15 Ways Clients Can Build a Better Relationship With Their SEO Provider

After running a link agency for the past few years, I can safely say that some clients are easy to work with and some are nightmares. I can also say that the ones who are easy and fun to work with are the ones that truly bring out my passion for the work that we do, and as I see with my own employees, being receptive to listening to someone else's perspective is something that I highly value.

It doesn't matter if a client's niche is exciting or if their site is so amazing that I want to spend hours on it every week. A client who is willing to view our arrangement as a give and take relationship is the client for me.

Here are 15 pieces of advice that will help you build a better relationship with your SEO provider.

1. Be Honest About What You've Done in the Past

This is probably the most critical piece of advice. Lots of clients have done some shady things that they might not have fully understood were being done, and many have known exactly what was being done and just chose to ignore the repercussions.

Be honest about what was done. It's rare to find someone who hasn't done some sketchy marketing at some point. We're not judging.

If you bought networked links and spammed the heck out of forums for three years, just admit it. Don't swear that those links were the result of a competitor trying to harm you. Lying just wastes everyone's time and energy.

Good clients will explain what they have done so their provider can find out how to fix it or counteract it faster, if needed.

2. Don't Immediately Blame Links When Something Goes Wrong

Don't immediately blame links if your SEO service provider has built one for you and you've just messed up your robots.txt file. Also, if your SEO provider has built some great links and your site skyrockets to the top of the rankings, generating lots of new traffic and conversions, don't try and insist that it had nothing to do with their work.

3. No Surprise URL Changes

Don't change URLs without 301ing them or telling your SEO provider about it. If you've provided some targets to work with and they are suddenly 404ing, that's embarrassing. Webmasters start to get cranky when you have to go back and request a change.

4. Share Access to Webmaster Tools and Analytics

If your SEO provider can't see what's happening, it's much harder to do a good job. Sure, we can bug you for this info, but it's much easier if we can dig in and not have to wait for you to come back from your weeklong vacation so we can get the data we need.

5. Answer Questions

I can promise you that I have never once asked a client a question simply because I was being nosey. If I ask whether you've just changed 100 URLs, to go back to harping on that one, it's because it affects my work.

If I do have access to your analytics and ask if you've done anything on-site that could account for the sudden drop in traffic to a specific page, again, it's not just because I have nothing better to do than ask irrelevant questions.

6. Listen to Our Advice on Risk

Not to be funny here, but if someone who doesn't mind buying links tells you that your link buying plan is just too risky, you really, really should listen. If we stand to make more money off building more links for you but we say we shouldn't do it, it's because we really believe that you're playing with fire.

7. Don't Employ Multiple Teams or People to do the Exact Same Thing

If you do this and both (or all 10) of us wind up getting links on the same site, don't complain about it and try and make some of us go back to the webmaster and get them removed.

8. Don't Share Someone Else's Confidential Information-

If you send your provider something that is clearly marked as being "for your eyes only", all your provider will think is that one day you'll be sending their confidential information to someone else.

9. Be Clear About What You Want

Don't start out asking for one service and then run your provider all around until you finally admit that what you actually want is something totally different.

I've written up loads of consulting proposals for clients who asked for one specific service. Then, after spending loads of time on it, the clients admitted that they really just wanted me to go buy a bunch of links for them. If you want paid links, then say so.

10. Ask Why a Service Costs What it Does

We'd rather explain pricing to you now than receive a complaint about it later. The more you know about what we do, the better.

11. Don’t Ask About Price Matching

Don't give us pricing information that you've pulled off the site of some offshore SEO firm that no one's ever heard of and expect a provider to meet that price. If you do and your SEO provider says OK, be very nervous.

12. Be Fair About Client Examples

Don't freak out if your provider can't give you the example you want when you're trying to decide if they are the right fit. Sometimes there are iron-clad nondisclosure agreements in place.

However, please be receptive to ways that your provider can prove its worth without violating client confidentiality.

If that's a deal breaker, that's fine – and honestly it might be one for me if I were in your shoes. But if your provider can't give you client examples but can work for you and refund the cost if you're not satisfied, either accept that offer or move on and try to refrain from sending rude emails about a lack of professionalism.

13. Any Good Link Builder Knows About More Than Just Building Links

If you're asked to promote your new content socially to give it more attention, take that advice. Don't just think that because you can't immediately tie social to links, it means the advice is worthless.

If you're told to do a few things to speed up your homepage load time since it keeps timing out, listen. Link building is much easier when a site's worth linking to, you know.

14. Don't Focus on What Your Competitors Are Doing

Don't continually point out what your competitor is doing that violates Google's guidelines and ask why we don't just mimic them.

For one thing, your site is not the same as their site. For another thing, if you build a profile based on someone else, you're contributing to a footprint, and that's not a good thing.

Would you want them copying you? No.

15. Don't Try to Get Something for Free

I doubt you'd be able to find a decent SEO who doesn't end up giving away way too much for free. Many of us are actually nice people who are willing to share what we know and help people.

But there is a limit.

If you want to pay for an audit, then get a quote and pay for one. Don't try and weasel out pieces of an audit for free each month.

If you're paying for a service, stick to the scope of your contract. Asking a question here and there is OK, but if you want someone to spend 2 hours on the phone walking you through how to do something, expect to pay for that time.

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6 Major Google Changes

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The last few weeks have been amazing. Google has made some big changes and they are all part of a longer term strategy that has many components.

In short, Google is doing a brilliant job of pushing people away from tactical SEO behavior and toward a more strategic approach.

You could argue that "tactical SEO is dead", but that's not quite right. And don't run around saying "SEO is dead" because that is far from the truth, and I might just scream at you.

Instead, let's take a few steps back and understa

nd the big picture. Here's a look at the major developments, some of Google's initiatives driving this change, and the overall impact these changes will have on SEO.

 No PageRank Update Since February

Historically, Google has updated the PageRank numbers shown in the Google Toolbar every 3 months ago or so, but those numbers haven't been updated since February. This means 8 months have gone by, or two updates have been skipped.

In addition, Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts has said Toolbar PageRank won't be updated again this year, leading many to speculate that PageRank is going away. I won't miss it because I don't look at PageRank often and I normally don't have a Google toolbar in my browser.

However, a lot of people still use it as a crude measurement of a site's prominence.

For sites with a home page that has PageRank 7 or higher, it may in fact be reasonable to assume that the site has some chops. Correspondingly, sites with a home page that has a PageRank of 3 or lower, it is either new, or probably a low quality experience. Stuff in the middle, you just don't know.

If Google shuts off this data flow entirely, which wouldn't be surprising, then they will have to rely on other real world (and better) measurements instead. This would actually be better than using PageRank anyway, because Google says they don't use it that way themselves, so why should we?

Hummingbird

There are a few elements to Google's Hummingbird algorithm, announced in time for Google's official birthday, but like Caffeine before it, this is really a major platform change. Google has built a capability to understand conversational search queries much better than before.

Hummingbird really changes the keyword game quite a bit. Over time, exact keyword matches will no longer be such a big deal.

The impact of this algorithm is likely to be quite substantial over the next 2 or so years. Net-net, they have drastically reduced access to the raw data, and are rolling out technology that changes the way it all works at the same time!

Google+

OK, this one isn't new. Google launched Google+ June 28, 2011.

While it seemed to get off to a slow start initially, many argue that it has developed a lot of momentum, and is growing rapidly. The data on Google+'s market share is pretty hard to parse, but there are some clear impacts on search, such as the display of personalized results.In addition, you can also see posts from people on Google+ show up in the results too. This is true even if you perform your search in "incognito" mode:And, while I firmly believe that a link in a Google+ share isn't treated like a regular web link, it seems likely to me that it does have some SEO value when combined with other factors.

How Google+ fits into this picture is that it was built from the ground up to be a content sharing network that helps with establishing "identities" and "semantic relevance". It does this quite well, and in spite of what you might read in some places, there is a ton of activity in all kinds of different verticals on Google+.

 Authorship

OK, authorship also isn't new (launched on June 7, 2011), but it is a part of a bigger picture. Google can use this to associate new pieces of content with the person who wrote it.

Over time, this data can be potentially used to measure which authors write stuff that draw a very strong response (links, social shares, +1s, comments) and give them a higher "Author Rank" (note that Google doesn't use this term, but those of us in the industry do).

We won't delve into the specifics of how Author Rank might work now, but you can read "Want to Rank in Google? Build Your Author Rank Now" for my thoughts on ways they could look at that.

That said, in the future you can imagine that Google could use this as a ranking signal for queries where more comprehensive articles are likely to be a good response. Bottom line: your personal authority matters.

I also should mention Publisher Rank, the concept of building a site's authority, which is arguably more important. Getting this payoff depends on a holistic approach to building your authority.

In-Depth Articles

Google announced a new feature, in-depth articles August 6.

The Google announcement included a statement that "up to 10% of users' daily information needs involve learning about a broad topic." That is a pretty big number, and I think over time that this feature will become a pretty big deal. Effectively, this is an entirely new type of way to rank in the SERPs.

This increases the payoff from Author Rank and Publisher Rank – there is a lot to be gained by developing both of these, assuming that Google actually does make it a ranking factor at some point. Note that I wrote some thoughts on how the role of in-depth articles could evolve.

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Link Building the Right Way in 2014

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Some have concluded that the best and safest response to Penguin is to stop link building altogether. That's a bad idea.

Here's a reality check: the best way to improve visibility in the SERPs, in 2014, is still link building. Links are still believed to be the most important part of the algorithm, according to the most recentMoz search engine ranking factors survey.

Google's own Matt Cutts confirmed the same in an interview with Eric Enge, stating:

"Links are still the best way that we've found to discover (how relevant or important somebody is) and maybe, over time, social or authorship or other types of markup will give us a lot more information about that."

That statement has some pretty important implications, when it comes to planning and budgeting for a digital marketing campaign.

The main takeaway is this: Link building is still the key to more visibility in organic search. If your objective is to improve visibility in organic search, then invest in resources accordingly. Social media and authorship may (and probably will) impact the SERPs at some point in the future, but not today and probably not significantly in 2014.

Relevance is the New PageRank

The evolution of the original 1 link = 1 vote algorithm took a quantum leap forward in May 2012 with the introduction of the Knowledge Graph, which is used by Google to deliver search results with semantic-search information. This information is gathered from a wide variety of sources, using more than 500 million objects and 3.5 billion facts. In Googlespeak, the Knowledge Graph is about "things, not strings."

It's quite probable that Knowledge Graph is baked into Hummingbird, the latest Google algorithm. Assuming that's the case, then a correlation between "context, not anchor text" and "things not strings" is applicable. Relevance is the new PageRank when searching for linking opportunities.

A real life example could look something like this: Pre-Hummingbird, a search for car covers might yield results split among auto accessories to protect your car, tribute bands that cover the classic rock group "The Cars" and songs covered by Ric Ocasek and the cars. The "old" algo couldn't distinguish one car cover from another. Hummingbird, on the other hand knows the difference. Now, all of those auto parts links coming from high PR band sites, are now exposed for what they really are: unnatural. At best the link is devalued. At worst it triggers a manual review.

Link Schemes vs. Link Building

Understanding the difference between link scheming and link building is critically important in 2014. For webmasters who were doing SEO before Panda, this can be particularly difficult to navigate.

Many have been directly impacted by the Google paradox. Unlike the Einstein theory of insanity, in the Google Paradox, SERPs actually do yield different results after doing the same thing (spammy link building) over and over again.

A link scheme that scored number one rankings in 2010 can and will draw a manual or algorithmic penalty, today. That paradox has driven many a webmaster nuts!

According to Google, the following activities are link scheming – not link building:

• Buying or selling links that pass PageRank
• Using automated programs or services to create links to your site
• Linking to a site for the sole purpose of getting a link back
• Building a link networking for the purpose of linking
• Large-scale article marketing or guest posting using keyword-rich anchor text
• Buying advertorials or articles that include links that pass PageRank
• Creating & Distributing Press releases with optimized anchor text

Recently removed from the guidelines, but still likely to trigger a penalty:

• Linking to web spammers or unrelated sites with the intent to manipulate PageRank
• Links that are inserted into articles with little coherence

3 Safe Ways to Build Links in 2014

So what's left?

• Focus external link building efforts on the acquisition of editorially given links. These are links requiring human intervention and approval.
• Build links that are relevant – on pages where the readers would have a genuine interest in your website.
• Quality trumps quantity. A few links from high trust/authority websites will have more impact than hundreds of links from "Made for Guest Posting" 
• more information :- Seo Services, Seo services in indore, 

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Benifits Of Inbound and outbound Links

                                                                      

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What are Inbound Links ?:-
Inbound Links (Back links) are the links pointing to your website from other' website or other place on the Internet. Inbound Links send people to your website from other website and plays a very important role into the the success of your blog or website. It helps to acheive good traffic and better ranking as well. 
Different ways to Create a Back link :- 
a.Create a Quality Content :- Creating Quality based and relevant content is one of the best way that increase the Inbound Links. Because Quality Content holds more chances to share by the visitors. The main purpose f creating Quality Content is providing value to your targeted visitors.

Take the time to look at the post that already ranked well in search results and notice their structure, quantity and word placement as well. Remember that Quality Content Holds The Success of your blog or website.

b.Share Your Content on Social Networking sites :-As we know that, now a days social netwoking sites are on boom and these sites are another great way to create Inbound Links. Sharing your post on these sites is a way to create a Inbond Link and has great response as well. 

Search Engines are quickly crawl these site like Facebook, Google+, Digg etc. Try to share use content of your blog on Social Networking sites this helps you to boost you traffic to your blog and Page Rank as well. 

c.Guest Posting :-Guest Post is another a best way to create a natural Inbound Link. You can create a post for other' blog and include a link to your blog in your introduction or bio. Create a quality post and choose the best blog to submit it. 

Make sure that in which you are submitting your post have the same audience or visitors. Don't submit your post on that blogs that are different niche from your blog.

d.Backlink Analysis:-Conduct backlink analysis on competing web sites or blogs – find out who is linking to competitor sites that are not linking to yours. Ask sites linking to multiple competitors to link to yours as well. If another web site or blog is already linking to multiple competitors, there is a chance they’ll link to your blog as well.

e.Comments on other Blog:-Commenting on other' blog and forums are another a great way to create Inbound Links. When you are commneting on other' blog there is a chance to share your blog' link with your comments, same thing follow for forums. Make sure that you are sharing your link on that blogs that are same to you niche that will help a lot to generate more traffic to your blog or website. 

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What are Outbound links?:- Outbound Links are the links on your website or blog that points another website or blog on the internet means pointing another websites from your website these links send your visitors away from your website to another website. 

Many of people have different - different views about Outbound Links and many of them follow that they should minimize the number of Outbound Links, since they send people away from your blog or website. But this advise is not well, if you want to link relevant content that gives more information to your reader then in that it will ensure the quality of your content and increse the visitor trust as well. 

Benifits Of Outbound links :- Outbound Links are also the most important aspect of Search Engine Optimization. By creating Outbound Links you can increase your Page Rank and traffic as well. Search Engine' crawling rate can be increased to your blog when you are using Outbound Links.

1. Outbound Link to relevant information makes Search Engien Happy.
2. Targeted Visitors.
3. Best way to be in touch with bloggers having same niche.

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Surprise! Google Updates PageRank

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Christmas has come early for webmasters eagerly waiting to see if PageRank would ever update again. Twitter is abuzz with webmasters who noticed PageRank was updated early this morning, for the first time since February 2013. It’s surprising to many, since Matt Cutts had said there were no plans for another 2013 PageRank update due to technical issues.

At Pubcon Las Vegas in October, Cutts said we hadn’t seen a recent PageRank update because the pipeline that pushes PageRank data from the internal Google servers to the toolbar broke. There were no plans to fix it, he said, at least not for the remainder of the year. However, it appears that they decided getting this information out to the public was useful enough that they fixed the problem.

It seems the majority of sites that are new since the February update are starting out with PR1 or PR2. However, sites that have already had PageRank in the neighborhood of PR4-PR6 didn’t see much in the way of PR improvement this time.

“We looked at hundreds of sites and 90 percent dropped,” says Dave Naylor of Bronco. “We’ve not seen many gain PageRank in big leaps this time. We saw PR6s drop to PR1s, but not many PR1s rise to a PR6.”

There is also a lot of speculation that this data is not that fresh, and that the data seems to be several months old. Since Google gets daily updates to their internal PageRank tool, it seems a bit mysterious that Google would push out stale data -- unless there is a reason for it.

“My gut feeling is that the PageRank is from when the Google PageRank system broke, so it’s not new PageRank; it’s second hand PageRank from September-ish,” says Naylor.

Having a Google Page Rank update done in the few weeks leading up to Christmas (especially as it’s their first update since February) is also a bit unusual. With updated PageRank during a busy shopping season, it will definitely have an impact on those who have purchased links from high PR sites if those sites have seen a drop in PR.

It is also very important to remember that Google sees their PageRank update internally on a daily basis, and that is what impacts the algorithm, not the PageRank that is publicly seen by users through the Google toolbar or another similar tool. However, the perception of site quality, particularly when it comes to buying links or advertisements, still gets a lot of its weight from the current site’s PageRank in determining its value, even when that data is months old.

More Updates :- Latest Update Seo , Seo Services 

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How to Build Links to Your Social Profiles

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Most people, businesses, and brands want the information that appears first in search to be positive and, preferably, controlled by them. One way to dominate SERPs is by having your website, along with your top social profiles and pages, come up on the first page. Just like anything else that you want to rank well in search, you'll want to build links to those social profiles and pages.

Another great reason to build links to your social profiles – especially internal links from the social network itself – is to increase the authority of the profile or page.

There's no definitive answer on how social networks like Facebook choose to rank pages in Graph Search, or how Twitter chooses to rank profiles in their search. But one could assume that the number of mentions a profile or page gets, especially high authority ones, could have an impact on their rankings.

How to Build Links to Social Profiles:-

Now that you know a few reasons why, let's look at a few ways you can build links to your social profiles.

Website Links to Social Profiles

If you don't already, you should definitely link to your main social profiles from your website. There are tons of different ways to do it:

• Simple text links in author bios on your blog.
• Links using small social icons in the header, footer, or sidebar of your website.
• Official follow, like, circle, and connect badges (not necessarily great from the link building aspect, but makes it easier for people to follow you).

Not only will these help increase your social following, they will create official links connecting your main online platform to your social networks.

Twitter Bio Links:-While they are nofollow links, one way to create backlinks from multiple personal profiles to one main company profile is to mention the company profile in other profile bios. One great example of this is HubSpot – many of their employees mention the main HubSpot Twitter handle in their bios.If you consider the authority of each Twitter user and number of followers they have combined, those could easily be considered some high authority backlinks to the HubSpot profile.

Want to make this work for you? Simply ask your employees who are active Twitter users to include your company's @username in their profile bio!

Facebook Page Links on Profiles:- Similar to linking a company's Twitter handle to employee's personal Twitter profiles, you can also link a company Facebook page to employee's personal Facebook profiles. Unlike Twitter profile links, these links are dofollow.

Cross-Promotion Between Profiles:- Another way to build some high authority links to your social sites is to do a little cross promotion.Google+, for example, asks you for your profile links on the about tab for your profile or page. Take advantage of these to create dofollow links to your social profiles and pages.Pinterest allows you to connect to Twitter and Facebook, thus adding a nofollow link to each on your Pinterest personal or business profile.

Link Research:-Just like you research backlinks to competitor’s websites, you can research links to their social profiles as well (or see what links you have to your own social profiles).The Instant Backlink Explorer from CognitiveSEO allows you simply enter a URL of a social profile and review the pertinent data about your (or your competitor's) social profile backlinks, such as link growth:

More information :- SEO Services in india , Seo Services 

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