Costa Rica SEO | A good of example of something that is much easier said…than done!

Guest Post

Don G. Halbert has been doing Costa Rica SEO for close to 15 years now.

Like any of the other SEO markets out there, Costa Rica is unique.

As an experienced SEO expert for a good 15 years now, I can say that without a doubt, this has been my biggest challenge to date. Why? Well, although I am trying to do my part at educating people in Costa Rica on the inner workings and feasibility of SEO work here, it seems to be a tough uphill battle.  For example, almost all SEO experts throughout North America and the UK will tell you, that when it comes to online marketing and SEO strategies, the most difficult industries to work in are, real estate and sportsbooks. The two are nearly impossible to work in simply because of the competitive market and the budget that most ‘high rolling’ and long standing ‘pioneers’ of each industry have. So if you are a new addition to one of these industries then I would suggest re-evaluating your SEO strategy a little to include markets that are not so competitive. To be honest, at many conferences on SEO, I have heard many big name SEO people say that they simply refuse to work in those two industries. But if they do take them on, it’s worth a lot more money than you may imagine.

Another tough aspect about SEO work is the whole “black hat” “white hat” scenario. I try to stay as white as possible because in my opinion, if you are granted the contract for SEO for a large corporation, the client is trusting you with their online presence and if you start pulling “black hat” tactics with total disregard for your client…this could cost them dearly.  How? If you commence “black hat” tactics and get caught by Google or Yahoo, they will punish you severely including banning/blocking your clients site from their SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Essentially wiping you from existence on the WWW. Not a good thing!

The Business of SEO

Like any other business with contrasting colors, the business of SEO has a “grey” area. A great example of this would be a competitor of mine here in Costa Rica.  He is localized to a particular area of Costa Rica but what he has done is gathered up all the businesses of the area and presented to them that he will put them on the WWW by giving them their own webpage and domain.  Now so far this is all good EXCEPT…what he doesn’t tell the client is that HE registers and therefore owns the company domain and as far as the webpage…well…that becomes a “sub-domain” off his existing site.  So this is how it actually is.

Businesses pay this company to market and promote their businesses yet the reality of it is, they are paying him to advertise and promote his own business. Currently he has a strong PR and domination on certain keyword phrases but only because all of these other businesses are “feeding” his SEO instead of their own.

What happens when a company wants to go off on their own instead of being a subdomain?

Well for one he asks that you “buy” your own domain name back from him for a price he dictates and then if you do manage to get your domain name back and you move your site on its own domain, you’re essentially starting over from PR0 and no keyword weight whatsoever. This in my opinion is simply unethical. Kind of like buying a billboard sign and when it’s installed your company logo is a small 1′x1′ spot in the bottom corner when the rest of the sign is the company that made the billboard for you.

To be honest, SEO strategies are not all that difficult.  Well I use that very loosely actually.  There are a few simple steps to take however discovering how to achieve them is not only time consuming but also very difficult unto their own. For example if I told you that you needed to “cherry pick” some good “backlinks” would you know what I meant or how to go about doing it? See what I mean?

Here are some of the crucial steps to a good Costa Rica SEO strategy.

1. Content is KING! Write unique content and don’t ‘affiliate’ your content that will only hurt your chances.
2. Develop relevant back linking using targeted anchor text.
3. Submit your site to DMOZ.org (wish you the best of luck here but if you get in it’s great news)
4. Never ignore ONSITE SEO whereas your perform SEO on your own page. This is more relevant to Yahoo than Google.
5. Have a Sitemap
6. Submit your RSS feed to submission sites for RSS.
7. Utilize free PR sites like PRlog.org but be sure to write ONLY well prepared press releases.
8. Cherry pick some amazing backlinks from higher than yourself PR sites that are relevant to your market.
9. Start a company/personal blog
10. Network! Utilize the many top social networking sites to your advantage. (Facebook, StumbleUpon, Twitter and Linkedin are some of the best)

Routinely following these steps you will achieve your desired results.  But like I said previously…it can be time consuming and difficult if you don’t know exactly what you are doing. Another good example of not know what to do would be submitting your domain to a link farm which has hundreds if not thousands of other links to other pages not relevant to your own. For this you will be punished by Google and Yahoo both and possibly demoted on your PR.