The Top 10 SEO blogs have been ranked based on Google Page rank,  Bloglines subscribers and Technorati authority.  The three sources have been used to  score the SEO blogs from 0 to 10, where 10 is the highest score. The highest aggregate total score for a SEO blog, therefore, is 30.

SEO Blogs considered: the list considers only SEO blogs that have a high percentage of SEO content. The  SEO content might range from SEO strategies, SEO link building, search engine optimization pricing to general best practices and SEO discussion forums etc.

Google Pagerank (0 to 10): the actual Google Page Rank was used in the score.

Bloglines Subscribers (0 to 10): Subscriber ranges were determined (i.e., 1-50, 50-100, 100-150, 150-300) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 10).

Technorati Authority (0 to 10): Ranges were determined based on Technorati’s Authority rank (i.e., 1-100, 101-200,201-300,301-400,…) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 10).

The first step to building an internet presence is developing a website. Then, you need to attract customers. Performance marketing services generate qualified traffic to your website with pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization ( SEO ), social media marketing solutions etc.

The internet is a truly global marketplace with over 1 billion prospective customers online. A majority of them use Google to look for information including products and services. Studies indicate that 95% of all searches result in clicks on search results that rank on the first page of Google. SEO services focus on making your website more search-friendly and increasing its seo ranking such that your website appears on the first page for relevant searches.

How does Search Engine Optimization (SEO) work?

Search engines crawl websites and index them based on several different criteria such as keywords, inbound links, etc. The search algorithms determine which websites are the most relevant for the specific search term while ranking the websites. Page ranking criteria varies based on the search engine. A website can have different page ranks on different search engines for the same search terms.

SEO companies work on websites continuously to improve page ranking; following guidelines laid down by experienced search engine marketing (SEM) experts. These best practices improve a website’s visibility in search results. Factors that contribute to make a website more search engine friendly are:

1. keyword rich content
2. effective website design
3. meta tags – title, keywords and description
4. fresh content
5. inbound links
6. navigability and accessibility in website structure

How do SEO services supplement online marketing efforts?

The internet is a constantly evolving media. To keep up, search engines frequently improve underlying algorithms to make search results more relevant to search terms. SEO service providers are always on the lookout for new keywords, emerging technologies, and better search engine optimization pricing models to offer website optimization. SEO services follow these steps to optimize websites:

1. Research the keywords

Finding the best keywords for a website is a complicated job. The popularity of a keyword has to be balanced with its competitiveness. At the same time, too many keywords should not be targeted or the impact of SEO will be diluted. Fortunately, search engines and websites provide keyword suggestion tools. SEO services may also have in-house tools to select the best keywords to optimize a customer’s performance marketing strategy.

2. Optimize the website content

SEO services strategically include keywords in the website content to increase its search engine relevancy. The keywords are used in headings, subheadings and paragraphs while keeping the content readable and compelling.

3. Inbound link building

Search engines favor a website that has many inbound links. It is taken to be proof of your website’s credibility and popularity. SEO services create articles in forums and related business websites, press releases for news websites that link to the customer’s website. They also try to get reputed websites in your business industry link to your website.

4. Monitor effectiveness of keywords and make changes

SEO is an ongoing project. The effectiveness of SEO has to be monitored constantly and content and keywords modified. An online perofrmance marketing strategy is incomplete without SEO. Customers trust organic search results more than paid searches. It is critical to optimize your website constantly to maintain business visibility and expand your customer base.

E-commerce websites have become a popular resource for people to buy products and services. This opens up an opportunity for businesses to extend their customer outreach. With more and more small and mid sized businesses launching websites every day, the internet has become a hotbed of competing web site designs vying for customers. One of the most effective and natural ways of increasing online visibility is via SEO of your website.

Search Engine Optimization improves the search engine ranking of websites, making them appear higher in search engine results. Though search engines do not reveal the secrets of the underlying algorithms, they lay down guidelines that improve the seo of your website. One factor that impacts natural seo ranking of a website is link popularity.

How does link popularity support SEO?

Inbound links from other external web pages are treated by search engines as votes of conidence for your website.  The more inbound links your website has, greater is its content credibility and relevance to the user and the search engine ranks it higher in search engine results.

Search Engine Optimization providers use several different SEO link building strategies to seo your website. Some of these are:

1. Submitting your website in online web directories: Submiting your website to paid online web directories is a cheap and easy way of building inbound links. However, it is very time consuming and is frowned upon by major search engines as way to pay for votes instead of getting them based on the quality of your website content.
2. Participating in forums: Forums are a great way to spread brand awareness of your website. SEO Services packages offer link building services via forums and discussions and article submissions. Anchor text that has the website address as the link results in an inbound link for your website. Many search engine optimization companies are also active on social media websites to help promote links to your website. Small and Mid Sized business owners and partners can also participate in these posts to help create more inbound links to further drive seo juice for your website.
3. Exchanging links: Search Engine Optimization providers can help you create and participate in Link Exchange programs. These are places where you can participate in reciprocal link exchange with websites that are complementary in nature resulting in qualified seo traffic to your website. Website search optimization firms select a website that is relevant to your business. They do not negotiate with unscrupulous websites that exchange links but do not allow customers to click on your website link.
4. Requesting links: All websites want more inbound links. SEO firms email web masters of reputed websites relevant to the business products and services and request a link to their sites. Typically, SEO providers start with the websites that link to competition websites. An inbound link from a reputed site increases the seo ranking for a website.

It is tempting to buy or exchange many inbound links to increase the google search engine optimization rankings. SEO firms take the guess work out of SEO for your website and make sure you avoid black hat techniques that can get your website blacklisted by major search engines.

Millions of people look for products and services on search engines every day. Search results appear as a list of website titles and descriptions. Search Engine Optimization providers focus on getting your website placement on the first page of major search engines to drive traffic and sales leads.

Meta tags help define the web page title, description and keywords relevant to a website. Meta tag optimization is critical for website search placement. Each web page design should have individually defined meta tags for title and descripton as these values are displayed in search engine results.

Meta tags For Website Search Placement

The three types of meta tags that influence page ranking are title, description, and keywords. Search Engine Optimization experts recommend that meta tags should include rich keyword content in the title and description that is reflective of the content on the web page. The combined result of these meta tags gives online searchers an exact idea of what the website offers and how well it meets their need.

The three meta tags that can influence website search placement are discussed in more detail below.

Meta keywords

Identifying keywords is the first step in search optimization. It is not an easy task. Competition on the internet is fierce and many businesses offer products and services similar to your business. You need to select keywords that are popular and reasonably competitive so that you can drive a significant amount of traffic to your website.

The keywords meta tag should include a comma separated list of relevant keywords and phrases as a continuous string. You should focus on a few select keywords rather than stuffing in all the possibilities as it dilutes each keywords influence in ranking your website higher on search engines. Moreover, major search engines have reduced the influence of the meta keyword tag while determining the website’s search placement.

Meta title

The title of websites should grab the attention of prospective customers. If a searcher keys in “computer hardware Dallas” in the search box and sees a link “Gizmos, Dallas – for all your computer hardware needs” in the results list, she will click on it immediately. The link comes from the meta title tag. A good title tells the searcher what the web page is about and confirms that the information she is looking for is on it. Witty titles are fine but they should be informative and unambiguous. The length of the title should be less than 94 characters and the most relevant keywords should be placed at the beginning of the string.

Meta description

The meta description tag provides more detail than the title. It should be a precise and relevant abstract of the page content with keywords and related terms thrown in. The description appears under the title in search engine results. It should not exceed 165 characters as search engines show only that much for each result.

The description of web pages should be compelling. A description such as “Get the top brands in computer hardware at Gizmos. Discounts and surprise gifts on purchase of flash drives, portable hard disks and other products” will attract prospects and encourage them to explore the options on your website.

Meta tags play an important part in search engine optimization. If you do not have the time or skills to research keywords and measure their popularity and competitiveness, you should hire a good search engine optimization provider to help achieve your goals. These SEO professionals are experts and can help you improve your website search placement.

The internet is a huge marketplace visited by millions of customers every day. If your business does not have a website for them to visit, you’re losing precious dollars every minute. What’s more, with the fierce competition, you need to pull all the stops to make your website design stand out from the crowd. Moreover, you an do so cheaply with seo – by identfying keywords that are important for high search ranking of your website to convert the traffic from them into sales…

Search engines crawl through trillions of web pages in a day. What can you do to make your website rank higher and come up at the top in search engine results? Hire a search engine optimization provider. Search engine optiization providers help increase the ranking of your website through many web site optimization strategies, one of which is link building.

What is text link building?

 Link building is simply getting other high quality websites to link to your website. It is a gradual but an effective strategy that leads to high returns. A search engine service treats incoming links as votes and notch up your website search placement accordingly. Not many people know that the popularity of a website is based on the popularity of the websites that link to it. In fact, inbound links from reputed and credible websites impress search engines even more.

Building Inbound links through article and press release submissions

Link builders develop content related to the business and its products and services and post it on blogs and driectory sites. The content includes inbound links to your website. The more articles you publish, the more incoming links you build to your website. At the same time, you become a credible source of information to the masses. SEO Link building companies also develop press releases and submit them to news directories. Search engines pick up relevant news information based on keywords and bring up the press release that links to your website.

Participating in social media and online forums

The more the SEO link building firms interact on the world wide web, he higher will be their capabilities of building links to your website. Link buildingcompanies participate in forum discussions related to similar products or companies, social media websites, and blogs relevant to your business goods. They can give altruistic advice on products and leave a link to your website. Contributing to online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia also works.

Developing link baiting strategies

Developing link baiting strategies is the most challenging task for search engine optimization companies but it also has the highest payoff compared to the other SEO tactics. Link Baiting is a form of SEO link building where the search engine optimization provider develops buzzworthy content that intrigues industry influecers to want to link to your website. It could be in the form of articles, videos, audio streams, reports, statistics, tools etc. A lot of thought goes into seo link building strtagies as it has the potential to generate incoming links from diverse online sources.

Targeting credible and reputed websites

A business may only serve a specific set of products and services to a niche audience. The keywords specific to your business type may also not be commonly used. Search engine optimization companies use this knowledge to target the large media outlets that focuses on your industry to get them to link  to your website.

Why should you hire SEO link builing experts?

As you can see, link building is not trvial. It is very time consuming and requires the online capabilities and reach to be effective. It is definitely not a job for in-house resource that lacks experience and knowledge. SEO Link building is unmatched as it is one of the most effective and cheap search engine optimization services to help drive traffic, increase business leads or e-commerce sales from your website.

SEO Link building can be done by itself or as a broader web site optimization initiative. Either way, its contribution in amplifying your website’s online presence is critical to the success of your business.

The first step to building an online presence is an attractive website design. Then you need to attract customers. Search Engine Optimization providers can help increase traffic to your website with SEO services, social media marketing and other online marketing strategies.

The internet is the largest market for any e-commerce website, with over 1 billion users. A majority of them use search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo to find product information. Studies indicate that a majority of the clicks from searchers are recorded on the top five website rankings on search engine results pages. Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the seo ranking of your website to try and achieve one of those coveted positions for relevant search terms.

How does Search Engine Optimization (SEO) work?

Search engines use more than 200 variables such as keywords, content, meta title and description tags, link popularity, etc to determine which websites are the most relevant for a given search term entered by the user. The ranking algorithms vary across the various search engines and a website is likely to have a different seo rank on Google vs. Bing vs. Yahoo for the same search term.

Search Engine services focus on identifying relevant keywords, optimizing meta tags and building links to improve seo ranking.  Following are some of the best practices to improve website search placement in the top search engines:

1. Implementing keyword rich content
2. Effective website design
3. Meta tags – title, keywords and description
4. Link popularity by developing an inbound linking strategy

How do SEO services supplement online marketing efforts?

The internet is the most dynamic media channel known to mankind. To keep up, search engines frequently improve underlying algorithms to make search results more relevant to users. The best seo companies are always on the lookout for long tail keywords, link building strategies, and changes in web trends to establish new web optimization services and techniques.

SEO services use the following search optimization techniques while optimizing websites for seo ranking:

1. Research and Identify relevant keywords

Finding the best keywords that convert into sales leads and conversions for a website is a complicated job. The popularity of a keyword has to be balanced with its competitiveness. At the same time, too many keywords should not be targeted or the impact of SEO will be diluted. Fortunately, search engines and websites provide keyword suggestion tools. SEO services may also have in-house tools to select the best converting keywords to optimize a customer’s seo ranking strategy.

2. Search Optimization of Website

SEO services strategically include relevant keywords in the website content so that search engines can index and determine the main focus of the website. The keywords are used in headings, subheadings and paragraphs while still keeping the content meaningful to users.

3. Inbound link building

Search engines favor a website that has high quality inbound links. It is taken to be proof of your website’s credibility and popularity. SEO services create articles in forums and related business websites including press releases  that link back to the customer’s website. They also write relevant and high quality content to attract and bait high profile bloggers and reputed media websites to blog and publish about your business.

4. Track the performance and effectiveness of web traffic

Web Optimization is a continuous process. The effectiveness of search engine optimization has to be monitored constantly and the keywords have to be revisited based on the peformance and effectiveness of the existing traffic to your website.

An online strategy is incomplete without Search Engine Optimization. Customers trust organic search results more than pay per click advertising. It is critical to optimize your website to improve your webite traffic and expand your customer base.

Businesses today depend on Search Engine Optimization providers to create visibility and presence in the online world. Stiff competition in the online market mandates that company websites rank higher in the search engine results. Search Engine Optimization providers help companies increase their website ranking in search engine results. This gives a boost to the number of prospective customers visiting the company’s website. A company can train its own employees to perform search engine optimization in-house. However, there is nothing known as cheap search engine optimization as SEO is not a one-time task but a full time job. It’s an ongoing process, that involves adding rich keyword content to your website and getting external websites to link to it. The idea is to keep the content up to date and fresh so search engine crawlers take notice of it and ranking your website high in the search results for the relevant keywords. Here are some points on how search engine optimization providers help companies optimize their website rankings:

1. Surpass intense online competition: Businesses today rely heavily on their web presence and visibility. Many companies today operate online and many others have departments that help establish and maintain online identities. This has resulted in stiff competition in all the major industries. Search Engine Optimization helps companies stay ahead of their online competitors by improving their seo rankings.
2. Appear on th first page of search results list: Web users and shoppers have a tendency to pay attention only to the first page of the search results. Companies that can get to the first page of search results have far better business prospects when compared with companies having their advertisements in consecutive pages of search results. SEO services help companies appear in the top ten search results of all popular search engines. They help by understanding the search trends and by drawing attention of suitable customers to the website.
3. Maintaining your website search rankings: Due to ever changing search algorithms, indexing methodologies and other factors involved in internet search, the ranking of a website in search results is bound to shift even after having stayed at the top. Search Engine Optimization providers follow these web trends. They help companies maintain their position in search engine results  and are therefore in demand at all times
4. SEO is not for the novice: Search engine optimization is a long and slow process. It’s a skill that is acquired by staying ahead of the competition by reading, attending seminars and practicing the art. SEO Service Providers also need to interact with search specialists and keep themselves abreast with the latest in the field. They also need to figure out the business of their clients and the search trends of the customers of these clients. SEO providers apply all this knowledge to help businesses stay on top of search. SEO is not a simple task that can be accomplished in a short time by amateurs or layman.

There is fierce competition in the online market and therefore it is important for companies to rank well in the search results. SEO service providers specialize in helping companies rank higher in search engine results pages thereby increasing the prospective customers to their websites.

There was a time when web designers would do anything to get more traffic from Google. If you follow the same practices today, your website could get banned from Google today. The best way for websites to achieve high seo rankings today is to focus on SEO friendly website design that is genuinely helpful to customers.

Customer centricity unites Google search engine optimization

White-hat Search Engine Optimization companies improve seo rankings by making websites google friendly. They develop content that is rich in keywords, pertinent and current so that search engine spiders can index the website effectively and bring it up in relevant searches. White-hat SEOs and search engines – google, bing and yahoo work towards a common goal – help users find and access information quickly.

Services offered by white-hat SEO services

White-hat SEO services use strategies that are endorsed by Google Search Engine Optimization guidelines. Some of their services include:

Streamlining website design

SEO freindly Website design should be aligned to customers’ expectations and should meet the requirements of search engine spiders. Optimal website design includes:

1. A clear and easily navigable hierarchy: Websites can range from a few to hundreds of web pages. The hierarchy of the web pages should be clear and each page should be accessible via a static text link. This improves search engine indexing.
2. Site maps: Site maps helps users find pages quickly and search engines in crawling through the website.
3. Strategic use of multimedia: Search engines – google, bing and yahoo don’t work well with multimedia. Though flashy images, animations and dynamic pages look good to customers, they obstruct search engine spiders from indexing the website. Avoid using too much of frames, images, JavaScript code, cookies, session IDs, URL parameters, DHTML and Flash. SEO services help businesses use multimedia strategically on their websites.
4. Facilitate website indexing: SEO services should include modified since information in the HTTP header to help search engines index the website.

Developing keyword rich and relevant content

Google uses a number of criteria to rank website content. White-hat SEOs engineer website content to meet google’s requirements. Search Engine Optimized website content is developed with:

1. Relevant and updated information: Websites that include content that is clear, unique, new, extensive, and recently updated rank higher. SEO services ensure content is kept fresh, timely and is of high quality.
2. Keyword rich content:  SEO services help businesses identify popular keywords relevant to their goods and services. They include the keywords in content so that search engine spiders can track information relevant to search terms. Strategic use of keywords increases the visibility of websites.
3. Optimizing Meta tags: Meta tags such as title, description and keywords in the website’s HTML code alert search engine spiders of their relevance. SEO services optimize these tags to garner more traffic. As the title and description is displayed in search results, their content is critical to attracting customers’ attention.

Creating links

Search engines trust websites that have many inbound links. Links from various sources endorse the website’s credibility and quality to search engines. Inbound and outbound links are both considered by search engine algorithms in evaluating a website’s relevance to search terms. SEO services build inbound links by participating in social media, publishing articles, news releases, etc. on trusted websites.

Google Search Engine Optimization is effective because it is oriented around the customer’s needs. SEO services improve websites’ credibility, visibility, and help businesses expand their customer base with high seo rankings.

Website Search Optimization process deals with understanding the criteria that determine which websites show up on top when a user is searching for something on Google, Bing or Yahoo.

The key criteria are as follows:

1. The number of inbound links to the website
2. Richness and relevance of content on the website
3. Moderate amount of keywords that are indicative of the topic
4. Well structured code of web pages, stylesheet and client-side scripts
   Some of the things that could negatively impact the ranking are redirect chains, mismatching or missing HTML tags, and broken links.
5. Some other techniques like having keywords in non-visible sections of the page, either in HTML comments or having same color as background, could negatively impact the websites search engine rankings

The Website Search optimization process is not a one-time job, nor is it something that could be done occasionally. It’s a continuous and ongoing process, that involves adding new content and meticulously synchronizing keywords and links for the new content. The intent is to have fresh relevant content every time a web crawler or a spider crawls a website.

Search Engine Optimization Companies

Search Engine Optimization Companies provide specialized services and expertise, which allows small and midsized businesses to benefit from the process. The content generation process, however, must be owned by the companies themselves so that the content is accurate and aligned with the company’s objectives. Content refinement, which deals with optimizing content for seo ranking, should be outsourced to the website search optimization companies.

Selecting an SEO Company

Established SEO services can backup their expertise in the field by providing references, which should be cross-checked by clients by speaking to the references. Some other resources that can be referred are websites like Angieslist & the Better Business Bureau.

It’s important for small businesses owners and marketing executives  to understand basic search engine optimization tips as this will help them choose an SEO service and maintain a productive relationship with them. Apart from checking on references & reputation, here are some other points to consider while selecting an SEO company:

1. Familiarity and experience on the client’s industry: SEO companies with experience in the client’s industy understand keywords, competitors & strategies, which help them hit the road running.
2. Responsiveness: You should pay attention to how quickly your emails were answered while contacting the SEO service for information, as it is a good indicator of how responsive the company is.
3. Reporting: Understand the frequency and delivery mechanism (online vs. over emails) of reports. It’s also important to ask for how periodic feedback is sought from clients and how strategies are readjusted. An effective feedback loop is critical to your success.
4. Projections: It is important to understand that seo rankings are constantly changing and it’s nearly impossible to guarantee a consistent google page rank. Therefore, you should adjust your expectations and be vary of a search engine service that guarantee a specific seo ranking.
5. Inbound links: Promises on number of inbound links is another website search optimization target that clients should be careful about. Its possible to pay for websites such as directories, parked domains to link to your wbsite or even echange links with other business websites. However, both these link building approches are looked upon negatively by Google, Bingand Yahoo.
6. Quality of recommendations: It’s important to notice how clear, specific and easily actionable the recommendations provided by the search engine service is. Also, the recommendations should focus on leveraging existing content and addressing gaps where they exist as content is the cornerstone of search engine optimization.

The recent economic recession has compelled small and mid sized businesses to think twice about their overall advertising spend. Small and mid sized businesses have shifted a significant amount of their advertising budgets online to try and squeeze the maximum return on investment (ROI). This has resulted in a surging demand for Website Design and SEO services. However, some of the top search engine optimization companies have also become selective in accepting new clients as SEO requires significant client involvement and participation to get the desired results.

The industry observers confess to have observed a gradual transformation in the attitude of SEO services:

1. Experienced SEO services firms are now adopting extensive SEO strategies as the industry practices have matured and also while selecting clients into their portfolio as it takes two to tango when it comes to getting desired search engine optimization results for any business. Many SEO companies have terminated their short term engagements with clients that are un-willing to invest in search engine optimization as an integral component of their online marketing strategy.
2. Individuals and entrepreneurs have started to learn the search engine optimization trade by joining SEMPO, attending conferences such as SES, SMX etc and taking SEO certification classes to start a small business or re-launch their careers based on the growing demand for SEO services.
3. Furthermore, large companies have ventured to do search engine optimization in-house and SEO careers have become main stream with individuals joining large companies such as Walmart, eBay, Electronic Arts etc to help them with their search engine optimization needs.

Here are a few guidelines to determine the right SEO service for your businesses:

1. Get a basic understanding of how SEO works so that you can determine the right search engine optimization strategy for your business. This will also help you in identifying the right SEO service provider that fits your specific needs. 
2. It is important to understand that SEO is a gradual process and there is no silver bullet, so set realistic targets and clear objectives for search engine optimization.
3. Create an annual budget for SEO activities so you can prioritize the search engine optimization strategies and tactics that you’d like to focus on with the SEO service provider in order to maximize your return on investment (ROI).
4. Finally, if you are serious about increasing your website traffic using SEO you should hire a good search engine optimization services firm as its easy to try and do it yourself by reading books such as SEO for dummies and taking educational courses. However, the results from such basic knowledge sources have not been very encouraging and its easy to get SEO wrong resulting in lost time and resources.