This is the second in a series of posts that will explain what we do and what it all means for your small business SEO.  We’ll publish one new post per day at 9 am EST all this week.

SEO Service Explanation Posts

1. On page optimization
2. Off site link building, directories, listing services, etc.
3. Keyword research assistance with KEI values provided.  (Wednesday Feb. 15th)
4. Custom 404 error page directory. (Thursday Feb. 16th)
5. Internal link building. (Friday Feb. 17th)
6. Competitors Analysis + Attack. (Saturday Feb. 18th)
7. “Popularity Contest.” (Sunday Feb. 19th)
8. Monthly Plans (Monday Feb 20th)

The SEO equation

As we said yesterday, search engine optimization is very simple.  Ranking higher on Google is only: On site SEO + Off site SEO.  

Off site link building, directories, listing services, etc.

Once you’ve audited, tweaked, fixed or otherwise mangled your front page and you’re ready to do off-site SEO, you’ll be ready for Google to find you.  How does this happen?  Well, hopefully you have your website linked a few places – profiles, forums, Facebook – basically wherever you already visit.  Assuming Google already has seen your site, they’ll be back to visit and check up on you.  

In between visits, Google will analyze what other sites think of you.  If you have 1 friend in the world, probably not very popular.  If you have 1,000 you are VERY popular.  If you claim to have 100,000 friends someone may think you’re lying.  This is essentially how Google sees links from other sites to your site.  If one site links to you, you’re not very valuable on the net yet.  If 100 sites link to you, you’re worth something for them to be linking.  If 1000 sites do, you’re popular.  And again, if you have 1,000,000 links back to your site Google figures you’re probably lying (cheating and are most likely a link spammer or some sort of black hat SEO guy.)  

So basically, the question is simple: how do you get good links?

How do you get these links?

Think like Google for a minute.  Which links would be the most valuable?  Two types of inbound links are valuable.  1) Influential links and 2) Related links.

Really, that’s how it should be, too.  Links can be rated as influential (think of your friend as Bill Gates) or not very influential (think of your friend’s jobless brother who doesn’t get out of bed until noon.)  If you were giving these two people as job references, who would you hope they call?  Google ranks you based on the influence of the site that is linking back to you.  A front page link from Google.com would therefore obviously have the most benefit and a link from a delisted, spammy page would probably be the worst.

The second type of rating for links is how related they are.  All other factors being equal, you’re much better to have a link from the Arts & Humanities > Photography section of one directory than having multiple links on an unrelated page.   

Our job is to identify related, influential (and hopefully both) links that we can get for your site and help build your off-site SEO profile.  We want to create a web that Google sees as both powerful and related to your niche.  Small business is entirely about reaching the right audience and we hope to help you reach them by listing you in relevant small business directories, with listing services such as Gathering Guide, etc.

How much does off-site SEO cost?

Link building, directory and niche listing adds cost $75 per hour with a 2 hour minimum.  While you could easily (and should) do some link building yourself, we have literally thousands of websites in hundreds of niches available already.  Our extensive collection of sites is a valuable addition to your SEO project.  We can add you to 150-200+ directories in a single day.  If you can do that yourself, you probably don’t need our seo services.

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In the end, every SEO factor is either an on-page or off-page factor.  Everything else we do, from Competitor’s Attack to Popularity Contest are all special programs geared toward building the best site profile we can give you.  SEO is a continuous project and we want to ensure you are built for the marathon.

Tomorrow we’ll discuss keyword research, KEI and how we can help you choose relevant, conversion-rich keywords that will increase your number of clients, not just the number of pages you show up #1 on.