This is the collection of most frequently asked questions about Search Engine Optimization. This list will be constantly updated with new phrases and terms as they emerge, so be sure to stop by frequently.
[toggle title=”What is SEO acronym for?”]
Seo is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization but it is no longer limited to search and engines.
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[toggle title=”What does SEO mean?”]
The definition of SEO is constantly changing. Today the definition of SEO might be something like: Actions you take to make your site easy to find on the internet and to draw traffic to it.
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[toggle title=”Is SEO spamming, fake, obsolete etc?”]
No. Chicago Tribune, The New York Times and BBC would agree. Like most of the website owners they also practice SEO. Even the people who are publicly denouncing it are optimizing their websites. Number of practitioners has been constantly increasing over the past few years.
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[toggle title=”Why is my site not on the 1st page of Google search?”]
Have you done SEO? Do you have valuable content on your website? Does your site consist mostly of Ajax, Flash or graphics?
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[toggle title=”Why am I constantly on the first place but when my wife searches she can’t find me?”]
Have you considered divorce? Probably wouldn’t help. You just need to disable personalized search, if you don’t Google will just keep giving you the results it knows you want.
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[toggle title=”When will the results be visible?”]
It depends on the results you want, but it might take some time. While for some keywords you’ll be able to see results in a matter of weeks or months, other may take a year or more. A thorough market and keyword research may show you how your effort will go.
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[toggle title=”Could we rank for iPhones?”]
Are you selling them? Do you represent Apple? Are you selling them globally or nation-wide? Are you prepared to spend over 50 000$ monthly on SEO? If your answer is yes, then you might.
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[toggle title=”Could we rank for a huge set of keywords?”]
If you have a site like Amazon you probably can. If not you should probably chose a smaller set of keywords. You have to find a few most popular and profitable keywords and work with them. A casino in Las Vegas would go with casino Las Vegas or something similar.
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[toggle title=”How much do SEO services cost?”]
How much does a car or a house cost? You need to know what type of a car or house do you want, and only then can you talk about the price. Chances are you will have to pay at least a $1000 and possibly much more.
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[toggle title=”Why do SEO services cost that much?”]
Why do cars and houses? Because they are not cheap or easy to make. And because it can make the difference between your site making money and not making any. In the end it pays for itself, and more. And when you are talking about SEO you are not really talking about any old house or a car, it’s more like a manor or a Porsche.
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[toggle title=”How long will I have to wait before my site is indexed by Google?”]
Depending on your site it might take minutes or weeks, but without SEO it might never happen.
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[toggle title=”What should I do to get my site submitted to Google or Yahoo?”]
The sites aren’t just submitted to search engines. But if you get links from indexed pages or get a lot of mentions in the social media they’ll find you.
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[toggle title=”How do I optimize my site for all of the search engines?”]
You don’t and you shouldn’t. You only need several – Bing, Yahoo, Ask and Google.
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[toggle title=”Is an XML sitemap really necessary?”]
That depends on your site, but it can’t hurt.
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[toggle title=”Do meta tags help with SEO?”]
No, they’re just there to help the user see what you’re about, Google doesn’t take them into account when ranking websites.
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[toggle title=”What do people mean when they say ‘linkbait’?”]
Depending on who you’re talking to they either mean tricking people into sharing your link, or creating great content that deserves to be shared.
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[toggle title=”Why can’t my cousin who is a web developer do my SEO?”]
He can, up to a point. SEO demands a set of skills, it’s not only about making your site look good, you should know what the search engine you are focusing on is looking for in a website, you also need to know something about content creation and marketing. Your cousin’s knowledge is important in SEO, but it is not nearly enough.
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[toggle title=”Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just use SEO WordPress plus plugins.”]
It would but it wouldn’t really help you. If you’re using them you can be sure a lot of other people are using them too. If you want to get ahead of your competition you’ll need something more.
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[toggle title=”Is Google against SEO?”]
No it isn’t, it even offers SEO tips and hints how to make your site rank better.
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[toggle title=”Is SEO only optimizing my site for crawlers and not for users?”]
Not if your SEO is handled by a serious SEO company, one that will try to make the site as user friendly as possible, which will not go unnoticed by Google.
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[toggle title=”Is hidden (cloaked) text and link buying considered black hat SEO?”]
It is by some people, but it really depends on the particular situation.
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[toggle title=”Is it legal to practice black hat SEO?”]
For the most part it is, but you still shouldn’t do it, the results you get that way are usually short term and not too reliable.
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[toggle title=”Is the size of my site a factor in rankings?”]
It used to be, sites with the large number of pages did rank better than similar smaller sites, but that is no longer the case. The only way a large number of pages can help you now is if they are filled with great content.
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[toggle title=”Are nofollow links useless?”]
Not really, search engines don’t assign as much weight to them as they do to regular links, but it seems that they do take note of nofollow links, and besides, they still bring visitors to your site which will only help your SEO.
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