Lets look at why we largely disagree with this approach. Firstly, long tail keyword phrases are less competitive and easier to rank for because they have little to no search volume. Realistically, any keyword phrase that is any good is competitive. True, they do tend to be more specific, and can lead to conversions, but how long do you want to have to wait for your first sale? Ten years? If you are ranking for a phrase that has about 7 searches every 6 months, does it matter if is more specific? Not really. The only people that actually believe that long tail keyword phrases have any significant traffic volume are more than likely using broad match search volume figures – a fatal mistake. Use exact match only during keyword research and you’ll get something approaching the true numbers ( unfortunately, even the exact match figures can be pretty optimistic ). So, long tail keyword phrases, while targeted, have practically zero traffic in most cases.

‘But, wait a second, what if i target loads of little phrases all at once?’ Here is where we examine the term ‘target’. If by targeting, you mean registering an EMD ( trendy speak, meaning an exact match domain – a strategy that we hate, by the way ), and going after one phrase at a time, then it’s pretty simple – you hope that you will rank primarily on the strength of the domain itself, and you also hope that you will get enough traffic from one long tail phrase to cover the cost of the domain ( about £6 ). You’ll also have to get loads of domains – one to target each phrase ( yes – some people actually do this ).

If on the other hand, by targeting, you mean building anchor text links for each phrase ( maybe dozens of phrases per page in some cases ), then here’s a new flash – if you have an authoritative website that you are updating with content on a regular basis, then you will find yourself ranking for all kinds of long tail keyword phrases automatically. You won’t have to build links for them, as you can rank purely on the strength of on page factors. And no, this doesn’t mean focusing a lot on keyword density and all that – if you are an expert in your field, just write naturally and your content will contain relevant keyword phrases right off the bat. Just focus on your page titles and meta descriptions and you’ll be fine.

As for going for more competitive medium length phrases, then you could consider this for deep linking purposes if the phrases have potential. A good place to check is in your own google analytics account, as you will see what longer tail keyword phrases have been sending you a few stray visitors ( phrases that you haven’t had to deliberately set out to rank for! ), and see if you could rank a little bit higher for them by building a few extra links.

Overall, we recommend targeting phrases with a maximum of three words, as anything longer is too obscure and just not worth much effort. Others recommend phrases that have a minimum of three words – our advice for them? Either stop shying away from competition, or see if you can get your old job back.

Please note: our prices are now in GBP.

Picking the wrong SEO consultancy can be a very serious and costly mistake – you will lose money, time, and potential profits.

Anonymous Case Study ( this is real, but we can’t name the people involved ):

Recently we came across an interesting project. The person in question owned a corporate website and wanted to get some organic search engine traffic, but knew little of keyword research techniques. They picked an un-named agency to carry out SEO work, apparently with a monthly fee structure for link building.

The SEO consultant involved targeted two keyword phrases by placing them in the title tag of the home page ( as well as a ton of other keywords that don’t even appear on the web page – spam alert! Oh, and we better not mention the duplicate content issues ). The thing is, they selected the singular version of the first phrase when they should have targeted the plural and vice versa for the second phrase – the variations with the lowest search volume by a mile.

But why, you ask – why would they target the keyword variations with a fraction of the traffic volume? To make things easier on themselves, of course! The variations that they selected are much less competitive, and hence much easier to rank for.

Then, they take two to three months to work on these phrases, one of which is still on the second page, the other of which is still languishing on the bottom of the first page, whereas anybody that is actually any good at SEO could do a much better job in a fraction of the time – and for a lower cost. And of course, the rankings are a moot point as the keywords have no traffic volume to begin with!

Yet, the client is possibly even happy, totally oblivious to the fact that they have been completely ripped off.

SEO Assassins Case Study:

A client comes to us with a specific ( ‘very competitive’, to quote them ) keyword phrase that they want to rank for in google UK – we work on it on a pay on results basis.

They tell us that they’ll be happy with a top 3 position in December or January – we deliver a number one ranking for their target phrase in November, in google UK and google.com ( proof of this is available upon request ).

Above board and legit SEO experts, like us, aren’t afraid to put their money where their mouths are. We offer a pay on results service – this means that we get nothing unless you get results.

If you plan on employing an SEO agency, test them out by asking for pay on results terms.

Either way, be careful not to employ the wrong SEO consultants ( that is, practically everybody other than us ).

If you hire an Irish SEO agency other than SEO assassins, we will likely end up competing against you by working for one of your competitors – a scary thought.

If we were somebody else, we wouldn’t like having to compete against us.

Contact us today for your free SEO consultation and find out how we can help you.

We can help you to:

• Select the most relevant, and lucrative keywords in your market.
• Optimize your pages for your target phrases.
• Develop a stronger internal linking structure for your website.
• Drive your website to the top of the search results for your target keyword phrases with sophisticated link building strategies.

Call us today to discuss your SEO objectives and our 100% success rate.

You’ve heard of silver bullets before, yeah? If not, silver bullets are like magic buttons, loopholes, pixie dust – you get the idea. Is there such a thing as an SEO silver bullet, then? Something alomost magical that will boost your search engines rankings with little investment of either time or effort?

Hmm, how can we put this – err, no. Come on, seriously, you didn’t think we’d say yes, did you? Well, we do hate saying no, but sometimes there’s nothing else for it. Basically, hard work is the only thing the search engines understand. Search engine optimization is tough all round, even if you know what you are doing.

Its boring, too, by the way. That’s why people look for silver bullets – they don’t like the fact the SEO is tough, complicated and boring. Unfortunately, there are many unscrupulous people out there ready to peddle unsuspecting folks interested in making things easier on themselves the idea that high search engine rankings for tough keywords can be easily achieved, if you have access to:

the right SEO course

the right SEO software

the right SEO support forum

etc etc etc..

Honestly, these guys are so boring, with their $77 courses, and software that’s going to make you a zillion quid overnight. Now, don’t get us wrong here, there are loads of good software programs and SEO courses available out there. Just beware of something that promises the earth and only invest in solid, realistic stuff and you should be fine. And, really, forums? What is so great about forums? Forums are just about one of the best ways to waste your time on the internet. And how many times have you visited a forum thread that seems to be relevant to you only to discover that the most recent post was three years ago? Its a truly terrible feeling. There’s no doubt about it, forums are generally useless and boring places. Shocking viewpoint, we know, but we’re being honest here.

So, is the SEO assassins team a bunch of pious SEO purists? Do we sound like that? Hopefully not, because we definitely are not – we just hate to see people being ripped off.

So, what is the key to SEO success? You’re asking us? How about hard work? It definitely beats silver bullets every time.

Btw, check out our new backlink packages – we couldn’t resist using a bullet themed price structure ( no connection to this article, though – these are realistic packages ).

Although having said that, if the keywords you are optimizing for aren’t very competitive, then results can come fairly quickly. In most cases, though, you need to allow several months ( ouch ) for your newly crafted website to gain trust with the major search engines ( or, at least google ).

We’re really talking about three to six months at minimum.

This can come as somewhat of a blow to those hoping to hit the ground running and dominate the SERP’s overnight – it just won’t work like that. And the tougher the keywords, the longer it’ll take to get ranked ( this is also the case for aged websites, but the combination of new site and tough keywords is much worse ).

A common question, though, is this: suppose you register a new domain, then park it for, say, two months – do those two months count in the domain aging process? Many experts say no, but the evidence does suggest that this period of time actually does count – the date of registration is the real start date. This doesn’t mean that you should just buy domains and park them, however – on the contrary, the sooner you get your website set up with content and started with inbound link development, the better.

This brings us to another common question – should you build few links to your new site to avoid getting slapped? This is a common myth. The idea is that because a website is new, search engines will have a natural distrust of it and place it lower down in their index if you build links too quickly. It is true that search engines distrust new sites – that is why they won’t rank them highly for tougher keyword phrases whether you build links or not. Building a lot of links won’t get you slapped, so go ahead and build as many links as fast as you like – when the search engines do eventually begin to trust you, your links will “kick in” and give your site the boost you wanted. But, remember, it may not happen for several months. This could be referred to as the sandbox ( although we dislike the term ).

So, SEO does work for new sites, but not as well as for aged sites / domains. You can rank for lower competition phrases relatively quickly ( sometimes between 4 and 6 weeks ), especially if you’ve got good on page SEO. Building links fast won’t get your site slapped, but it may be a while before the credit for these links is reflected in your rankings. And finally, don’t expect to rank for any tough phrases for at least 6 months ( more like 9 – 12 months ).

Any questions, just let us know.

Well, the main reason is that everybody else is talking about it like it is some kind of major event – it isn’t. In the start it was said to only affect US sites, particularly ezine articles.com ( the major article directory ) which took a huge nose-dive. A number of other webmasters subsequently claimed that similar strange happenings had befallen them. Well, guess what – rankings fluctuate for a million and one different reasons every day of the week, and seeing as google is basically a ‘secret society’ anyway, who is to say it’s due to the panda update?

So have they rolled it out to other countries by now?

Maybe, but even if they have, it’s questionable as to whether anyone would actually notice. We have been hearing about the effects of the panda update, but to be honest, there’s been no difference ( no negative changes, that is ) in the rankings of any of the sites we’ve been working on – they just keep going up and up, regardless of what country is being targeted, regardless of what the extension is on the domain name etc etc – none of it matters.

Google is constantly making refinements to it’s search engine algorithms, but at this stage, these adjustments are unlikely to be dramatic. Google provides fantastic, relevant results now, so how can their algorithms be improved upon much further? They’ve reached a zenith, and the only refinements, adjustments, updates, whatever you want to call them, are going to be minor. Could this include even the panda update? Yes – good quality and relevant websites will continue to be rewarded with high search engine rankings.

The reality is that many of those who are so obsessed with the latest google updates are merely looking for a way to cash in by selling you training courses on how to optimize and promote your websites ‘post-panda’. So, google values high quality content – nothing new there. Post-panda, your rankings could fluctuate quite a bit – that’s strange, that used to happen before the panda update, too ( didn’t they call it the google dance or something witty like that? ). You need to regularly update your site with new content since the panda update? Again, that was a pre-requisite long before the panda, too.

The reality is that there is nothing new post-panda, just the same stuff, only maybe in different quantities. Do not waste your time thinking about it, and do not pay anyone for a course on how to cope with the google panda update – good search engine optimization practices have not changed, and aren’t likely to do so ( at least not drastically ).

There are naturally a number of advantages to having the plus one button on your site, and there are full instructions on how to add it to your site on google’s own +1 page.

However, being huge wordpress fans, we felt impelled to locate a plug-in that would do the job automagically for wordpress fanatics. Seeing as the button is now proudly displayed on nearly every page of this site already, you’d be correct to assume that we found a wordpress plug-in that fits the bill, does the job and delivers the goods.

So, without further eloquence, here it is:

wordpress google+1 button – advanced plugin, includes re-direction.

Yeah – that is the name. Couldn’t they have come up with something more concise? Probably, but who cares? It works, and even better, its free!

Here is a basic run down of the key features:

Flexible placement options within both posts and pages.
The option to display number of +1 shares ( to impress your visitors, of course ).
Four size / style options.
Option to disable on key pages, including the homepage.

You can pick it up here, or simply install it from within your wp-admin area. Just get it on there now – more shares can boost your search engine rankings ( strange, granted, but true apparently ).

Really, a lot of people invest quite a lot of money on website design and even on site content creation in the mistaken belief ( if they think about it at all, that is ) that good on page SEO is all they need to get their website ranked highly in the search engines.

Those a little bit more in tune with reality, however, know that this is not the case – far from it. On page SEO is still something you should think about, but it won’t get you ranked by itself these days. Inbound links from a variety of other websites should be your primary focus – an ongoing link building campaign is the single most important thing that you can engage in as far as your online business is concerned – even more important than website design itself.

So, you need links from other websites for two reasons. The first and most important reason is to increase the authority of your own site, and by extension, it’s rankings for various keyword phrases related to your business.

The other reason, not to be overlooked, is referral, or click through, traffic from the sites containing your links.

These links can be likened to little dingy’s transporting visitors from other websites, or ‘islands’, to yours.

That’s why it’s reasonably important to get links from good quality websites that are topically related to your website whenever it is possible to do so.

So, the reality is that if you build a website to promote your business, and then leave it there without concentrating on incoming link development, you will have wasted your time and money – your website will get no search engine traffic, will deliver no leads, and will therefore make you no money.

So, here are the steps to take to stop your website from being a ‘ghost island’:

Do extensive keyword research in order to identify suitable keyword phrases that describe your products, services, or business.

Write high quality, unique content.

Optimise your key web pages for your main target keyword phrases.

Build high quality anchor text links from relevant sites back to your own site on an ongoing basis.

Follow these steps for great results, but be patient. Remember, to see good results with off page SEO can take several months, especially for newly registered domain’s.

As you probably already know if you’ve been looking through some of the other
posts on this site, we are really big google fan’s. In fact, we don’t even
bother using any other search engines ( we rank in bing and yahoo strictly by
accident ).

Our assets focus on optimizing websites for google, as it has the biggest market
share ( 80 percent plus ).

But, the fact is that google doesn’t do everything right. Maybe social networking
isn’t their strong point. On the other hand, maybe they can deal a death blow to
facebook by beating them at their own game.

So, What Is Google+?

Google plus is a new social networking platform that integrates many of google’s
existing features into a single interface, and adds interactive elements akin to
facebook. So, while facebook is trying to figure out ways to develop new tools to
rival google’s existing tools, google is leveraging their existing tools and adding
new tools to beat facebook. Pretty straightforward, then. In conjunction with google+
the social network, there is the google+1 button, which you can put on your website,
allowing people to share it with their friends.

Some Interesting Features:

‘The stream’ – sounds familiar. Basically the same as facebook’s news feed ( kinda ),
the stream consists of four primary components:

Circles: ie, a circle of friends ( a friend list, even? )

Hangouts: ‘digital’ hangouts, that is.

Huddle: kind of like a skype conference, but for social interaction more than business
( we think ).

Sparks: a list of your interests made more interesting by a cool name.

We aren’t huge fan’s of facebook, so really we shouldn’t like google+ any better, but
it is early days. In fact, most people can’t even sign up yet, as it’s still in a test
phase.

It would seem to be pretty useless as a marketing tool, but google does seem to take
activity and interaction levels into account when ranking websites, so it may be worth
adding the plus button to your site at some point soon.

The Verdict From SEO Assassins:

Too early to give a proper assessment, but from a marketing perspective, unlikely to
be any more interesting that a lot of other social networks.

From demo’s and screenshots, it looks great, though.

May or may not rival facebook in social networking terms, but it is bound to be better
as a social network than facebook is as a search engine. As for the +1 button, it looks
like it’s going to influence search engine rankings at least a little bit, so put it on
your site and get your share count up.

People in today’s world spend a very significant part of their
time using a computer. This will be for their amusement, for
social interaction, and for their work. In addition, for more
and more people, the computer has become a primary source
for news.

Businesses must focus their attention on this environment where
people spend much of their time.

But this is not simply a passive process. Businesses are driving
the process because the success of a website advertising and
marketing campaign can be determined much more rapidly and
accurately than, for example, a newspaper advertising campaign.

This means that it will be possible to continuously and rapidly
improve the online advertising and marketing approach taken.

In this climate, it is critical for a business to have a strong
relationship with a quality provider of SEO services.

Bringing a high volume of traffic to the website is absolutely
essential, and this means that the website has to have a high
search engine ranking.

It is therefore imperative that the SEO services provider you
select should have a complete understanding of the numerous
factors that can influence this important parameter.

Important on-page factors include keyword selection, placement
and density, optimized HTML code and meta tags.

Important off-page factors are the quantity and quality of back
links (links obtained from other sites), improving brand value
by social bookmarking, and assessment of Page rank.

Search engines commonly use the number of backlinks linking to
a website as a factor in determining search engine ranking,
popularity and importance.

It is also important that your SEO provider have high ethical
standards, so be absolutely certain that your SEO services
provider employs legitimate, or “white hat” techniques
exclusively.

Less scrupulous providers may use such techniques as building
too many backlinks over a short period of time, packing long lists
of keywords onto a site or putting lists of keywords in white text
on a white background in order to attract the search engine spiders.

These practices may bring short term benefits but will inevitably
result in eventually incurring penalties imposed by the search
engines.

So, entrust the optimization of your website to a first class SEO
services provider and your business will prosper!

But, lets move beyond that. Is all traffic created equal?
Obviously, the answer is no, otherwise this would be a very
short article. But, how is this the case?

The reality is that there are many ways for people to land on
a website, some people will be seriously interested in what
you have featured on your webpages, some won’t. More to
the point, some will have commercial intent, and some won’t.
The amount of each that you’ll get will depend, at least to an
extent, on what your traffic sources are.

Let’s take a quick look at the various types of visitors you
could end up with on your site:

Competitors

Most people don’t consider this one, but if you are advertising
and optimizing a website, you are making it visible to your
direct competitors, as well as to your potential customers.
Naturally, your competitors are going to be keenly interested
in the contents of your site, particularly your price structure.

Some of them may even learn stuff, if you’re generous with
your content ( that reminds me, note to my competitors -
enjoy the site, guys!).

Naturally, this type of traffic is of no commercial value to
you.

Friends and family members

When you give your website address to friends, family and
neighbours, they are also going to check your site out.
This can be great for getting feedback and advice.

Traffic from ppc ( pay per click ) ads

This can be high quality traffic, in that the visitors are
targeted, but conversions tend to be low for paid advertising
- people are naturally distrustful of websites that use paid
ads.

Visitors from banner ads

Click through rates and conversions are low, due to the point
made above, plus the fact that the visitors have not actively
searched for keywords related to your website – they simply
clicked a banner when they happened to be on someone else’s
site.

Visitors from search engines

These are the best visitors you can get to your website. If you
are high up in the SERP’s, then you will enjoy high click through
rates, highly targeted traffic, and higher than usual conversion
rates, as searchers trust websites in the free listings much more
than those in the ppc sections of the search pages. A strong
seo campaign is all it takes ( well, pretty much ).

You will get some competitors clicking on your listing, but at
least it won’t cost you money in this case ( unlike ppc ads, for
instance ).

So, all traffic is not created equal – search engine traffic is
the purest, most resonsive traffic there is. Grab some as soon
as you can.

But, can google be beaten? More to the point, does it
need to be beaten?

Google is the world’s top search engine by some
considerable margin – bing and yahoo, at most control
20 – 30% of the search engine market share, and this is
not likely to change, no matter what you’ve heard.

In recent months, facebook has overtaken google in the
traffic stakes – but, what does this mean exactly? Does
it mean that facebook is generating more revenue than
google? No – the reality is that facebook and google
are two totally different entities, with totally
different objectives.

When people want to socialize, they go to facebook, when
they want to do research, or buy something, they go to
google. Can facebook compete with google in the search
engine stakes, though? Have you ever tried finding
stuff on facebook? The answer is a simple no way!

But, isn’t facebook launching an e-mail service? Yeah,
but so what? Even if they do grab some of google’s e-mail
market share, most people will probably still use their
g-mail account alongside facebook, especially seeing as
google links everything else to your e-mail account, too,
like google docs, analytics, and webmaster tools, to name
a few.

But, perhaps the most pertinent of all for internet marketers
is the question of whether normal website owners and / or
seo experts can beat google to grab top rankings.

The fact is that google isn’t competing with legitimate
online business owners – they want high quality sites with
high quality content in their indexes, so why would you
need to fight with them to get your site ranked?

Only spammers and scammers try to beat google, and they
always lose in the end.

So, stop fighting google – they’re smart, super-rich, and
you don’t need to fight them anyway. Work with google for
high rankings, and keep facebook, bing and yahoo in their
proper places.

Blackhat seo, as we know, refers to all of the old and spammy techniques
that many webmasters have used to boost the rankings in the serp’s.

Blackhat practices have largely been replaced by more subtle grey hat
strategies, seeing as most of the older, blacker tactics relate primarily
to on page optimization, and we know that on page seo doesn’t carry the
same weight that it formerly did. You know, keyword stuffing, tiny text
and all that stuff – it just doesn’t work anymore anyway. In fact, it is
really cause and effect – on page factors have been devalued because
so many people abused them with dodgy seo practices.

Grey hat seo involves the spammy use of incoming links, mostly from web
2.0 sites ( most notably link wheels ). But, does grey hat seo work? Does
blackhat seo still exist, or have the search engines eliminated it for
good?

Firstly, we specialize in whitehat seo, so we don’t really know that much
about the dark side. However, we do know black seo arts when we see
them.

Black hat seo does still exist, and it is no doubt more sophisticated than
ever, but there is also no doubt that any positive results from black hat
seo will be short lived.

Seeing as the focus of all seo these days has moved onto off page seo, via
link building, it is less likely that a person would get their website banned with
black hat seo ( this is due to the fact that a webmaster is not in control of
who links to them – if dodgy inbound links got a website banned, then all an
dastardly competitor would have to do would be to build loads and spammy
links to your site to get rid of you ).

Black hat seo is still dangerous, however, as google and the other search
engines can sometimes catch you in the act ( link buying, for example )
through manual analysis. At best, black hat links will be de-valued, so you’ll
have wasted your time and money.

And, it is not uncommon even now to see dangerous on page tactics being
used by some seo experts ( not really experts, you know? ) and web designers.

Stuff like cloaked text, dodgy re-directs, hell, even keyword stuffing the page
title tags. Now, this stuff can get your site banned, seeing as its on page, and
therefore your responsibilty.

So, as far as on page seo is concerned, be careful who you use – you don’t
want the double whammy of a website that is ineffectively optimized and
dangerously black hat.

But, what about grey hat seo? Well, the fact is that while grey hat seo is
safer, less aggressive, it is naturally less effective than blackhat seo.

So, why not just employ whitehat methods, then?

Aggressive whitehat seo is the very best way to boost your website rankings
safely and steadily.

Popular white hat methods include: press releases, article marketing, social
bookmarking, link requests, and guest blogging to name but a few.

Expert search engine optimization consultants will know what is effective and
what is safe – the last thing you want is to waste time or risk your website
rankings on outdated ‘old hat’ methods.

If you need more specific advice on hats or seo, call us…