We all know what it’s like. We’re sitting at home, moping feeling the brunt of mortgage crisis collapses. We’re feeling the brunt of an ever increasing interest rate, an ever increasing fuel price. Food prices escalating at a rate of knots and well, we’re not making more money. So where to from here?

Well, I’m no business GURU and I’m know financial genius, but I am in the forefront of technology and believe that this is where you should start!

It’s a funny thing business. A couple of months ago in South Africa, real estate companies, mortgage companies and real estate investments companies were growing a rate of knots. In fact South Africa’s real estate market had taken over from the agricultural sector and the biggest income generating sector of our country! Now let me tell you this is a scary thought considering mining & agriculture was the start of our country! Sorry getting side tracked there…

During this time I started punting my SEO business, the reason being I had some ties in the real estate markets and I’ve had a pretty good success ratio with real estate and mortgage sites. Funny though, EVERYONE was making money and business was falling into their laps, so when I eventually sent them the quotes(and they were interested in what I had to say) they laughed. “HOW CAN YOU EXPECT US TO PAY R15 000.00 a month for this service?” What in the world could you give us that we’re not already getting without having to promote our business in anyway!!!!! So a couple of weeks and I mean weeks go by, and all of a sudden there’s a change in the property market. Business is not longer falling in your laps and money now needs to be spent on marketing. TV ads are unaffordable to most. Radio ads too. News papers only reach a certain percentage and in order for people to see and remember that AD, you need to get them on the right day!

This week I got 7 calls alone from mortgage brokers and real estate companies asking for SEO work to be done on their sites! The problem now is that you’re trying to jump in when others did it a year ago, and trying to play catchup to an already popular advertising median is never easy!

Having said that, it’s the way to go. The great thing about Internet marketing and advertising is that you’re constantly their to capture an audience when they’re looking for you. People no longer have to scrounge around looking for that advert in one of the 50 magazines they read in the last 3 weeks. They hop onto Google and TYPE in “Property sales in South Africa” and VOILA up pops your site.

This is what I’m tryig to get across to our South African business culture! The internet is the future. It is the way you can reinvent your business in a slow and quiet market. It’s a very cost effective way to advertise your business and if you don’t have a website, it’s time you WOKE UP!!!!

Contact Ivolution Today! Your search engine marketing and search optimization specialists.

Yesterday we wrote a little article about forums and how we need to clean them up. I strongly believe that with all the rubbish on the forums and I’m talking mainly about SEO forums  (won’t mention names but there’s not that many big ones left anymore) we’re looking at the demise of the FORUM so too speak.

A possible reason for the rubbish we find on forums these days, could be the introduction of social bookmark sites such as DIGG, REDDIT & The latest greatest SPHINN. Social bookmark sites have become a super duper highway of information and all they’re really doing is what the old forumsused to do, and that’s reference good articles and stories relating to specific topics. I belive that more topic related social bookmark sites such as SPHINN will make it easier for people to search end find topic related articles, but whom I to judge sites that bring in 30 000 000 visitors a month.

Which brings me back to my article yesterday…
So maybe the demise of the good old internet forum is Social Bookmarking!

What are your thoughts?
Ivolution: Revolutionizing The Internet - Search Engine Optimization & Marketing Professionals

It’s something that I’ve been pondering about alot lately. This article may be a little old as well in it’s thinking but it’s true. Since the beginning of internet time forums have always been around. I mean working in IT for a couple of years, forums were the only thing that kept me in my job as an IT administrator when the SHIT hit the fan. In fact in the good old days when asking a question in a forum, the answer would normally be a link to external site and normally that site was number 1 in google for that search. 99% of the time rightly so as they deserved it and that’s probably how they managed to keep their site top of the rankings too.

But lately, forums have become crap! They’re no longer the informative incredible, quick responding platforms they used to be and to be totally honest the rubbish you read on them and specifically SEO forums is just not worth your while.

When I logon to a forum and a question is asked: “How do I generate links to my website”. Dudes and Dudesses, if I read “By submitting your site to free directories” once more on a forum I think I’m actually going to scream. The problem now is that you get 400 people replying to the same article and because the forums got some good link juice ranks for every SEO keyword and search phrase under the sun.

I have no problem with that, but when the content is just so full of nonsense it’s a waste of internet space!

So in an attempt to avoid the plain rant and rave, I’m going to attempt to bring back some calmness and order to forums. I only hope that some good forum administrators read this article and help clean up the rubbish on our net!  Lets do away with the 400 comments, per post. Lets start giving references to older posts, and other articles that people have written so that we can avoid the millions of duplicate content sites that we have spread across this vast world of ours!

See our SEO Competition

Ivolution - Attempting an Internet Revolution.
Search Engine Marketing & Optimization Services

Today for the first time I realised how changing the structure of a well ranked site affects your rankings. Let me just say that before you decide to design a website, and before you decide to go live with your amazing new site that’s SEO’d from head to toe, think, think, think and think again! Make 1000% sure that the structure you’re using is the one you want to stick with.

My site ranked in the TOP 10 for most of it’s industry related terms. I changed the structure of 2 section sof the site in other words, I moved two pages from one directory to another. My site rankings on 1 week dropped from TOP 10 to TOP 50.

What I did wrong:

I did not think about my site structure when first designing my site. Why?? Well I didn’t think I’d actually be able to compete in the industry that I compete in. Silly, I doubted myself but you learn. LESSON 1. Always make sure you know what structure you want and you stick to it throughout your site!

I moved the existing files to another directory and deleted the old ones from their original locations. I also changed all the internal links to point to the new page location. IDIOT!!!!! By removing the old files I lost all my PR form those pages i.e. 8 months of work down the drain. PLUS all the PR that I was giving other pages on my site from those pages dropped in the SERPS too. LESSON 2. When moving a site make sure that you redirect the page using a 302 redirect to your new page. This will ensure that PR is transferred to your new pages and your site rankings are not affected.

External links, those darn things that you work so hard to get. I lost all the incoming links to my site by not checking if there were incoming links. Incoming links and especially deep linking links are an essential part of your SEO strategy. LESSON 3. Make sure that all you incoming links to the old page are either changed to your new pages or that you use the 302 redirect explained above so that you don’t loose it all.

Those were my mistakes, I’ve learnt from them and decided to share them with Y’ALL!
If you could pleas shed some light or give us a little more information on what you’ve experienced please do so.

Search Engine Marketing & Optimization Specialists: Ivolution SEO

South Africa’s HOTTEST SEO Competition

I had a blonde moment and I’m new to WordPress so give me a break I created a new page and can’t link to it at the moment.

There’s an SEO Competition running for all South African SEO talents wanting to show off their expertise.

Come on in and check it out!
Ivolution SEO: R5000 SEO Talent Scout Competition

Some have called it Google on Speed. Some are calling it the Google Sundance, but it’s been bugging me for around a month now. My pages are jumping at a rate of knots and my rankings are changing daily. Then I read an article on my favourite site, http://www.site-reference.com. Google Everflux: Just What We Needed, Google on Speed!

Finally, an understanding to what’s been happening. For those of you who have been monitoring your rankings closely I’m sure you’re already up to speed with the “NEW” Google Everflux update. Google Everflux although not a new term in the SEO arena dating back to 2002 according to Site Reference’s article (Way before my time) was also referred to as the Google Shuffle. The Google Shuffle was an update that would occur every 3 to 4 months where Google would re-asses your site and change your rankings accordingly i.e you’d see new pages linking to your site PR changes etc…

Here comes the change, the “NEW” Google Everflux runs pretty much every day. I’ve noticed my pages dropping and climbing between 5 and 10 places almost hourly at times. According to certain articles this daily refresh of content is to help Google deliver more relevant news results and page results to searchers thereby trying to create more dynamic and fluid results.

So the question is, does this mean, that content has become KING again? Or does it just mean that your linking strategies now need to be updated daily? Personally, a good linking strategy (Jim Boykins - How to build links in 30 days) and well written content (constantly changing & constantly up to date) will keep your site top!

Ivolution SEO - South Africa’s Search Engine Optimization Specialists

It’s what I love about BLOGGING. I’ve mentioned this before and it’s a strategy that I love using for new clients. Start a blog build some quick PR and then use the BLOG to boost your site. I know alot of people out there are going to SLAM me by saying there are already millions of bulls$#%t blogs out there so stop spamming the web with crap but that’s not what I’m talking about…

I’m talking about people that use BLOGS to promote their new sites or business sites. It’s a fact that getting BLOG PR when using a BLOGGER or WORDPRESS blog is just that much easier quicker and it’s FUN!

So how do you get quick BLOG PR?

Register and BLOGGER or WORDPRESS Blog. Write 3 to 4 good articles a week for about a month. Submit your blog to a couple of BLOG directories such as MYBLOGLOG, BLOGFLUX or BLOGEXPLOSION, if you’re targeting a specific country for example South Africa, use a site like AMATOMU.com.

Browse the directories for a couple of BLOGS that are small new start-ups and contact them asking for a BLOGROLL link exchange. Possibly not the best practice but hey, it works and if you’re looking for a quick index it’s a must.

Create yourself a Google Webmaster account, sign-up for sitemaps & analytics. Get the stats up and running, sitemaps will only work if you’re hosting the blog account on a hosting server.

Last but not least, get your BLOGS submitted to some social networking sites such as DIGG, MUTI (South African), Del.icio.us and various others…

Give it a month or two and you’ll be flying with a nice little BLOG with PR2 or 3.
If it doesn’t work, sorry at least you tries something new

Welcome back everyone. I do apologise for the state of this BLOG at the moment but my WordPress skills are something of a pathetic. I’ve been using BLOGGER for ages and I love it, but I was politely advised by ALL that WordPress for SEO is a must. So, I’m slow at getting this BLOG off but give me some time….

Anyways, I came across a lovely little tool for all you SEO freaks out there. It’s called LinkTiger. There are 2 versions to this product as all good SEO tools should have, a free one, yes, the magic word, FREE SEO TOOL and a paid one. The free version allows you to check one website weekly for broken links. The paid, well there’s not limit to the power of this link checker.

As you all know, broken links in SEO is a no go and in terms of success rates in search engine, well it makes sense that a site with broken links, is just not a site worth crawling for anyone. Plus broken links look crap and drive people away from your site. With LinkTiger you’ll no longer have that problem. It’s check internal links, external links and images. Anything that’s out of the ordinary it’ll spit out at you. What’s amazing about this little tool as well is that it allows you too see crawl rates and speeds. It’s a brilliant a priceless tool.

Check it out, even if you use the free version, it’s worth it!

Not sure if anyones noticed but there’s been a lot of movement on the Google rankings in the last 4 or 5 days. Anybond felt any ripples in Google land?

It’s been a long time since Ivolution SEO posted our first two BLOG posts and for that I must apologise. There are millions of SEO BLOGS out there that pop up and have this amazing first post about how they got so involved in BLOGGING and it’s been a life long dream of theirs to start this incredible BLOG, but alas it dies into a faint dim light eventually fading into oblivion!

But, we’re back and Ivolution are ready to take this SEO Blog to the next level. This weeks post is about Blogging believe it or not, and the age old question: Do BLOGS pay? or: Does it pay to BLOG?

A new stuy from the University of Texas states that the top 50 000 blogs earned roughly in the reion of $500 million on average in 2006…. $500 million dollars for the top 50 000 blogs incase you didn’t read that before! These findings were based on Chitika’s blog advertising network of over 12, 000 registered blogs. Some of the conclusions were:

1. The top 1 percent accounted for approximately 20 percent of the total revenue.
2. The top 5 percent accounted for approximately 50 percent of the total revenue.
3. The top 10 percent accounted for approximately 80 percent of the total revenue.
4. The top 15 percent accounted for approximately 90 percent of the total revenue.

Taking those stats into account, if you’re a coroporate company or business and you haven’t discovered the art of blogging and art of making money from BLOGS, contact us @ Ivolution SEO Today - The revolution in Blogging!