Here’s our thought: Definitely not both!

A good ‘best practice’ policy to follow is that you never want more than one agency ramping up your SEO efforts. The ONLY exception to this rule is if you are hiring competing firms for separate, non-competing websites in which you manage. Then it can be fun!

But the original question stands: The lone wolf or the dream team? Consider this……

The one-man SEO show:

PROS: He will likely cost you less than hiring a team.

CONS: All of your SEO eggs are in one basket. What if your guy drops off the face of the Earth? (in all fairness, an SEO company could face the same fate, but we’re running the odds) Takes a vacation? Gets sick? Do you really want your SEO campaign to match one man’s schedule? Also, one man CANNOT perform optimum website SEO himself, leaving spotty link building in his wake.

The SEO Team:

PROS: Hiring a company with a team gives you the ‘two heads are better than one’ approach. Maximum optimization can be realized when the team implements an assembly line process to building links. SEO firms are far more likely to use proprietary in-house systems for off-page SEO strategies, making results more predictable. A well run team is always more trustworthy and reliable than any one person.

CONS: The team concept will likely cost more than a single optimizer.

Just like with anything else, you get exactly what you pay for.

“We’ll even host your site for you” (for a small fee, of course). Sounds good, right? Well, maybe not…..

Those who are internet savvy know that this is not the optimum way to have a site built, but for those not currently in-the-know, let me explain:

Building a website is very similar to building a house. The language framework in which the website is built is like the structure framework of your house. The content on your website (text, images, etc.) represents the furniture that would go inside your house. But, just like your website, your house cannot be constructed just anywhere. You need a piece of land on which to build. The land on which you build your home is like the hosting platform on which you build your website.

So, would you pay a builder to build your new house on land that the builder owned and leased to you? If the answer is ‘yes’, there is no need to read further……..

Your web designer and your hosting agent should not be the same company.

When you hire a web designer, and use that designers hosting service, you don’t really own the site they are constructing for you, but are merely renting it. Sure, you own the content of the site (furniture), but the framework (house) and the hosting (land) belong to the web designer. As long as you pay the designer for whatever fees they ask, you are fine. But when you decide to take your website and go with someone else because of better rates or more effective work, your web presence will have to start…..all…..over.

Avoiding this pitfall can be very easy. After you have a domain name secure, you should get your own hosting. Companies like BlueHost, HostGator, and Go Daddy offer very reasonable shared hosting for smaller websites (less than $100 per year), or dedicated hosting which costs more, but can handle bigger websites. And when comparing, you will likely find that using your own hosting is considerably less expensive than the web designer’s.

Once this is done, shop for a quality website designer that is willing to work for hire, building a website for you on your newly acquired hosting platform. This will keep the work honest and the hosting fees down. If you find a designer unwilling to build on your hosting platform, you might want to keep shopping.

You may be an internet expert, but if not and you have questions, always try to seek advice from an unbiased third party that you trust.

And 3-way linking was born……

The idea makes sense. Instead of trading links with another website, an SEO firm would create another custom site from which to bounce links, creating a ‘triangle’ effect. Now, links can travel to and from trading websites without breaking the reciprocal linking bad practice.

A great idea…………………4 years ago.

This is a practice that Humankind SEO endorsed, but the latest Google algorithm updates have given many reputable SEO firms reason to pause. It seems that the value of links traced between the same three websites has dropped significantly. Today, webmasters requesting 3-way links might mean well, but their ideas are ‘late to the party’, as well as on Google’s radar.

But why? For what reason does Google de-value these links? The answer, we believe, goes like this:

(!) Candlewood Suites – Kingwood – Front Desk – Ask for a package for ‘Poisoned Jello’ (!)

Google believes that the best ranking should go to the website that offers the everyday Google user the most relevant content. Subsequently, these relevant sites shouldn’t need to offer anything in exchange for quality links. Google feels that, if you need to offer money, discounts, special treatment, or any other benefit in exchange for a link from your website, then that site probably doesn’t deserve your link. Think about it. If you are owned bariatric clinic and a local hospital system with a powerful, well respected website requested an article from you on your opinion of the latest, cutting edge bariatric procedure, you would most likely feel honored by the request and submit said article (even if you had an assistant write it for you). This article, if published on the hospital system’s website, would almost certainly include a link from the hospital website to your bariatric clinic website.

And there you have it! A high quality, relevant link direct to your website that you acquired correctly.

Nice work!

Back in February, Overstock.com was penalized by Google for improper SEO tactics involving link building.

At the request of some Humankind SEO clients, we will attempt to explain what Overstock.com is accused of and what you can do to learn from their error.

An excerpt from the Wall Street Journal article:

“In Overstock’s case, the retailer offered discounts of 10% on some merchandise to students and faculty. In exchange, it asked college and university websites to embed links for certain keywords like “bunk beds” or “gift baskets” to Overstock product pages.

Until recently, links to Overstock pages were among the top three results for such words on Google search results. By Tuesday afternoon, links to Overstock for those same searches dropped to between No. 40 and No. 70 in the rankings.

The change followed a complaint by a competitor last week to Google about Overstock’s actions”

The EDU links:

The Link Offer:

Can you see what Overstock is trying to do?

Google is fuzzy about many details, but one detail they are (fairly) clear on is the acquisition of links. A website owner is allowed to acquire links that pass page rank, but not to purchase them. Overstock, though they are not directly purchasing these links, are offering a direct financial incentive to EDU site webmasters with link building access. The goal? To “acquire” high quality inbound links from EDU sites to assist in Google ranking. If Google was unclear about this manner of acquiring links in the past, they made a profound judgment on it here.

The take away: Buy all of the ‘no-follow’ links your heart desires, but links passing page rank need to handled judiciously…..and carefully.

As a contributor to Price’s daily morning talk show, The Price of Business, Humankind SEO was approached with the opportunity to develop and optimize the newly founded website.

“We love the show and contribute to the show regularly”, said Hudspeth, “so the decision to exert our optimization expertise for the new website came easily”.

Humankind SEO is a Houston, Texas based search engine optimization firm with clients ranging from hospital systems to auto dealer groups to mom & pop businesses.

The Price of Business airs weekdays at 11am CST on Talk Radio 650 AM in Houston, Texas.

What: Houston Business Marketing Advantage Seminar

When: Wednesday, March 9th, 2011 – 9am to 3pm

Where: The Bank of America Building – 2302 Fannin, Suite 200 (2nd Floor), Houston, Texas 77002

Registration: $69.50

Discount Registration (HNN and BNI members): $49.50

Price of Business Listeners Registration

Guest speakers will include Rick Yandle with Design at Work, Carla Medlinka with Change Magazine and Tammie Nielsen with TK Media. Visit BluePennies.com for more information! I’ll see you there!

We left off with: “But why?”, you ask. “Why would I begin to rank higher on Google for ‘New Widget model 335C’ if I am not specifically targeting that keyword phrase”?

Google will establish importance to all websites, and websites deemed more important by Google will receive more visits from Google checking out the goods and services offered on said website. Plus, not only does Google return more often to ‘important’ sites, but they stay on the site longer, giving their ‘bots’ more time to rifle through your site collecting data.

Soooo…….

When someone out in the world searches for the new “Super Gadget 8G”, Google will recall crawling data pertaining to the “Super Gadget 8G” on an important website. YOUR WEBSITE!! Even though you are not specifically optimized for “Super Gadget 8g”, Google still makes the connection and conspicuously displays to the Google user the page of your website where the search data is found. Voila! The secondary benefit of ‘big rocks’ ranking! Taking care of the big rocks first helps your website gain a clear focus on the direction of your web presence. Do this and Google will help pick up the crumbs for you!

http://www.thespec.com/news/world/article/484704–the-dirty-little-secrets-of-search

Here are the points of note I got out of the article:

• Don’t use black hat techniques like buying links, making gateway pages, or cloaking.
• It helps if you pay Google millions a month in AdWord spend.
• Google is able to manually control SERP results and update their algorithms on the fly. Note that the change wasn’t instant but happened over a week.
• If Google were to punish for offsite grey hat SEO like link building it would be easy to kill a competitor’s site. They won’t do this.

So be careful out there. Walk the line carefully and keep an eye on your SEO program!

To give an example of ranking with zero indexed links, let me share with you one of our throwaway made-for-adsense (MFA) sites. We threw this site up six months or so ago to test out some ranking theories and promptly forgot about it. After getting so many questions about indexing and replying so many times, I decided to drag it up as an example I don’t mind sharing.

Site: www.courseair.com
Indexed links: Zero
Ranking terms:

So what’s the takeaway? You can rank easily with volume of weak links, just like a dripping faucet can fill a bathtub. That’s what makes Linklicious.me so powerful – it takes that flood of low quality links and makes sure they count for you.

This begs the question though. Would I rather have an indexed link or an unindexed link. The answer is indexed of course, simply because Google considers it more valuable. But I think so little of indexing that I never even check to see my indexing stats. Instead of building 10 or 50 links to get a page indexed, just throw those links at your money site where they can make a direct and obvious benefit without link juice dilution.

So head out there and start testing these “facts” you hear about. Don’t take what I or anyone else spouts as the truth. (And of course share some secrets with us when you find them!)

It is easy to be consumed by the multitude of keyword phrases for which your website might be relevant. Sometimes these phrases might be for one of many products you are selling, like ‘New Widget model 335C’, or maybe the keyword phrase is a vanity phrase, like ‘best CPA in Houston Texas’. These keyword phrases might seem important, but the search volume for phrases like these can be much lower than you think. Planting your optimization tree here will not bear much fruit at all.

Instead, focus on the “Big Rocks” first. These big rocks are the keyword phrases relevant to your business that are searched the most. If you have a phrase searched 10,000 times per month and no other phrase relevant to your business comes close, then that my friends is a BIG ROCK! Focus your efforts there and with a few other big rocks, and soon you will see the little rocks begin to follow suit.

“But why?”, you ask. “Why would I begin to rank higher on Google for ‘New Widget model 335C’ if I am not specifically targeting that keyword phrase”?

The answer is easily explained. It is……….

Tune in next week boys and girls. Same bat time, Same bat channel.