efforts.
- In your first contact, indicate that you’re willing to pay a fee if necessary. Most blog owners crave for such business generating from their blog and most are honest people that will honor your agreement.
- Ask for a link on the home page. Home page links have far more value than links from the internal pages.
- Try to make an arrangement for a year at a time – the longer your link stays on a site, the more value it will have with Google.
- Pay monthly if you can.
- Give the blog admin the exact URL and anchored text-link to be used for the link.
- Also give him a description to go with/around your text link – a text-link without any text around it could be viewed negatively by Google.
- Varry your anchored-text as well as the URL for the best results.
- Monitor your link on a regular basis.

Still, visit blogs and leave comments with links to your site, not for the benefits of SEO, but for encouraging other blog visitors to visit your site. That generates traffic/customers and if you have excellent content, could lead to natural links for your site.

Press release distribution was the focal point of 2009 link-building campaigns. Many high-end SEO companies used this technique to:

1-     Provide their clients with a presence on Google News

2-     Drive more targeted traffic to their clients’ sites

3-     Obtain high-quality inbound links.

We were no exception. We used press releases extensively. We even spent countless hours researching and testing different press release distribution sites and prepared the list below. This list will help you identify the best press release distribution sites and only submit to those that are worth while – saving much time, money and energy in testing them yourself.

Note: you need a standard high-quality press release before submitting to these sites, or your release will be rejected.

Press release distribution sites – ranked based on the ROI we observed:

Stay tuned for more link-building techniques/lists to emerge soon.

I have personally seen Google search results fluctuations since I started my SEO career. For one thing, if it wasn’t for Google changing the search results pages, none of our clients would have had top of Google rankings, right?

But what we mean here is gaining and losing first page or top positions in cycles. Normally, this doesn’t happen for very competitive keywords, as top players always have SEO experts on their sides. But for less competitive keywords, this is a common phenomenon.

Here are some reasons that you see your site’s rankings fluctuate on Google:

1- Posting fresh content: Google values fresh content on sites. Adding a new story to your blog, posting a new article on your site or simply rewriting your site’s homepage could trigger Google bots to move you up the scales a few notch. Same could go for your competitors. However, the improvements in rankings don’t last that often unless you keep on updating your site’s content.

2- Optimization Removal: if our SEO team has optimized your site and you have over-written the optimization work by uploading your old files to the server, you have caused your site’s rankings to be dropped. In this case, you can ask our team to re-upload the files.

3- Different Google bots: each Google bot (spider) uses a slightly different algorithm; so, theoretically, when different spiders visit your site, they would rank your site according to their algorithm.

4- Duplicate content: this is also more likely a theory as I have not seen the proof of it, but I was just reading Google Webmaster Help and someone had claimed if your site’s content is copied by someone else, it could fluctuate your rankings. However, what I’ve seen with duplicate content is that rankings will drop to 10+ pages of Google SR’s.

We appreciate your comments/questions.

Duplicate content refers to “substantive blocks of content” that match or are similar to “content within or across domains”, according to Google webmaster central. Google simply reduces the ranking of both pages/Web sites if it notices similar content being posted.

Here are some examples of duplicate content and tips on how to resolve them:

Mirrored Sites
Having mirrored sites refers to the same Web site being hosted on two or more different domains. This was basically what cryoserver.com had done. They had their site hosted on cryoserver.com as well as forensiccs.com.

Use a domain-level redirect from one domain to the other to resolve the mirrored sites issue. Also, use 301 redirects for any linked-to Web pages within the redirected domain.

We asked cryoserver.com to redirect the mirrored domain to the main one. After only one week, Google removed the red-flag and now their site ranks on the 3rd page (still some SEO work is needed to get them to the first page).

The same for-sale items on e-commerce Web sites
This is very common when it comes to e-commerce sites. Many URL’s are dynamically created and linked to from the home-page or other pages. Or simply, one product is placed within different categories. To resolve this issue, you should avoid dynamically building your pages and use different description even for the same products if they’re placed on different categories (having different url’s).

Copied text to be placed on competitors Web sites
If someone copies your text and place it on their site, your site could be penalized (flagged) by Google spiders for having duplicate content. This doesn’t happen too often, but when it does, it reduces your site’s rank on Google dramatically. To resolve this issue, you should contact the site that copied your text and ask them (by using all means) to remove the stolen text from their site. If they don’t comply, you should just rewrite your own content (painful, but it’s easier and less expensive than hacking the other site and removing your text).

Print-only versions of Web pages
Avoid print-versions if at all possible. If you cannot, use a “no-follow” tag wherever you link to a print-version copy of your Web pages.

Web pages that generate a mobile-friendly version
Similar to above, use “no-follow” tags so Google spiders don’t follow the link.

If you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to ask. We will respond to all questions in a timely manner.

To know if your site is banned (red-flagged) by Google, follow the following steps:

1- Copy a portion of your site’s content (at least two sentences) and paste them into Google search within quotes (“your site’s text”). That way you’re asking Google to return only the sites that have that exact content. If you only see your site in the search results, that means everything is fine. If you see other sites listed next to yours, but yours is at the top, that means the other sites have copied your text and that’s not a good thing, but your site is still not flagged. However, if your site is not ranked at the top or is not listed at all, that means either your site is flagged, or you have copied someone else’s text – neither of which are good news.

2- Search Google for some of the keywords within the title tag of your site (the title tag appears within your site’s back-end code as as the text after <title> – also, it shows up at the top of the browser when you load your site. If your site comes up #1, or towards the top of Google search results, then it is not banned.

3- Search for your main keyword (which is also part of your title tag if you’ve optimized it correctly). If your site is within the first 10 pages, then most probably it is not banned. If it is listed after the 10th page, it is most probably flagged. I say “most probably” because this very much depends on many factors such as selecting your main keyword correctly, etc.

And if my site is red-flagged, is there any chance to get it un-flaged?

In most cases, yes; you can get your site un-flagged – and lately Google does this rather quickly. To un-flag your site, follow the following steps:

1- Identify why your site was flagged in the first place. Some of the common reasons are using duplicate content, keyword stuffing, door-way pages, etc. (for a better list, you can read our Google SEO eBook). This is by far the most important step. If you’re unable to identify why Google has flagged your Web site, there is no way for you to help remove it.

2- Remove the “black-hat” SEO technique that got your site flagged. If you used duplicate content, re-write it. If you used keywor-stuffing, remove them, and so forth.

3- Next time Google spiders visit your site, they will notice that you have removed the spam techniques and will slowly give your positions back on the search results. If you want the process to take place faster, get some inbound links for your site.

In general, avoid using questionable SEO techniques on your site – especially do not ever link to sites you do not know their online reputation. Read extensively on the subject before you go for optimization of your site or consult someone who knows the game. There are many gray areas that you could go into and sometimes the lines between white-gray-black are blurred.

Good luck with getting your site ranked at the top of Google.

There are many ways to improve your link popularity and therefore your Google Page Rank (PR), but some of the techniques are more controversial than others. The “organic” way is to provide top-notch content and encourage other sites to link to yours.

Although much of Google’s formula for determining Page Rank (or a Web site’s popularity) is secret, they have revealed that the more sites link to your site, and the better Page Rank (PR) these sites have, the more link juice your site will receive.

However, link building the “organic” way can be a slow process and isn’t always guaranteed to work. So, many Web site owners are tempted to use paid links – simply paying 3rd parties to place a link on their sites. The process of buying links for the sole purpose of improving PR is frowned upon by Google and other search engines since they are trying to provide their users with organic search results.

“The best links are not paid, or exchanged after out-of-the-blue emails – the best links are earned and given by choice,” says Matt Cutts, a Google engineer who blogs about these issues. “Google does consider buying text links for Page Rank purposes to be outside our quality guidelines.”

It is important to note that buying links from 3rd party Web sites shouldn’t be confused with paid advertising or Sponsored Links. With paid advertising, search engines have provided a platform where you can pay them directly to place your link on their search results pages – clearly defined as “Sponsored Links.” Usually, you won’t be charged unless someone clicks on the link to your site – thus Pay Per Click is another name for these advertising methods.

Many Web sites do buy links and, done correctly, it can have a positive effect on your Web site’s Page Rank as well as its ranking on Google search results. But, before you start spending your marketing dollars, you should start with a well-organized SEO strategy – which relies on a variety of “white-hat” (and sometimes not-so-much white hat) Google SEO techniques.

If you still think you need a boost from paid links, keep in mind the strategies and cautions below.

Choose Reputable Sites: If you’re link building by buying links make sure the site you are paying for has a high Google Page Rank (PR 5 or above). Remember that your Page Rank increases because of the quality of your links, not just the quantity. Google gives a higher ranking to sites it views as having more organic back-links and offering legitimate content.

You cannot be penalized by placing a link on a link-farm or a site that has been banned by Google, mainly because your competition could have done that in your place. However, that’s just a waste of your time, since the link coming from a link-farm wouldn’t have any value for your site. But this works both ways. Links from reputable sites will increase your site’s PR. Multiply that by an entire network of second-party sites and you’re on the fast-track to success.

Text Links: If you pay someone to provide a link, you want to make sure the link either looks like an organic part of the Web page (like an endorsement of your services) or like an advertisement. If the purpose of a text link is to funnel traffic to your site, then that’s a perfectly acceptable link-building technique. Note that you’re NOT having the link there for improving your PR, although that’s a bi-product (and could well be your main objective). As far as Google is concerned, you have not crossed any lines.

One option is to pay a site to place content with embedded text links leading back to your site. Be careful which words you use as text links. If you use the same text link words over and over on different Web sites, Google’s algorithm may think that your Web site is spamming. Be sure to vary the keywords you use as text links.

Directories: Directories exist for a wide variety of topics and will provide a link to your Web site for free or sometimes for a fee.
When I try to explain the pitfalls of posting links to sites, I remind clients of all the spam and viruses floating about the Web. Now apply that concept to link building. Sometimes it’s not so easy to recognize the sheep from the wolves. In these situations, it’s best to consult with SEO experts before posting links to bad Web sites. Master Google has a lot of experience with guiding its clients through these treacherous waters and has helped many sites get to the top of Google in 2 to 6 months.

Safe directories have competitive Page Rank and have been vetted by Google’s AdSense or a similar service. Google doesn’t consider such sites to be link farms since they are run by human editors who evaluate each submitted Web site for relevance and quality –and there is a chance you will be rejected. Some of these sites operate in a bit of a gray area ethically, but usually Google allows them. However, many paid sites aren’t legitimate directories, so be careful. Only a reputable directory can increase your Page Rank and Web traffic.

Staying Power: Paid links offer another downside: they don’t last as long as organic connections. If you take the time to set up a network of organic links, those links will remain in place – directing traffic to you and raising your Page Rank – for a while. Paid links disappear if you don’t keep paying for them.

Getting Links for Free: Whether or not you decide to buy links, you should also consider how you can get links for free. First, offer great content that people want – and keep it fresh. You can also write articles for another Web site and ask for a link from the byline. Or you can offer good blog content or send out press releases.

So, use paid links if you wish, but be extra cautious when you do so. We’ve seen Google penalize sites for specific keywords when spam techniques were used. Pay only for reputable sites and make sure your text links vary from site to site. Then you’re off to the road of Google SEO success.

Articles you submit to these sites need to be original, related to your field of expertise, well written and free of spelling/grammatical errors. It may be better for you to hire a professional copy-writer to help you with the writing.

Here is the list:

The sites that have “approved” in the description field are those that we have tested them and have seen our listing within a few months. We’re going to continue working on this list and update it until all directories are either approved or removed from the list.

Book mark this page for your future references.

Also, place a link to this page on your site, so your friends can benefit from this list as well.

It’s Too Good to Be True!

It is too good and it is true. We benefit from this service in multiple ways some of which includes:

-        Our reputation – many firms who do not trust SEO companies are able to see that we’re different

-        Prove SEO results – if your site ranks on Google while you didn’t pay anything, imagine what we can do with it if you do pay

-        Paid SEO clients – some of the free SEO clients have now become our paid SEO clients through one of our packages.

Ranking Better With Google!

Within the past five months – since the start of the program – we’ve been able to qualify and optimize 190 out of 476 applicants through our free SEO program. About 40% of the sites we optimized are now ranking better on Google and about 20% on the other search engines. Depending on the competitiveness of their keywords, many of them have first page of Google ranking.

Why We Rejected Some Applicants

The main cause for us to reject some applications was that the FTP information provided was incorrect. Without an accurate FTP info, we’re unable to optimize a given site. If your site was rejected, please kindly refill our services request form.

Read about our free SEO here.

Sign up and use our services to your benefit.

For SEO gurus the game got that much harder. 2009 was by far the most difficult year I had in keeping up with Google. Not only because our admired giant kept changing its search algorithm (like that’s something new), but also because the “link-building” game was being “copied” and “manipulated” by other SEO firms much faster.

“White-hat” SEO techniques that used to work wonders early in the year, had very little effect after a short period of time – due to over usage by all the SEO firms.

I personally rolled up my sleeves and jumped into the pool of learning how to find “new” ways of generating organic links. In another post I will share some of my findings.

I learnt one thing. Finding new organic link-building methods is an ever growing game. We have to spend more time digging into the NET and learn from our trial and errors and tweak our tests to see what works and what doesn’t. Honestly it wasn’t easy.

The good news is that we were more successful than ever. Most of our clients enjoyed top rankings on Google (the ones that were paying for the top rankings) and their businesses grew – even in the economic down-turn.

We were even able to offer free SEO to over 300 qualified Web sites. Close to 90% of them saw a change in their rankings. This is what we gave back to the Internet world.

Be tuned in as I will post more items related to some of our SEO secrets as well as laying down our strategies for 2010. Enjoy your holidays.

Ali Husayni
President

If you honestly don’t believe this is possible, then read on; I may have you believe otherwise.

First, there is a difference between guaranteeing to rank your site at the top and guaranteeing to refund your money if your site is not ranked at the top.

You see? We DO NOT guarantee to place every single site at the top, but we pay you your money back if we’re unable to do so.

Google also advises against those companies that guarantee your site to be at the top. After all, only Google decides who’s going to be at the top, and who’s not.

In reality, every site is capable of ranking at the top, however, the efforts to do so vary greatly and for some companies, it’s not worth the time/effort/investment.

I’ll put this in more simple terms:

Google is very logical and its logic is very simple: “Rank sites based on their popularity on the Internet.” In other words (generally speaking), sites with a better Page Rank (PR) get to rank at the top of Google for a particular keyword (of course with the correct optimization in place). PR is determined by the number and the quality of inbound links a site receives.

Google considers each inbound link pointing to your site from other 3^rd party sites as a vote of confidence in your site. The 3^rd party site refers its readers to your site for more information. Now, your site becomes a reference point for another site – thus a valuable site in Google’s terms. Imagine you have hundreds or thousands of these kinds of links. Google will realize that your site is a “mother” site. Therefore, it’ll rank it above all the other sites.

Do you see how simple this logic is?

The logic is simple, but to actually get your site known enough in the Web world so 3^rd party sites link to your site as a reference is another story. It takes very delicate and tedious work to accomplish this in a short period of time. And that’s what we have mastered.

I have been able to place sites at the top of Google in 2-6 months.

Sure. I can share with you numerous examples of sites that we’ve helped rank at the top. I just can’t mention them here for obvious reasons. Just fill out our services request form and I’ll set up a time to share with you some of our secret inbound link-building techniques and tell you precisely how long it’ll take for us to place your site at the top.

Is Google SEO right for everyone?

No, of course not. For some businesses, it is not worth their time, money or the efforts to get their sites ranked at the top. Some keywords are way too competitive and Google is dominated by huge corporations with great SEO budgets that smaller companies couldn’t compete with them. However, for most other keywords, it is very possible to rank at the top.

Find out for yourself if your site can compete. Fill out our services request form and I will personally respond to you.

The company has provided press releases for its clients as part of its 1st Page of Google and Top of Google SEO service packages for several years. Now Master Google provides press releases as a stand-alone service.

For $79 per writing, a dedicated Master Google Web Copy Writer will prepare a fresh, original press release using keyword terms specialized for the client’s Web site. Also, Master Google’s Web team will optimize and post the press release to the client’s Web site for free.

For an additional $49, Master Google will post the press release on five major press release distribution sites such as prlog.com, bignews.biz. All of Master Google’s distribution resources are press release and news hubs for Google News, a highly selective and highly touted news database.

Master Google has a comprehensive distribution service which issues a client’s press release throughout its entire distribution network – or a selection of client’s choice. This network includes authoritative distribution hubs such as prweb.com, mediawire.com, usnewswire.com, and many others. For more information on the comprehensive press release service, visit our site:

http://www.mastergoogle.com/press-releases.php

The benefits of writing, optimizing and distributing press releases are many, but the main ones include: adding fresh content to clients’ sites, generating organic inbound links from authoritative Web sites, getting exposure through Google News as well as increasing sites rankings on Google search results. As a result, more targeted traffic floats clients’ Web sites.

Combined with Master Google’s Free SEO package, this creates a great opportunity for virtually anyone who wants exposure on the Internet.

“We are finding that our clients with full SEO services are greatly benefiting from our press release services,” said Master Google President, Ali Husayni. “This has led us to creating a separate service dedicated to press releases. For companies curious about the benefits of SEO, or unsure if they can benefit from fresh content, this is a perfect way to test the waters without making major financial or contractual investments.”

“The great thing about this program is that anybody can afford it,” said Husayni. “Even if it’s a blogger on a shoestring budget, he or she can increase their exposure with minimal investment. There is nothing to lose and so much to gain from Master Google’s press release service, and we hope to see many new clients joining the Master Google family soon.”

Master Google is a Google marketing company providing search engine optimization services since 2004. For more information about press releases or Master Google’s other services, visit: www.mastergoogle.com.