Seo Redefined

It is all about Location, Location, Location; even for your website.   Do you know who has linked back to your website?  Do you know if all of your back-links are links you would want linking back to you?  Do you have adult sites or gambling sites linked back to you?  Is your current SEO Company only producing good links back to your site? If you do not know, then you may be in for a big surprise or worse yet banned by a search engine.

Recently a former client of mine called because his website had dropped off of Google.  It was no where to be found.  After a checking I discovered that his current SEO Company had done a massive back link campaign for him.  They did 500 back-links for him in a 3 day period.  The majority of the back-links were from adult services and gambling sites.  A huge mistake for anyone to do.

First, 500 back-links in 3 days can be red flag for the search engines.  Google tends to see this as blackhat seo and can knock your page ranking down to zero.  Anytime the search engines see massive irrelevant back-links to a site you are looking to get banned.  Especially if the sites are directories whose sole purpose is to create massive back-links.  This is what happened to my former client.

Google tends to like to see back-links developed over time in a more organic way.  Listing your site with directories that are relevant to your site is very important.   Commenting on blogs that have similar content as your site is also excellent.  It is a slow process and can not be rushed.  If it is rushed or down wrong the search engines will look at this as spam and your site will be removed.

So what can be done to check to see if your site is a bad neighborhood or not?  How do you remove the back-link you do not want associated with your site?  How do you get the search engines to re list your site? What tool can you use to check your back-links?  You will have to read my next blog for that information.

This is probably not the best title for a blog but my wife made me clean up what I had originally written as a title.  Good thing I listened to her or I may have regretted writing the other title.  You are probably wondering why I am so ticked this morning?  It takes a lot to fire this old Georgia boy’s tractor up but some SEO scam artist got me going.

I spent about an hour on a telephone conference this morning with some independent Real Estate Brokers and Agents talking about how to do SEO during an economic downturn.  The conference was going really well when several Brokers brought up how well they were doing,  Well we all like to hear success stories and I for one can always pick up a nugget or two of new information that may help me and my clients.

Two of the Brokers use a well known SEO company.  The Brokers were very pleased about their first page Google placement.  On the service this sounds good and is very impressive.  But a couple of questions later and the truth emerged.

The search terms they were being found under were not search terms people would ever use to search for a Broker/Agent or homes for sale.  In fact when I checked the search terms being used I found there was only 5 other sites in the world using that term.  So no wonder they were showing up in the number one position for that search term.  So as not to embarrass the Brokers I have cleaned up the search terms so they can not be indentified.

Here is the search term they were in position one for on Google:

Hometown State USA real estate and homes for sale or rent in Another Town but Same State

No matter how you broke this search term down they could not be found in the first 10 pages of Google.  The search terms you would expect to be used were not used and these Brokers sites were non-existent for the most used search terms for their area. The Brokers told me they had each paid over $5000 for this SEO Company to work on their sites.  They were promised by this SEO company first page placement for their selected search terms.

Brokers and Agents are professionals who spend their time getting listings, showing homes and selling homes.  Many of you do not have time to do the SEO for your websites or research the best search terms to use.  That is why you trust and rely on an SEO professional to give you the best information possible.  Many of you trust these people enough to give them thousands of your hard earned commissions. 

SEO Companies who do business like this make it all the harder for honest hardworking folks like myself to make a living.  Once an Agent or Broker have been burned, they are less likely to trust any SEO Company again.  Who can blame you.

Stories like this really fire up my old John Deere tractor. So over the next several weeks I am going to share tools and tricks with you that will help you make some good educated choices.  So whether you are thinking about hiring an SEO Company or checking on the one you currently use, you will be better informed.

Excellent Post.  I always enjoy reading posts from you.  Thanks again and keep up the good work.

I always like to share new tools with folks that I find useful.  This one is no exception.  In fact this tool is a great way to check on how you are doing with your SEO.  You can even check on the progress of your SEO firm that you hired.

The tool is called Website Grader and can be found here at Hubspot.  It is easy to use and the information it gives you can be useful.  But keep in mind that I have found this tool to be between 80% and 85% accurate when grading the websites that I have done.  But for those of you who no very little about SEO this tool may be a pretty good one to use.

All you have to do is enter your website address and then your email address.  In about 30 seconds you will have a report sent to your email. You just click on the link and read your report.

The report will tell you things like in-bound links, Google page rank, the age of your domain and other information.  You might not understand all of the information but you can Google the terms to get a better understanding.