Blog

SEO Per Click – A different kind of SEO

Posted by Todd Helvik at 9:17 pm

SEO Per Click Launched

You’ve heard of SEO (search engine optimization and PPC (pay per click) but this is a brand new concept.

SEO Per Click will deliver traffic to your website or you don’t pay a dime. So what’s the catch? That’s the beauty of this concept, there isn’t one. You submit your website or we can build you one, get a feel for your niche and give you 1 flat rate you will pay only when unique visitors come to your site via search engines/advertisements.

This concept is already in place with a few local clients to give it a test run in the beta phase and they couldn’t be happier. If you have a website, want to expand your business or are looking to establish a real presence online this concept really is a no-brainer.

For more info check out SEO Per Click @ http://seoperclick.com

LeBron to Miami: Owner Reaction

Posted by Todd Helvik at 10:42 pm

As all of you I’m sure have heard by now, “King James” is heading down to South Beach and I can’t say that I blame him. What he did takes a lot of guts, to leave his home town and life-long friends and family to go take a viable shot at winning an NBA title.

Many people will criticize him and say how he abandoned his hometown and bla bla bla. He set himself up for this very moment when he signed his previous short term deal to give him “options” if things were not going as planned in Cleveland. People love to criticize sports stars and say how they are all about the money and then you find arguably the best player in his sport during his prime sacrificing millions to play for a ring and still people criticize.

He owes nothing to Cleveland

He played there for 7 quality years, won 2 MVP’s, took them to the finals and the best record in the league twice and basically revived one of the worst franchises in basketball by himself. After all of that, do you think his owner is appreciative? Have a look at this letter drafted by the bitter Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert showing absolutely zero class as not only a business man but as a person.

In the letter

He goes into saying how LeBron is deserting Cleveland and it is “such a cowardly betrayal” and how he vows to work harder than ever now to bring a Championship to Cleveland. Too bad he didn’t possess that attitude in the prior years or there would be no question in LeBron’s mind where he would be resigning. By signing washed-up players like Ben Wallace and Shaq who Phoenix Suns fans know first hand does nothing for a team other than run hard down the court after his 1 good play of the game and promise things he can’t deliver on any longer, Dan Gilbert dropped the ball over the past few years and the only savior there, Danny Ferry, is no longer with the team either so championship hopes in Cleveland will soon turn to playoff hopes.

In closing, I can’t wait to see what happens in Miami and it should be a very entertaining season if nothing else and Mario Chalmers don’t make LeBron pay you to wear number 6, he will already be roughing it after his latest pay cut.

Multiple Domains/Landing Pages & SEO

Posted by Todd Helvik at 1:36 am

A client asked me today about setting up separate websites/landing pages that all link back to his site and was hoping to help the popularity of his website in the SERPS(search engine results pages). I figured this was as good of time as any to elaborate a little more on this topic.

This type of thing can be helpful if it is done the right way and 9 times out of 10 it is not. Many seo companies and business owners themselves are really jumping into keyword-domain pool and buying up any and everything that has to do with their business with the hopes of being at the top of the SERPS for those particular terms.

Can it work? Yes, IF the keywords are so off-topic or long-tail that the competition is scarce and in which case is not worth the time of building the page/website because not enough people are searching for those terms anyway.

Will it work long-term? I sure hope not and I cannot wait for Google to start penalizing these companies with replicated landing pages across 10 or 15 domains because all it is in my eyes is low quality marketing spam. Something you will find if you take this approach is that you may rank well for a very small number of keywords that are most likely all in your domain name and as I said above, if you do then the competition is scarce and your traffic will be very minimal.

Let me tell you why SEO is not always about ranking for the most popular keywords in your niche.

Because any SEO Consultant that knows what they’re talking about will tell you that a majority of traffic comes from very random/long-tail searches you and no other person would really be able to think of.

Your next question is probably well then how can I rank for these terms?

Write quality copy on your website and keep it coming on a weekly/monthly basis. If those companies spamming the net with replicated domains spent as much time writing helpful tips, additional pages or improving the quality of their own website not only would their be a traffic increase but conversions would increase as well, without a doubt.

Remember, spam is a short term solution(solution may be a strong word) but quality will pay off 10x more in the end.

Young Singer Discovered by Ellen, Greyson Chance

Posted by Todd Helvik at 9:06 pm

Pretty crazy I must say. This story is about a 6th grade kid with 3 years of piano lessons and zero vocal training. He was captured on film at the school talent show covering a popular song by Lady Gaga called Paparazzi.

Ellen and over 20 million other people have taken notice via YouTube of this young singer and she even featured him on her show while she was searching for talent on the net. Long story short she discovered him, featured him on the show, invited him back for a follow up performance where she also gave him the $10,000 winners check, a new piano from Yamaha and a new record deal from her brand new label.

Well anyways, check out why Greyson Chance’s life has changed, dramatically:

Google Earth 3D – Check it Out

Posted by Todd Helvik at 1:46 pm

Pretty darn neat. You can check out where you live, stadiums and famous landmarks across the world, in 3D. Below is their demo video to give you a better idea about some of the capabilities with this plugin.

All you have to do is follow the link provided below and download the 3d plugin on the upper right of the map and then check out some of their recommended examples like the Golden Gate Bridge or Tower of Pisa.

Google Maps 3D

Enjoy!

Do I need a blog on my website?

Posted by Todd Helvik at 7:59 pm

No you don’t need one, but if you like traffic and potential customers having new avenues to get to your site then incorporating a blog might be a good idea. As Google continues to evolve with social media and up-to-the-minutes results visible in search engines via Twitter you’re shooting yourself in the foot if you’re not letting your customers know you’re still there every so often.

Does this mean you need to make a blog post everyday?

No, but the general rule of thumb (just made this rule of thumb up in my head) is 2-5 a month for local businesses.

What should I blog about?

Topics related to your business. Are you a plumber? Tell your customers some popular do-it-yourself tips for a leaky drain or clogged toilet that may save them a service call. Your next question, but doesn’t that take away from my business? Initially yes, but the long-term benefit from helping people and providing a valuable resource for your clients is unparalleled. You give them a free tip, they pass along your name, number website whatever to their friends and you are on the top of their list when anything plumbing may come up.

How do I incorporate a blog into my site?

There’s a few different ways to go about this. There are a lot of blogging platforms out there now-a-days that are very user-friendly.Here’s a list of a few popular ones and if you don’t like what you find with any of these just hop on your favorite search engine and do some research and you will surely find something to suit your needs.

Blogging Platforms

Google’s platform is Blogger and it is 100% free as well as Wordpress and Tumblr is also another popular one.

As always, if you have any questions about these or any other platforms or just general questions pertaining to this post let me know, be happy to help you out.

602.705.6050 or todd@toddhelvik.com

SEO Gone Bad

Posted by Todd Helvik at 1:54 am

It’s getting pretty ugly out there in the SEO world. Everyday I come across more and more website owners and even so-called “SEO Companies” that don’t truly understand what SEO is about.

I’ll throw out a quick example and since I’m in the seo/design industry I’ll use one referencing what I do and we’ll choose san diego as our city of choice this “company” is targeting. Their opening paragraph includes great and catchy information like “our san diego seo company specializes in san diego seo services for san diego businesses…to contact our san diego seo company xyz name please call us @ xxx-xxx-xxxx”.

To be completely honest there are dozens of local sites I encounter on a daily basis that I could provide great examples of this but I’m sure you’ve all seen them for yourself.

So am I saying that incorporating keywords into your content is bad? Of course not but there is a right and wrong way to do everything. I’m sure if you own a site or do “SEO” as you may think you’re doing, on a site where you keyword stuff and rank that you know what you’re doing, well I’m going to burst your bubble, you don’t.

“But I rank for popular keywords and I get traffic to my site.” That’s fantastic but driving traffic to your website is only half the battle. Do you think a consumer that lands on your site is going to call a company that looks like a 3 year old wrote the copy and 9 times out of 10 the aesthetics match the copy which equals a very poor website that does the exact opposite of what you build websites for. Websites are built as a business front for your business to potential virtual customers, would you buy something from a store that is messy and/or unorganized? Of course not, you’d walk in and scratch your head and be gone before the door even closes and websites work the same way.

SEO is not going anywhere but as the engines continue to get smarter, these type of practices will fade away and I personally hope even get penalized. Make your presence online professional, simple to navigate and with a few other simple techniques you will notice a huge difference in conversions and sales.

SEO Myths & Money Savers

Posted by Todd Helvik at 9:15 pm

If you’re a business owner and have a website which hopefully at this point you do, then you’ve probably been approached by an internet marketing company promising you the world and emptying out your pockets in the process. In this article I’m going to talk about a few things that you need to be aware of or even call out the salesman on when he bugs you everyday of the week.

Search Engine Submission Packages

Many companies, even well known/established companies (which is scary) will charge you to “submit your site to search engines”. First off, this is something that can be done for free and if you have had a website up for anytime at all it is most likely already submitted and being crawled regularly. Some companies will even take it a step further and charge a yearly or monthly fee for re-inclusion into search engines. SAVE YOUR MONEY. Once your site is crawled or indexed by search engines they will come back to re-crawl your site regularly, time varies on a few different things but do not ever pay someone to submit your site to search engines, it will be a better investment to reenact the picture above.

We will optimize your meta tags for 20 keywords

Sounds exciting right? It’s not but again, well know companies will hose you on this service that does nothing, literally. Very few engines even look at keyword meta tags and the one you should be most concerned with, Google does not even take these into account when indexing or ranking your site. Make sure to not only deny this service if approached, make it a point to disregard anything else they have to say because they obviously don’t know what they’re talking about.

We will submit your site to 500 directories

That means 500 links, GREAT! Sign me up, let’s do it. I am going to run to home depot and pick up a shovel so I can gather all the money I will be making. And they’re only charging $199, I wish I found this FANTASTIC SERVICE sooner. Hopefully your sarcasm alarm is going off because this again, is bs. First of all, there are not 500 directories out there worth including your website into and second, spamming your website across the net in this manner is not only not helpful but it is harmful and could result in penalties, banning, etc.

We will list your site in Google & Yahoo Maps for $129

Your response: “No thanks, I think I have 10 minutes free this evening and since that is a free service I will just do it myself.”

Add to Google | Add to Yahoo

We guarantee 1st page Google rankings in “ORGANIC SEARCH” in 60 days

Organic search is highlighted because it IS possible to get your website on the first page of Google for any keywords you want and overnight, it is called Google Adwords and though I won’t get into it too much now, but if you don’t know it is Google’s sponsored search results with placement determined by the highest bid. Anyways, back to guaranteed organic search rankings. Is it possible to guarantee 1st page rankings when it comes to SEO(search engine optimization), of course, is it really ethical, not really. I say that because guaranteeing something that you cannot control is a poor business practice. Google’s algorithm (what determines where websites rank in search results) is not known or published anywhere to tell people what it takes. The only thing SEO’s like myself rely on is speculation, trial and error. Does it become a craft and you learn what works and what doesn’t, of course but you never really know. I have very many websites ranking on the 1st page of Google in competitive verticals and understand how to get them there but there is no set formula and as Google continues to evolve and change, so will my strategies. What works today may not work tomorrow so staying current with techniques and best practices is crucial in SEO. So when it comes to companies guaranteeing organic search rankings, do your homework and the best way to call their bluff is by asking for examples and do not let them fool you (which many do and continue to do) by showing examples of a high ranking website of theirs ranking for long-tail keywords searched may be 50 times a month.

There are so many scams and bs out there when it comes to this industry it is very disheartening. If you ever have a question at all about something being pitched to you by a company or a individual feel free to ask me. I would love to help you save your money and make sure it is being put to good use. So that’s all for now, I will elaborate on more later.

Tiger Woods Return to Golf

Posted by Todd Helvik at 8:48 pm

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Tiger Woods is making his return to golf after an indefinite leave of absence due to some issues between himself and his wife (he cheated on her 1 or 11 times). And if that is news to you then I would also like to let you in on another secret, Michael Jackson has passed away.

Anyways, back to the subject at hand and let me first say, thank god he’s coming back. I know everyone has their opinions about him and what he should or shouldn’t do but all I honestly care about is watching him dominate a sport just like he has been doing for the past decade. He owes myself and millions of other fans across the world 0 explanation for his actions or “transgressions” as they call them in the news.

People are so quick to criticize other people and say how bad they are and they can’t believe someone could do that and bla bla bla and “I’m never going to watch him again because of what he did.” All you need to ask yourself is why did you watch him in the first place, because he is a loving husband or because he has dominated a sport unlike anyone we have ever seen and is arguably the world’s most popular athlete and after this scandal we can pretty much call that a fact.

And what is really going to upset all the new “Tiger haters” is that more people are going to watch now more than ever. The fact is Tiger changed the entire sport of golf, the coverage, the paychecks and the sponsorships. No player will ever deny that and they all have him to be thankful for making their wallets much fatter than they were before he was here. At the end of the day, you’re not his relative or friend so he doesn’t owe you any explanation or details about his personal life.

All I want is for Tiger to come back to his winning ways and remind everyone why they know his name in the first place and as bad as it is to cheat, at least he didn’t cheat the sport that has given him so much which we can’t say about so many players in other sports, mainly baseball and football. Hopefully the picture at the top of this post gave you a good laugh, it did me. Also thought I’d throw on his most recent interview on ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi.

Amazing Sand Drawing Doesn't Suck

Posted by Todd Helvik at 4:34 pm

Kseniya Simonova is a Ukrainian artist who just won Ukraine’s version of “America’s Got Talent.” She uses a giant light box, dramatic music, imagination and “sand painting” skills to interpret Germany’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine during WWII.

Check it out:

She’s got a couple other videos worth checking out as well.