Frequently Asked Questions

What is HoustonMarketingPros.com all about?

We are a team of experienced internet marketing professionals who offer search engine marketing and search engine optimization services, along with copywriting, website design, social marketing, public relations and website analysis. At HoustonMarketingPros.com, we offer quality services that won’t exceed your budget.

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Why should I hire your services?

We have a team of professional SEO marketers who are highly experienced in this field. Our services are highly affordable giving you better ROI (return on investment). The service packages offered by us are suitable for a variety of business needs. Our highly efficient technical support team is available at your service round the clock through chat, phone and email. Most Website Design companies promote website design packages and do not have the necessary skills to effectively optimize the site for the major search engines. Having a flashy graphical rich website that cannot be found on the Internet is like building a fancy castle in the middle of a desert that nobody knows about. This is why we promote SEO services more than website design as SEO is critical to your business success. Website Design is the easy part, hiring our expert SEO team is what will make the difference in having a presence on the Internet vs. becoming visible and actually generating profit from your Internet based business.

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What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?

It is the process of marketing your website on the Internet. Search Engine Marketing involves strategies like SEO, submission, paid inclusion programs and so on. SEM helps in enhancing your website’s interaction with search engines and helps your desired target audience to find you on the Web. We have solutions that allow short-term immediate visibility as well as long-term solutions that align with your long-term advertising goals and objectives.

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What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Search Engine Optimization uses a variety of techniques by an SEO subject matter expert that allows your website to get higher rankings within search engines. It is a process that involves a combination of on-page & off-page optimization factors. On-page factors are things that we can do to your website such as tweaking the Title, Meta & Alt tags for specific keywords that are relevant to your website. Off-page factors are also very important and involves tasks such as working with related sites to link to your website, writing articles and submitting to article directories, blogging and other best practice activities that will drive substantial traffic back to your website. More targeted traffic back to your site results in a greater opportunity to sell or market your products and services.

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Why do I need to optimize my website for search engines?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important strategy for marketing your website on the Internet. If you are looking up to your online profits, then don’t neglect your website’s SEO. Research shows that above 80% of Internet users search for what they are looking for using keywords in search engines. Select the SEO technique that goes well with the requirements of your business. The art of SEO is about getting your site to show in the Organic area of the search engines. Consumers browsing the Internet trust the organic search result area, and these are not quick tactics that are performed overnight. Our SEO team will educate you on how to get your site on the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN and discuss what we can do to help you stay there.

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What are search engine spiders and crawlers?

Spiders are programs (also called SpiderBots) that search pages on the Internet, index them by usability and subject matter, and rank them accordingly based on relevancy. Software engineers working with a particular search engine company program these search engine crawlers and spiders, based on highly confidential complex algorithms. It is essential that these algorithms be kept confidential or else non-ethical design & SEO firms would program sites to manipulate the system. While the algorithms are not published, HoustonMarketingPros.com understands what the search engines are looking for. We program your site based on SEO best practices such that can be performed on your site that will result in it being crawled regularly by the search engines. More importantly, the key is to optimize your site such that when people search for specific topics or keywords, the search engine returns their search with your website as the most relevant result that meets their search criteria.

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What is the meaning of PageRank and how is it important for my website?

PageRank is the term used by Google to rank web pages according to their importance with regard to specific keywords. Higher page ranks translate to higher online reputation. Working with an SEO firm such as HoustonMarketingPros.com will assure that SEO best practices are implemented and your Google Page Rank has the highest probability of getting closer to the top of the scale.

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Can I achieve the topmost position in search engines for a particular keyword?

As the number of websites on the Internet is increasing day by day, it is difficult to get the top position for one specific keyword. Instead it is recommended that you optimize your website for keyword phrases that your target user group would search for. Keyword phrases having 2 to 3 words are ideal for improving targeted traffic to your website. For instance, “SEO Copywriting” is better for SEO than just “copywriting”. For highly 0competitive keywords or keyphrases, getting higher search engine rankings will take some time. However, teaming with the right SEO firm will help you to achieve top rankings in the search engines.

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How much time will it take search engines to ‘index’ my website?

There’s no fixed time frame. New websites take about 2 to 8 weeks time to get indexed in a search engine’s index. The fastest way to get indexed is to have a high ranking website link to you. The spiders are usually crawling these high-ranking websites regularly and they will crawl to your site as a part of the linking process. The time it takes to index a site is somewhat irrelevant compared to the question of How Long Will It Take to get search results for targeted keywords to show up on Page-1 of Google, Yahoo or MSN.

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Do you guarantee the top ranking for my website in search engines?

No, we don’t! But if any other company is offering you a guarantee then beware, because top ranking or any particular ranking for your website for a particular keyword in search engines cannot be guaranteed by anyone.

Search engines follow a complicated algorithm for ranking websites, and they keep changing it from time to time. New websites are coming up everyday and your competitors are also striving hard to reach the top position on search engine results. Due to all these variable factors, search engine rankings can never be predicted or guaranteed. But we can assure you the best efforts on our part to get higher search engine rankings for your website on important search engines and directories.

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Why do the search engine rankings for my website differ on Yahoo compared to Google?

Different search engines use different algorithms for ranking a website for specific keywords. For instance, Google prefers off-page optimization instead of on-page optimization, which is given higher priority by Yahoo. On-page optimization involves optimizing the keyword density, H1 tags, etc. of a web page, while off-page optimization deals with inbound links, etc. More on-page optimization means higher ranking in Yahoo and vice versa. Off-page optimization takes longer to show results, as you require more backlinks that take some time for aging.

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What is the meaning of an ongoing search engine optimization campaign?

If you optimize your website for a month and not do it again, then it will have a negative effect on your search engine rankings. It means if you have the topmost ranking in search engines then you have to maintain it through an ongoing search engine optimization campaign, else your ranking will drop and so will your profits. Hence, you need to hire the services of an SEO company to maintain or increase your search engine rankings.

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What are the advantages of an ongoing SEO campaign?

Ongoing SEO campaign involves regular optimization of web pages including new and updated ones. You will get more targeted traffic to your website through a steady link acquisition process which include link exchange programs. It helps in improving and maintaining top keyword positions for your website. Our professional consultants will advise you for better optimization of your website by constantly monitoring your website statistics.

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Does my website need a complete makeover for search engine optimization?

Deciding to change the website design for better search engine optimization is a tough decision for website owners who have spent a lot on the appealing graphics and multimedia on their website. While Internet users find such websites more appealing, search engines are more comfortable with plain HTML coding and content. Using JavaScript, for instance, results in the search engine going through a lot of unnecessary codes before actually indexing the relevant keywords.

Also, web crawlers are insensitive to content embedded in videos and graphics. However, various SEO techniques can be applied to a website without losing its existing visual appeal. Our SEO experts will work in close coordination with you to optimize your website for search engines and make it user-friendly at the same time.

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What is the meaning of black hat SEO? Is it unethical to use it?

Higher search engine rankings can be achieved using various techniques. Some of these techniques are ethical while others are unethical or black hat or backhanded. Black hat SEO techniques like duplicate content, page cloaking, link farms, and keyword spamming will get your website high search engine rankings in a very short time, but they do not work in the long run.

Search engine crawlers are becoming smarter day by day and websites that use black hat techniques will be heavily penalized. Search engines may even totally ignore or sandbox such websites while spidering.

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If my website is penalized by a search engine for some reason, can you help me?

Yes. First of all we will identify and analyze the reasons for the penalization of your website by a search engine. Then we will follow certain procedures to extract your website out of the situation.

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When will I see the results of the search engine optimization efforts?

There’s no definite time period for SEO efforts to start showing results. Days, even weeks make take to show the outcome of optimizing your website. Usually you can see the results immediately after your web page is spidered. So, keep a tab on your website’s search engine ranking for the optimized keywords. Through regular monitoring you'll be able to see the difference.

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Which keyword research tools do you use?

Our experts perform keyword research using the best standard registered tools such as ‘Keyword Discovery’ and ‘Wordtracker’. These research tools track keyword information from a number of minor and major search engines and help us in keyword analysis.

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Does the number of pages competing for a particular keyword affect my website's search engine rankings?

No, your website’s ranking is not affected by the quantity of competing pages for a particular keyword. The level of competition matters the most. Your website’s content, coding, and linking are very important to occupy the top positions in SERPs.

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Which PPC programs does your company support?

Google Adwords, Yahoo Overture and MSN Adcenter are some of the popular PPC (pay per click) programs that we support.

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  • Google
  • Yahoo
  • Ask
  • Live
  • MSN
  • Alta Vista
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