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A really good seo gets more referals than they can handle!  So sick of low quality, unethical, high volume crappy seo scammers out there....AAARRRGGHHHHHH!!!!!

Ok, I feel much better now....

This is just my opinion, but the fact that someone would have to cold call to find SEO clients throws up all kinds of red flags.  A talented SEO NEVER needs to cold call. In fact the problem is not finding new clients, the problem is having to pick and choose who you take on. Isnt the point of seo to bring in leads and clients? If your own seo skills are so poor that you have to cold call, then...well I am go out on a limb here, but get the he k out of our industry and giving real seo's a bad reputation.

Keyword usage is highly important, how as the prior poster said keep it natural. I mean think about it, if your website is about Hotdog Manufacturing it would only make sense to have that phrase used frequently. The actual ratio of keyword vs total words does not have an exact formula, however if you just keep in mind natural You should be fine. If the phrase is scattered to heavily (keyword stuffing) then you could get penalized. Good luck!

When I ask this, I am not under the illusion that links do nothing.  I am more curious if from an SEO strategy perspective is executing a link building campaign a really unwise use of time and resources?  Currently my company literally has every single one of our SEO clients ranked on page 1 rank 1 for their most high value keyword and in the top 5 results for another 5 to 10 high value keywords.  we have almost done no link building for these clients. I mean we have established a handful of really good links, but thats it. I look at some competitors link profiles and they have hundreds yet our clients sites are outranking them.

I am almost at the point of not implementing link building initiatives. I mean we will still establish high quality links as they naturally present themselves, but as far as investing time and resources building links i am leaning towards not even doing that anymore or atleast for a while to see what the effect will be.

We seem to find better results when we spend our time building great additional pages and following all web best practices.

Just curious as to what other think?

Thanks SEOmoz Community!

I agree with alot of what has been said, but the two comments really ring true for are,

#1 All these low quality SEO's are creating a huge opportunity for high qualified SEO's

#2 Word of mouth. Word of mouth. Word of mouth.

Thanks for the posting. I do similar blog posts somewhat frequently myself..

Thank you!

Thanks!!

I recommend looking at www.servint.net I am customer of theirs and they are awesome. The support is the best i have ever dealt with and they have been around since the 90's.

Good morning SEOmoz community. I have a question which I am pretty sure I already know the answer to, however i thought I would reach out to my fellow experts to see if anyone had some great advice.

I would really like to give my website a makeover.  i have two thoughts on this, one is to scrap the site completely and start fresh, the other would be to only change it visually, but keep all the content and on-page optimization. I am terrified of losing my rankings. I am ranked position 1 and 2 for highly competitive terms and have another 15 - 20 keywords on page 1. Any advice would be tremendously appreciated!!!

I am looking to expand my hosting and i wanted to know who some of you my fellow Mozzers would suggest? I need it on the westcoast...i could do something in Mountain Standard Time zone too, but PST preferable...

Many, many thanks!!

Great input!  Thanks for taking the time to respond, I truly appreciate it!

Interesting... thank you for that insight.  I really had no idea the "Designed by" credit could be a negative thing.  I do want the credit there, but I am going to take under serious consideration your recommendation on "no-follow"

Thanks again, much appreciated!!!

Is there a benefit to diversifying your hosting providers?  I mean if there are 10 client sites on one shared hosting package and they all have links to my company because we give ourselves credit on all the sites we build. Will Google give the links to me less weight or even look at it as some link building scheme? Does private registration prevetn things like this. Would it help if i got my own IP's from different C blocks?  Thank you in advance Mozzer family!!

Well I am going to also go with your suggestion, I am going to pick up some hosti g from Pair next. Thanks for all your input!

Four attempts to contact a salesperson at Liquid Web was a complete failure and aggravation.  They are a good host I am sure, but they didn't have it together enough to have a competent, friendly sales rep with a working headset available.  And when I did get a rep on the phone...which I could barely hear, they seemed annoyed that I dare ask what the benefits of hosting with Liquid Web are.  Really, I wanted to go with them, but I felt like I was already seeing red flags.  Pair, honestly...and perhaps this was a mistake, but I didn't like their website...it seemed very bare bones and antiquated....I mean was not looking for a host with the flashiest website by any means, but their site was concerning to me....too, basic...like not even minimalist, but just looked unsophisticated.  It made me concerned they may be very frugal, and I feared that frugality may also apply to purchasing infrastructure...and Orange....eh...I don't know..just wasn't feeling it.  With Media Temple I spoke with someone that sounded very professional, not salesy, was quite candid and knowledgeable....he was one of their engineers...site was nice....their market growth impressive....I just got a good feeling from them.  Perhaps I had the wrong mindset in my decision, but hey....it's $20 buck a month and I am going to be bringing on about 4 more hosting providers, so I am not too concerned. Honestly....liquid web REALLY irked me....

I just went with Media Temple....thanks!

I just tried Liquid Web...I was going to go with them, but twice I called and the voice connection was horrible and when I asked the sales rep to explain the benefits of going with liquid web as opposed to other providers, she almost acted annoyed...it was very uncomfortable...not a great way to enter into a business relationship....unfortunately they are scratched off the list of possibilities as a place to bring our rapidly growing web agencies client websites....

Trying Media Temple and your suggested Pair...thanks!

Good morning my fellow Mozzers! I am currently looking at adding some diversity to my current web hosting and I was hoping I could get some suggestions. I dont currently need a VPS or Dedicated Server, I just need some shared hosting, you know, packeges that are sub $20 a month...i mean i will pay more than that, but so far everything i look at that meets my needs(basic hosting, email, ect...). This is for client sites and they are growing in number somewhat rapidly. I currently host with GoDaddy and they are amazing in the support department, but I do question whether their servers are causing slow page loads ect...but all in all I am happy with them. I have used Netword Solutions in the past, but left them because i was not a big fan of talking to support people in india and malasia. I do think that their servers might have performed better than GoDaddy so i am not ruling them out at this point

i am looking for a provider that has excellent support and who has servers that are not so overloaded the can render pages and content slowly. Performance is very important to me. I am not looking for the cheapest, I am looking for the overall best.

Thanks in advance SEOmoz family!!!

No idea.  It states that they are improving it, adding features, ect...  For the amount of time it has been down it better be pretty amazing...

They are updating the Rankings tool so I believe we will not get reports until thw update is done. Its actually driving me nuts!  Its one of the main features I use....its been down for a while now...