Toronto SEO Firm - SEO & SEM Specialist

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.

Not to say Ask.com is anything like a pimple but we are talking relative size here.  The question is, can a search engine that is 1/17th the size of the industry leader run a profitable business model?  The answer is, YES! 

Forbes is reporting that Jim Safka, head of Ask.com announced his company will acquire Lexico, the owner of sites including Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com.  The deal has an estimated acquisition value of over $100 million dollars.

Back in March Ask laid off just under 10% of it’s workforce and decided to focus on women above 30 and web searchers looking for answers to questions about health, fitness and entertainment because it appears this niche made up a majority of their user base.  With only a shrinking 4% share of searches Ask seems to be holding on by a thread.  There has even been speculation that they would soon be dropping its own search algorithm in favor of licensing Google’s search technology.

Safka denies this claim and say that the new Lexico acquisition is to take advantage of current Ask.com users that tend use full-sentence questions three times as often as users of other search engines.  So for now it looks like Ask.com will keep up the fight and just try not to go head on with Google but instead to attempt some innovative side-steps in hope of capturing a bit more market share and perhaps some more loyal customers.

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

Our original website, www.OnlineBusinessStartups.com concentrated on web design, advertising and promotion solutions.  We began providing SEO services to our in-house clients over three years ago, since then our company has matured to the point where we are now able to accomodate additional SEO service clients.   Over the next few months we will be able to take on a limited number of new SEO clients.  Please contact us for a free quote to see if our service is right for you.

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.