Toronto SEO Firm - GTA SEO & SEM Specialist

It is not really a close-kept secret but it is relatively new and is quite powerful as I am finding with my tests.  It is the power of image alt tags. 

With Google image search being used at a growing rate you can really drive substantial amounts of traffic to your website by utilizing your alt image tags.  Make sure they are descriptive but also that they use high-traffic keywords.  For image heavy niches they can drive tons of quality traffic as I am finding out with my fashion blog, last month I recieved 12k visits from Google images and my adsense has tripled for that site.  It seems three of my images are on the first page of Google’s image search for some very popular terms and those are driving the nice boost in traffic and conversions.

Another great thing that I am noticing so far is that the increase in traffic has not triggered ’smart pricing’ because the quality of traffic from these image searches are high.  So start going through your websites and find all the older images you have that are missing alt tags and add them in.  The traffic boost will be well-worth your time.

There have been a few posts recently about all the fly-by-night SEO scammers that are giving the entire industry a bad name.  Here is an example of one on DigitalPoint forums and I have seen this style of SEO scam run dozens of time over the past few weeks.

Here is their sales pitch:

Keyword Optimization Service - Customer Satisfication guarantee

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Search Engine Placement Introduction:

web-designlk.com is an Natural Search Engine Optimization Unit, that builds professional search engine marketing strategies for long-term keyword placement on major search engines. Our search engine marketing strategies offer your company a logical solution for exposure to the Internet public through intense research and development to assure any company success within search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Why Web-designlk SEO Experts?

Web-designlk Srilanka We’re specialized in Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing . We have the Proven Experience and Expertise in Optimizing Website that Succeed by Bringing in Best Enquiries, Which Generate Sales and are an Asset to Your Business.Customer Satisfication is Our Main Goal, Our Professional Keyword Optimization Package features a unique two step process to optimizing your website for a higher ranking in regular search results.

1st Step -
1, Keyword Research / Competetor Keyword Reserach Analyzing
2, Optimize Your Webpage [onpage - Opt] Contents .

2nd Step-

1, off-page search engine optimization Link Building
2, 3rd Party Personal Campaign Launching & Start Submissions + Opt.

Why Keyword Placement is Important?

• Boost Your Search Engine Traffic & Maximum ROI
• Drive Real Traffic Your Website
• Increase Your Business Conversation
• Multiple First Page Listings
• Dominate Your Competetor Keywords
• Long Term Search Engine Popularity

Actually does not sound too bad, and certainly at the top end of the spectrum for Indian based SEO scammers.  But as pointed out in the thread, once you look a little deeper into what they have achieved in the past for clients the smoke-mirrors and BS start to unfold.

Working from your keywords in your screenshot I will call you out on your service:

Url: http://www.vengadeshwaraa.com
Domain Age:11 Months
Current PR: 03.
Project: 5 Keyword opt in Top Ten.
See Screenshot

For number 2 keyword there is 2 competition in quotes, for number 3 keyword there is zero competition in quotes and for the third keyword there is 1 competition in quotes.

Charging a customer to rank for keywords with almost no competition is very shady and then posting those results as proof of your SEO skills is quite deceiving.

Good catch IC_IC, this is one of the most popular scams out there and most webmasters (especially the beginners) don’t catch it.

The response given when confronted with this obvious fraud is priceless:

“we are just working with client requirements only, if client needs only this keywords , we will particular keywords. we dont care about traffic..”

and that pretty much sums up the state of SEO fraud.

I read a good informative post by Doug Caverly at WebProNews.com, it talks about some changes Google has recently made to their section on “What’s an SEO?  It seems Google has taken down their warnings about SEO’s a few notches.

The old version mentioned “a few unethical SEOs” in the fourth line and then jumped into a list of warning signs.  The revised help page introduces a negative in line three, but uses the gentler term “irresponsible.”  From there, it names a lot of possible benefits.

“Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including: Reviewing and providing recommendations on your site content or structure . . . Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript . . . Content development . . . Managing online business . . . development campaigns . . . Keyword research . . . SEO training.”

Relatively neutral, background check-type questions follow, and then the same warnings eventually appear.  It seems Google now has fewer qualms about nudging people towards SEOs, though, or has at least decided that its old description came off as too harsh.

Barry Schwartz deserves credit for unearthing the less-than-sweet version.  And perhaps as another way of saying “sorry,” Google’s asking people to contribute their own SEO-related recommendations.  Google has upset so many folks with it’s seemingly non discriminate penalties that it want to make nice with a portion of their professional user base?

There have been rumors of such techniques floating around for ages and there are even some black-hat SEO’s that specialize in this type of “link bombing”.  The gist of the deal is that you create organically or through purchase ‘bad’ links to your competitor’s websites in hopes of causing their search engine rank position to plummet.

There are a couple of interesting posts floating around about this practice because someone from Google has chimed in on this controversial topic.  It is funny how a subject matter can take on a complete different view depending on how you look at it.  There are a couple of headlines out there that in my opinion are quite deceiving: “Google Defends Bad Link Theory & Repeats That Competitors Can’t Hurt You” and “Google Debunks Link Sabotage Theories” - In both cases I think the reality is the complete opposite of the titles.  Here are the two quotes that made me realize this, “Most of these guidelines involve the content on the site itself, something which generally can’t be changed through links pointing to the site.”  To me this means that some of the guidelines refer to incoming links and those can and will affect  your site in a negative way.  The next quote is even more ominous, “In theory, I can imagine that there might be some borderline situations where that would be possible, however in all the time I have spend diagnosing website issues I have not once run into a situation like that. Also, I know that if a situation like that were to come to our attention, it would be resolved very quickly.”  This last one tells me that it is possible and because of stiff competition I believe it is even likely.  Sure, if it comes to their attention that it is being done it can be resolved but it might never come to their attention, right?

Bottom line is that it is very unfair that something beyond your control should affect your website’s ranking.  Especially when it is so easy for a competitor to use these techniques to harm your site.  I am also guessing that the occurrence of this type of black-hat technique is much more prevalent than anyone knows.  After all, a few positions in Google ranking for popular keywords can means 10’s of thousands of dollars to some businesses.

I am happy to mention that I am now ranking number one for ‘Toronto SEO Agency’, competition is similar to ‘Toronto SEO Firm’ around 90k.

I was also checking the ranking of ‘Toronto SEO Firm’ and I noticed a nice little bonus, that my pricing page is also ranking on the first page of results for that term!

For those of you following my progress you would know that I have been doing SEO for about 3 years but only for in-house clients and my own websites.  I recently decided to take on a few new projects, hence the development of this site.  www.torontoSEOfirm.com first went live on May 9, 2008, just over a week ago and already I am ranking on the first page of Google results for one of my targeted terms (see image below) - We even have a site-link for our newest post! - This term does not have a lot of competition so it is not exactly a monumental accomplishment but it does give a good indication of how ‘doing things right’ can have a very positive effect, even with a new site.

I have been a critic of Google’s posturing and seemingly indiscriminate awarding of penalties for a long-time. 

There has been a ton of speculation around the industry of -20, -50, -60, -100 penalties (for those laypersons this is a SERP penalty that subtracts ranks you should be awarded, so if you normally should rank number 9 for a specific keyword or phrase, with a -60 penalty you would rank number 69 instead).  Someone found a site listed in number 61 position with sitelinks, usually sitelinks show only for the first result in a Google search.  Rumor has it that these penalties are being applied because of the suspected purchase of paid links.

I have said it before and I will say it again, until I see proof that Google can read a webmaster’s mind I don’t think these type of penalties are fair, or a good businesses practise for that matter.  If Google is going to punish websites so serverely because they ‘think’ the owners have bought links then it is going to be really easy to sink the competition.  Simply go on a little spending spree buying up site-wide links on some crappy unrelated pharma sites and watch your competition sink in the SERPs.

I better get busy and check my Paypal account so see how many competitors I can afford to get penalized.

I am always keeping an eye out for what my competition charges (click to enlarge the image) and here is the price page for an SEO in New York.  I won’t comment on whether his prices are too high because I don’t know a lot about the quality of his work. One thing I do know is good SEO/SEM is very valuable and can pad the bottom line of a company more often and at a better value than almost any type of advertising and promotional campaigns

Our SEO/SEM monthly packages are on sale now for 50% off (this offer may end without notice) and start at an affordable $300, take a look at our pricing page for more details.  Click here for a free, no obligation custom quote

The usual smoke-and-mirrors we are used to from Google were put away for a brief period this week during an interview Udi Manber, VP of Google Search had with Popular Mechanics.  Manber mentioned that Google had tweaked its’ algorithm 450 times last year.  This explains some of the really weird disappearances and resurrections of many websites and directories.

He also made an revealing statement about on-page SEO, saying: “I wish people would put more effort into thinking about how other people will find them and putting the right keywords onto their pages,” - It makes you wonder where the line is drawn between proper white-hat SEO and gaming the search results. 

Something else that was said that effects directories and other penalized websites is a statement that: “Google doesn’t adjust search results by hand.  “If we find, for a particular query, that result No. 4 should be result No. 1, we do not have the capability to manually change it,” “We have to find what weakness in the algorithm caused that result and find a general solution to that, evaluate whether a general solution really works and if it’s better, and then launch a general solution.” That sounds like BS to me and it is quite obvious that there has been many ‘hand-adjusted’ visible tool bar ranking for directories and blogs.  I suppose Matt Cutts will be busy fielding much of the follow up to the answers from this interview.