Looking SEO companies that specialise in Actinic

[DBurrows]

Had one of them days today, both my SEO companies have failed to really produce any satisfactory results in the year that they have both been working on my website.

This is mainly because the companies we use do no understand actinic and continually want to change html pages on our website and cannot seem to grasp the concept of "templates" and when we do finally make them understand they have no idea on how to impliment their changes as they do not know actinic.

What I am after is someone who knows how to optimise a website for specific key words / phrases but ultimatly knows how to impliment them in actinic.

If you are interested please leave details of your website and examples of sites you have worked on with relevant keyword searches for that site.


Many thanks

[pinbrook]

Thge best person to do SEO is yourself. With an Actinic site each page has to be optimised each time you add new products.

I would recommned the path of asking Old Welsh Guy to do a report on your site, and then you learn how to implement his recommendations.

[BPJSURF]

I have no problem offering you a free evaluation of the website to see if we can help. You may be making simple mistakes that you can correct yourself. You can call direct 732-528-7635 x203

Brian
brian@suresolutionsinc.com
check this page: http://suresolutionsinc.com/search_engine_optimization.html

[garyhay]

I would take a step back and look at the market before I wasted any more money on SEO. Your products are in a highly competitive market with lots of players out there.

If you have a high street shop with 100 retailers selling the same goods at the same or lower prices then you have to ask just how much business you can expect on the street.

The same goes for the web. IMHO it would take a lot to get you well listed in the DVD/CD media listings and maintaining that position would require ongoing work.

First thing you could do is place a link to your site map on the homepage or simply take shoppers straight to the store pages.

Free shipping over £200+ does not read like a good deal to me and I am sure this will be putting people off before they even start shopping (hope i looked up the correct site).

Can you say who the SEO companies are as I would like to hear what they have to say just out of interest.

Please feel free to use my contact details from the forum if you wish to speak to us.

[B_Online]

what site is it, can you show me your url?

[B_Online]

I’m not sure what your site sells but from Gary’s replies its DVD / CD related, if its blank media etc, then you will have a major problem finding high positions in Google, there has been a massive increase in small companies starting online stores selling these same products and from what I have seen in this market, it will take up to 2 years of hard work and money to gain high ranking positions with this type of product. Unless you have spent over the odds with Google and SEO companies and of course you need a bit of luck and hope Google don’t change how they rank again.

So if I was you I would optimise the site for less competitive products (if you have any) this works and does at least bring in some sales and will enable you to tick over until you have reached a stage where Google ranks your site on merit. There is no point selling something what “everyman and his dog” is selling, you need to find a niche and target those products with less competition, and in time you will be able to sell your competitive products.

I have worked on SEO for DVD/CD blank media sites and I noticed that the top sites all have sponsored links with Google and other sites. (I have seen sites in position 1, 2 3, 4 in Google which don’t need to pay for sponsors but still do, this might be just to keep competitors from gaining a position in the paid for sponsors) In the top 10 sites I have seen “site wide” (a link on every page of a site) links throughout some websites pointing to a single website, giving this site hundreds and sometimes thousands of backlinks just from one site (a lot of sites in good positions have up to 2000 backlinks just in Google)…BUT Google is changing how it ranks sites and is moving away from “site wide” links and is looking for links from different IP address and scores higher for relevance.

SEO work can be a full time job and is good if you have time to do it you’re self, but it does take a lot of research and time to reach high positions in a competitive market place. Quite a lot of people in this forum would recommend OldWelshGuy for SEO work, and in my opinion, I totally agree with you, SEO work should be done on an Actinic site by someone who knows how Actinic works.

[wjcampbe]

OWG is either very busy or on holiday. I emailed his company last week - no response so far.

[webyourbusiness]

I still say that Google is biased towards theiir paying clients in the ultra competitive slots...

[B_Online]

I still say that Google is biased towards theiir paying clients in the ultra competitive slots...

I totally agree with that statement, Google is run as a business and money talks!

[BPJSURF]

Google states in their guidlines that the use of paid advertisement does not affect organic search results. http://www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html
Fiction: Advertising on Google affects my rankings in the search results.
Fact: advertising with Google neither helps (nor hurts!) a site's rankings on Google.
There had been postings in some of the search optimization forms debating the same issue that google favors advertisers. I can not say that I have ever seen any legitimate evidence of such behavior from google. Google uses PageRank to determine postioning. They openly admit that linking is a key source to PageRank. From a technical perspective paid search results do not increase a web sites links. This is because the paid advertisement links to google which then processes the advert to the appropriate page as determine by the adword campaign from within the google system.

I can not see how google would favor paid advertisers. It would undermind their buisness model and the quality of the service they offer to their primary customers (the people who conduct searches). The idea that google would comprimise their entire business model for short term gains from paid advertisers is nothing moreI then paranoia. I personally dont subscribe to this theory.

Brian

[webyourbusiness]

Sorry, Brian, I've read those guidelines a hundred times - I don't believe them... not for ALL searches, but for some - I'm 100% convinced that they apply some factoring and those sites using google advertizing tools are definitely favored in my opinion...

read their patent application too... they even state that ads can/may affect the ranking algorithm - if you ask me - it's their way of declaring their bias - but it's just my opinion (based on considerable real situation analysis of course).

oh - and I respect your right to believe some other theory - I certainly don't agree though...

regards

Greg

[garyhay]

This has turned into a bit of a debate.


I recently started an Ad Words campaign for a client and I would say that his site was picked up on by Google organic search much quicker and with a high placement that any other sites I have worked on.

[SusanF]

Gary,

I'd be interested to know how the Google ad campaign has been going for your client. I've been thinking about possibly using this as my main marketing tool, but have no idea yet of its worth.

Regards,
Susan.

[webyourbusiness]

Gary,

and I have clients who had campaigns - gained position in the organics, dropped the campaigns and now can't be found in the organics - not one, not two, not three - but FOUR now - and I'm sorry, I don't believe in coincidences when it comes to the search engines...

Also... from the recently files patent from Google found here:

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20050071741&OS=20050071741&RS=20050071741

[0090] Additionally, or alternatively, search engine 125 may monitor time-varying characteristics relating to "advertising traffic" for a particular document. For example, search engine 125 may monitor one or a combination of the following factors: (1) the extent to and rate at which advertisements are presented or updated by a given document over time; (2) the quality of the advertisers (e.g., a document whose advertisements refer/link to documents known to search engine 125 over time to have relatively high traffic and trust, such as amazon.com, may be given relatively more weight than those documents whose advertisements refer to low traffic/untrustworthy documents, such as a pornographic site); and (3) the extent to which the advertisements generate user traffic to the documents to which they relate (e.g., their click-through rate). Search engine 125 may use these time-varying characteristics relating to advertising traffic to score the document.

My vary the relevance of a document based on ads generated - I read that as adsense publishers being favored... and also - see the bit in there about:

e.g., a document whose advertisements refer/link to documents known to search engine 125 over time to have relatively high traffic and trust, such as amazon.com, may be given relatively more weight than those documents whose advertisements refer to low traffic/untrustworthy documents, such as a pornographic site); and (3) the extent to which the advertisements generate user traffic to the documents to which they relate (e.g., their click-through rate

this tells ME that their advertiser's documents are preferred over non-advertisers - ie, if you have an adwords campaign - ie, are PAYING Google - you get a benefit in ranking.... now that's whoring themselves and if you ask me, it's EXACTLY what I was describing and what Brian J was saying could NOT be the case!


There are a LOT of interesting items that can be read a number of ways - but this one is of particular interest to me...

[0008] Both categories of search engines strive to provide high quality results for a search query. There are several factors that may affect the quality of the results generated by a search engine. For example, some web site producers use spamming techniques to artificially inflate their rank. Also, "stale" documents (i.e., those documents that have not been updated for a period of time and, thus, contain stale data) may be ranked higher than "fresher" documents (i.e., those documents that have been more recently updated and, thus, contain more recent data). In some particular contexts, the higher ranking stale documents degrade the search results.

Stale being more relevant? That's a little backwards to how MSN works - I know it's funky and the reverse of how it USED to work!


read on....

[Tim Weaver]

Surely its obvious. One of Google's criteria for search ranking is the popularity of the site, i.e. the number of click-throughs from its search pages. Run an Adwords campaign and every clickthrough from the advert will count towards raising your general ranking. The reverse applies once one ceases an Adwords campaign.

[webyourbusiness]

That's the easiest to understand explanation I've seen Tim, and I've been banging this drum in a number of forums - no-one seems to be able to get it - they all have the attitude that BrianJ has - that to alter the rankings will kill the goose that lays the golden eggs - whereas I think they're not in the golden egg business - they're making Pate (how do you do an accent in quickpost) - they're a business - sure - but does ANYONE think they're a GE - ie, in 50 years they will still be in business?

I personally don't think their business plan goes out past 3, perhaps 5 years - how could it? Does anyone know what we're going to see with cellular and other wireless broadband - how the internet appliances will have progress? Nope... their search engine will probably be a very different animal in the markets it serves in 5 years - let alone 50....

Besides - I see the patent as a way of turning round and telling advertisers who create a fuss in a while - "We put it in black and white - it is not our fault you can't find the information you need to make an informed decision!"

Perhaps not - but I do have SOME experience that leads me this theory - I didn't start in the business and more specifically, internet business, only yesterday!

[garyhay]

Run an Adwords campaign and every clickthrough from the advert will count towards raising your general ranking.


webyourbusiness

I am agreeing with you. I think if you run Adwords it helps your organics quite a lot and vice~versa.

[webyourbusiness]

I know you're agreeing - I'm just trying to reword it for those that have not been able to grasp the meaning in the words of the patent... and add another perspective on why I don't think it would necessarily be a nail in their coffin to effectively boost the paying customers at the cost of those that don't pay - after all - they "owe" webmasters at large absolutely NOTHING - they are better off looking after their paying customers... that's just business!

A good example being if someone who didn't have hosting with us called for support - could be build a business model on providing support to them without any revenue stream? It's POSSIBLE - but I'm not going to risk losing everything to try and work that old nag....

regards

Greg

[B_Online]

Well Greg that was said with passion, you meant every word of that. I cannot believe that some people would think that a company would be unprofessional and totally irresponsible as to not keep control of what happens in their company, and to leave the outcome of the company to fate. I mean why would paying customers of Google keep paying if they were not seeing any benefit, Google don’t operate as a non-profit organisation and if they want to make money, (which they do) they have to provide a service to their paying customers, a service that has to be seen to be working, this would obviously be to the disadvantage to the none paying customers, who would eventually see that all the sites above them are in the top 10 places are paying customers of Google’s ad-words. This would not be for 100 percent of all sites but for the majority I’m sure this to be the case.

Quite a lot of sites I have worked on do not use ad-words and these sites will find some custom, but always struggle to get anywhere near the top 30 – 40 sites in Google (unless for some obscure key phrase), and most of these top sites are using Google’s ad-words, Gary has said that he has had some success when using ad-words, I have had the opposite effect for NOT using ad-words, there must be something in it!

The thing to do would be not to disagree because of what we have read and been told, or believe to be true but to actually try ad-words for a period and see what the results was for yourself, at least this way you would understand first hand what works for you. And remember Google is not a charity and like most companies who want people to use their product or service, are prone to misinformation, when it suites.

[simonmc]

Advice 1.

Anyone who is telling you about a link between Google Adwords and The natural Google search listing is speaking to you without one single shred of evidence. In fact it is fairly simple to disprove this theory and many in the SEO world have already done it. See sites like SEO-Guy or Webworkshop etc to read up on this false myth.

Advice 2.

Optimizing for Actinic is no different than optimizing for any website. There is nothing special about this product apart from the fact that it is probably easier to optimize than any other shopping cart. This is because it produces search engine spider friendly web pages. It allows you to change the site title and to include any product text that you see fit. This is called on page optimization. Actinic makes it easy for you to optimize each product page individually.

Advice 3.

Fire your SEO company. To achieve NOTHING in 1 year is no good. Asking you to change HTML on your site will also likely be a smokescreen although without knowing what you have been asked to change it is not possible to say for sure.

Advice 4.

People who think 2,000 backlinks is competetive know little about SEO. To compete for 2,000 backlinks the way Google works today is not hard but it does come with risk. Just like any optimization is at the whim of the Google Algo. You could either employ a link builder full time. (My preferred option) or you could buy links. Look around the SEO forums for link programs. Remember though that aby optimization you do either on site or off site comes with risk. The least risky solution right now is to have links built to your site and product pages by a real person.

Link building is THE most important thing you can do for your SEO. If your SEO people are not doing link building for you then they are just making your site SEO friendly. There is a massive difference between making your site SEO friendly and making it compete for your terms.

Advice 5.

Build your links from sites that are in a similar market or interest area to your own. They do not need to be direct competitors. Use your anchor text wisely. Have 20 or so different search terms that you want to rank for and alternate these these anchor texts with different link partners.

Be carefull not to swap links with website that have been penalised by google. This will cost you dearly.

Keep a track of your links on a regular basis. People change their pages and remove your links without your knowledge. Keep on top of them. Be fair yourself with your own links.

Advice 6.

Get a proper company to do this work for you. Ask around the SEO sites and do due dilligence on any and every company you consider. Or learn the craft yourself. It will take you about 6 months to grasp a good level of understanding and a feel for the job. This is full time work. Work out what it means to you in real money to have good SEO and then budget accordingly.

Advice 7.

If your website is crap it does not matter how many visitors you get to your website if they do not buy. Get a usability expert to give your site a once over and follow the advice to a tee. Otherwise you will be wasting the visitors.

Good luck

Simon

[Tony Moore]

great comphrehensive post, well done. I've recently embarked on an SEO program provided by my hosting company www.irishdomains.com . I found a very useful first step to to have proper visitor stats so you can see your starting position and how people are getting to your site now . Webstats is excellent but I'm sure there are others too. Just completed a major optimization and the results even at this early stage are very encouraging both in terms of vistor numbers and conversion rates. What I find most interesting is learning the processes of what excatly makes a good page and using webposition gold is also a very useful tool.

[BPJSURF]

Simon, well done I agree with the majority of your statements I believe it to be sage advice to anyone considering seo.

I should like to clarify a few points. Link building and Link popularity are very important to search engines and in particular Google. However I would have to disagree that it is the most important aspect of SEO. Content is the king. Search engine collectively all have the same mission and that is to deliver relative current content to a searcher. Content is what is being requested in a search and content is what is to be delivered to a searcher.

Building quality content is vital to a web sites success. All the link building, page optimization, html formatting and keyword phrase research is secondary to content.

I would say it is wise to embark on a seo (SEM or internet marketing) strategy that is directed at all the major search engines and do not over emphases Google. From a business perspective if your efforts concentrate on a single search engine and you build up traffic your going to get comfortable and ignore the other engines (I have seen this all too often). One small technology change at the search engine can decimate your SERPS and leave your business in a quandary (we have all seen this as the technology changes).

All the major search engines have been making tweaks and adding technology to improve the relative content delivery to their searchers. In the last year we have seen "local search", more emphasis on shopping aggregators like Yahoo! shopping, Froogle, EBay’s purchase of Shopping.com as well Google just announced a new tool to set up an automated sitemap for your site. Yahoo! added a new tool to adjust your results based on shopping or information. All the acquisition and new technologies change SEM and the way you should look at marketing your site. The reason you must change is simple, because content is king and the search engines are improving their technology to deliver better content.

Simons post is well placed as it gives an overall structure to SEO implementation. An excellent reference point to read 3, 6 and 12 months into your SEO effort.

Brian

[B_Online]

Advice 1.

Anyone who is telling you about a link between Google Adwords and The natural Google search listing is speaking to you without one single shred of evidence. In fact it is fairly simple to disprove this theory and many in the SEO world have already done it. See sites like SEO-Guy or Webworkshop etc to read up on this false myth.
Rather than sending people to find what you have obviously read, why not post the "fairly simple to disprove this theory" links in here?

I have not yet seen 2 SEO engineers agree on how best to optimise a site, ask 10 SEOs a question and you would invariably get 10 different answers…Yes read when given advice but I would also say, do a search in Google for your keyword/phrase and note how many top sites also have sponsored links, its not a big thing to do and it will cost you nothing.

My mind tells me that any multi-million Pound/Dollar industry (Like Google) would take total control of how its own company operates and would not leave the outcome of the company in the hands of its users. This would be Total Madness! Any member of staff who came up with that idea in a boardroom meeting would be claiming benefits that same week. If you do not know how Google operates, that is because they don’t want you to know and that would tell me that they would give out false or no information in order to keep you from finding their secrets.

You say there is no link between “Google Adwords and The natural Google search listing” and go on to say “In fact it is fairly simple to disprove this theory and many in the SEO world have already done it”…if you are the expert and have read this why haven’t you mentioned what it is, so the other forum members could benefit from your expert advice. You show us the evidence!


Advice 2.

Optimizing for Actinic is no different than optimizing for any website. There is nothing special about this product apart from the fact that it is probably easier to optimize than any other shopping cart. This is because it produces search engine spider friendly web pages. It allows you to change the site title and to include any product text that you see fit. This is called on page optimization. Actinic makes it easy for you to optimize each product page individually.
I see you have not read many posts in this forum then…Some people think that the use of JavaScript and routing through the CGI-BIN stops search engines dead in their tracks, Actinic's code is also not clean, MSN rank higher if the code is clean, that’s not too search engine friendly is it? you could only change the ‘Title’ name easy in version 7… not so easy in earlier versions. Your theory why Actinic is "easier to optimize than any other shopping cart" is weak to say the least… you say “This is because it produces search engine spider friendly web pages. It allows you to change the site title and to include any product text that you see fit”, are you saying that no other package does this? Not only is your comment not true but there is evidence that Actinic sites are the opposite.

David Burrows said:
“This is mainly because the companies we use do no understand actinic and continually want to change html pages on our website and cannot seem to grasp the concept of "templates" and when we do finally make them understand they have no idea on how to impliment their changes as they do not know actinic” This is clear evidence and proves the case that if a ‘proper company’ can not understand Actinic, then the only person to do the job would require knowledge of Actinic in order to be able to correctly do the job, David Burrows is using a so called ‘proper company’.

Advice 4.

People who think 2,000 backlinks is competetive know little about SEO.
You could either employ a link builder full time. (My preferred option) or you could buy links.
Link building is THE most important thing you can do for your SEO. I am the only one to mention 2000 links…and I was referring to observations made by myself of sites at the top in Google before Google changed its ranking method this year, I also went on to say “BUT Google is changing how it ranks sites and is moving away from “site wide” links and is looking for links from different IP address and scores higher for relevance”.

Your preferred option of using a full time link builder is a luxury most small companies could not afford to do.

You say “People who think 2,000 backlinks is competetive know little about SEO”, (Even though nobody mentioned 2000 backlinks are competitive), But then you go on to say: “Link building is THE most important thing you can do for your SEO” I think you are slightly out of date here with your strategy, you might need to read up and see what Google is saying these days.

I too have learnt that links was the most important thing to do with SEO but Google is now saying that they are throwing more weight towards content…do I believe everything I read or should I learn by trial and error and see what works for me. For a small company it would not be wise to throw money they cannot afford at an untried ‘proper company’ and in your words “You could either employ a link builder full time”, i think a cheap alternative could be better used here, if you throw your money at things like this and your site does not work, you would be in deep trouble.

It is ok reading and reading and reading to give you a good understanding, but if everybody is doing the same reading where do you end up?
You then need to see why your site is not in the top 10, you can do this by studying what the top sites are doing on-page and off-page and then emulating what they are doing then tweaking your site so you have the edge.
Most sites I see all say that they are the ‘Leading supplier’ or ‘cheapest in the country’, ‘the best SEO Company and promise to get your site in the top 10 in no time at all, Guaranteed’ etc...Obviously, you DO NOT believe everything you read.

Advice 5.
Be carefull not to swap links with website that have been penalised by google. This will cost you dearly.
Good advice considering it would cost dearly but your advice is only relevant to people who know what they are looking for and if they knew what they was looking for then they wouldn’t need the advice… how do they know what a penalised site looks like?

Advice 6.

Get a proper company to do this work for you. Ask around the SEO sites and do due dilligence on any and every company you consider.What would you consider a proper company…would a single person be considered a proper company, does it mean a proper company and pay tons of money for a job that people can’t really afford, which, by the way could have been done by a single person company?...not sure what you mean by proper company? Any examples in your expert opinion would help us all.

Its all very well saying go and get the best company to do the job, but who is the best company, do you know who that is….because if you don’t, then telling people to get a "proper company" and to "Ask around the SEO sites" to get the best company to do the work is only stating the obvious. Most of your comments have been made before in these forums and I’m not to sure why some think your post to be of a better standard than others have said before.

There is a difference in how the major search engines rank webpage’s and it may be best to optimise for all search engines, because when you strip away some of the things search engines look for, you are then left with a core webpage in which all search engines will rank and it seems ‘content’ is the overall thing which is common between all major search engines.

I am no expert but from what you have said so far, nor are you…if you are, then show us your evidence and give us all something in which we can say "That’s is very useful” and not to post vague comments by sending people to non existent links to research and to say get the best you can in SEO ‘proper company’ or spend money on full time work, because to me, if someone is asking how to optimise their site, then that tells me that site is not doing to well, and there is not too much money coming from that site to spend…And its no help just Stating the obvious in my opinion.

[BPJSURF]

John,
I read your post and i understand your position. Your correct that some level of investigation should be conducted to prove or disprove the adwords / organic search ranking relationship. As well it would be productive for all those who read these threads to get a better understanding of search engines and Google in particular. I am sure you would agree the key to understanding search engine marketing is reading.

Its seems as if this thread has gone a bit negitive. I think thats unfortunate because the discussion is a worthy topic albeit off topic from the orginal post.

My self I decided to investigate the theroy of adwords and googles favoritism towards advertisers a bit more in detail. I have participated in other forums on the subject however I have never run any tests which provide a qauntative conclusion on the subject. I will do some research as well I plan on posting again to a few other forums to see if we can gain some insite on the subject. Providing links to the results will be my goal.

I would hate to see the threads go negitive because its counter productive. I plan on starting a new thread n the topic under other business issues once I have more quanitative information to share. I hope others will consider participating in a similar fashion.

Enjoy

Brian

[Sally Dickson]

I have no problem offering you a free evaluation of the website to see if we can help.

Could you have a look at the SEO on these two sites:

http://www.wookies-etc.com
http://www.wookieshop.com