I am seriously thinking about signing up for SEO with your company. My web designer recommended you. However, I have some questions… Firstly, for my first keyword I entered, the SEO Opportunity states “poor” however the monthly search volume is 9544 on the keyword and for a “top 3″ ranking the cost is $110/month. However, for my second keyword the SEO Opp is “good” and the keyword has 1393 for the monthly search volume for a price of $79/mnth. I’m wondering why, if we are paying to be in the top three - and paying more for the first option - why the SEO opp is “poor”. Surely the higher the search volume, the better - why is the price is higher??

Second question: What exactly does “top three” mean?? We are looking at Google only. Does that mean for one month each and every time someone does a Google search and enters the key words we pick we will come up on the first page in one of the top three spots?? How do you have control of this - there are many SEO companies out there and what if 10 other companies are all telling their clients the same thing - that means there are only three spots for 10 companies. Please can you explain exactly what the ‘top three” means? Thank you.

Hi Denise -

The answer to your first question is that pricing is actually based upon the existing competition and the existing seo “strength” of your Website. Pricing is not directly related to the keyword’s SEO Opportunity. In other words, if there are a lot of Websites with strong seo strength and your site has a lower strength (often due to being a new site or having a low Google PageRank) than the pricing will be higher. This is because it takes us a lot more work, time and effort to get sites with a lower seo strength ranked high in the search engines.

As for your second set of questions: We can’t only rank your site for Google. We use an optimization practice that targets all of the major search engines. Sometimes you’ll rank in all three and sometimes you won’t. The good thing is, if you don’t rank in a particular search engine, you won’t pay anything. And the pricing for Yahoo and MSN is at a lower price since they tend to drive less traffic. In addition, we can’t guarantee that you’re site will rank for the Ranking Goal that you choose (although most of our customers do end up achieving their ranking goals). That’s another reason we only charge you if you rank, and the amount you pay is predicated upon how high we can get you ranked . . .

I hope this information helps, and please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any other questions!

Kind Regards,

Shawn B.
RankPay Support

First off, let’s go over what “meta tags” are in the first place.

Meta tags are found in the “head” area of your web pages (near the top of the page’s HTML). Other than a web page’s “Title Tag”, the information in the head area of your web pages is not seen by those viewing your pages. Instead, meta information in this area is used to communicate information to search engine spiders and browsers.

The meta keywords tag allows you to provide additional text for search engines to index. The keyword tag is sometimes useful as a way to help your Web page rank for synonyms, misspellings, or unusual words that don’t appear on the Web page itself.

SO, when it comes to the keyword tag, here’s what we recommend…

First off, make sure you do have the tag on each and every page in your Website. Next, be sure to include keywords related to the central theme of your page. Separate each keyword phrase by a comma and be sure not to include more than ten phrases. Many people believe that you can stuff the keywords tag with as many keywords as you like, but our testing and results don’t agree. Too much of ANY optimization factor is generally is not a good thing.

Here’s an example of properly structured Meta Keyword tag:

<META name=”keywords” content=”furniture, tropical furniture, bamboo furniture”>

So be sure that all of your pages have the tag properly place, it doesn’t take long. If you have any questions about the Keyword Meta Tag, feel free to contact our Support Team within your RankPay account.

Credibility is often measured in how long a particular search engine has known about the page. Of course, the amount and quality of content on the page also matters. So do other factors, like how many other Websites link to your Web page.

The primary way to evaluate the overall credibility of your pages is by viewing it’s Google “PageRank”. The scale runs from 0-10 with ten being the best possible score. PageRank (aka “PR”) is one of the methods Google uses to determine the relevance or importance of a Web page.

Google explains PageRank this way:

——————————————–
“PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query. ”
——————————————–

It’s important to note that PageRank is not the only determining factor in where your page will be ranked or what the future SEO future holds for you and your Website. There are plenty of examples in which low PR pages rank high in the search engines (usually for keywords that aren’t very competitive). PageRank is just general barometer . . .

How do I view the PageRank of my pages?

You can accomplish this one of three ways:

• Login to your RankPay account and view the PR of the pages you have already assigned to keywords. Do this by clicking on the Active Keywords or Pending Keywords tabs.
• Download and install the Google Toolbar which has a Google PageRank “meter” on it. You can download the GToolbar here: http://toolbar.google.com
• You can also use a Website that has a PageRank tool like PageRank.net.

You can learn more about Google’s PageRank system by visiting the Google site at:

http://www.google.com/technology/

1. Optimize Your Title Tag - Make sure the exact keyword is in the title tag. The title should consist of this keyword and 1-3 additional words. It’s also best to place the keyword farther to the left. If you are using the same webpage for multiple keywords make sure each keyword is the title and use a | or comma

2. Keyword at Top & Bottom of Page - Make sure the keyword is in the first sentence towards the top of your page. Then place the keyword in text somewhere near the bottom of your page.
   

When you’re done, log back into your RankPay account and click the “Pending Keywords” tab. Enter the URL of the page you optimized for each pending keyword and click the button to verify your onpage optimization.

This insures that you will not be charged full pricing indefinitely but you’ll still receive SEO services to help “maintain” the top ranking for your Website.

The rankings we use to establish pricing are based upon the more common generic results that are not personalized.

There are 8 simple tasks that you or your webmaster will have to do to prepare your webpage(s) for our SEO service. They only take about 15 minutes to complete…

We have a page that explains in detail how to do “onpage optimization” here.

Although it is not required, selecting pages that have a higher “Google PageRank” rating greatly increase our ability to get rankings for you. You can view the PageRank of your Webpages here.

You can assign up to 2 keywords per Webpage.

It’s important to keep in mind that when you cancel a keyword it is then available for another user to add to their account. If that happens, you won’t be able to add it back to your account since we only allow one customer per keyword.