FAQ
What is Search
Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Search
engine
optimization (also known as SEO) is the process of improving the volume
and quality of
traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" (or "organic")
search results. As the name suggests, this is acheived by 'optimizing'
a website for Search Engines.
Why
do I need SEO?
Usually, the earlier a site
is presented in the search results
or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site.
For eg - if you were to search for 'online dating' on Google, you will
get
121,000,000 results. If your site is about online dating but its on
page 14,562,572,
it really isn’t helping anyone. The top ranked sites are the
ones that will get
the most clicks. So as you can see, it only makes sense to SEO your
site.
Do you use any automatic
submission tools?
We have evaluated several submission software
packages and realized that none of them handle the submissions with
customization and care that optimized submission deserves. Most
submission software’s claim to fame is that they submit to
hundreds, sometimes thousands of search engines and directories. This
can lead easily into a trap, as most of this 1000s of places submitted
to are considered FFA or Spam links destinations. This can easily
trigger major search engines to penalize or even ban your website.
We strongly advise against automated submission to
thousands of so called search engines and directories.
All our submissions are done by hand, carefully
selecting appropriate SE procedures and directory categories. The site
title description and classification of your site during hand
submission is critical and carefully handled.
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Do you use off-the-shelf
automated optimization software?
We have evaluated
most
optimization softwares that matter. Though most of this software
handles analytical basics very well (like key phrase popularity and
similar tasks), professional website optimization requires way more
human intelligence and research than any off-the-shelf software can
handle. There are various skill sets and accumulated expertise required
which optimization software cannot handle independently. All
our optimization is done by hand using the latest knowledge
based
on search engine algorithms and trends. The result surpasses by far
what any software can deliver.
How
does this all work?
Our procedure is
simple to understand but very elaborate in implementation.
The following steps will give you a fair idea of our procedure:
-
Analysis:
Seobay starts with a full analysis of your website. Depending upon your
needs, we analyze all the aspects related to your area of concern. This
is done semi-automatic for some areas and mostly manual for others. We
use a proofed combination of some online web tools coupled with manual
scrutiny for analysis.
-
Reports and Recommendations:
The analysis reports are sent to you with recommendations. These are
diagnostic reports identifying problem areas with recommendations of
viable solutions. Each project is handled manually.
-
Optimization:
This stage covers implementation of code optimization, SEO copywriting
and re-linking the site so it becomes search engine crawler friendly.
For a full service detail, check out our SEO services
page. All implementation is manually taken care of.
- Link
Building: This is the last and final stage of our Service.
We will build one-way, reciprocal, three-way links, and get links from
Article submission, Press Release distribution etc.
All the above
steps are covered on a individual project basis. A team of
professionals – everyone working within and responsible for
their own specialized field, handles various skill based modules of
each project manually.
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For which search engines would
the site be optimized?
Most search
engines, which include Google, MSN, Yahoo, Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves and
Hotbot, all follow similar ranking algorithms. We optimize web content
keeping in mind the basic fabric of search engine behavior.
Interestingly, there are only finite number of on-page parameters
available to each search engine to evaluate the relevance of a website.
However, weight assigned to each parameter may vary, which gives them
their individuality. Our SEO effort addresses each on page factor to
its optimum level using ethical and safe techniques. This ensures good
performance in all search engines that matter.
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Do you practice ethical SEO?
Absolutely! Our
procedure ascertains that your site content is easy for spiders to
index and there are no crawler roadblocks. We practice only techniques
evolved after thorough experimentation, and Seobay.com complies to the
editorial policies of the main search engines: Google, Yahoo &
MSN, most other search engines comply with one of those. Seobay is a
search engine friendly company, which means your website and domain are
safe from penalties
and safe from getting banned by the search engines for the
use of illegal, unethical or unprofessional techniques. Read what Google has to say?
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Do you offer any ranking
guarantees?
No. We are aware
that there are several so called SEO experts who claim that they offer
“money back” guarantees for top placements. Some go
on to claim that they enjoy special relationships with search engines,
which helps them get special positions for your site. Nothing can be
farther from the truth. Don’t get swayed by such speculative
guarantees, as there is too much hidden in their fine print. Its no big
deal to get top-10 position with some obscure keyword phrase you would
get ranked with anyways, but no one is searching using that phrase.
Also, when it comes to actually honoring the money-back guarantee, is
when you would realize where the trouble starts.
When you deal with us, you are assured of getting services from a
proven team of experts who believe in transparent dealing and ethical
practices. Do not risk your domain with unprofessional, unethical
website techniques. We provide 100% organic search engine
optimisation. No tricks, no cheats or unprofessional methods to obtain
rankings. With our proven expertise and time, your website can achieve
stable high rankings, whilst complying with search engine editorial
policy. Please examine our case studies and client testimonials for
validation.
Ranking results vary based on industry competitiveness; keyword
competitiveness; search engine algorithm changes; and fluctuation in
off page factors. These variables render it impossible for anyone to
guarantee specific ranking. Getting top ten rankings on search engines
is quite like weather forecasting. You can have all the data about
temperature, humidity, wind conditions, pressure conditions, cloud
movements, last 100 years' historical data but you still cannot bet if
it would rain tomorrow. Yet billions of dollars are spent monitoring
and forecasting weather on "best assessment" basis.
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How long does the SEO process
take, when do I see results?
The timeline for
the SEO process may vary depending upon the size of the website and its
complexity. Most projects can be completed anywhere between 4-6 months.
Sometimes projects may get delayed due to unavailability of the client
in important decision making milestones. Broad guidelines of time
frames are listed in the specification of each program in our services
section.
Optimisation and marketing do not happen overnight. Optimisation can be
performed quickly, but then you must wait for the search engines to
catch up. A link campaign can take months to help improve results
within the engines for mild to competitive phrases. A great campaign
can take from three months to a year or more; three to six months is
the standard, but it can take a lot longer depending upon what phrases
are required and targeted.
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How do you track ranking of the
site?
We run a ranking
report before site optimization at the start of the project. This is
done to assess how your site ranks before our efforts and also to
ensure that the current high ranking of specific keywords is preserved
in our optimization process. The report indicates ranking of various
URLs of your site with major search engines.
Once we optimize and submit the site, search engines usually take
between 4-12 weeks to index it. We usually run a second ranking report
8 - 10 weeks after submission. The difference in the two reports
clearly indicates the change in ranking due to our SEO effort. We run
the ranking report on a monthly basis for clients who have signed up
for monthly maintenance.
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How do I know if my SEO was
successful?
In most cases
your enhanced website traffic will more than please you about the
success of the SEO efforts. If the enhanced traffic has performed
better than your ppc (pay per click) spends, amortizing the SEO costs
over 1 year, you could say the SEO was a success. It may not be
possible for us to evaluate some figures thus related; we therefore
post the comparison between pre–optimization ranking and post
optimization ranking report to demonstrate the success of our SEO
effort.
These reports are very easy to understand and clearly list the
variables with respective values that are affected by the SEO effort.
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Do you offer any additional
customized SEO services?
Yes, extremely
large e-commerce sites usually cannot be classified into even our
enterprise SEO programs. Very often sites have highly specific SEO
requirements; we therefore offer tailor made SEO services to address
specific challenges and concerns of your site. Please contact us
describing your site concerns, specific requirements, challenges, and
any specific query and we will be happy to evaluate and give you a
customized recommendation.
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What is more effective, SEO or
Link Popularity Building?
Actually SEO and
Link building are complimentary to each other.
SEO, as a concept, usually includes addressing Link building to boost
your site’s Popularity and PageRank. Specifically speaking, site optimization addresses the on-page
factors whereas Link
building addresses off-page factors critical for your
site’s overall ranking.
In most competitive industries, on page factor improvements or link
building cannot get you high ranking individually. The on page and off
page factors complement each other into a common search engine
algorithm contributing their weights in ranking your website well. A
well thought out SEO strategy addresses both on-page and off-page
factors.
Seobay.com therefore recommends a comprehensive SEO strategy,
which includes Link Building, to boost your Link Popularity and
PageRank and result in high rankings.
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Do you offer SEO for dynamic
sites?
Yes, most dynamic
sites do not pose severe problems from the SEO perspective. However,
some dynamic sites are driven through inflexible content management
systems (CMS), which limit the optimization of codes on the page.
If your site is
driven through an off-the-shelf content management system software,
then you might face such problems. However, if you have your own
content management system, we can work closely with your programmers
for implementation of optimized code.
Very often, the
architecture of a dynamic site is designed in such a way that it poses
serious roadblocks to the search engines. Our experts will carefully
evaluate your site architecture, to recommend changesto assure that the
site is search engine crawler friendly.
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Do you offer SEO for frame-based
sites?
No. Frame-based
sites practicably show up blank on search engines. Many SEOs recommend
using <no frame> tags to overcome this problem. However,
such tags only marginally increase the crawler friendliness of your
site and there will be still roadblocks in place leaving out most of
your site's content. There are advanced java-based techniques
available, which can be deployed to make the entire site search engine
crawl-able. However, such deployments usually work out time consuming
and expensive. We therefore strongly recommend migrating to a
non-frames web site. Since we have web development resources available
with us, we can undertake the migration of your entire site from frames
to non-frames economically.
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Do you offer SEO for flash sites?
As of writing
this answer, most search engines are experimenting with evolving
technologies, which can read flash. However, there have not been any
significant live deployments yet. Macromedia offers an SDK to make the
flash more search engine friendly. However, the attempt has been feeble
and the results far from satisfactory. Flash still presents a big
obstacle to having your site spidered by the search engines and an even
greater obstacle to ranking well for keyword search results. Not only
do Flash-designed sites typically lack much of the indexable content
search engines require, they also often employ redirects from their
splash pages, which are considered spam by the search engines.
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Why do I need SEO maintenance?
The harsh reality for every successful website
marketing campaign, is that some require ongoing search engine
optimisation services. Why? Well, generally the main reason is due to
the competitiveness of the keywords being targeted. You have to think
of it logically, if you're optimising your website to remain
competitive, chances are so is your competition. The difference is in
the quality of a businesses' SEO which should achieve the desired goal,
a higher, stable ranking than your competition.
Search Engine Rankings may fluctuate due to any of
the following reasons, which makes it necessary to have a monthly
maintenance package:
Search Engine
Algorithms keep changing with time as they try and improve
Algorithms changes of Search Engines can affect rankings and would need
further fine-tuning and treatment of the site in order to restore or
improve the rankings.
Search Patters and buying behavior of people change with time
Market Shares of Search Engines change
Ongoing SEO can
also be attributed to other factors, such as:
Continued strive
for a higher position
Continued strive for total site stability (helps reflect algorithm
changes)
Ongoing marketing campaign to broader branding and exposure
Ongoing performance reporting and analysis
Ongoing page tweaking for ultimate results and stability
and many other reasons.....
Regardless of how
good an SEO is, no SEO controls the search engines, nor has the secret
key to them. When the search engines do a major shake-up, generally so
do all the rankings. However, there are constants that can be performed
on a continual basis to help reflect algorithm changes.
This is the exact reason ongoing fees, especially for ever developing
link popularity, can be essential. The more quality links you have,
anchored around the web, the more stable your site will become and move
as required with algorithm changes. Sites disappear and move when
search engines conduct major updates; though, the sites with quality
content and stable link structures tend to return and take up their
original positions.
Without ongoing SEO, sites can tend to slowly creep downwards in the
rankings. Why? Because you are still forgetting about your competition.
They are continually attempting to rank above you, and as such will
slowly push your website off page 1, off page 2 and so on. This can
happen quickly, or not happen at all depending upon your niche and the
competitiveness of that niche.
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