International Search Engine Marketing Blog

One of the most disconcerting parts about working in this industry are all the fly by night operations that pop up and offer prospects unfounded promises. These sites offer website owners grandiose promises and sometimes downright lie. I had the unfortunate incident of dealing with such a website owner. Sadly, this is a common occurrence in the industry. Therefore I wanted to add a few general tips to watch out for, using Graphic SEO as a case study.

Research the company / site owner.

The owner of Graphic SEO is Joseph Alvini, a college student, who has no staff. The only alleged “expert” at the firm is himself. When hiring a firm, my suggestion is to find out more about the company’s owner. Is it a one man shop? Is the owner of that shop an actual expert or simply a self purported one? Before plunking down any kind of money with a firm do your homework.

Is the company a legal entity?

Check with the company’s city to see if it is actually a registered business. For instance, Graphic SEO currently has no business license and is operating illegally. There are plenty of legitimate companies out there. Do not waste time with one that does not even take the time to operate legally. Trust is essential in life and business. I find it difficult to trust any person or company that is operating without going through the proper channels.

Does the website have a phone number?

All reputable websites should have a contact telephone number. It is an indication that they care about customer service. Longer standing companies tend to have a toll free number to further prove their commitment to customer service. I am always weary if no contact number is prominently displayed or upon calling it nobody answers. The SEM industry is convoluted and confusing. Ensure you are dealing with a company that cares enough about their customers to actually speak with them.

There are of course many other common sense suggestions before conducting business with a firm. My hope is that this helps people save a few dollars and prospective clients steer clear of businesses, such as Graphic SEO, that are operating illegally and with little genuine concern for their clients. There are many excellent local and international search engine marketing companies that exist. Please simply be careful before sending one money.

I recently received a question from a business colleague and thought many other companies or individuals may wonder exactly how the different search engines value different types of links. The spurred from reading an article titled “SEO for WordPress”, part of which stated that Google does not provide as much consideration to sitewide links or links that are outside the main content area of the page. He went on to ask that, “I have also seen similar things before where people advise to keep the links only on the main page. As someone involved in the SEO field I wanted to ask the following: Do you think the above information is true? Or what is your opinion?”

As with much of the information regarding SEO and the value of links from other pages there conflicting information throughout the internet. Sorting the fact from the fiction can be a difficult process. While this is posed to me as a short question there is an extremely complex and ever changing answer. 

The bottom line is that with all search engines and the manner in which links are valued is largely determined by the perceived quality of the link. It is certainly true that Google values sitewide links differently than links placed only in one location on the page. A common misconception is that sitewide links can hurt a website. The reality is simply that sitewide links do not help a website. Typically, credit or link juice is received for the first link on the site, but the remainders of the links are generally ignored by Google. This is especially true when the links all have identical anchor texts and surrounding content. Yahoo and MSN value sitewide links differently. As of now, a sitewide link can be an extremely valuable asset and can increase a website’s position in the search engine results pages. However, it would come as no surprise if this changed in the future and the other engines adopted a strategy similar to Google with regards to link valuation.

As for the question on whether links within the content are more valuable than those outside the main body of the text, the answer is resounding yes. Links contained within relevant body text typically carry a much heavier weighting than those that are located within the footer navigations or the sidebars of the page. The rationale behind this is quite simple. If the webmaster finds the resource (website) valuable enough than the link will likely be posted in the primary content area rather than along the footer or another place where visitors are less likely to actually visit the site. 

Of course besides this, there are many other factors that influence the value and importance of certain links more than others. A well formulated SEO campaign ensure that there is a wide selection of all different types of links and looks at many other considerations such as the authority of the site that the link comes from.

I wanted to thank my colleague who originally posed the question. Hopefully I answered your questions. With any luck others will be able to find this post and also gain a better understanding of the value of links in a SEM or SEO campaign.