Outsourcing is a major trend in many businesses today. From accounting to customer service to web design, many companies prefer to outsource these departments. When it comes to SEO, does outsourcing make sense as well? I suppose that the answer cannot be clear cut. There are pros and cons to outsourcing your SEO activities.

Take this line of thought from Leigh Hunt:

I’d even go so far as to say that SEO companies are detrimental for your online business.
And here’s why:

As any good online marketer will tell you, attracting targeted traffic to your website is the most important aspect of creating success in your online business.

It’s this knowledge to attract and convert traffic that will really empower you in your online business.

It’s this knowledge, or lack thereof, that will determine how successful you will be in the long term.

Do you really want to give this power to somebody else?

Do you want to put the knowledge of how to build your online business in the hands of someone who does not have any interest in your long term success beyond the fee you pay them month after month?

She does have a point, doesn’t she? Yet she herself admits that she got “royally screwed” by an SEO company in the past. Perhaps her bias is showing. Then again, I believe that you should empower yourself in order to be successful in anything. As she points out, with knowledge of SEO, you have full control over the success or failure of your business.

Let’s look at the other side of the coin in the next post.

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If you are quite serious in your efforts to understand SEO and learn about its ins and outs, one of the things that you can do is to get a how-to guide in the form of a book. There are many ways to learn about any topic – from web sites to blogs to magazines to pod casts, and so on. Sometimes, though, I prefer to browse through books – whether in paper form or on e-book form – simply because books have a certain structure to them. If you think linearly – like I sometimes do – then a book would be good for you to at least organize your thoughts.

I came across Craig Killick’s free e-book on SEO, entitled Let’s Cut to the Chase, on his blog. To be honest, I have never really heard of him before but after browsing through his blog, I got quite interested in the e-book and since it was for free, I went ahead and downloaded it.

So what does Killick have to offer in his e-book? The book basically documents his journey in the world of SEO and I like that fact – it is very easy reading and most anyone can relate to it. The way he shares and presents his ideas are quite easy to understand and implement. As he himself said in his blog, he does not claim to be THE expert on the matter and his e-book may not be as comprehensive as some might like it to be but the fact remains that his e-book does have something to offer that would change the SEO process for your small business for the better.

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Researching the right keywords is an integral part of SEO. Ask any person knowledgeable in this field and they will tell you that you have to have the right keywords in order to make some headway into the world of SEO. Yet how do you find out which keywords to use for your particular web site? There are plenty of tools out there, one of which is WordTracker.

I personally like WordTracker for a variety of reasons. For one, WordTracker offers hundreds of millions of keywords and key phrases that are specific to particular niches. You will most certainly find the most popular and most used keywords and key phrases for your specific subject using WordTracker. It has a free version, which anyone can use without having to shell out any money. I suggest, however, that you do get the full version as it offers much more than the free version. WordTracker will give you what your target audience is using as search terms in the major search engine. More so, WordTracker will help you figure out additional key words that you can use for your web site. It is very easy to use – most everything is intuitive – so you don’t have to waste time trying to figure out the software.

If you want to find out what WordTracker can do for you, try out the 7-day trial for free. Just make sure that if you do not want to continue using it, unsubscribe before the trial expires, otherwise, you will be billed for using it.

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For many beginners, the default choice is to set up their web site with a free hosting group. This may make sense financially as one does not have to lay out any money for the hosting of the web site or the blog. Yet if there is one thing that you could do at the beginning to improve your online presence, it would be to get your own domain. After all, you can get domains these days for relatively cheap prices. Why should you get your own domain name when you can get one for free?

The main reason is that with the free web sites or blogs, you normally have limited choices as to what your domain name would be. The typical domain name would have the (free) host’s name and then your chosen name as a sub-domain or an add on. This does not do much for SEO, really.

I like how Aftab Ahmed Siddiqui explained how important the domain name is when it comes to SEO. In his article, he outlines how he was able to optimize a web site for certain keywords using a specific keyword in the domain name. He goes on to say:

Google considers your domain name as a part of its algorithm or ranking criteria. If your web site is well optimized and your domain name contains your main keyword, you definitely have better chance of higher placement on SERPS.

So if you want to up your chances of being in the higher ranks with search engines, you might want to shell out a little bit of money to get your own domain name. More than giving credence to Google’s algorithm, you would also want to make it easier for your visitors to remember your URL – and with your own domain name, you can do so easily.

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For many people, it used to be that Flickr was perfect for SEO purposes. However, when Flickr suddenly made use of nofollow tags to comments and picture captions, it seemed that the bomb dropped on these people. Naturally, negative reactions erupted all over the web because of this action – which took place around last week, by the way. If you have not heard of this, don’t get immediately swayed by the prevailing opinion – that Flickr is now useless for SEO. I ran across a post on this issue, which provided me with a better perspective of the whole she-bang. Will Paoletto at BigOak Blog shares:

1.) Flickr has not added nofollow to discussion boards. For those of you who liked to scout out high PageRank pages and just drop your link as a comment to the photo, which could be accomplished easily if you owned a link-laundering website, you can still do this in the Flickr group discussion boards. Flickr has not yet added nofollow tags to those, and given the preponderance of discussions that revolve around people sharing photos, you can just as easily drop relevant external links in the discussion and reap link juice benefits.

2.) Flickr has not added nofollow to personal profile pages. If you have a personal profile page, you can place targeted anchor text on it, point links at it, and receive full SEO benefit as it gains PageRank.

3.) Flickr has not added nofollow to group pages. If you own a Flickr group, you can still put as many links as you wish on the main group page without fear of them being turned into nofollow.

So there you go – you still have three areas wherein you can work your SEO magic. What do you think?

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Towards the end of February till the early days of March, Google PageRank underwent some updating. This should be good, no? Well, if I were to base my answer on the various goings on in the blogosphere, it seems that something has gone not-quite-right. Then again, it depends on your perspective.

According to denizens of the cyber world, the recent PageRank update has brought on trouble for internal web pages that have no external links pointing at them. Think about your own blog or web site, which pages are not likely to have external links pointing at them? You got it – they’re probably resources and the pages that contain links that point outward! The thing is, these pages are necessary. The other thing is, you can’t really have too many incoming links coming from external sources to these pages! So do not be surprised if you suddenly see the PageRank of these pages drop – I have seen some of these pages drop to PR0 even!

So what should be your course of action now? According to Kenkai, do not panic. He goes on to say that:

It’s only an indicator that is fairly accurate for one day every three to four months and B, the longevity of a link has always been more important than whether it it PR3 or PR2.
For new links, look at the PR of the index page and how many links are on the page that you are being offered a link from. A PR0 page with 150 links on it, isn’t worth considering, but a PageRank 0 page with ten links on it may be, as long as the link ticks the other link factor boxes.

So keep your pants on. It’s not the end of the world.

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I am sure that you have read and heard a lot of discussion regarding the Alexa Toolbar for blogs. This has been a hot topic for quite some time now and whether or not the Alexa Toolbar is actually helpful may not be clear to you. On the one hand, there are those bloggers who swear by it. On the other hand, there are bloggers who say that it is nothing but hype. So what is it really? Let’s take a look at both sides – the pros and the cons.

Down with Alexa!
-The toolbar is very much utilized by web developers. This is not inherently bad but it does affect the sample of the users. As such, the figures may not be as accurate as you would like it to be.

-Manipulation of Alexa figures can be easy. Though this may do wonders for your sense of achievement, it may not be reflective of true success.

-You can only use so many toolbars. If Alexa is not that accurate, you might be better off using other toolbars.

Go Alexa!
-Having good Alexa figures can help impress other users who trust in them. More so, this could also catch the attention of advertisers, making it work for you.

-Using the toolbar is convenient – you can see your figures without having to visit the Alexa site.

-An Alexa thumbnail of your site can be used by other sites. This will increase your popularity eventually.

So, what is the verdict? Try it out for yourself and see if it will work for you. If not, remove it and nothing is lost. If it works, then good for you!

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