This post is a Re-Mix of a post I wrote in 2006, Formerly called: “How to Scope Out a Competitor’s Website and Learn From It.”

It’s always fun and interesting to check out what your competitors are up to. When you type in a search for your keywords, who comes up? Are your competitors ahead of you or below you? Why? Do you know what kind of traffic they get? Do you know how many links are coming into their site?

Competitive Research

In search engine marketing, competitive research and analysis is everything.  Since search engines are all about ranking, the websites you see in the search engine rankings above and below you are your competitors.  So it’s very helpful to know how to research those competitors to discover how and why they rank the way they do.

10 Free Tools For Researching Your Competitor’s Website

#1.  SpyFu.com

SpyFu is one of my favorites as it can show you how much money a competing website may be spending on pay per click advertisements.  And is also useful to show you which organic keywords may be bringing in the most traffic.  Tool Use Rating: Easy

#2.  SEODigger.com

SEO Digger is a free tool that will show you what keyword phrases different websites rank for.  The ranking database is updated every 2 weeks and is usually very accurate.  This can be a great resource if you’re trying to find out what phrases a competing website ranks for.  They can also be sorted by order of Wordtracker popularity which shows how many times those phrases are searched.  Tool Use Rating: Easy

#3. SEOmoz Tools

If you are already familiar with SEOmoz, you know that they provide a host of tools that can help with SEO.  Many of which can be helpful for competitive website analysis including: SEO Toolbox, Trifecta, Term Target, and their new tool called Linkscape.  Note on Linkscape: this tools is definitely for more advanced users, but can be very valuable to search for link data on almost any website.  Tool Use Rating: Ranging from Easy - Difficult

#4. WebsiteGrader.com

The Website Grader is an extremely user friendly site that will give a quick review of any website and show helpful data like: domain age, domain renewal information, meta data, backlinks, onpage factors, traffic, and alot more.  The really helpful thing is that it gives easy to understand explanations if it happens to find any erros on the website.  This is a great tool for discovering basic strengths and weaknesses with any competing website.  Tool Use Rating: Easy

#5. NicheWatch.com

Niche Watch takes a little different approach in that it doesn’t start with a competing website, but with keyword phrases.  You type in a phrase, and it will show you data on the top 20 competitors including backlinks, links to the page, Page Rank, and alot more.  This is a great resource to see info on offsite factors for each website and it can often times give you great insight as to why a site is ranking the way it is.  Tool Use Rating: Moderate

#6. SEO For Firefox

SEO for Firefox is one of the more famous tools of the bunch.  Aaron the creator claims that over 50,000 people are using it.  If you don’t already have Firefox, you may want to consider downloading it just for the purpose of using this great add-on.  When turned on, this tool will show extra data under each Google result after you complete a search.  The data includes useful things like: backlinks, page links, .edu links, pages, domain age, Dmoz, Yahoo Dir, and alot more.  Basically it lets you see why competitors are ranking in the results, and based on the data, it’s usually very easy to see why sites are being ranked the way they are.  Tool Use Rating: Moderate

#7.  Compete.com

Looking for exact traffic numbers for a competitors website?  Too bad, that is priviledged information.  But the next best thing can be found at a site like Compete.com.  They compile data on millions of websites to provide you with fairly accurate traffic analytics, and basic search analytics; like which terms are used the most often to bring search traffic.  It’s about as good as you can get unfortunately.  If you want to compare data try Quantcast and Alexa.  Tool Use Rating: Easy - Moderate

#8. LinkDiagnosis.com

Link Diagnosis is a newer tool that I’ve only been using for a few months.  But I have been extremely impressed so far.  It basically will look at the backlinks of any website and examine the anchor text, Page Rank, quality of link, and number of outbound links on the page and displays it in an easy to read and export format.  It is really sweet for being able to tell how strong incoming links are to any giving website complete with data on NoFollow links.  Tool Use Rating: Moderate - Difficult

#9. SearchRascal.com

Search Rascal is purely a ranking analysis tool that allows you to see who is ranking for any given keyword.  The unique thing about it is that it tracks past ranking and will show whether or not websites have moved up or down in ranking in the last day, week, or month.  It is very handy.  Note: only works for more competitive phrases.  Tool Use Rating: Easy

#10. Google & Yahoo

Believe it or not, Google and Yahoo are a couple of the best tools you have available for competitive analysis.  You just have to know how to use them… Google consistently has the best search results, so make sure you use it the most when trying to search for actual competitors.  If someone is ranking above you in Google, chances are they deserve to be there.  Yahoo is great for searching incoming links to your website.  In fact, almost all the tools above use Yahoo’s data to search for links.  To get an overall picture of how many links are coming in, visit Yahoo Site Explorer, type in your domain name with or without the www, and click on “inlinks”.  This will give you a full picture of your incoming links.  Tool Use Rating: Easy

I hope these 10 free tools will come in handy as you try to learn more about your competition.  Make sure to keep track of your findings, and if you have any questions about how to use any of them, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Related posts:

1. http://tools.seobook.com | SEO Tools From seobook.com
2. Is Your Website Eating Itself Through Keyword Cannibalization?
3. What is Page Rank, and Will it Effect My Website Ranking?

Those of you that know me, know that I’ve been offering real estate website reviews through the Real Estate Tomato for about a month now.  I’ve had such great feedback from these reviews that I’ve decided to expand this service to the greater public.

The reason I believe these reviews are so needed in the SEM (Search Engine Marketing) industry is twofold:

First: There are plenty of tools out there that allow you to collect data on keywords, competition, structural analysis, etc.  But there are very few tools that actually synthesize the results for you in an understandable form.  None of them actually.  In all cases, it’s up to you to take the information and figure out how to implement it on your website.

Second: There are SEO companies out there that will give you a site audit and website review.  But these services don’t come cheap.  In most cases you are looking at $2,000+  for a website review/audit that goes into any kind of detail about your site.

Conclusion:

The SEO industry could use a no-nonsense webiste review service that is: scalable, inexpensive, and easy to implement.

Here Are the Packages That We’re Offering:

#1:  Standard Website Review: ($99)

• Keyword Suggestion Report
• Volume of Searches for the Suggested Keywords
• Structural Analysis Report  (Crawl Testing, Error Reports, Structural Integrity)
• Full Backlink Report
• Detailed Anchor Text Report
• Google Current Ranking Report for Suggested Keywords
• Detailed Beginner’s Guide to SEO (e-Book)

#2:  Advanced Website Review: ($149)

• Includes the entire Standard Website Review Package
• Meta Tag Suggestions for Top Pages (based on research from the Standard Review)
• Competitive Analysis Report (identifies your top competitors)
• Competition Reverse Engineered Report (intense research on your competition)
• Link Building Guide (e-Book)

#3:  Comprehensive Website Review: ($199)

• Includes the Standard and Advanced Website Review Packages
• SEO Resource Guide (e-Book)
• 1 on 1 coaching  (1 hour)

Screenshots of Website Reviews:  (click to expand)

If you are interested in ordering or learning more, please click here to request your Custom Website SEO Review, or feel free to give me a call at: 720-670-0742.

Thank you!

Your Advocate For Online Success,

Justin Smith

Related posts:

1. Competitive Website Research Analysis | 10 Free Tools
2. Book Review: Raving Fans - A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service
3. Book Review: Realty Blogging… I got mine!

Definition of Keyword Cannibalization:

“The act of placing the same keywords or phrases on multiple pages of a website in titles and content in order improve ranking in the search engines… leading to confusion with search engines on which page to rank in the results.”

This is extremely important to the general health of websites.  I see people so often trying to rank well for certain keyword phrases using this technique.  But unfortunately, their efforts are misguided.  Placing the same keyword in every title, every page, and every piece of content you create is a very bad idea.  The common misguided notion goes something like this:

“Well… I really want to rank well for the keyword “Las Vegas Real Estate”, so I’m going to place that phrase in every title and every piece of content I create.  After all, Google loves keywords, and the more I use it, the better chance I’ll have of ranking.”

Let’s explore why this doesn’t work:

Google ranks each page of a website independently of each other

You may have a home page, and 10 articles that all include the same keyword phrase in the title and body… but guess what?  Only one (possibly 2) of those pages are ever going to rank in the search engines for that specific keyword phrase.

Using the same keyword doesn’t help gain extra relevance

Creating multiple pages with the exact same keyword phrase in the title and content does not force the search engine spider to interpret the site as being more relevant for that same keyword phrase.  All it does is force the spider to choose which page is the best.  One page will rank, and the others won’t show up at all.

The quality of your content will suffer

If you are using the keyword “Las Vegas Real Estate” in every title of every article, what are you readers going to think?  Need I say more???

You are severely limiting your search engine traffic potential

Many of you probably understand the concept of the long tail by now.  It works.  Don’t get me wrong, “Las Vegas Real Estate” is a great keyword.  But do you really want to put all your eggs in one basket when there are literally thousands of variations of that phrase that could do just as good or better?  Why waste your time trying to get every page of your site ranking for the same term when there are so many others out there waiting to be ranked for?  Think about it.

——

Meta tag titles are typically the biggest problem with keyword cannibalization.  Not only on the home page, but on sub pages and article pages as well.  Each page needs to have it’s own unique title.  This will give you the most likelihood of ranking for many different keywords and give you the most traffic potential.

Probably the most common place for keyword cannibalization is in blogs.  People will create blog post titles that are often very similar to each other, and this becomes a problem because most blogs are set up by default to make the article title the meta tag title.  Thus creating the keyword cannibalization effect with multiple articles.

Tips on Avoiding Cannibalization

1. Write unique Meta tag titles for your home page and sub pages.  Use specific words that describe that page.  If you can’t think of anything besides “Las Vegas Real Estate”… seek professional help.  Or try this keyword suggestion tool.
2. If you have a blog, make sure your article titles are unique to what you are writing about.  Using variations of a keyword are fine: “Las Vegas Condos”, “Las Vegas Real Estate Agent”, but don’t over do it.  Try to appeal to your readers first, and to the search engines second!
3. Choose which pages are the best candidates for certain keywords, and send internal links with the anchor text of those keywords to that page.
4. Start broad on your links, and build out.  Your home page and top level pages probably have the most potential for ranking with more competitive broader terms.  Make sure you target those tougher terms on your top level pages (shallow pages), and work on the more specific long tail keywords with articles, and blog posts (deep pages).

~ Secret Tip ~

If you are really struggling with how to title pages, and can’t think of any more good keyword phrases to use, try using a good keyword research tool.  Google Keyword Suggestions, SEO Book’s Keyword Research Tool, or even Wordtracker or Nichebot.  Start by searching for a broad term, and use the results to find the most relevant, and the most popular keywords for your page.  You may just find that the keyword you wanted to use in the first place doesn’t get as many searches as you thought… and that there was a related phrase you should have been using all along.  Hint: I do this every time I write a new article…

So go get to work!  Remove all those duplicate Meta tag titles.  Do some keyword research.  I think you’ll find that with a little work, you’ll see a much bigger return on your investment with broader search traffic.

Related posts:

1. The Top 10 Most Common SEO Mistakes
2. Follow-Up Post on Building Incoming Links to Your Site
3. Healthy Website Linking Practices

Here are a couple of brief definitions of branding just for reference:

“in marketing, the sum total of a company’s value, including products, services, people, advertising, positioning, and culture”

“in marketing, the use of logos, symbols, or product design to promote consumer awareness of goods and services”

We all know the classic branding examples: Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Etc…

But what about branding online? To some extent, we see the same branding efforts online from many of the big companies.  This usually comes in the form of banners, text ads, video sponsorships, etc.  That’s all fine and good.  I don’t question the supreme wisdom of Madison Avenue in this regard.  But what are companies doing to brand on the search engines?

This is obviously an important question as search engines command such a huge amount of traffic and eyeballs.  It would seem like such an obvious place to build brand awareness through higher visibility in search results.  But sadly, so many marketers skip this step and go straight towards the “SEO drug” that so many people are hooked on these days: higher ranking.

I’m full aware of the temptation of purely going after higher rankings, it looks good, it boosts your ego, it’s impressive to show to clients… but it doesn’t always translate into more success in the long run.  SEO is so much more than simply achieving higher rankings.  And I want to point out some of the reasons why that is the case.

Search Engine Branding With Meta Tags

This is talked about quite often in the SEO space, but it is hugely important, and I want to spend some time covering it.  Meta titles and descriptions are very important here.  When you include company names and even tag lines in your Meta tags, you are maximizing your branding potential because that is what people see on the search engines.

Here’s an example for a “Car Insurance” search on Google:

What’s wrong with this picture? Everyone on the page has branded properly in their meta titles and descriptions except for autoinsuranceremedy.com  Have you ever heard of them?  I haven’t.  But I have heard of all the other companies on the page.  Coincidence?… or just poor branding?

Let’s take another example for a local real estate search:

Imagine this as a scenario:  a first time home buyer is considering a purchase 6 months down the road.  They have no idea what to do, and they have been researching for properties in their price range, good real estate agents, and information about the local area.  They happen to use Google on a regular basis, and are doing multiple real estate related searches.  This is where branding can make all the difference in the world. Take a look at the above results.  Who is branding and who isn’t…   Just because a title says La Jolla Real Estate, (which was the search term) doesn’t mean people are going to click it… and even if they do are they ever going to remember who you are?  Of course, you may get lucky, and they might like your site and bookmark it for later.  But the more likely scenario is that they will go right back to Google the next time, and the sites that displayed their brands in the results through meta tags will gain the mind/brand share.

Meta tags play a huge role in this online branding process because that is what people see in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages).

So what did we learn here? Place your name, company name, or site name in your titles and descriptions.  Here are a couple of examples of good use:

You can see that placement tends to be different based on preference.  I personally prefer to have the brand in the front of the title tags on my top level pages and money pages.  And move it to the back on deeper level pages like articles, and product pages.  The point is that you are building brand awareness with every search result that you appear in by placing the brand in the titles and descriptions.

Not Convinced Yet? Ok, here are a couple studies that prove my point:

A report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Nielsen NetRatings suggest that “27 percent (of survey respondents) were more likely to name a specific brand if it was in the top spot of the search results page.” (Sponsored Listings Effectiveness Study, July, 2004).

And again, a report by the Dieringer Resource Group, which surveyed 3,000 respondents regarding their online purchasing habits, found that 60% of the respondents’ brand opinions were changed or enhanced as a result of online research (American Interactive Consumer Survey, June, 2004).

The problem that I’ve found with many SEO consultants is that they don’t come from a marketing background, but from a technical background.  Thus, they can fall into the trap of trying purely to acheive that higher ranking, but not pay as much attention to effective search marketing in terms of results.

I admit that I am still learning how to be a good marketer first, and an SEO second… but understanding how to brand in the search engines has definitely opened my eyes to see a deeper purpose in my SEO efforts.

——

Related posts:

1. 5 Reasons Why Your Company Doesn’t Need More Domain Names
2. THE Ultimate Guide to TOP ranking in Local Real Estate Searches
3. Internet Based Avatars: The Complete Guide

Just had the pleasure of interviewing Andrew Shotland, a local search engine optimization expert, and had the opportunity to ask him some local SEO questions. Click the podcast button for the audio version, or read below for the transcript.

Hi this is Justin from Searching Solutions, and I have Andrew Shotland on the line with me. He’s a local SEO expert, and I was hoping he could answer a few questions for us. Thank you Andrew for joining us today. If you wouldn’t mind just letting people know what your background is, and what you’re doing right now.

I’ve been in the internet business since the beginning in the mid 90’s. I launched Showtime network’s first website, and I worked for NBC for many years and worked for NBC.com for a while. For the last several years, I’ve been doing search engine optimization consulting, and I worked for a local startup called Insiderpages.com where I did a lot of local search engine optimization. So I worked for some big media companies, a lot of startups and a lot of small businesses who were looking for local search help.

What would you say your percentage of clients are that are more focused on localized search… I know your blog is pretty much all local SEO.

I’d say it’s probably about 50/50, but more and more even big media clients are sort of getting it. For example, right now I’m doing a project for a lot of big television stations, and they think of themselves as local, but they never really thought of themselves as candidates for local search, and now that we’re having these conversations with them, it’s opening up their eyes to all this local traffic that they’ve ignored.

So their thinking more in terms of building a national brand awareness, and things like that? Instead of localized searches basically?

They’re thinking of very specific local searches. There not as much interested in national awareness. They have all this content and programming on their site, but they never think to try to rank for keywords like ‘Oprah’. They are really focused on news, traffic, weather, and classifieds. They’ve never thought until recently that there was traffic outside of those things. Be it Yellowpages, event searches, restaurant reviews, etc. A lot of these companies have very authoritative and trusted websites, and don’t really need to do a lot to rank well for these niche terms.

You have unique experience coming from Insiderpages.com. One of the questions I had was: You constantly see in localized searches these big authoritative directory type websites like Superpages.com, Yellowpages.com, etc. What are you finding that it takes for the smaller guy that’s trying to rank well in those local searches? What is it typically taking to rank well above those?

It’s not as hard as you’d think. I’m constantly amazed when I see some startup kicking a$$ over the yellowpages.com or superpages.com type of websites. Those sites have a lot of trust, but they haven’t been especially good at getting people to generate content. They’ve gotten better with their architecture, but they’re still very slow moving in adding new stuff. For example, when I was at Insiderpages, we talked to Superpages a lot about “hey, can we share reviews with you” We wanted to share our reviews all over the place. They kept saying, we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it, but it took 2 years to just add reviews because they had so many mine fields to navigate before they did that. But if you look at a site like Yellowbot, which came out of nowhere last year, they were able to quickly launch a generic IYP (Internet Yellow Pages) and use some really creative architecture mostly around the idea of niche local tagging to start getting all these crazy niche local searches which … you know… sites like Yellowpages.com, they’re just not there. So I’ve seen a lot of start ups be able to instantly dominate these big IYPs because they’re more flexible, they’re faster, and they’re more focused. So for example, You have a site in… where are you located?

Castle Rock Colorado, just below Denver

Ok, so if you wanted to create a Denver local search site, I can pretty much guarantee, if you just work at it for a couple months, you could start to outrank DEX for a lot of searches. Because you’ll focus. You’ll get a lot of people in Denver linking to you, you’ll get a lot of content created, whereas, they’re trying to do 20 million different things.

Yeah, I’ve definitely seen that in our local market. I was just curious to see what your perspective was on it because that seems like some of the primary competition. Especially for your medium sized markets… between 50,000 - 100,000 residents. There’s not a lot of competition there, but the main competition seems to be these big authoritative type hubs.

Yeah, if you wanted to create a local search product, for small towns all over the place, it could do really well. Even just… think about architecturally, a yellowpages.com or superpages, they need to focus on the biggest markets. So if you focused on instead of the top 50 markets, the bottom 50 markets, you’d have all those markets prioritized in your architecture.

I wanted to talk about the long tail just for a minute. You know it’s a very common term in the SEO industry… but moving it over to localized search, for the small business owner… Most of the small business owners I talk to… you know, you have a local plumber that’s in the Denver area, and they’re just thinking in terms of trying to rank for phrases like ” Denver Colorado Plumber”. And they’re totally not thinking about long tail type searches, and they’re just not even considering the possibility. Do you think there’s value for small businesses to move in that direction and work on some of these long tail phrases? Keeping mind that there’s not a lot of search volume for those types of phrases, but do you think there is some value there?

Oh for sure. First off, to get back to your previous question, I think the small business owner has the biggest advantage when it comes to competing and ranking in these pages. Because ultimately that’s the content that Google wants to show you. The guy that can actually do your plumbing, not the page that aggregates 20 people who can do your plumbing. Which is just kind of a repeat of Google’s search results. I think for small local companies, just focus on SEO a bit, and you will see dramatic results. Because, they are so much more favored. They have a lot more relevant links to them usually, and they just have a lot more interesting relevant content created.

So I think, in your plumber example, I think they can get a lot of bang out of long tail because many times, long tail keywords are much more qualified people. I’d rather have someone for me, looking for… let’s say… “leaky toilet in Denver”, then “Denver plumber”. Because it’s just a much more qualified searcher, and they certainly know what they want. It definitely couldn’t hurt. This is always the challenge, it takes a little bit of work and research to just figure this stuff out, and figure out where is the relevant search volume in the market, and can I first rank for that, meaning I have to create content for it and build links to it, and then, can I service it and turn it into a lead. But I think that the smart local guy will do the same things that the big sites are doing just on a smaller scale.

One more quick question before I let you go. If you could speak directly to that local business owner. Everyone knows the economy is tighter, and business budgets are pretty tight, but what would be a couple real practical tips you’d give to the business owner that may not be the most technically savvy type of a person, where they could really improve their rankings without too much of an investment.

A lot of it’s the basics. Look at your title tags first. That’s always the first thing, and best thing to do. And make sure you get content on the page that targets specific terms you want to rank for. Make sure that you have your phone number on every page. And that’s not for SEO, that’s for getting people to call you. And it couldn’t hurt to have email me, or a contact form on every page as well in big letters… so many companies don’t do that. Certainly try to get local links from your local chamber of commerce, and friends, partners, things like that.

But the thing that I’ve found that is the biggest bang for the buck is looking in your analytics, and most web packages, even cheap ones, have some kind of analytics that they can get access to, and most businesses don’t really look at these things, but if you can get access to your charts… here’s how many people you’ve got this month from Google, or Yahoo, and here are the keywords they used to get to you. If you take a look at that, And look at the keywords that are sending traffic, then go to Google and search for them and see where you rank, getting an approximation of where you rank… and if you rank let’s say, at the bottom of page one or page two, That’s a sign that that keyword is pretty good for you if you’re getting traffic for it. So I would recommend figuring out which page is sending that traffic for that keyword, and boost your internal links to that page for that keyword, with the keyword as the anchor text. I’ve found that it works for big sites, small sites, and it works really fast, which is great.

That’s a great tip. Thank you so much, and thank you for taking the time to give this interview.

For more information about Andrew Shotland you can view his page on Local Search Optimization at LocalSEOGuide.com

Thanks again Andrew!

Related posts:

1. Optimizing Local Search Results with Reviews
2. Podcast: Matt McGee From Small Business Search Marketing
3. What Sites Are Used the Most for Local Search?

Here is a brief rundown.

http://tools.seobook.com

First, visit the above address to check out some of what he has to offer. Currently, the best tools are the Keyword Suggestion Tool, SEO For Firefox, and Rank Checker.

Keyword Suggestion Tool

There is no other place on the internet that pools the data like Aaron’s tool does. And that is why I like it so much. Sure, I have a wordtracker and keyword discovery account, and they are helpful in their own ways, but I always use this tool first when doing preliminary searches. Make sure to check it out!

SEO Firefox

This 2nd tool called SEO for Firefox is one of my favorite tools of all time. It is super easy to use, and provides great data.

As you can see from the example, it integrates data directly into your results. Most notably, it shows how many links are coming in to the page, and some other valuable data like domain age, PR, DMOZ links, and more. If you use Firefox as your primary browser, I highly suggest this tool.

Rank Checker

This last tool is the latest invention from seobook. It’s another Firefox add-on that checks the ranking for certain URLs and keeps track of historical data. I haven’t had alot of experience with it yet as it didn’t work at all on one of my computers (Google ranking always refused to show up), but overall it’s worked great. For whatever reason, I have never found a great ranking tool that gives historical data, and is easy to use. There are many out there, and this tool comes pretty close, but I remain on my quest to find that perfect rank checking tool.

So, I hope you’re able to check out some of these great tools. You don’t have to be an expert to get your feet wet in SEO, and some of these tools from http://tools.seobook.com can definitely help. Have Fun!

Related posts:

1. Competitive Website Research Analysis | 10 Free Tools
2. Using Unique Google Queries to Build Incoming Links
3. SEO Quick Tip of the Day —> #5

The search marketing industry, in large, doesn’t necessarily function according to a certain list of regulations or enforced standards. Sure if you are blatantly violating Google’s standards by spamming, cloaking, sneaky redirects or any other “black-hat” SEO method, watch out, there could be penalties!

But, on the home front, this industry is relatively new and evolving so quickly that there are no official “codes of conduct” being strictly enforced or regulated at this time. To implement any type of regulatory agency would call for a massive effort by many and could take a long time before any real results became evident.

However, SEO’s and others are under the shadow of the search engine giants, they set the standards and regulate to some extent, what takes place in the SEO world. Tick someone off at Google and good luck!

Do standards need to be implemented?

Here at Searching Solutions we hold a strong view that Search Marketing shouldn’t be a heavily regulated industry. Why? First of all, Searching Solutions is a “real” business that operates on core sets of business values which supersede any standards out there! Even if there were strong regulations out there, just like any other business there will always be those who violate them!

Furthermore, SEO and Internet Marketing is so vast, so intricate so much more like an art form than a practice, it would be extremely difficult to regulate. As a result, your market would become like a Government agency and take months to see results if strong standards were introduced.

How We Operate

Searching Solutions strives to win consumer trust and achieve real results. We do this by working directly with businesses; we get to know your business inside and out! We are locally based in Colorado and if at all feasible, we will come to you and meet face-to-face! That would be a little difficult for those based in India or elsewhere.

Our Credentials

Who can offer professional SEO credentials? As of now, nobody! Don’t be fooled. As a business, our goals are consumer trust, real results and satisfaction always! If we can’t achieve these we may as well shut the doors. We avoid “cookie cutter” methods because every business is different so don’t expect a “package deal” with us, you deserve a deeper strategy than that. In short, we base our degree of professionalism and credentials on real results! Check out our case studies and see for yourself!

Related posts:

1. Professional Website Review Service (SEO Audits)
2. Optimizing Local Search Results with Reviews
3. Colorado Local Internet Marketing Company

Enjoy…

Related posts:

1. Using Unique Google Queries to Build Incoming Links
2. Follow-Up Post on Building Incoming Links to Your Site
3. Competitive Website Research Analysis | 10 Free Tools

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1. Optimizing Local Search Results with Reviews
2. Interesting Search Engine & Blogging Statistics
3. Podcast Interview: Andrew Shotland on Local Search Optimization

There are some problems with this mentality…

1. New Domain Names = More Time & Money to Develop

Just because you have a new domain name, doesn’t mean you automatically have a website. This is obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many people simply don’t understand this. You are going to have to put something on that new domain name and that is going to take time and money. Why do this when you already have a perfectly good website?

Some people buy domains only to have them redirected to the original website. What is the point of this? Why would you market a new domain name only to have it point back to a different site? Branding comes into play with domain names like I talk about in reason 4. Just because you have more domain names doesn’t mean you’re going to get more traffic to the original site.

2. Multiple Domain Names Waters Down Your Search Engine Ranking Effectiveness

This is an important point. Assuming you purchase multiple domains with the plan of marketing them individually… this is really going to water down your potential to build incoming links. As you may or may not know, the number of incoming links to a domain is one of the most important factors in search engine ranking. When you set up multiple domain names, and market them separately, those links are being spread too thin. All that hard work you spent building 1,000 links spread over 10 different domain names should have been focused on building 1,000 for 1 domain name giving that one domain maximum effectiveness in the search engines.

3. Multiple Domain Names Water Down Your Brand

Unfortunately, many people don’t understand the fact that a domain name is a branding tool. Most businesses will use their company name in a domain name by default. Which is good, unless you’re one of those companies that are just looking for a one time sale, branding is very important online.

Branding a domain name properly online is key to return traffic. If people don’t remember your domain name, they probably won’t be visiting your site. And even if they try to find you in the search engines, they will become confused at all your different domains (see reason 4).

They want to type in a search phrase in Google, and find the same domain name at the top (yours) every time. It creates customer loyalty, it gives your customers peace of mind, and your customers will be alot more likely to remember it next time.

4. Creating Multiple Domains is a Surefire way to Confuse Your Customers

Coupled with the idea of branding a domain name online…

You want to give your customers peace of mind. It can truly become confusing for a customer when they can’t figure out which domain name is yours. This is especially true on the search engines when a customer is trying to find your company on the search engines, but instead of finding your main website, they see instead all these other domain name variations. It can quickly become very confusing for a customer. With all the websites out there, customers want consistency, and this plays huge into your branding efforts online.

5. Novelty Domain Names Don’t Work

We’ve all seen this… Mountain Dew will have some new promotion or contest and will create a novelty domain like: www.DewMocracy.com This comes from an old-school ad mentality, that assumes a brand can be built around a catch phrase. In reality, this has only worked a handful of times. It’s not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to offline marketing to build a slogan for brand awareness, but when you move into the online world, there is very little evidence of it working. Every single time I’ve gone to one of these novelty domains, I find that they get little to no traffic, and all they do is confuse the customer in a huge way, and spread incoming links too thin. A much better strategy would be to tie that new promotion into a directory of the primary domain, like this: www.mountaindew.com/dewmocracy That way, any incoming links that the catch phrase or promotion generates will still go towards building the overall authority of the main domain name. I cringe whenever I see novelty domain names being used, they are such a waste and rarely produce results.

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Anyways… if you’re trying to come up with unique online marketing ideas, multiple domain names is not the way to go. Give us a call and we can give you some ideas that do work.

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