SEO v Adwords

[DannyR]

Hi Guys,

I am starting a business and need to have a website built. From what I know it needs to be "google" friendly (SEO) but the guy I have in mind isn't too clued on.

Do SEO experts build the website or do I have it built and then they make the necessary changes later?

Is it more expensive to do SEO or ADwords? I assume this depends on the market?

From what I have read you need to maintain SEO budget monthly? My website would be quite static at the beginning and I have read that you need to keep updating to stay up the rankings?

Apologies as I am not an IT expert but have tried to read around the subject so I have an idea at least.:|

Any help would be much appreciated,

Thanks:D

[SEO-Doctor]

Find a cheap designer who knows about SEO, and do all your keyword research first. Also, Try and get your main keyword in your domain.

SEO v PPC...do both. SEO takes time,so ppc will give you a start.

[DannyR]

thanks, sorry if this sounds dumb but how do you do keyword research?

I have an idea on what the keywords maybe....

LOL, do you know any good, "cheap", designers who know SEO? ideal world...:D

[fisicx]

Can I suggest another approach.

Forget all about SEO and start writing. Write for the man in the pub, answer all the questions about your products or services you can think of. Do some creative writing to describe your products or services, list the benefits and provide hints and tips. In other words, make sure your content is informative and interesting - the sort of thing you would want to read. Then give is to a stoppy teenager and pay them a fiver to be critical.

Keep working on your content, when it is honed and perfected all you need to do is get the website built to hold it all together. The keywords will fall out naturally.

[SEO-Doctor]

thanks, sorry if this sounds dumb but how do you do keyword research?

I have an idea on what the keywords maybe....

LOL, do you know any good, "cheap", designers who know SEO? ideal world...:D

look for a student :)

[Jason L]

Type 'google free keyword tool' into google and you can pick up their handy adwords tool - this will show you montly search volumes and give you some other helpful keywords that you may not have thought of.

Re: AdWords/SEO you should do both. But don't get too reliant on AdWords unless your margins are very good. It's good because it is instant but you need to be getting ROI. You should really be trying to optimise your key terms in the SERPS (search engine results pages). Having said that, you shouldn't rely too heavily on SEO either because google can and does change its algorithm and you could find yourself in favour one day and out of favour the next (although it's not quite that fickle)!

As fisicx says concentrate on good strong copy which describes your product/service - and look to promote your site in a number of ways (both on and offline). That way you don't put all of your eggs in one basket, so to speak

[Itani]

SEO will take time, you need to make sure you don;t rush your SEo process or you will get penalized by google.

Start with Adwords , set a budget and this will give you a head start while you optimize your site slowly for search engines.

If you need a student to work on this just who has knowledge of SEO aswell just message me .

You have to research your keywords and competition aswell and choose the right domain name. Choosing a strong domain is very important and will make SEO a bit easier if you have a great domain.

[fisicx]

Choosing a strong domain is very important and will make SEO a bit easier if you have a great domain.
Since when? Your domain name is only going to help for an exact match.

[Itani]

Since when? Your domain name is only going to help for an exact match.

What do you mean since when? The domain name is the 1st thing you have to research before you do anything. So your goign to make a website and then look for a domain?

Yes It will get you an exact match but who cares if your domain keywords are not even searched?

Eg jasminedirectory .com if you type in those words yes they will be ranked number 1 but what good is that? who knows who jasmine directory is?

so you search for keywords that are popular to do with your niche and you choose a domain. so when people search those terms you have that advantage of them being in your domain and you need to also make sure your domain is not stupidly long.

I have domain bandsandartists.co.uk which is searched 11,000 a month I'd rather have that to start of with then a domain with keywords that doesn't get searched at all.

[fisicx]

Google, amazon, play, ebay, yahoo, bing, ask and thousands of others. None of these have keywords in the domain name but they seem to do ok. The effect of the domain name on ranking is miniscule when compared to the page title for example.

You mention bandsandartists. I'll bet that exact match isn't made 11000/month. 'Bands and artists' maybe but since 'and' is a stop word and not included in the search you would do even better is you had bands-artists (the hyphen or undescore because google treasts them as a space and bandsandartists as all one word).

[Itani]

Lets not forget Google, amazon, play, ebay, yahoo, bing, ask are all established business who have millions Dollars or Pounds with very experienced staff.

if I bought a domain "poogle.com" which was a shopping site and had millions of £ of course your going to do well. Money is everything . and lets not forget those sites have been established for years and years.

Common sense is to search bands and artists with a space. Even if they did search bandsandartists I will rank high anyway.

If you do your research "bands and artists" on a global monthly search terms is 6,600 on google and has a high advertiser competition but I still rank on 1st page of google.co.uk for that keyword and my site is less than 3 months old.

I also receive many other hits from google for keywords like Indie bands, Indie music, unsigned bands and much more music terms.

So I chose an effective domain to do with my niche which gets alot of searches and made it easier for my self. If I chose for example mymusicprofile.com I wouldnt rank newhere near 1st page for any music terms unless I spent time and effor optimizing every page, building backlinsk etc which all takes time because we all know you cant rush the SEO process.

So how can you say a domain name isn't important when your starting an online business or site? Especially if you have a low budget, than research is KEY to save you money.

[fisicx]

If you had brought wiznog instead of mymusicprofile it wouldn't make any difference to your ranking.

If you are selling green widgets the there might be a tiny advantage in buying green-widgets but NOT greenwidgets. But even if you had got green-widgets it won't help if someone is looking for 'economy sized widgets'.

Each of your domains are treated as a single word by the search engines there there is no SEO advantage. You ranking is determined but the other 199+ ranking signals.

[Itani]

So are you saying a domain name has no relevance what so ever to your rankings or SEO?

[fisicx]

No, I'm saying the relevance is limited when compared to other ranking signals. And if you have multiple words then you need to use undescores or hyphens so that the SE knows where each word ends. But this makes the domain name look spammy.

In any case, because more and more searches are longtail, having an exact match domain name is becoming almost irrelevant unless you are targeting a specific niche.

All of this means your domain names (because you concatenate the words) might just as well be gibberish for all the good they do.

[XanderMarketing]

Hi Guys,

I am starting a business and need to have a website built. From what I know it needs to be "google" friendly (SEO) but the guy I have in mind isn't too clued on.

Do SEO experts build the website or do I have it built and then they make the necessary changes later?

Is it more expensive to do SEO or ADwords? I assume this depends on the market?

From what I have read you need to maintain SEO budget monthly? My website would be quite static at the beginning and I have read that you need to keep updating to stay up the rankings?

Apologies as I am not an IT expert but have tried to read around the subject so I have an idea at least.:|

Any help would be much appreciated,

Thanks:D

It also depends what industry you're in and who you're targeting. Can you provide us some more information on this...

[websitedesign]

First step = market research, customer profiling, competitor analysis and most important: keyword analysis

Do not write your content until you have analyzed your keyword strategy. This helps in seo and creating long term traffic to your site

ppc is ok in the start (small scale) to help get your website indexed faster but it gets expensive after a while (keyword analysis also helps you get better landing scores and pricing)

I would invest in SEO over ppc unless you have a proven formula for guaranteed ppc performance