If you are trying to do a little SEO by thinking of ways people search for your company, here is a great post I wrote on my other site BWI: 200 Different Ways to Say Your Name. I was doing a little research on one of my clients site, and found that his visitors had searched for his company using over 274 keywords. This happened all in one month, and with less than 2,000 searches from Google.

Last night I put out  new post on BWI about how I think Google is starting to demand more than a lump of a website, Google Wants You to Be More Specific.

It’s a post I put a little more time into so I hope you check it out. I believe this will be the trend for Web 3.0 or schematic websites. The trend is, it’s time to start lining your ducks in a row, and stop leaving Google or other search engines to do all the work. You could ignore the subtle clues Google is suggesting, but if you do, you will simply lose out to those that have a well organized site. You know heading tags work, you know sitemaps are important, meta tags have been doing it forever, but microforats or rich snippets as Google calls them, will soon be playing a larger roll. Check out the post, and see what I mean, and please make a comment on it if you have in insight to this.

Google Wants You to Be More Specific

I’m sure many of you know by now using videos is a great way to market your site. Their fun, their viral, and can often make a deal. Simply putting your video on YouTube is not enough though. You have to optimize it. You have to make it visible to the major search engines besides just Google. You have to at least give it a fighting chance.

Tons of Others Competing Against You

So you got your video, and you’re ready to upload. Are you ready for the traffic? You probably don’t have to be. A common occurrence is that you will hardly get anything out of it. To make a video viral you have to do it right, you have to be competitive, and you have to remember there are others competing for that traffic as well. Have you done anything to optimize it for search engines? Most likely you are just hoping others will like your video.

Unless you are already a professional at video marketing, now might be the time to consider using a video SEO service, like the one provided by USO Networks. USO Networks is the world’s foremost leader in video creation, distribution and optimization, and their proprietary technology continually works to achieve the highest possible search rankings for videos.

Making a high quality video is not as easy as you may think. USO can help you with every aspect of the site besides just marketing it. They can help you with the content creation, the making of the video, and of course the marketing. Maximize your efforts for quality video, and make those efforts pay by having a well promoted one.

Tired of submitting to directories yourself? SEO Focused to the rescue. While many SEO services are ready to take on your whole project, many webmasters already know what to do, at least pretty well. Why buy the whole package when you can do much of it yourself, and at a lower cost. Here is where SEO Focus can help. Check out these rates for their link building service.

There are some screaming good deals there, and if you are trying to get links using the social bookmarking technique, they offer equally great rates here: social bookmarking. The owner of the site is a popular DP member with an impeccable transaction feedback. Not one negative comment that I could find. Hopefully, I will be adding to his rep as well because I am trying out the service as well. I just signed up for a smaller package as a sample for another website I have to get it submitted to a bunch of directories. I believe directories are often one of the more safer places to list your site when you are using a service like this. I will keep you posted how it goes!

Also, for those of you looking for free advice, that addtionally have a seo blog with some basic tips and updates.

Do you live in Vancouver Canada, and are in need of a  SEO consultant? SEO Visions might be your ticket. SEO Visions specializes in site optimization for search engines, link building (to enhance your ranking), and article writing/submitting. They also can manage any pay per click campaigns you might want to run, and are Yahoo Ambassadors. See SEO Visions pay per click advertising service.

SEO Visions is based in Vancouver Canada. The man in charge is Tod Mumford, and he has been doing SEO for over seven years now. Combined with his partners they have over twenty years in industry experience on getting your site ranked at the top. They offer several SEO packages, and can also create a custom plan just for you. I would always call, or get more details before getting a pre-defined plan. Your not an SEO expert are you? How do you really know what you need?

Comparing prices and services SEO Visions seems very competitve. They have a great resource of SEO articles, and additionally have a good list of search engine that you can submit your site to. Listing your site in directories and search engine is something anyone can do. So if you haven’t done that yet, it’s time to get on it.

For those of you in the UK here is another seo and marketing site for you, TopClickMedia.co.uk. Before I even saw their URL I new I was on a UK site when I saw “looking at search engine optimisation” on their SEO page. The clue is the “S” and not a “Z” in optimization. Top Click Media specializes in PPC, SEO, and web design/branding.

It’s All Abou the Clicks

That’s their tag line, getting you the clicks. I know that’s what I want. To be a little more specific though, I want quality clicks. Top Click Media’s primary business is getting you clicks with quality pay per click services. The do campaigns on Google, MSN, and Yahoo, and have been managing ppc campaigns for over seven years. They also do campaigns on cell phones and Facebook, but what I have read about advertising on Facebook is “stay away”. I’m sure if it is done carefully it can work though. Facebook might also be important for branding techniques. I’m not a marketing expert, so you will have to ask someone like Top Click Media.

Ad-Doctor

Another great service they offer is Ad-Doctor. I think this is a great idea. What they do is make sure your ads will a high percentage click thru. This is important for two reasons. The first reasons is that you want clicks. The second reason is that better performing ads cost less per click. Getting more for less is good, and testing with no experience in this can be an expensive venture.

Overall a nice looking site, and when you check it out, you will find it is clearly all about the clicks. I’m sure they are doing well.

Looking for an online marketing company? HubShout is an online marketing company that offers SEO services as well, and apparently they do it very well. They managed to rank 2nd on Google for the keyword “SEO technology”. That’s not an easy thing to do considering the 10,000,000 plus other sites competing for it..

HubShout will first prep your site for search engines, help you build up your links to improve search engine rank, and will even manage a paid search campaign. Building backlinks is one of my favorite methods because it works two fold. It improves your search rankings, which gets you more visitors, and it also improves your visibility. Forget the search engines for a second. Having a ton of links pointing to your site will generate traffic on their own. Especially if they are on a popular site. Before you get started with them though, make sure you take advantage of their free consultation.

You can also find on the site a list of seo articles if you are determined to do things yourself, or are just doing your research. Online marketing is still a challenge, and it’s easy to waste your money quickly so as I have said many times before on this blog. Do your homework before starting a campaign. An even better idea is talk to an seo expert before you start your site.

Here is another SEO site for you, see search engine optimization New York. The site is owned by Davidz On Online Web Design Studio. Davidz On Online Web Design Studio, or what I will now call Doowds (dudes?), is a group of New York web designers. I wonder if they really are just a group of dudes? Doowds specialize in web design and flash, but additionally offer seo services to get your site seen.

Doowds has a ton of of clients, and a huge portfolio to show off their work. Having a web development company that also specializes in SEO can be a great combination. Optimizing a site should begin day one. Another unique feature about them is that they actually offer a hosting service as well. I personally refer my clients to a hosting company. I don’t want to be a IT tech support guy for when a customers email doesn’t work. Leave that stuff for the hosting company. Apparently though, they have the support, the service, and looking at the plans a competitive rate. Plans were basically based on storage,  and not traffic. Hats off to them, I wish that was my office.

Davidz on Online Web Design Studio, I won’t call them Doowds anymore. A great looking Web Design Studio that offers complete website support.

Here is another search engine marketing site for you, Seologist. Their logo doesn’t do them justice on my site. Their template is cool I think. Anyhow, Seologist offers a variety of marketing packages ranging from $800-$2000. All of the plans they have will help optimize your site for keywords, but on the internet today you need a lot more than keyword optimization. Optimizing your site is just the starting point for their packages.

Google AdWords

Seologist SEO plans also include search engine marketing. This most likely means buying ad space on Google or Yahoo. When a SEO marketing company offers a service like this, make sure they are AdWords qualified or Yahoo qualified. Here is a quote what it means to be qualified from Google’s site.

This individual has met Google’s requirements to attain recognition as a Qualified Google Advertising Professional.

If they are not qualified you could be throwing money down the drain by inexperienced, self proclaimed specialist. It’s not a difficult qualification either, so if your “SEO specialist” can’t pass it, well, you know. Burn money burn. Seologist are qualified by Google.

Comparing the Plans

Seologist has four basic plans: Pop, Funk, Jazz, and Fusion. The names go with the theme of the site. They have a nice side by side comparison, SEO Ontario, and if it were up to me, I would just get the most basic, Pop. By going with the Pop plan you can always request the specific things that the higher up plans  have, making it a little more custom for you.

Free Quote

Can’t hurt to get a quote. At Seologist you can get a free quote, and another thing I like about this site is that great big phone number on top. I would always insist on talking to the specialist before making an order online for SEO work. Whatever company you select to use for doing this type of marketing, be as informed as possible. This is an easy place for a small business owner to just throw money away making a poor decision.

So if you read my last post, SEO Services, you may have realized that optimizing a site for search engines isn’t neccessarily about fixing the actual site, and that it can really be heavily influenced just by having a ton of other sites linking to you. Those are quality sites of course.

Graffias Network is a site designed to help you get those links, and is even used by SEO specialists for link building. One of the ways they improve your backlinks is by directory submission. This is something you could do yourself, but it takes a long time, and costs more. They charge only $5 per link (with some conditions), and if you look at the list of where they submit, many of those sites charge much more doing it yourself. Besides directory submissions they also have a network of blogs where they write posts about your sites, create content for you, and various other blog tasks that can help spread the work, and improve the quality of your site.

Graffias Network does offer web services as well. It is more of marketing a site in general, but sometimes in optimizing you need a little webmaster help as well. They offer: web design, coding, web development, and several promotional services. The Graffias Network is a relatively new network, as of 2008, but they have been in the business since 2001. In 2004 they experienced a rapid expansion of sites and services,  which has become the large network they are now. Take the time to dig around, and check it out.