The biggest mistake made by an analyst is failing to determine the prospective audience of the site. How can a site succeed if it is ignorant of its audience? Without a good understanding of the audience, there is no effective way to determine what they are searching for. By default, most SEO companies just assume a general audience made up of all Web demographics. This generic platform is not optimal, and does not provide the best keywords. For example, let's say a site is aimed at a more technical business-to-business audience. This audience would most likely be looking for industry-specific terms and technical lingo as opposed to the general consumer masses that would be oblivious to these terms. If this situation were reversed, technical lingo assigned as keywords could cripple the organic optimization campaign.

Now that the audience has been determined, the analyst must properly assess the amount of traffic for each keyword. It is important to understand that not every person searches the same or has the same technical level. Individual keywords must be assessed to determine their value, but they must also be tested against possible synonyms and similar terms to determine which keywords are producing the most traffic. Simply optimizing a site for a pre-determined list of client supplied keywords DOES NOT provide a good foundation for an effective SEO campaign.

This may sound obvious at first, but after talking to hundreds of Web site owners I've found it to be a very important question. Many sites seek to be a 'jack of all trades'. Instead of being the best at what they do, they spread themselves too thin by trying to be everything to everyone. What ends up happening is the site does not look like an authority on any topic to the search engines. Refining an effective keyword analysis and assignment almost always helps the analyst and the client understand what the site is about and how it should be targeted. The search engines always favor a site that is narrow in its scope. They believe a site that is dedicated to a single topic must by default be more authoritative on that topic when compared with a site that devotes only a portion of its content to the topic.

It may not seem important what order the items are completed in, but it can dramatically affect the outcome of the campaign. Many SEO companies and clients get caught up on traffic numbers. Traffic estimates on keywords are only relevant if the audience you are intending to target is searching for those keywords. If a certain company is only targeting local visitors, then the traffic for national keywords is irrelevant. It is very important that the audience is determined before anything else. It is extremely common for traffic estimates to end up being the only criteria for analyzing keywords; this does not produce effective campaigns.

The core reason most keyword analysis programs fail is that many SEO companies base 100% of their success measurements on rankings and traffic. The main reason a site is existence is for one of three reasons: leads/general marketing, advertising revenue, or ecommerce sales. The end goal is to make money. If you select the wrong keywords, it generally has no effect on the actual rankings (unless the keywords are too competitive for the site or the organic optimization is poorly implemented). In this way, an SEO company may see a campaign as very successful while the client sees no additional business and actually loses money on the campaign. We measure all campaigns based on ROI, rankings, and effective traffic. We consider ourselves successful only when the client is successful.

Our number one priority when refining our search engine marketing methodology is removing the items that no longer provide value. Many SEO companies use out-dated methodologies that are like a museum of past SEO. Instead of refining their methodology, they simply add new items on top. This is often known as the 'buckshot approach'. Because they have not researched and tested the items in their methodology separately, they simply implement everything that has ever worked, currently works, might work, and even some items that have never worked. Our goal is to provide the most efficient and compact search engine optimization methodology in the business. SEO optimization is not voodoo. It's a very logical methodology built through research and testing.

The major search engines are attempting to provide a useful service. Many SEO companies believe that SEO itself is a battle against the engines. We are users and fans of search engines and never found the guidelines provided by the major engines to be in opposition to ethical SEO. If the core goal of an SEO campaign is to improve a site, then the methodology should very easily stay in compliance with the engines guidelines. If your SEO company seeks to push your site above your competition through any method outside of improving your site, then they are not working with the engines, but against them and will not provide long term search engine rankings.

More than anything, TreeHouse SEM is comprised of Web users. There is a lot of spam and trickery on the Web, and we make a very concerted effort to promote ethical search engine optimization tactics and speak out against less-than-ethical methods. It is in our best interest that the industry as a whole has a good reputation. We want your site to contribute to the rich experience of the Web. We do not artificially rank sites or promote anything related to spam. Take a look at sites that rank higher than you. These are the sites that the engine finds to be most authoritative. Now make your site better.

The engines simply want to rank the most authoritative and highest quality sites first. The logical solution to low rankings is to improve the quality of your site for both users and search engines. Search engines do have some unique needs that must be addressed to ensure they are getting the most out of your site. A good optimization campaign will improve both search engine and user experience on the site as well as improve search engine ranking for the site.

The main difference between TreeHouse SEM linking campaigns and the same priced campaigns of other SEO companies is our emphasis on quality. We firmly believe in providing maximum value in all of our linking campaigns. From a contractual standpoint, it is easier to sell large amounts of low quality links on sites that share nothing in common with your site. Low quality and non-relevant linking campaigns are very dependent on changes to the search engine filtering algorithm. This forces the customer to buy more links and continue with much longer contracts.

We believe in helping our clients get the most out of the search engine marketing process. Good, relevant links take time to gather, but provide more value. You will also have to buy far fewer total links. In this way, your site is building a network of links between other industry-relevant sites.

TreeHouse SEM does not deal in reciprocal linking campaigns. These campaigns have not shown to yield the desired results. We feel that they do not meet the standards with which TreeHouse SEM prides itself. Oftentimes, SEO companies use reciprocal linking campaigns to justify elevated optimization campaign costs. In most cases, these links are NOT thoroughly tested or researched and their origin is not always clear. There is no real way to tell if the reciprocal links you purchase are part of a greater link farm scheme or not. This means you are not only buying less-than-effective linking campaigns, but you may also be damaging the reputation of your site with the engines.