Special Relationship with Search Engines

Q. A company called me while I was cooking dinner and said they have a special relationship with the search engines, and they will place my site in the first position at all of them for X amount of money. I couldn't talk to them because my dinner was burning, but I'm curious as to how they can do this and whether it's something I should learn more about.

Jill: Most likely this company is simply buying the sponsored PPC ad spots and will then resell them to you with a high markup. Nobody has a "special relationship" with Google, and you can't buy your way to the top of the natural results. I would suggest politely hanging up on any telemarketer that tries to tell you otherwise.

Competitors' Traffic

Q. Our minister told me that I can find out how much traffic my competitors get. Do you know how to do this?

Jill: It's impossible to find out how much traffic your competitors get unless they somehow have their log file statistics out in the open. Sites such as Alexa.com can give you some comparative data, but they will never give you the exact amount of traffic that your competitors receive. The only sites you can get that info from are those to which you have log file access, or those on which you have installed some tracking code. Nobody can just install this sort of thing on their competitors' sites, as they'd need server access to do so.

Using Plurals and Singulars

Q. Both the plural and singular form of my keyword phrase are searched upon often according to Wordtracker . Which one should I choose?

Jill: Both. Keyword phrases such as the singular and plural forms of your words, which are related, are extremely simple to use within the visible copy on your pages. When we naturally write or speak, we use both plural and singular forms of words, so why restrict yourself to one or the other?

Never optimize a page or a site for just one keyword phrase. That is the equivalent of SEO suicide in my opinion. Every site has hundreds if not thousands of phrases that someone might use to find it. Figure out what they are, and then use them to your advantage to bring highly targeted visitors to your site.

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