Help - not happy with SEO company's work

[erictwendell]

That's what I was trying to explain. Ask them to report their off page work weekly. And for all the Fb, twitter, and other all social network updates ask them to report that work monthly,...Will that be efficient??

 

[fisicx]

No. Why are they messing about with social networks? I would be paying them for SEO work not posting on twitter. Sorry, eric but entrusting a business website to an unverfied freelancer is just daft, they could have a fantastic profile with loads of great feedback but actually turn out to be torally useless (as many people have discovered).

 

[erictwendell]

But I have seen few freelancers earning good penny..How they gets work then???

 

[erictwendell]

What is the general procedure of signing an agreement with the freelancer on net???..

 

[zigojacko]

But I have seen few freelancers earning good penny..How they gets work then???

The same way all these other clueless "SEO companies" that charge ridiculous amounts for doing 'diddly squat' in 6 months get work...

Just because they get work doesn't mean they are any good. Many freelancers flock to freelancing websites because they can't make it outside of these networks. It's often cheap labour for cheap useless work. You get what you pay for and most businesses learn this the hard way by finding some freelancer that is apparently an "SEO guru" on a freelancer website that no-one in the industry has ever heard of.

Of course, there are some amazing freelancers about but the success of their business often lies away from freelancer networks.

 

[max99]

you'll often find that good freelancers don't need to advertise their services as the word of mouth means they get enough business as it is. The service I offer I never advertise anywhere and still get several people a month contacting for quotes based on being recommended.

 

[10032012]

And why would this be any better? Most freelancers provice just as poor a service as anyone else.

I agree. Even more so... SEO is the latest skill to have and to offer as a service... except the vast majority do not even have the foggiest of what to do. Its rare for a web designer, developer or even a web host, not to claim to offer SEO services.

My advice for anyone ... is always go to a specialist who knows what they are doing. A specialist will never be someone who knows how to do everything else also and rarely will they use words such as "expert", "specialist" and "guru".

Its SEO for beginners on-page and spam submission of links, is what you going to get with a clown.

For example, beginner SEO on-page is about a phrase with descriptive keywords in the title tag and avoiding "click here" as links. That is not SEO work you should be paying for - its common knowledge, dare I say it common sense. If you are not IT literate you wont get it, if you are, its likely you are at that level anyway - or beyond it.

An specialist SEO will know whats better between tag sequences...

• <a>,<b>
• <a>,<strong>
• <strong>,<a>
• <b>,<a>

All the above (obviously with their full code) will give you a link with bold text. Do you use the old bold tag ('b') or do you use 'strong'? Do you have this inside the link or outside? Do you even use b/strong in a link?

This is just a small on-page SEO factor. Also, position of content... breadcrumbs, secondary menus, schema microdata, rel/title/alt attributes, number of links (internal and external etc) etc.

A clown will literally make sure you have the following on page:-

• Title tag: relevant description of page
• META tags keywords and description; usually dofollow robot meta tags also
• Keywords within your header tags, h1, h2 and h3 etc
• All hyperlinks are keyword specific, no "click here"s
• (typically but not always) A paragraph of keywords you want to match for

As for off-page SEO, the clowns simply outsource it... sometimes its software that spams blogs or creates profiles on popular sites and other times they literally send your website traffic through adsense-prohibited traffic exchange/rotator programmes.

The difficulty is they all seem to provide a list of actions as long as your arm... and proper SEO also do this so its hard to advise what to stay clear from.

What to look out for or be cautious of:-

• We will submit your website to loads of search engines (60, 100, 300, 1000, 2000+)
• We will submit your website to loads of directories (60, 100, 300, 1000, 2000+)
• We will tune your meta tags
• Promise of hits or customers
• Freebies and additional services when you buy/subscribe
• Long contracts or upfront payments

Explained:
1) There are only 10 significant search engines - in the UK only 2 major ones... Google and Bing. You want SEO for them, the others will likely not do too badly from the optimised pages. Look out for PING your sitemap... thats what you want... submit your website link... you don't. I found out this with Google back-in-the-day. Get linked on a small but significant (or better, preferably a constantly updated website in Google's index) website Google will find you... if you submit by web form, Google will never come and when it does you are unlikely to be included in the index. Same will all search engines I believe.

2) Directories are a thing of the past. Google doesn't like them much any more, and even when they were positive, it was only dmoz and yahoo the major two worth being in. Most directories are nofollow. This is an old SEO tip.. real SEO gurus etc. always keep on top of the latest search engine algorithm updates... this is a bigger deal to them than any new smartphone or console launch!

3) META tags are ignored in regards to SEO (with exception to a rumour that they might be used as merely audit regarding penalisation - they wont have a positive effect) - this is an ancient SEO tip... before even the days of Google

4) If you rank highly, more people will come, fact! You want natural search engine traffic from SEO work and it can take a while to be achieved. Hits are more likely to cost you money than make you money. These clowns promising you hits will spoof the referrer header as to make it seem like the person came from Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. No SEO will make guarantees regarding "hits" - a real SEO might of unique visitors.

5) This is an dated sales technique... "buy this product today and get this product free... WOW". Its going to be expensive even with a clown/scammer... its a service, they create you a bespoke solution for your website... so nothing will be free or additional - everything is included as the primary and sole service. Any additional sweeteners of the deal is their own anxiety that it might not be enough by itself.

6) Some real SEO might want a long going contract but many are month by month, quarterly or paid upfront for as long as it takes to get the job done. If you stop wanting the SEO off-page optimisation, they are happy to allow that extra capacity for someone else... these clowns will oversell services but do little or none work for the money.

Hope this helps someone.

 

[zigojacko]

^ Awesome Post ^

This clearly demonstrates the difference between any old Tom, Dick and Harry offering "SEO services" and real expertise in the field. If all you're getting offered is titles, metadata and submissions, you need to look much further, because anyone with an ounce of IT literacy will be able to do this (they won't be able to get it right though because they don't have a much of a clue or depth of experience and expertise in this field, they just physically no where to go to make the changes).

The reality is, probably as much as 90% + of companies that have any form of digital marketing listed as a service on their website (with probably 100% of these 90% using the word SEO) actually have no idea what it really entails or how to go about it correctly, ethically or in any valuable way that will move their client forward.

That post is worth bookmarking for any business that is struggling to identify why one provider of SEO is going to be better than another.

 

[ZeroDouble]

@zigojacko - I'm actually quite surprised that you labeled that as an "Awesome Post".

I appreciate what the poster was trying to do, and he is of course right about how there are lots of "Clowns" in SEO, who do lots of the things that are mentioned.

However, some of the information contained is at best misleading, and at worst just plain wrong.

Not trying to flame anyone, but I just feel that some of the details that are being portrayed as fact could be confusing for any non SEO who might be reading it.

I do respect the fact that the post was meant to help others though.

 

[zigojacko]

@zigojacko - I'm actually quite surprised that you labeled that as an "Awesome Post".

I appreciate what the poster was trying to do, and he is of course right about how there are lots of "Clowns" in SEO, who do lots of the things that are mentioned.

However, some of the information contained is at best misleading, and at worst just plain wrong.

Not trying to flame anyone, but I just feel that some of the details that are being portrayed as fact could be confusing for any non SEO who might be reading it.

I do respect the fact that the post was meant to help others though.

Please explain what you feel is plain wrong, misleading and what part of it could confuse any non SEO?

Bearing in mind I also extended why I thought it was an awesome post with the rest of my post.

 

[ZeroDouble]

Sure, I wasn't going to pull it apart, as I didn't really think that it was fair to the OP, but....

"beginner SEO on-page is about a phrase with descriptive keywords in the title tag and avoiding "click here" as links."

This suggests to me that we should be using generic anchor text for internal linking?

"Look out for PING your sitemap... that's what you want... submit your website link... you don't."

Really???

"if you submit by web form, Google will never come and when it does you are unlikely to be included in the index."

If I submit pages via WMT or even google's "submit your url" function they are always visited and almost always included in the index.

"Directories are a thing of the past. Google doesn't like them much any more, and even when they were positive, it was only dmoz and yahoo the major two worth being in."

There are plenty of directories worth being included in (for various reasons), even in this day and age.

"META tags are ignored in regards to SEO"

Are they?

 

[zigojacko]

Sure, I wasn't going to pull it apart, as I didn't really think that it was fair to the OP, but....

Yes, fair enough, but if you feel the post was misleading and incorrect, for the benefit of readers, it's probably best to explain your reasoning.

"beginner SEO on-page is about a phrase with descriptive keywords in the title tag and avoiding "click here" as links."

This suggests to me that we should be using generic anchor text for internal linking?

It suggests to me that internal linkage should be descriptive of the destination page you are linking to. I'm not sure why your perception of that ended up being vastly different to mine.

"Look out for PING your sitemap... that's what you want... submit your website link... you don't."

Really???

I'm not entirely sure what that sentence means, if your website has a sitemap then sure, ping it to the search engines. Whether a sitemap is needed or not is entirely another debate but on this one sentence alone, I'm not going to take it as being "plain wrong".

"if you submit by web form, Google will never come and when it does you are unlikely to be included in the index."

If I submit pages via WMT or even google's "submit your url" function they are always visited and almost always included in the index.

Yes, maybe they will come via a 'search engine submission', maybe they won't. The point here is that by posting fresh content and earning links to your website is going to be a far more quicker and more successful route to getting indexed than relying on a search engine submission form (and this isn't Google WMT for your reference).

"Directories are a thing of the past. Google doesn't like them much any more, and even when they were positive, it was only dmoz and yahoo the major two worth being in."

There are plenty of directories worth being included in (for various reasons), even in this day and age.

We're talking generic web directories here, not niche business directories. This could be made clearer but by classifying them in the same sentence as DMOZ and Yahoo, these are the types of directories that we're talking about. There are very few worth bothering with that will make a blind bit of difference to traffic/SEO.

"META tags are ignored in regards to SEO"

Are they?

Give me an example of a meta tag that is used as a ranking factor when an algorithm ranks pages in a search engine...?

 

[ZeroDouble]

Give me an example of a meta tag that is used as a ranking factor when an algorithm ranks pages in a search engine...?

Obviously no-one outside of a few people a google know exactly what the algo uses as ranking factors, but recent documented evidence suggests that:

Having a meta description, and having a relevant keyword contained within it will have a positive effect on search engine ranking in Google.

 

[zigojacko]

Obviously no-one outside
of a few people a google know exactly what the algo uses as ranking factors, but recent documented evidence suggests that:

Having a meta description, and having a relevant keyword contained within it will have a positive effect on search engine ranking in Google.

Err no. Google say that the meta description is not used at all as a ranking factor, a well written and descriptive meta description detailing the businesses USP's however will expect to increase click-through rate. No direct connection to how a page ranks however.

Edit:-

Quote from the linked page:-

Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don't use the description meta tag in our ranking.

Google announced this in 2009 and it still the case today.

 

[ZeroDouble]

Regardless of what Google might say, there is documented evidence to suggest the contrary.

 

[zigojacko]

Regardless of what Google might say, there is documented evidence to suggest the contrary.

Um... There is a documentation on absolutely everything on the web, what's right and what isn't is what matters.

I disagree, any reputable body in the industry will say that the meta description has no direct correlation on organic search rankings. It didn't even make it on the list of search engine ranking factors for 2013...

You've completely failed (IMO) to support your claim of that post being misleading, plain wrong and confusing. With the one thing you've decided to discuss being the direct opposite of what Google have clearly and openly announced themselves years ago now.

And you're saying @10032012's post was misleading...!?

 

[ZeroDouble]

Um... There is a documentation on absolutely everything on the web, what's right and what isn't is what matters.

I disagree, any reputable body in the industry will say that the meta description has no direct correlation on organic search rankings. It didn't even make it on the list of search engine ranking factors for 2013...

You've completely failed (IMO) to support your claim of that post being misleading, plain wrong and confusing. With the one thing you've decided to discuss being the direct opposite of what Google have clearly and openly announced themselves years ago now.

And you're saying @10032012's post was misleading...!?

I think that you should read the search metrics data again, as it clearly states that it does (hence why I linked to it as well).

There's also this study by moz.com, which interestingly enough states that apart from having a relevant keyword in the description, the meta title tag is also used as a ranking factor (or are they not reputable either?).

The post was potentially misleading, for the reasons that I have already mentioned, and this was further highlighted by the fact that you had to go into detail to explain certain aspects of it.

 

[fisicx]

Regardless of what Google might say, there is documented evidence to suggest the contrary.

Am I missing something? I couldn't see any documented evidence that the description meta tag is used in ranking.

Note: making a statement and producing a graph is not the same as providing evidence. I would expect to see something like:

"A test of 20 pages had stable ranking 6 months. We added a meta description and ranking on 14 of the pages improved by an average of 10 places."

 

[zigojacko]

I think that you should read the search metrics data again, as it clearly states that it does (hence why I linked to it as well).

There's also this study by moz.com, which interestingly enough states that apart from having a relevant keyword in the description, the meta title tag is also used as a ranking factor (or are they not reputable either?).

The post was potentially misleading, for the reasons that I have already mentioned, and this was further highlighted by the fact that you had to go into detail to explain certain aspects of it.

The title tag isn't even a meta tag I suggest you learn what you're talking about before outing other members' posts without any backup of what you're mumbling on about... For the sake of keeping this thread useful to any readers, I'm not going to continue this discussion with you. I'm sure many of the readers of it have enough information now to make up their mind on what's what.

 

[ZeroDouble]

Note: making a statement and producing a graph is not the same as providing evidence. I would expect to see something like:

"A test of 20 pages had stable ranking 6 months. We added a meta description and ranking on 14 of the pages improved by an average of 10 places."

That's a fair point, perhaps I'll run some tests some day.

 

[ZeroDouble]

The title tag isn't even a meta tag I suggest you learn what you're talking about before outing other members' posts without any backup of what you're mumbling on about... For the sake of keeping this thread useful to any readers, I'm not going to continue this discussion with you. I'm sure many of the readers of it have enough information now to make up their mind on what's what.

Yes, you're right, technically the title tag isn't a meta tag, I stand corrected (although that wasn't really what we were discussing, was it?).

FWIW I have provided evidence to back up my claims, but that's fine, go ahead and throw your toys out of the pram because you can't admit when you are wrong, I couldn't care less.

Also, I didn't intentionally try to "out" anyone's post (as you put it), in fact I did my best to avoid it, and actually went out of my way to thank and compliment the poster as it did contain some useful information.

 

[fisicx]

That's a fair point, perhaps I'll run some tests some day.

I've already done it - and it made no difference. A number of UKBF members took part in the test.

 

[ZeroDouble]

I've already done it - and it made no difference. A number of UKBF members took part in the test.

Interesting, was it documented in a thread here, and do you have a link to it?

 

[max99]

Although valid points I think it's important to state that all seo should be done with the main word 'natural' in the back of your mind. Whatever a sites/people do is what you should be seeking on your site. Hence link profiles that should have anchor texts like people use i.e if you own a company called sarahspetshop.co.uk then anchors would be sarahspetshop, sarahs pet shop, sarahspetshop.co.uk, click here, visit site, pet shop, etc

Also you're both arguing stating things as fact "it makes no difference" "they are not needed" etc ... we don't know. Google may say they never take meta desc's into account... but they may do, we just don't know

 

[zigojacko]

Also you're both arguing stating things as fact "it makes no difference" "they are not needed" etc ... we don't know. Google may say they never take meta desc's into account... but they may do, we just don't know

That's why lots of us carry out hundreds of tests every year to find out.

I also don't think there is a great deal of benefit in Google blatantly lying about what they do and don't do / what works and doesn't work seeing they are interviewed by the likes of Danny Sullivan and Rand Fishkin frequently on matters relating to SEO for the purpose and benefit of the industry and globally recognised conferences.

Testing and study is done for a reason...

 

[10032012]

ZeroDouble ... DoubleZero ?

First and foremost, I never claimed to be an SEO expert! Secondly, we are all adults on a business forum, to criticise someone and then get a title tag confused with META... seems a bit embarrassing. I don't want to come across as all geekysnob so I wont flame you back for it. Seems like you wanted to criticise for purpose of criticising rather than merit or factual.

Algorithm specifics is pretty much a strong kept trade secret. Every update allegedly is to remove spam and useless sites... its more down to collaborating SEO folks working out/reserve engineering the algorithm ... over time people will work it out or something close to it. They need to stop this.

Google has an significant interest in advertising alongside the results... basically buying the chance to be on the first page... if the top SEO companies could actually guarantee a top 1-3 position in Google... no one will buy adword adverts alongside the search results any more. Not to forget Google will be full of junk sites at the top!

 

[The web design girl]

Unfortunately this sort of thing seems to happen so often with SEO companies who talk customers in to signing long contracts. They often seem to think that once the document is signed they will get paid anyway, so don't need to earn their money. So you end up with little to nothing to show for your money.

You are better off with a Pay as you go solution. Our company (and im sure many others here too) work this way. That way the customer gets their reports each month, and they have a chat with you about what to focus on each month, and it is only doing good quality work that will keep the customers coming back each month.

 

[ZeroDouble]

First and foremost, I never claimed to be an SEO expert!

Well that makes two of us then, because neither did I.

Secondly, we are all adults on a business forum, to criticise someone and then get a title tag confused with META... seems a bit embarrassing.

TBH technical differences and semantics between the different types of tags are not something that (in the grand scheme of things) I'm too fussed about.

I'm not a professional SEO, I just promote my own sites, and it's not even my full time job, so I guess you could say that I know what I need to know, in order to do what I need to do.

So, no, I'm not in the slightest bit embarrassed, and am actually quite happy to have learned something new today - for me, that's a good day.

I don't want to come across as all geekysnob so I wont flame you back for it.

You just did.

Just for the record though, I didn't want it to appear like I was flaming you and nor was it my intention, and TBH I think that overall I was pretty respectful in the way that I disagreed with certain parts of your post.

Seems like you wanted to criticise for purpose of criticising rather than merit or factual.

Criticising someone's post on a forum for the sake of criticising? Who, Me? Never!

Seriously though, there were certain things that I disagreed with in your post (although most of it was pretty spot on), and I was genuinely surprised that certain people were labeling it "awesome" and telling business owners to bookmark it, when there were things that at even to me (a non professional), were not quite accurate, or at the very least needed further clarification so as not to possibly cause confusion to people who might not know.

I'm not going to repeat myself, but I still stand by every point that I made, and am actually quite disappointed with the response that I got from others when I presented evidence (from reputable sources) to back up certain claims that I made (whether people agreed with it or not).

 

[10032012]

TBH technical differences and semantics between the different types of tags are not something that (in the grand scheme of things) I'm too fussed about.

But others might be? For instance, to simplify it entirely... you have a keyword and a page; the index process is about basically generating a relevance score between a specific search term and the page (the page can be influenced from other factors too such as other pages on the site, its age and links to it - just to clear this up before anyone disagrees)

If you are paying someone (or even doing it yourself) to perform SEO on your website, you want the best results. Factors such as "technical differences" and "semantics" (quoting yourself) - especially over a website with hundreds of thousands of pages (but not necessary needing so many) - is the difference between page 3 and the top 3.

If coding (wrong word, HTML is markup, not scripting) your pages in a specific way that it generates a better score for keywords... it equates to a better SERP. Google for instance places a lot of emphasis on linking and website age etc. so undertaking best practice for on-page SEO is not necessary a make or break... but it doesn't harm for an SEO to do this when you are paying them for supposedly doing so!

Google (like other search engines) never normally have static results, for instance, its quite probable to be guaranteed page 1, but where you show up can vary a lot over time. You might be first today, could be forth tomorrow etc. and with a big infrastructure like Google this can vary depending on the datacentre/server processing your request. Proper on-page SEO can iron out these movements over competing websites that don't do similar.

For me, this seems more relevant than ever... Google used to influence its results largely by local factors, but since the distrust since NSA snooping... Google is now redirecting to a secure website and IMO the results can be a little more iffy from time-to-time as its not forcing through local results so much (I am not referring to the google local maps listing) even when set to UK its probable to get international websites spring up from time to time.

With greater adoption of HTML5 with inclusion of various new tags, its of vital importance to understand what performs better if you want good on-page SEO. Webmasters are more aware now of better ways to indicate sections of the page more than before... back-in-the-day the Search Engine had to do the guessing; now you can specifically follow good practice and help Google out, in return it will reward you. Of course, its not all about content... using a CDN, less DNS lookups, minify CSS and JS, using caching server-side and expires headers etc client-side, avoiding blocking elements and moving most scripts to the bottom of the page instead of in the traditional header can vastly improve the speed of your website - and Google does take this into account.

 

[ZIZE]

bottom line if he is pulling 500 quid a month off you and cant produce a simple list of links built then drop his ass and if you can recoup all your cash
if he threatens to chase you tell him to go for it if he cant produce anything to you to keep his client he wont be able to back up his contract

500 quid a month i could put you on front page of google for a massive amount of keywords if he cant even produce one link run for the hills

just a thought make sure you are not in the google sandbox

 

[HamSandwich]

Yikes... There are some scary comments on this thread.

I run an SEO team (agency side) and I would never claim to be able to put someone "on the front page of Google" without even having seen the site. Without knowing the link history, seeing the content and of course checking how competitive the industry is, how can people make these claims?

Secondly, promising keyword rankings is useless as rankings make no difference to the bottom line of a business. I could get you to number one in Google for "elephants with purple underpants" but it wouldn't bring in any revenue.

My advice to the original poster would be to set tangible goals for your campaign that reflect the goals of your business, e.g. improve conversion rate, increase revenue etc. If your KPIs are sales-based (e.g. revenue), measure success against year-on-year data to eliminate seasonality.

It's not fair to say that £5k per month is the minimum anyone should be spending for good SEO. We have e-commerce clients that spend £1,000 per month and we've increase year-on-year revenue by 125%. For every £1 the client spent in November, they made £17 back. That's the kind of ROI you should be chasing, not meaningless keyword rankings.

 

[ZIZE]

Yikes... There are some scary comments on this thread.

I run an SEO team (agency side) and I would never claim to be able to put someone "on the front page of Google" without even having seen the site. Without knowing the link history, seeing the content and of course checking how competitive the industry is, how can people make these claims?

Secondly, promising keyword rankings is useless as rankings make no difference to the bottom line of a business. I could get you to number one in Google for "elephants with purple underpants" but it wouldn't bring in any revenue.

My advice to the original poster would be to set tangible goals for your campaign that reflect the goals of your business, e.g. improve conversion rate, increase revenue etc. If your KPIs are sales-based (e.g. revenue), measure success against year-on-year data to eliminate seasonality.

It's not fair to say that £5k per month is the minimum anyone should be spending for good SEO. We have e-commerce clients that spend £1,000 per month and we've increase year-on-year revenue by 125%. For every £1 the client spent in November, they made £17 back. That's the kind of ROI you should be chasing, not meaningless keyword rankings.

i didnt elaborate and i wasnt touting for business so dont comment i have made over 3000 sites in my time from scratch that includes a new domain and every one i guarentee they have been on google for keywords related to that website.
i gave up seo and moved onto other things after working in it more or less since the 1st days of www.
working for one of the 1st internet marketing companies that ever existed in london
i claim what i claim because i made the site and did all onsite and offsite and i have never said i am going to rank for 1st page for keywords that are major competitive so how is this post scary huh ?

secondly rankings are important when they are website content related if you dont see why then you should not be allowed anywhere near seo

can i just say it again yes i can rank any website for keywords on front page of google i have yet to fail if your site is awful then i wouldnt touch it until it was set how i required
if you didnt agree then you would be told find someone else

dont knock without knowing the details and no i dont want a job

back to the op if your seo guy cant produce anything to show what he has done month to month i woudnt touch him
i used to give a complete breakdown of everything including hours spent during each month everything was there for my clients to see including traffic breakdowns,marketing campiagns etc a total open book
just an afterthought
dont think i have ever made a site that has less than 7k uniques per day with a nice conversion rate

 

[HamSandwich]

Sorry if my post caused any offence Zize, it certainly wasn't my intention.

I'm sure it was easy to guarantee first page rankings in "the first days of www" - these days you can't guarantee anything, especially in competitive SERPs dominated by authority brands and influencers.

 

[Ian J]

Yikes... There are some scary comments on this thread.

[ quote edited for brevity ]

promising keyword rankings is useless as rankings make no difference to the bottom line of a business. I could get you to number one in Google for "elephants with purple underpants" but it wouldn't bring in any revenue.

Not picking on anyone in particular but I have been following this particular forum for years and there are scary comments in many threads.

Secondly I assume that it is taken as read that when people promise you rankings for keywords that they are talking about relevant keywords. As a factoring broker when I discuss SEO with people and they talk about keyword ranking I make it quite plain to them that the only keyword that I am interested in is the single word "factoring" and likewise the only search engine that I want to be ranked in is Google

 

[HamSandwich]

As a factoring broker when I discuss SEO with people and they talk about keyword ranking I make it quite plain to them that the only keyword that I am interested in is the single word "factoring"

Hi Ian, I've had quite a lot of similar conversations with clients in the past. These 'marketing defining' keywords are rarely the best keywords to chase. They're the most competitive and the furthest from conversion in intent.

A search for [factoring] is likely to be informational in intent - someone looking for more information on factoring for research purposes. The more longtail the search becomes, the closer to a conversion and the more transactional the intent tends to be. For example, someone searching for [factoring services for trucking companies] tends to be ready to buy, or at least more so than the user who searches for [factoring].

Each industry is different - even each website - but the only way to know for sure is to test. My advice would be not to ignore the longtail as there is much more potential for success through thousands of keyword variations.

 

[GrowingLad]

Hi! Newbie here. Copied and pasted this request for help from another forum.
Spent a couple of hours reading through and getting a feel. Apologies if I am posting in wrong place (do re-direct me if so) but I am desperate for help and guidance! Long story but will make brief.
I set up a company that promotes workshops and courses in personal development. Doing ok. Only me in the company. Had a Weebly website. Doing ok. Advertised for help with creating a newsletter to reach wider online audience/clients. Found a guy who claimed to be 'Expert' SEO developer and within a few days hired him after he convinced me that Google doesn't like Weebly and prefers Wordpress and he could help design brand new website, Facebook page and get me lots of traffic. Have only been with him exactly one week and paid him £600 (half of fee agreed) and ended up having a fall out already - feel quite bullied by this guy - wanting to get the new site online by Monday (tomorrow) and me wanting to hold back because the booking system is non existent. Should I dump him or what?? Please help. Many thanks and apologies again if I have posted in wrong place. )