Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Marketing A Bail Bonds Business
At the end of the day, bail bonds are a service business. SEO and SEM are just tools in the bail bondsman marketing tool kit. Knowing how to differentiate a bail bondsman from the sea of competing bail agencies is key to converting the users that hopefully are arriving at your website. I found an article with some good bullet points about marketing a service business, specifically a bail bonds agency. Hopefully, one or two items will resonate and prove fruitful for your bail bonds marketing endeavors.
Common Misconceptions About Bail Bonds
For the average person, bail bonds are one of those things that most people have heard of, but really don't have a thorough understanding of. Consequently, there are numerous myths or misconceptions floating around on Main Street America. Those in the SEO game need to understand the public's perception of the bail bonds industry because it shapes their search habits. What a user understands (or doesn't understand) will affect the key word terms someone searches for and how they perceive the information once they arrive at a website.
I am passing along an excellent article that describes some of the more common bail bonds misconceptions. With that information in hand, it is prudent for any bail bonds seo professional to evaluate the information they believe their users are looking for and how to best serve the users once they land on your bail bonds website.
I am passing along an excellent article that describes some of the more common bail bonds misconceptions. With that information in hand, it is prudent for any bail bonds seo professional to evaluate the information they believe their users are looking for and how to best serve the users once they land on your bail bonds website.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
How To Build Quality Bail Bonds Links According to Google
I just read a great SEO newsletter article, from WebProNews, about building good quality links in the eyes of google. Link building is one of the most important pieces to the SEO puzzle. However, building good quality inbound links from other bail bonds websites seems to be more challenging than link building in other industries. Possibly due to the narrow niche and high percentage of commercial sites dominating the landscape vs. industry informational hubs. The article mentioned that google made a very clear point of describing what kind of links they value. Are you listening? Google is telling you what links they like and how to get them! This is coming from google, so I put a lot of merit into the advice.
WebProNews says "The first piece of advice Google gives is to get involved with the community around your topic. If you were still not convinced that social media plays a very big role in search, consider this is coming straight from Google. Now the networks your community hangs out in may vary, but engaging with the community is simply a good way to get links and build credibility, which also will most likely lead to more links. Engaging is good for increasingly visibility outside of search anyway. Nothing new. Just reiterated by Google. "
They go onto report that google advises "is to create content that solves problems for your users - things like tutorials, videos, and tools, surveys, research results, etc. Users who find helpful content are likely to pass it on. " It seems as though some bail bonds websites are very light on information to help users and very heavy on selling to users. I can appreciate the website is a selling tool, but google is saying that getting traffic can be enhanced if you first answer burning questions for users. Remember, in order to get users to buy your service, they must first find your site. Google is blatantly saying they value sites that help solve user questions. Ahem, hint, hint. One site in the Las Vegas bail bonds market that does this well is las vegas bail bonds. Their FAQ section has a much broader selection of resources, questions and answers than most of the Las Vegas competitors. In addition, the information they provide for various courts, bail procedures and detention facilities is better than 99% of the other sites. As a user looking for help with bail bonds, would you rather go to a website with a one page, "buy from me" message or one that answers many of your burning questions all in one place? Google would take the latter every time.
The article goes onto say that google hates paid text link ads and will not pass any link juice when discovered. They also cautioned against relying on contests, humor and other gimmicky strategies for link building. While they may get some short term traffic, google doesn't reward them in the long run.
Google also mentioned all directories are not created equal. "There are great, topical directories that add value to the Internet. But there are not many of them in proportion to those of lower quality. If you decide to submit a site to a directory, make sure it's on topic, moderated, and well structured. Mass submissions, which are sometimes offered as a quick work-around SEO method, are mostly useless and not likely to serve your purposes."
So there you have it. Google is telling you what they value and what they don't. Make your site useful and the traffic will come. Novel concept! Now get going!
WebProNews says "The first piece of advice Google gives is to get involved with the community around your topic. If you were still not convinced that social media plays a very big role in search, consider this is coming straight from Google. Now the networks your community hangs out in may vary, but engaging with the community is simply a good way to get links and build credibility, which also will most likely lead to more links. Engaging is good for increasingly visibility outside of search anyway. Nothing new. Just reiterated by Google. "
They go onto report that google advises "is to create content that solves problems for your users - things like tutorials, videos, and tools, surveys, research results, etc. Users who find helpful content are likely to pass it on. " It seems as though some bail bonds websites are very light on information to help users and very heavy on selling to users. I can appreciate the website is a selling tool, but google is saying that getting traffic can be enhanced if you first answer burning questions for users. Remember, in order to get users to buy your service, they must first find your site. Google is blatantly saying they value sites that help solve user questions. Ahem, hint, hint. One site in the Las Vegas bail bonds market that does this well is las vegas bail bonds. Their FAQ section has a much broader selection of resources, questions and answers than most of the Las Vegas competitors. In addition, the information they provide for various courts, bail procedures and detention facilities is better than 99% of the other sites. As a user looking for help with bail bonds, would you rather go to a website with a one page, "buy from me" message or one that answers many of your burning questions all in one place? Google would take the latter every time.
The article goes onto say that google hates paid text link ads and will not pass any link juice when discovered. They also cautioned against relying on contests, humor and other gimmicky strategies for link building. While they may get some short term traffic, google doesn't reward them in the long run.
Google also mentioned all directories are not created equal. "There are great, topical directories that add value to the Internet. But there are not many of them in proportion to those of lower quality. If you decide to submit a site to a directory, make sure it's on topic, moderated, and well structured. Mass submissions, which are sometimes offered as a quick work-around SEO method, are mostly useless and not likely to serve your purposes."
So there you have it. Google is telling you what they value and what they don't. Make your site useful and the traffic will come. Novel concept! Now get going!
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Gaming the Bail Bonds Search Results With Multiple Websites
As everyone knows, the competition is only getting tougher and tougher for search results relating to the bail bonds industry. As I once read, there is no white hat and no black hat search engine optimization......just varying degrees of risk. As such, I've seen a number of different methods employed to achieve rankings. One of the more often utilized, but probably higher risk and higher (sometimes lower, depending upong the execution) reward strategies is to create multiple bail bonds websites with the purpose of manipulating page rank. This is of course a violation of the google webmaster guidelines.
The Miami bail bonds market is a particularly competitive one. Florida in general has a lot of large bail bond companies operating in the state. Most of these companies, have large war chests for marketing and advertising. So it is no surprise some of the bail bonds companies would try to game the system (google) with the hope of getting an edge in the SERP's.
For example:
bondsmaninmiami.com
floridabailbondscompany.com/
tgkbailbonds.com/
floridabailbond.com/
dadecountybailbonds.com/
coconutgrovebailbonds.com/
kendallbailbondsman.com/
keybiscaynebailbonds.com/
floridabailbondsman.com/
It is obvious that all of these websites are cross linked and affiliated with Bail Yes. Not only are they being used for manipulating page rank, but they provide a lot of duplicate content. Both of which are a violation of the google webmaster guidelines. Imagine being a Miami bail bondsman trying to market through your website. You must contend with competitors, such as Bail Yes, that are operating at least 9 different websites.
We understand that the reward by using so many sites can potentially be a strong foot hold in the search results. However, I believe that this is an inherentely flawed strategy. Forget for a moment that the sites can be DEINDEXED by google for violating their guidelines. I would suggest that rather than working on 9 websites simultaneously, the effort would be better spent working to create one great site. The linkbuilding, marketing and content creation would yield much better ROI since they wouldn't be split 9 ways. However, the advantage of setting up multiple sites is that it can accelerate SERP's once implemented.
Contrast that with a website like Miami bail bonds. This lone website's webmaster doesn't appear to be gaming the system. However, they are concentrating on good Miami bail bonds related content. No fishy page rank manipulation, no weird cross linking or duplicate content. I would bet money that in the end, this Miami bail bonds website will do better than the Bail Yes websites.
At the end of the day, every webmaster has to weigh the risk to reward. You have to ask, is gaming the system with multiple sites that are similar going to do much better than making one really good site? If the answer is yes, the follow up question should be; Are you also willing to risk google penalizing every single one of them?
The Miami bail bonds market is a particularly competitive one. Florida in general has a lot of large bail bond companies operating in the state. Most of these companies, have large war chests for marketing and advertising. So it is no surprise some of the bail bonds companies would try to game the system (google) with the hope of getting an edge in the SERP's.
For example:
bondsmaninmiami.com
floridabailbondscompany.com/
tgkbailbonds.com/
floridabailbond.com/
dadecountybailbonds.com/
coconutgrovebailbonds.com/
kendallbailbondsman.com/
keybiscaynebailbonds.com/
floridabailbondsman.com/
It is obvious that all of these websites are cross linked and affiliated with Bail Yes. Not only are they being used for manipulating page rank, but they provide a lot of duplicate content. Both of which are a violation of the google webmaster guidelines. Imagine being a Miami bail bondsman trying to market through your website. You must contend with competitors, such as Bail Yes, that are operating at least 9 different websites.
We understand that the reward by using so many sites can potentially be a strong foot hold in the search results. However, I believe that this is an inherentely flawed strategy. Forget for a moment that the sites can be DEINDEXED by google for violating their guidelines. I would suggest that rather than working on 9 websites simultaneously, the effort would be better spent working to create one great site. The linkbuilding, marketing and content creation would yield much better ROI since they wouldn't be split 9 ways. However, the advantage of setting up multiple sites is that it can accelerate SERP's once implemented.
Contrast that with a website like Miami bail bonds. This lone website's webmaster doesn't appear to be gaming the system. However, they are concentrating on good Miami bail bonds related content. No fishy page rank manipulation, no weird cross linking or duplicate content. I would bet money that in the end, this Miami bail bonds website will do better than the Bail Yes websites.
At the end of the day, every webmaster has to weigh the risk to reward. You have to ask, is gaming the system with multiple sites that are similar going to do much better than making one really good site? If the answer is yes, the follow up question should be; Are you also willing to risk google penalizing every single one of them?
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Getting Penalized By Google
Google is a curious thing. An enigma that is needed by almost all in the online world, but understood by few. Google has taken on an almost mythical status because of its unyielding power over what consumers access, see and possibly buy. For those in the SEO world, you have to do well with google rankings or nothing else matters.
As most know, google has an unpublished set of criteria for ranking websites. The reason is so anyone with an interest in seeing their website perform well will not be able to reverse engineer the algorithm. The only guidance provided by google is inluded in their vague webmaster guidelines. Which basically say have a good site and don't manipulate things to try and game their system. The threat is that anyone caught by google trying to game their system may have their website penalized or removed from the index. Does it catch everyone? No. Does it snare some that didn't intend to game the system. Absolutely. Do you have to consider google for any changes you make to your site? You better believe it.
This blog was created to document the ongoing SEO environment of the bail bonds industry. With particular emphasis on the Las Vegas bail bonds industry that we serve. Our intent was to make this a written history of our efforts and at the same time make observations about the field in general. As you can imagine, the first link we put up was to our own Las Vegas bail bonds website. Was it to game the system? No. A link, from a PR0 blog is not going to help our cause. We put it up as a way to say, this is what we've been working on. Were we going to add links to other sites? Yes! But these posts are a process, not an end result. So our approach was to add links over time based on what we were seeing. Unfortunately, this blog was penalized as a result of the link to our other website and dissappeared from the google index altogether. How do we know it was penalized? When searching for "http://bail-bonds-seo.blogspot.com" in google, the actual blog was not included in the results.
We pretty easily figured out what had happened and removed the link to our other site. After which, we used the reconsider function in the google webmaster tools to ask that this blog be added back into the index. Within 48 hours it was. The moral of the story is that webmasters and online professionals need to carefully think about both the actual and perceived intent of their actions with a website. For us, it didn't matter too much that this site was penalized since this site is for fun. If it goes away, that is OK. However, if it had happened to one of our commercial websites, that would have been big trouble. According to google, it may take weeks (or never for that matter) to have a penalized website added back into their index. You have to ask yourself before making changes, why am I doing this and can this be perceived as trying to game the system? Hopefully google will agree with you.
As most know, google has an unpublished set of criteria for ranking websites. The reason is so anyone with an interest in seeing their website perform well will not be able to reverse engineer the algorithm. The only guidance provided by google is inluded in their vague webmaster guidelines. Which basically say have a good site and don't manipulate things to try and game their system. The threat is that anyone caught by google trying to game their system may have their website penalized or removed from the index. Does it catch everyone? No. Does it snare some that didn't intend to game the system. Absolutely. Do you have to consider google for any changes you make to your site? You better believe it.
This blog was created to document the ongoing SEO environment of the bail bonds industry. With particular emphasis on the Las Vegas bail bonds industry that we serve. Our intent was to make this a written history of our efforts and at the same time make observations about the field in general. As you can imagine, the first link we put up was to our own Las Vegas bail bonds website. Was it to game the system? No. A link, from a PR0 blog is not going to help our cause. We put it up as a way to say, this is what we've been working on. Were we going to add links to other sites? Yes! But these posts are a process, not an end result. So our approach was to add links over time based on what we were seeing. Unfortunately, this blog was penalized as a result of the link to our other website and dissappeared from the google index altogether. How do we know it was penalized? When searching for "http://bail-bonds-seo.blogspot.com" in google, the actual blog was not included in the results.
We pretty easily figured out what had happened and removed the link to our other site. After which, we used the reconsider function in the google webmaster tools to ask that this blog be added back into the index. Within 48 hours it was. The moral of the story is that webmasters and online professionals need to carefully think about both the actual and perceived intent of their actions with a website. For us, it didn't matter too much that this site was penalized since this site is for fun. If it goes away, that is OK. However, if it had happened to one of our commercial websites, that would have been big trouble. According to google, it may take weeks (or never for that matter) to have a penalized website added back into their index. You have to ask yourself before making changes, why am I doing this and can this be perceived as trying to game the system? Hopefully google will agree with you.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Deconstructing the Number One Las Vegas Bail Bonds Website
When it comes to Las Vegas bail bonds and SEO, Goodfellas bail bonds reign supreme right now. They hold the top SERP for just about every relevant serach term, on Yahoo and Google, including "las vegas bail bonds, "las vegas bail", "las vegas bail bondsman" and more. So what have they done that has made them so successful?
According to the Yahoo site explorer tool, the goodfellas website has the following:
- 20 pages
- 57 inbound links to the home page
- 67 inbound links to the entire site
- PR 2
Many of their inbound links are from local listings on sites such as Yahoo, yellowpages.com, merchantcircle, localsearch and superpages.com.
Other than those sites, there aren't very many powerful links. This underscores a recent shift by google to emphasize local businesses for geo specific searches.
If you are trying to market your business to a specific local geography, it pays to make yourself known in both the online and offline local community.
According to the Yahoo site explorer tool, the goodfellas website has the following:
- 20 pages
- 57 inbound links to the home page
- 67 inbound links to the entire site
- PR 2
Many of their inbound links are from local listings on sites such as Yahoo, yellowpages.com, merchantcircle, localsearch and superpages.com.
Other than those sites, there aren't very many powerful links. This underscores a recent shift by google to emphasize local businesses for geo specific searches.
If you are trying to market your business to a specific local geography, it pays to make yourself known in both the online and offline local community.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Bail Bond Of Las Vegas Is In The Game
As we've blogged about before, the level of SEO competition among bail bonds companies varies depending upon the geographical market. If you are in Southern California, I hope you have a very strong PR 5 or 6, otherwise don't even bother. As for Las Vegas, the level of competition is not as strong. However, it is obvious that a few Las Vegas bail bonds companies are employing SEO strategies and even hiring SEO firms.
Bail Bond of Las Vegas has obviously started an SEO initiative. Kudos to the them. How do I know they've started an SEO campaign? For one, they are embarking on an obvious link building campaign. I've noticed a steady stream of articles aimed at generating inbound links to their site. They are optimized for the terms "Las Vegas bail bonds" and "Las Vegas bail bondsman". Two of the more heavily searched terms related to the Las Vegas bail bonds market of course.
It seems that Bail Bond of Las Vegas is not doing this in house. Based on the hyperlink at the bottom of their home page, I would guess "The Search Source", is doing their SEO campaign. They are a Las Vegas area online advertising and marketing company. I couldn't find the Bail Bond of Las Vegas website anywhere in the top 15 pages of google for the term "Las Vegas bail bonds". That doesn't necessarily mean that their SEO company is terrible or ineffective (although it could, who knows). More likely it is a matter of time, since SEO takes months to cultivate.
Either way, Bail Bond of Las Vegas is in the game and we look forward to seeing how they play.
Bail Bond of Las Vegas has obviously started an SEO initiative. Kudos to the them. How do I know they've started an SEO campaign? For one, they are embarking on an obvious link building campaign. I've noticed a steady stream of articles aimed at generating inbound links to their site. They are optimized for the terms "Las Vegas bail bonds" and "Las Vegas bail bondsman". Two of the more heavily searched terms related to the Las Vegas bail bonds market of course.
It seems that Bail Bond of Las Vegas is not doing this in house. Based on the hyperlink at the bottom of their home page, I would guess "The Search Source", is doing their SEO campaign. They are a Las Vegas area online advertising and marketing company. I couldn't find the Bail Bond of Las Vegas website anywhere in the top 15 pages of google for the term "Las Vegas bail bonds". That doesn't necessarily mean that their SEO company is terrible or ineffective (although it could, who knows). More likely it is a matter of time, since SEO takes months to cultivate.
Either way, Bail Bond of Las Vegas is in the game and we look forward to seeing how they play.
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