There’s four main aspects of SEO we’re going to discuss in this article: competitive SEO vs. long-tail SEO, monthly SEO vs. pay for performance, white hat vs. black hat, and manual vs. automated.

Competitive SEO vs. Long Tail SEO

When it comes to keywords that people search for on search engines, we classify them into two categories: competitive and long tail. Competitive keywords are those that are highly competitive, short length keywords that have high search traffic. An example of a competitive keyword may be “cars” or “credit cards”. Long tail keywords are keywords that are less competitive, longer in length and have lower search traffic. An example of a long tail keyword may be “reliability of foreign cars” or “tips for applying for credit cards”.

Both strategies have pros and cons, and we utilize both strategies for our clients depending on their expectations and budget. Competitive campaigns are generally more work, take longer to see results, and are riskier in that if your rankings fall for one keyword, you lose substantial traffic. However you can get exponentially more traffic by ranking for a few competitive keywords than long tail keywords. On the flip side, long tail keywords are much easier to rank for, are less risky in that you spread your rankings across hundreds or thousands of keywords, and are a more stable approach to SEO. However long tail campaigns can also take some time to get traffic and the traffic associated with each keyword is dramatically lower than competitive keywords.

Monthly SEO vs. Pay For Performance SEO

The newest trend among questionable SEO companies is a pay for performance campaign. They believe these campaigns will ease the business owner because they don’t have any out of pocket expenses until their website gets ranked. Sounds great right? Well, unfortunately it isn’t. First of all these SEO companies will choose keywords to rank you for that are easy to rank and have very little traffic, after all they care about getting you ranked and getting paid. And the second main problem is these companies use questionable SEO practices that generally will get your site ranked, but your site won’t stay ranked for any period of time. They get you ranked just long enough that you pay them and then they are no longer responsible for your rankings.

At The Marketing Masters, all our SEO packages are on a month to month flat fee basis. We work hard to get your site ranked and ranked for quality keywords using quality, ethical SEO practices. This means that once we do get your website ranked, you’ll not only have a good amount of new traffic but you’ll also stay ranked. This type of service truly does deliver a good return on your investment.

White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO

Some SEO companies only worry about making it to the finish line and don’t care how they get there. They take short cuts, use unethical link building strategies, and ultimately do things that can cause permenant harm to your company and your company’s name.

These unethical methods often are initially effective, however once the search engines catch up with them they can lead to your website being banned from search results. Additionally, these types of methods often involve spamming other website owners, which at the very least is a shaddy practice and in some areas is even illegal.

The Marketing Masters always utilizes what is known as white hat SEO methods. These methods involve ethical link building, which means your SEO campaign will appear completely natural to search engines. We never spam or solicit other companies to post links on their website. We follow all industry best practices and take your company’s online reputation extremely seriously.

The main difference between white hat SEO and black hat SEO is pricing. Unethical, “short-cut” methods are much less expensive and less labor intensive than ethical, proper methods. However at The Marketing Masters, we always are able to build an SEO campaign that fits your company’s monthly SEO budget.

Manual SEO vs. Automated SEO

Just like ethics in SEO there is a huge difference between how SEO work is performed. Some companies have resorted to utilizing automation to reduce their workload and lower their costs, which usually is reflected in higher profit margins for them and not through lower costs to you.There are two huge problems with utilizing computers to perform SEO work: the first problem is quality and the second problem is duplication.

Let’s first talk a bit about quality in SEO. When computers are programed to perform SEO tasks, such as page optimization and link building, they aren’t able to personalize the SEO for various niches. This leads to a very standard, cookie cutter type of SEO that often is not as effective as a custom tailored SEO package. Secondly, computers are often utilized to build massive amounts of links in a very short time from the same IP address. Search engines aren’t stupid–they can pick up on these “link blasts” and often penalize websites for this type of activity.

The second problem is with duplication. When computers are used to optimize, build links, and perform other SEO tasks, they are generally programmed online a a few ways, meaning the content they produce, links they build, and other aspects of SEO are often duplicated from one website to another. This does not deliver the highest ranking power possible, and can also result in your website being penalized by search engines.

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