All search engines have terms and conditions of service. When a company that performs SEO for a client or even a website owner that performs the SEO tasks , they need to comply with the search engines terms and conditions. This means that the SEO that is performed on the website is “white hat SEO” .

All the SEO tasks must comply with the search engine terms and conditions to perform “white hat SEO”. It is obvious from this that the opposite would be “black hat SEO”.

When the SEO tasks that are performed company with the search engines terms and conditions and the website provides the search engines what the search engines are looking for, then the website is far more likely to rank higher and have sustainability in the long terms.

With all the hard work that needs to go into SEO is a good thing to ensure that all tasks are according to the terms and conditions. Not doing so may ruin all SEO efforts performed by the company for years and in the worst case, not only have the website de-ranked but also banned.

Some SEO companies refuse to let clients know what they are doing with their websites to get rankings. This should raise a red light in anyone’s terms. Such companies often use systems that are not allowed by the search engines. It only takes time until these are found out and the consequences can be grave.

PR: wait...  I: wait...  L: wait...  LD: wait...  I: wait... wait...  Rank: wait...  Traffic: wait...  Price: wait...  C: wait...

I get this question often. So, I though I take a minute to write about this in short. You start your SEO by analyzing your website and the competitors website on the search engines.

Without starting at this point, you will never know where you are, where you are going, when you got there and what you are measuring in terms of success and results.

We give our clients some 7 pieces of software to analyze and monitor SEO efforts. This helps our customers see where they are and when they achieve their goals.

After you achieve each SEO goal you need to start looking at new territories to gain visitors. Unless you are the size of Wikipedia, there is always more to do in SEO there are always new sources of traffic to consider to get more customers. Just don’t try to “bite the whole elephant in one go”. Do your SEO step-by-step and try to keep focused. By analyzing you site and your competitors site you will be able to get down to the tasks you need to achieve and move on from one task to another until you reach your goals.

If you don’t know how to analyze your site and your competitors site, you may want to consider an SEO audit for your site.

PR: wait...  I: wait...  L: wait...  LD: wait...  I: wait... wait...  Rank: wait...  Traffic: wait...  Price: wait...  C: wait...

I was recently hopping all over the net when I encountered yet another great addition to Twitter. This time it comes in the form of a CRM system. The design is an enhancement of Salesforce.com's Service Cloud application, which allows the monitoring and tracking of user information partaining to their products on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

In plain English, if you are a company and sell certain products; the new application will allow you to monitor conversation about your products that users are engaged in, and even allow you to engage in it if you so wish. With that kind of power, you can easily respond to any complaints or find out information on what makes your product good or bad, and therefore make it better and increase customer satisfaction.

Looking at it from a purely business point of view, this new addition to your existing CRM system is a must if you really plan to go above and beyond to please your customers. If you are an E-Commerce site, you will definitely know how difficult it is to get real-world accurate feedback from your customers partaining to your product, and through Salesforce's new Twitter intergration you will be able to extract that feedback. Going even further, I'm sure one can see the great potential for marketing an existing product or releasing a new product with lowered risk of "failure-to-launch".

From the "peanut-gallery" (me), I can't say I disapprove. It is a great opportunity, especially for new E-Commerce sites to get that necessary improvement information. The only possible fault I can see is that (like similar applications) this one probes and eavesdrops on conversations. I'm a big fan of my privacy online, and when it comes to praising or complaining about a product, I tend to report straight to the source. Yet, if you do not mind the product's supplier leeching information off your chats or even engaging your conversation, then all is well.

Unfortunately for business, Salesforce's Twitter intergration application is not yet fully completed; but don't worry, it's right around the corner so start budgeting for something that could potentialy put you up there with the best.