Numerous mind boggling questions arise for the business owner including:

1. How can one SEO firm be offering to target 50 keywords or 10 keywords for the home page whilst another is strictly targeting 5 keywords for the home page etc?

2. Why do some break down their services into different ‘packages’ as well as how many links they’ll be adding for their ‘platinum’ packages whilst the other SEO firm makes no mention how many links they will be adding every month. Is link building as important as it used to be?

3. Why do some use words like ‘guaranteed results’ and ‘promising’ page #1 results when no SEO firm should guarantee results given no one ‘is in bed with Google’?

4. Why do some have fancy client video testimonials and extensive case studies but fail to demonstrate a small snapshot list of specific keywords targeted for their clients and where they currently appear on page #1 of Google?

5. Should a 6 month money back guarantee be assessed as a ‘risk free investment’ or lost revenue when strong Google results don’t produce a return on investment for the same timeframe and the process will have to begin from scratch with an SEO firm that knows what they’re doing in the first place?

6. Should I engage a firm that appeared on sponsored links but failed to appear in the natural results in Google for the phrase ‘search engine optimisation’? If they cannot deliver results for themselves for this phrase what chances of does my business have of success?

7. How do I differentiate between an SEO firm using white hat techniques to achieve results and those employing black hat techniques which could see my website banned by Google from appearing anywhere in its search engine?

8. At a monthly investment of $200, will the work to my website be outsourced offshore compromising the security of my website and risking illegal techniques being employed that can see my site banned by Google?

9. Why should my business be tied into a legally binding long term contract when results may not be clearly heading in the right direction or providing a return on investment for my company?

“With no contracts to sign TopRankings earn your business each month by delivering long term sustainable page #1 Google results”
We get you to the top…legally and continue to let our client results speak for themselves – no fancy packages just great results!!

Noam Judah

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It seems many are!!

With search engine optimisation being one of the fastest growing industries in Australia, it is regretful that many of our rival SEO providers are clearly rushing to sign up clients well before the client’s website is genuinely ready for online success.

Let me explain.

Just over a month ago a prospective client specialising in home and office cleaning enquired with both TopRankings and one other rival SEO firm.

I spent a good three minutes glancing over the website before quickly concluding it needed a professional overhaul.

1. The colour scheme, font size of the text clearly didn’t convey a professional and credible and capable cleaning company. There was no emotional appeal with clean and clear photos or other imagery. 
2. The architecture of the website was clearly not optimised for the user, nor the search engines. 
3. Limited call to action cues

I politely invited the prospect to first speak to one of our web design contacts. I explained that through a redesign she will clearly boost her company’s credibility and professionalism and chances of conversions when visitors begin finding her in Google. 

Off went the prospect and contacted and engaged the web designer I recommended.

A few short weeks later our web design contact told us that the prospective client was being harassed with a phone call every second day by our rival SEO firm encouraging her to sign up ASAP.

Her feedback to the designer was that since the initial discussion, not once did the rival SEO firm suggest a website redesign. 

Any visitor to the current website will agree the site has aged and must undergo an overhaul. I’ve purposefully withheld the URL for now.

TopRankings continues to pick and choose its clients carefully. If the prospective client

1. Doesn’t have a professional and credible website
2. Doesn’t have a realistic understanding and patience regarding result timeframes. 
3. Doesn’t understand that like any company we don’t commence work until we are paid.
4. Isn’t results and value driven, but cost and ‘face to face fruitless meeting driven’…….

….then we invite them to approach our rivals who ‘guarantee’ results, lock them into 12 month contracts and employ illegal techniques that will see them being banned by Google from appearing anywhere.

We love our loyal clients…they are and continue to be

Patient and realistic about result timeframes

Passionate about leading their industry and growing their business.

Professional and commons sense in their decision making approach. When they chose us in the first place, they glanced at our results page and quickly understood that they would be delivered seriously strong results. That we wouldn’t represent their direct competitors concurrently and most importantly that their investment with TopRankings would be a drop in the ocean when compared with their profitable returns. 

And yes the commercial cleaning company is proceeding with TopRankings. The hard working business owner clearly saw who is passionate about her company’s future success.

Noam Judah

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At TopRankings we pride ourselves on our ability to achieve and sustain clients rankings, however it has become apparent to TopRankings for us to achieve such results we rely on Full Access to a clients site. So what does full access mean?

Full Access means we can edit, upload any page within the clients website. Some clients prefer us not to have this access due to their business policies,  however these clients we usually dont take them on as feel that that this situation is generally not workable for numerous reasons.

           a)      Clients not updating sites as quick as we would like

           b)      Clients not fully applying the changes we recommend

           c)       Clients making mistakes when applying the changes

           d)       Web designers charging our clients an enourmous amount of money to make the changes we recommend.

SEO is an art form and has to be done expeditely and accurately, who would be responsible for the site if the website got banned by the search engines due to someone making an illegal change on the website? TopRankings likes to be accountable for all changes it makes, we simply dont like pointing our fingers.

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What do I mean by this? Well quite simply does your SEO company have an interest in what they have done positively and perhaps negatively to your site? At TopRankings we send our clients a monthly report,this monthly report shows the client what the current rankings are within the chosen search engines for their keywords. Furthemore clients have the opportunity to logon to their client portal where not only can they see the latest report but can see the initial rankings report of their website before we took over their SEO campaign. This makes our process very transparent to our clients and can clearly see if the SEO tactics we have employed are thus benefiting their rankings.

This report opens us up for critiscim as sometimes rankings do drop but rest assured our highly experienced SEO engineers also have access to these reports and thus concentrate their work on targeting those keywords that may of dropped.

Without these reports we as an SEO company and you as a client are shooting in the dark.

Now is the time to hold your SEO accountable. If you aint getting monthly reports dont think you should be?

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Another great EBOOK we recommend is by our good friend Glenn Murray from Divine Write he has produced what we would describe as the most complete SEO Books around. Glenn goes into the great depth about SEO and includes a range of topics that are sure to wet your appetite.

SEO is a constantly changing landscape and many people simply dont have time to practice with the methodologies in both EBOOKS and thus they employ the services of a SEO firm. However for anyone who wants to learn more we encourage them at the very least to read the books.

To view Google Starter Guide, please click here

To view more details of Glenn’s book, please click here

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We’re often asked “Should our business dabble in Google Adwords?”

There are several answers and theories and many businesses will do both Sponsored Links and ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ at some stage. We find many of our existing clients tried Sponsored Links first and learnt the hard way that Adwords whilst beneficial….is not a long term sustainable approach.
My 3 Step Recommendation:

STEP 1:
Invest in a successful website for your business which should include:
(a) A professional and credible looking website
(b) Simple navigation structure for your prospective customers to find relevant information or products
(c) Content on your site, especially the home page that clearly spells out in seconds the product or service your company provides
(d) A number of ways for your customers to engage including a prominently displayed phone number / hyperlinked email address and web form

STEP 2:
Plant the seed for long term sustainable results at a fixed monthly investment through ‘Search Engine Optimisation’. A significant increase in the website traffic should come through between months 6-12 depending on the competitive nature of your chosen keywords. Significant traffic increase and 24/7 exposure on Google to your target market with the successful website described above should get your phone ringing.

STEP 3:
Let the new business sales and profits from ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ boost your ability to then invest in Sponsored Links….after all there is still an estimated 15% market share to be secured.

CONCLUSION:
Both forms of Google exposure will be beneficial for your business when engaging the right professional company to manage the SEO or SEM campaign.
In our experience however, most of our business clients are unable and mostly unwilling to sustain an ever increasing, costly and very limited Sponsored Links advertising campaign.

These businesses prefer to be found at the top left of Google on a 24/7 exposure basis, not only because this is where most of their prospective customers actually click, but more importantly these businesses understand the buying psychology of their prospective customers. These prospective customers continue to use Google to produce and deliver them with results that are the most relevant and trustworthy for their search.

When you are the one appearing towards the top of the search engine, you’re one step closer to closing that next sale….even if the Googler was searching for you at 1am.

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We love clients who are passionate about their site, they have decided SEO is right for them but now they want results and we want to be the SEO organisation to prove to them that SEO can add tremendous value to any business, but I also hate this questions as usually the answer I give is not an answer they like.

The simple answer is we dont know how long it can take, while some sites has taken less than a week some sites have taken 12+ months to achieve, every website is built different, some are new sites and some are very old sites, because their are so many variables involved it is impossible and unethical for us to guarantee when results will be achieved.

The problem for our clients is we bill monthly, and every month when their money gets withdrawn from their bank account, naturally they are going to ask what did I get for this payment?

SEO is like a house, when you build a house their is much work done in the development in the house before the 1st brick is even laid. SEO is exactly the same, the initial few months we are preparing your site, getting it ready for the bricks, but who wants to build a house with a bad foundation. If you build a house on a solid foundation, you have done your soil testing, been granted your permits etc you know that once you lay the bricks the number of issues you have in the building of the house will be dramatically reduced if you spent the early days getting a solid foundation. SEO is no different.

At TopRankings we are not after quick results we are after sustained results. ie look at www.ittelligent.com.au, the keyword IT support has been #1 for 2 years straight (Google.com.au) and has only been knocked to #2 for a few days here and their.

So where does all this leave you? While we dont offer you guarantees what we do promise is if we dont deliver your results within 12 months of SEO commencment you simply suspend payment until such time we have achieved the results outlined in the beginning of the campaign.

If you are after guarantees and assurances that SEO can be achieved within 3 – 6 months then we will recommend you choose a different SEO firm (hey we are happy to provide you their details if you like), but in 6 months we will see you again as you will soon realise that what was promised to you hasnt been achieved. TopRankings are not the cheapest SEO firm in the world but like anything else in the world you simply get what your pay for.

You will then join our ever expanding list of what we call our 2nd try clients (clients who have tried SEO elsewhere and have finally came back to TopRankings as they realised we are honest and fair).

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While I could sit here and give you a stat of how many users use Google vs other search engines, we all realistaclly know the majority of the population prefer Google above Yahoo and NineMsn.

When we first start SEO on a website we  notice that Ninemsn and Yahoo will index the changes and rank the site (hopefully higher) a lot sooner than Google. Now I could try and explain why Google takes longer than any other search engine to display your higher ranked pages but I will leave that argument/discussion for another time.

In TopRankings eyes we target you for all 3 search engines (not necessarily equally). So why do we do this? Let me explain!!!

When you purchase your shiny new PC and turn it on and goto Internet Explorer what is the 1st site that usually appears? It is usually NineMSN (Channel Nine and Microsoft collaboration web portal/search engine). Would you believe their are many users that dont know how to change the default page so they keep Ninemsn running as the default and thus this is usually the search engine they primarily use. Some users simply prefer Yahoo over Google, after all Yahoo supplies the users with an abundance of information (yes Google can but once again some users dont know how to enable this feature).

We use the rankings we have achieved for you in Yahoo and Ninemsn as a guide, if we have achieved great rankings for you in these 2 search engines we can safely assume given time these results will flow thru to Google (unfortunately with Google, time is the million dollar question). We personally have noticed it can take several months for the changes to appear where Yahoo and Ninemsn is usually days/weeks NOT months.

So in summary their are definetly users who use other search engines than Google. Why wouldnt you want to target these users as well?

Judging success of SEO shouldnt be simply based on what position you are in Google what really matters is how much bigger is your wallet getting? I personally dont care if I am #1 or #3 or what search engines I am top results for as I try and be top for all search engines and not just one. What really matters to me is how many people found me on the web and if I have converted them as a client? And then I always ask myself this question, if I didnt SEO my site would the client ever would of known I existed? If the answer is NO then SEO is working for me regardless of the search engine and/or my ranking.

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