Are SEO Companies worth approaching?

@cusimar9May 23.2006

We’ve a website which we’re trying to promote. We had a few quotes at the start of the year from SEO companies who were asking for upwards of £10k pa to market it.

We obviously decided to try doing it ourselves first, but we’re definitely finding it isn’t easy. What exactly do these SEO companies do? Do they basically buy loads of advertising on your behalf then charge you a premium for doing it?

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@Compguy_PeteMay 25.2006 — #not really...

It's more like your paying them for what they know... hopefully based on an educated look at your company & site.

There is a story/tale I heard once and it's very fitting:

THere is this company and hey had to call in this retired person from the company to fix this issue after going though the people who replaced this person. The guy walks in and flips a couple switches and gets out a tool out of his bag and comes back in a few minutes saying "it's fixed and here is my bill for 30k" The owner says "30k What they heck is this!!!" The retired gentelmen says " it's 5 dollars for the part and $29995 for knowing it had to be replaced"

Moral of the story is if the company is truely worth it you'll see the results and not all things can be done in house.

I might also suggest going to whomever developed the site and ask what they think as well... they may cut you some sort of break being they developed the site.

@cusimar9authorMay 25.2006 — #I developed the site... and while I know a fair bit about SEO we're not on the top of Google yet (not for our target keywords, anyway) so obviously we aren't doing enough.

We have a generous advertising budget, but we're blowing it all on Google Adwords when I'm sure there are better ways of spending it.

@Compguy_PeteMay 25.2006 — #How does your site rank on Yahoo and MSN?

How old is the site & Domain name?

Mind posting the link.

What is the converstion rate on ad views to ad clicks to sales

@cusimar9authorMay 25.2006 — #The site ranks well for one non-competitive keyword, but for more competitive keywords it doesn't rank at all in a lot of search engines.

The domain is about 7 months old and the site is about 3 months old.

Our cost per click is on average about 20p... and our (current) budget is a few hundred pounds per month.

@Compguy_PeteMay 25.2006 — #Could you do me a favor and PM me your keywords used in adsense in order of costs, the price of the keywords are not totally needed.

[I](to other post readers - I have asked for the PM because of the highly competitive nature of the site in question we do not wish to alert other site owners in this field.

The outcome of this PM will be posted without senstive infomation.)

[/I]

@bokehMay 26.2006 — #SEO companies who were asking for upwards of £10k pa to market it.[/QUOTE]Three months seems like a long time but in reality it is much too new to have a reasonable rating. I have several sites and each of them come number one in Google for several relevant terms. I have not tried to push any of them and have not specifically optimised any of them for search engines. I have one site I use just for testing my PHP scripts. This domain is less than one year old but has ranked number one for [URL=http://bokehman.com/search_engine_rank_for_bokehman.com/]one hundred unique searches[/URL] in the last four weeks alone.

My advice to you is keep your money in your pocket and bide your time.

@cusimar9authorMay 27.2006 — #Out of interest how did you compile that list?

I monitor our referrals but referrals from google could be either from search results or from sponsored links, so the keywords used aren't much use to me...

Some of our competitors have been going for several years... obviously we can't wait THAT long. I don't want to put a timescale on it but I would say we need to see some good results by the end of the year, and I want to do whatever I can now to ensure that happens.

@bokehMay 27.2006 — #The table is being compiled dynamically (it does it by itself). The search terms are unique so it just shows the most recent search for any particular terms. When a visitor comes from a search engine, if the search page was page 1 the referer variable is followed back to the search engine and the rank checked. Pretty simple stuff really.

Being in a rush is just going to cost you a lot of money that you will never recuperate. If your business idea is purely e-commerce based it is very unlikely you will ever make any money out of it as there is so much competition. Maybe writing and selling software online is an exception to this. In general a website is just a complement to a physically established business and should be a time saving interface between the firm and the clients (answering questions, etc.). One of my site sells subscriptions to a photography magazine and is very successful in this.

As far as SEO goes the basics are:[list]

[*]a page that validates

[*]a short meaningful <title>

[*]good use of <h1> for relevant terms

[*]a very short list of meta keywords

[*]a very brief meta description

[*]some dynamic content

[*]lots of patience

[/list]

@SeoDocJun 01.2006 — #CompGuy Pete is right on the money with that story.... in general SEO is worth the money and in fact, has a higher ROI than other forms of promotion. The key is whether or not its worth it to you...if you are spending tons of money on PPC then I would guess...yes. SEO is a good choice if you plan on the "long term" because it can take much longer to have an effect versus PPC. If you plan on doing it yourself, expect at least several months of research first.

@FerdinandJan 30.2014 — #If everything was so simple - everyone have been successfully engaged in the sites promotion. But it's not so. After Google introduced new filters - penguin and panda - all became much more complicated. Lots of SEo companies stopped their ceased their activities because they weren't able to achieve great results for their clients using old standard methods. But the most authoritative SEO companies are still able to effectively promote sites in search engines. As correctly noted Compguy Pete, the thing is in knowledge and abilities of these companies. They use the more complete analytics tools and have opportunity to get links on very popular resources that is available for not so many. Of course, they don't tell how they succeed... these are their secrets that allow them to do what others can not do.

@webdesignnowApr 12.2014 — #SEO for on and off site is imperitive as well as great content. Google is not stupid and will penalise anyone that tries to use black hat techniques. I am well versed in seo and run an affordable Web design and seo company, have done for years. Seo is not just about meta tags and keywords, it goes much deeper than that.

@sheldonloboApr 20.2014 — #SEO companies do well keyword research and implement on your site and they also do off page link building to get some quality links coming to your site that increases your SERP.

@linathinfotechApr 21.2014 — #Depends on that SEO Company.

For example, we at linath infotech try to do SEO for website through On Page techniques for promotion like Blogs, Press Release, Classifieds, Business Listings, etc.

@RoopatgApr 21.2014 — #Based on your website pages,they suppose to charge. But you ensure that the SEO company is optimizing your site ethically. If they follow black hat seo, it will harm to your website.

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