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This is a guest post from Melvin Dichoso . It is part of The “Bad Ass” SEO Guest Blogging Contest.

Most people who have just got started in their online ventures usually focus too much on SEO. It’s no secret that its really one of the biggest misconceptions most beginners and even experienced guys run into as far as their online businesses are concern. Today in this blog post, I’m very much hoping I can address this by writing about SEO as well as its connection to SEM and Social Media.

First and foremost I’m not an SEO guru or whatsoever. Heck, my blog is even PR0 up to now, although I have managed to reap a lot as far as  the blog’s traffic is concern. Just consider me as you’re typical online entrepreneur and blogger.

Setting up some Initial things

So what does these three things I mentioned above have something in connection? When building a website or any online-based project, you want to build SEO in it from the get-go. You want to optimize it for those key terms that you’re looking into from the start. I know you’re saying, “how can you do that, you don’t even have content yet?” Yes, you’re right but what I mean is that with every websites you can already set up things from the start that would give you a dramatic effect later on. Let me explain.

For example, if I’m building a site based on a WordPress platform, I can start fine-tuning the site’s search goals by doing the necessary things like adding an All in One SEO pack, canonicalizing the domain, setting up the meta descriptions properly and creating a robots.txt (and many more of course). You see, these are the things that you can already do from the start yet it doesn’t take that much to do those. On the flip side, it may not yield that much results for the first few months but its future benefits would be enormous for sure.

Search Engine Optimization isn’t a short-term goal in the first place right? Organic rankings is something that can be achieved over time and if you’re getting lots of traffic from search engines then you know what I’m talking about.

Before the SEO our site picks up

Now we all know that ranking in search engines does not happen overnight, but does that mean we’re going to wait that long before doing anything? No! That means we have to work on something that would alleviate the lack of traffic from our new site.

There are two things that you can do that would offset the need for SEO for short term. One is utilizing social media and the other one is via search engine marketing. Let’s tackle both of those things here.

Social Media

Social Media is something that everyone these days wants to utilize but only few can do it well. With that my tip has always been to focus on one niche targeted network first and forget everybody else. If you’re into Stumbleupon then focus on it, work on it first.

The problem with people is that they try to get everything from each and every social media sites but the truth is its never gonna happen. These social sites have different audiences and you can only target the ones which is the most relevant to what your business is. Also social media has an effect to search rankings. Indirectly you can see that it can boosts links, search rankings and web traffic in particular.

Popular site Mashable has even written an article on how SEO and social media goes hand in hand together.

Search Marketing

Unlike social media, search marketing does not have an effect with your search rankings. Instead this can be a quick way to boost your site’s traffic immediately from the start.

Let’s go back to our WordPress Site example. After we’re able to set up all the basic SEO-related stuff to our sites, we can immediately focus on running search campaigns for our sites via Pay Per Click. The way I do it is I focus on the top three networks, Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and MSN Ad Center. These three have the biggest market share and there’s no reason to go to other 2% of small search engines that can give you almost no traffic.

Running pay per click campaigns can be really tricky and hard. You need to focus on a lot of things like Ad copy, keywords, targeting different demographics, quality scores and a whole lot more. I had learned all of this for quite some time and to be honest, I spent a lot of money testing things but  I could say it’s all worth it.

I know not all of us can run PPC campaigns so there’s always an option of hiring a search marketing person or a team to run your campaign for you. This can be an investment on your part but the way these guys could do the job for you could later on offset the cost.

The logic behind running search campaigns is to immediately drive traffic to your site, find the top markets and top demographics for what you’re business is about and penetrating that market. We could also experiment on our campaigns and as a return this could only give us the whole pie of what we’re trying to achieve. We could forever do these campaigns until our search traffic starts picking up. In short, SEM is for short term and SEO is for long term.

Conclusion

Driving traffic to our website, more generally our business is an unending cycle. We as business owners continue to tweak and test things and try to find more sources that could give us the maximum return for what we spend.

These three components that I mentioned namely SEM, SEO and social media play a key role for that. They have their own ideal time to get implemented and it’s all about connecting them and making  them work harmoniously.What do you think?

Yes, you read correctly, it’s time for The Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest. For the next month, I’ll be accepting guest posts right here on my blog. As you can see below, the top guest bloggers are eligible to receive cash prizes (current pot is $2100.) cash and there are a couple non-cash prizes.

To clarify, you don’t have to actually be a bad ass SEO (although it wouldn’t hurt) to enter the contest. The general theme is SEO and the contest itself is bad ass since we have several generous sponsors that put up cash and a few other prizes.

What is the Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest? Blogging is always fun, but it’s even more fun when there is cold hard cash involved. Starting today (August 2nd) until September 2nd, you can submit guest posts to my blog. I’m pretty flexible as far as acceptable topics as long as they fit within the general theme of this blog. So, anything from SEO to blogging to social media will do.

How long does the contest last? The contest starts today August 2nd and ends September 2nd You must submit your post between these dates in order to be eligible to win. The winners will be announced 15 days after the contest ends. This will allow us ample time to publish any remaining posts and to judge all contest entries.

What can you win? Take a look at all the sponsors, cash and other prizes!

$200. Prize Sponsors

Daniel McGonagle Link Building

BestTravelWebsites.com Best Travel Sites

ArrangeYourVacation.com Vacation Rentals

$150 Prize Sponsors

Candy Store

$100 Prize Sponsors

Alisa Bowman Marriage Advice

Internet Marketing Services

SEO Software

SEO Ottawa

Virtual Assistants

Hesham Zebida Thesis Skins

Gerald Weber Houston SEO

Toni J Young Network Marketing Training

Quillcards Distinctive Ecards by Quillcards

Ghostwriter Dad Ghostwriting services

$50 Prize Sponsors

Whitney Segura Whitney Segura’s Internet Marketing Blog

James Brown James Brown

Raxa Design Houston web design

Eric Brantner Freelance Copywriter

The Servant Media Houston Business Development

Ana Hoffman, Traffic Generation Cafe Increasing Targeted Website Traffic

The Lane Real Estate Team Kennewick Homes

Other prizes: Non-Cash Sponsors

Hostgator.com 1 year Business Hosting plan. Includes toll free phone number and SSL $179.40 value Business Web Hosting

David Harry A full years membership at SEO Dojo, a value of $250.SEO Training Dojo

Link-Assistant.Com SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license) $599 worth with a life-time Live! Plan subscription. SEO tools

Special thanks to the contest media partner: My Blog Guest. MyBlogGuest.com is the free guest post exchange community where users meet to exchange guest posts and network.

What are the rules?

1. Register for a user account with SEM Group so you can submit your post for review. Please fill out all of your profile information and if you don’t have a Gravatar please get one. You may have up to 3 links in your bio.

If you have already published a guest post here in the past there is no need to register. If this is the case and you aren’t sure about your login just send me an email and I’ll let you know your login credentials.

2. You must submit your post by September 2nd 2010
3. Your article must be original content, and it must be written by you.
4. On the day your post is published, you must write a post on your blog about the contest that contains a link to the official contest post and links to all of the sponsors using the correct anchor text. Also these links must remain do-follow. You can get the code to link to all of the sponsors here
   ^?View Code HTML

   <p style="text-align: center;"><strong>$200. Prize Sponsors</strong></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Daniel McGonagle <a href="http://linkvanareviews.com/">Link Building</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/besttravelwebsites.png" alt="" title="besttravelwebsites" width="391" height="90" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1575" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;">BestTravelWebsites.com <a href="http://besttravelwebsites.com">Best Travel Sites</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/arrangelogo.png" alt="" title="arrangelogo" width="100" height="100" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1576" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;">ArrangeYourVacation.com <a href="http://arrangeyourvacation.com">Vacation Rentals</a></p> <strong>$150 Prize Sponsors</strong> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/bestcandystore1.gif" alt="" title="bestcandystore" width="200" height="39" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1509" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.bestcandystore.com">Candy Store</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><strong>$100 Prize Sponsors</strong></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Alisa Bowman <a href="http://www.projecthappilyeverafter.com/">Marriage Advice</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/New-Logo-with-White-Space-350.jpg" alt="Vertical measures" width="350" height="50" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.verticalmeasures.com/">Internet Marketing Services</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1438" title="sheerSEO_banner" src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/sheerSEO_banner1.gif" alt="" width="120" height="60" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.sheerseo.com/">SEO Software</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/logo_with_border1-150x150.jpg" alt="" title="logo_with_border" width="150" height="150" class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-1499" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.seo-writer.ca/">SEO Ottawa</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/logo.jpg" alt="" title="logo" width="334" height="43" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1591" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://offshoreally.com/">Virtual Assistants</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Hesham Zebida <a href="http://www.thesisawesome.com">Thesis Skins</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Gerald Weber <a href="http://sem-group.net">Houston SEO</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Toni J Young <a href="http://www.tonijyoung.com/">Network Marketing Training</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Quillcards <a href="http://quillcards.com/">Distinctive Ecards by Quillcards</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Ghostwriter Dad <a href="http://ghostwriterdad.com/">Ghostwriting services</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><strong>$50 Prize Sponsors</strong></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Whitney Segura <a href="http://www.whitneysegura.com/">Whitney Segura's Internet Marketing Blog</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">James Brown <a href="http://www.jamesbrownmarketing.com/">James Brown</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Raxa Design <a href="http://www.raxadesign.com/">Houston web design</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Eric Brantner <a href="http://ericbrantner.com/">Freelance Copywriter</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">The Servant Media <a href="http://www.houstonbusinessdevelopers.com/">Houston Business Development</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Ana Hoffman, Traffic Generation Cafe <a href="http://www.trafficgenerationcafe.com/">Increasing Targeted Website Traffic </a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">The Lane Real Estate Team <a href="http://www.joelane.com/">Kennewick Homes</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Other prizes: Non-Cash Sponsors</strong></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Hostgator.com 1 year Business Hosting plan. Includes toll free phone number and SSL $179.40 value <a href="http://www.hostgator.com/shared.shtml">Business Web Hosting</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">David Harry A full years membership at SEO Dojo, a value of $250.<a href="http://www.huomah.com/dojo/">SEO Training Dojo</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Link-Assistant.Com SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license) $599 worth with a life-time Live! Plan subscription. <a href="http://www.link-assistant.com/">SEO tools</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Special thanks to the contest media partner: <a href="http://myblogguest.com/">My Blog Guest</a>. MyBlogGuest.com is the free guest post exchange community where users meet to exchange guest posts and network.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://myblogguest.com/"><img title="myblogguest" src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/myblogguest-125-30.gif" border="0" alt="" width="125" height="30" /></a></p>

5. You can be either a sponsor for the contest or you can compete in the contest. Unfortunately you can’t do both.

Post Guidelines

1. Guest posts must be at least 450 words, not to exceed 1000 words.
2. You may have as many links as you wish in the body of the content. However, please limit links to your projects or websites to your bio. Absolutely no affiliate links allowed.
3. Your bio must have a Gravatar. Please use a picture of yourself and not a logo.
4. Keep your post relevant to the overall theme of this blog. SEO, link building, internet marketing, pay per click, social media, blogging tips are all acceptable topics.

How to win

1. Write a post about the contest to help spread the word in the blogosphere. Your post (contest submission) will be judged First on quality of the content and style of the post.
2. Add Sponsors links to your post using the correct anchor text and make sure the links are do-follow. This is extremely important and your post won’t be eligible to win if you haven’t fulfilled this requirement. The sponsors are the ones making the cash prizes possible, so show them some link love.
3. A high value is placed on the number of and quality of comments received on your guest post. Also, be sure to interact with and respond to your commentators. This will help you win! Ambiguous and/or spammy comments will not help you.
4. Spread the word about your post through all your social media channels: Twitter, Facebook, Sphinn, etc. A high value will be placed on number of Tweets and overall social media promotion.

Keep in mind, the sooner you submit your post the more time you’ll have to promote it. So the early bird gets the worm!

Also feel free to use the donkey image in your post. You can get the code here

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1397" title="badd_ass2" src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/badd_ass2.gif" alt="" width="450" height="300" />

Also feel free to upload the image to your server if you like.

IF you have any questions feel free to contact me. Also you can contact me on Skype, I’m searchengineguy.

Let the blogging begin! Woot!

Two of the most prominently used methods of internet marketing are pay per click advertising and search engine optimization. How do they compare? When should you use either? Knowing how to properly use each can make a big difference in your ROI and traffic results.

• Speed of results. As much as some extreme cases for SEO may be flaunted, on average search engine optimization takes a while to have full effect. This can be a few weeks, a few months, even as long as a year to get desired results. Pay per click on the other hand will have results within a day. If you're interested in getting immediate results with a marketing method, PPC is your choice. You'll find out what keywords are more effective much more quickly and can adjust them almost real-time. SEO is better used for a researched keyword list using keywords you know will have desired results.
• Cost, immediate and long-term. PPC is very fast to produce results. You pay for the amount of traffic you want. If the traffic that searches for those keywords or browses the sites you advertise on exists, you can potentially pay thousands of dollars a month. For SEO, you generally will pay a large amount up front to get initial SEO work done, then a monthly amount to continue the SEO services. (This varies heavily, depending on where you pay for your SEO services.) On average, this is a higher cost than PPC for the same markets. If your PPC costs are high for every cost per click, chances are your SEO costs will also be high, and the same for markets with lower competition – both PPC and SEO will have costs relevant with the market value, and SEO is usually a higher cost.
• Results, long term value. PPC is good because it can provide instant results, and you can get immediate return on investment. SEO will not produce results immediately, but the long term value is much higher. The traffic growth on a good SEO campaign is exponential, and growth for a PPC campaign (if any) is usually linear. The difference between an organic position on page 2, position 9 on page 1, and position 1 on page 1 is immensely different. For PPC, the response for difference in positions is quite different, but the it is not as large as those from organic results. SEO will cost more but will provide a bigger long term result, if the keywords being optimized for are quality ones.

Knowing these details, it's recommended that you use PPC to do keyword research fully and test which keywords convert best before pushing into SEO. That way your costs can be adjusted quickly for different keywords, and the commitment to SEO can be done with tested keywords that have verified results. This will save you large costs and help produce definite outcomes.