How hard is it to just not get ripped off?

[lynxus]

I grow so tired of marketing.

Adwords / BingAds are meh.. Spend a fortune ( even after paying people to supposedly sort it out ) and get little in return.

How hard is it to just get someone to do SEO monthly that doesn't cost £1000's!!

Even then, the expensive ones are full of BS..

Yay heres some features..
- A report
- Ohh you get webmaster tools integrations
- I may add one or two links back to your site.
- I wont optimise any pages. that will cost you at least £10,000 a month please.
- I promise to work 5 hours on your SEO.

Thats £1500 a month please!

Who the hell do these people think they are? What kind of bullshit are they pulling?

Grr

</rant> Sorry.

 

[AllUpHere]

If it's for your live chat business you are always going to be in for a bit of a hiding if you want to use SEO or PPC to promote it. I'm not at all surprised you've had some bad experiences.

 

[lynxus]

If it's for your live chat business you are always going to be in for a bit of a hiding if you want to use SEO or PPC to promote it. I'm not at all surprised you've had some bad experiences.

Mighty difficult to be honest.

Google adwords isnt too bad. Get a few conversions. Some turn to paying customers.
Bing... Erm..

I use other methods that do work slightly.

My biggest provider of new custom comes from clients who recommend us. Id say about 80% of new custom are via current users ( Who use it heavily and not just for its basic, Hey lets have a live chat )

Would be nice to just find a decent SEO that can do bits over the month. Month in , Month out for a good few hundred a month.

But it just seems that with SEO its a case of wasting cash hand over fist on a promise that never actually comes to fruition.

Trying to even contemplate any kind of ROI is just not possible. I dont like that. Its a constant gamble.. To me, Business and constant gambling is bad news.

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

I notice an irreversible trend into online marketing that push service businesses to one specific behaviour. I mean:

If business provides repeatable services, then many times when it comes to PPC most of them are able to pay 100% of first income for advertising just for oportunity to meet the customer for the first time.

Time of cheap PPC is OVER, transform your business model or die.

 

[lynxus]

In my sector. There isnt such a thing as cheap PPC Looking at £12 to £20 for a keyword.

 

[Hospitality_king]

Back in the day it cost us £2.00 per click, then when we got outbid, rose to 2.50 we haven't used adwords or any PPC since 2006...

 

[The Byre]

There is a hysteria over on-line marketing and SM, SEO, PPC etc., etc. and the whole issue has been blown out of all proportion.

Yes, you need a good website. Yes, some products need good SM activity.

But not at the expense of all other types of marketing and the total abandonment of common sense!

 

[Elliottc26]

It's true to say, I think, that if you want a piece of the online market then you'll need to do some online marketing activity. As your business grows, you can add in more and more efforts to ensure a competitive edge.

If something isn't profitable, then it could simply be how things are set-up and managed being the issue. After all, more and more people will perform an online search when looking for goods and services.

But other marketing activity should always be used where appropriate to reach your target customers/clients both for inbound and outbound to keep the flow of enquirers/sales coming in. Your intended market will dictate strategies for this.

PPC has worked well for many businesses including trades and industry, professional services, construction, retail. Depends what you target and how you target.

 

[AllUpHere]

Before spending thousands on PPC and SEO, how much did you spend on having a strategic marketing plan researched and prepared?

If others are bidding the kind of figures you have quoted for PPC there must be some money being made somewhere (by somebody). Equally, if others are bidding these kind of figures and are making money out of it, they probably have some kind of advantage over your business. Do you know what that advantage is?

 

[Hospitality_king]

Equally, if others are bidding these kind of figures and are making money out of it

Just cos people are spending on PPC, don't mean that money is made off it. You have got thousands of wasted ad spend being spent cos site owners think they got to throw money at PPC just to look like their in the game.. Most of it is totally wasted, ofcourse no one is going to admit to it lol.

Its so easy to get it wrong and squander cash, without a return and PPC is probably fits in better than anything else, as its an onging expense for you need to keep topping up. The best advertising is infact a non-topping up methods.

 

[Tin]

How hard is it to just get someone to do SEO monthly that doesn't cost £1000's!!

If that person can do SEO and meet expectations then why shouldn't they charge whatever they feel the work is worth?

In reality I think what you're saying is that the whole industry of SEO is full of blaggers who don't have enough skill to meet expectation... on that point I agree completely with you. I know personally of less than a handful of people that I'd throw my own money at for SEO but the core of the problem you've found, is that it's impossible to find those needles in that haystack, they are definitely there but they don't work for a couple of hundred quid.

If the site in question is IMsupporting.com I'd respectfully suggest that you have a good look at what's going on with your keywords and URLs. I haven't done that but I suspect there might be a problem going on, I just thought it worth mentioning.

Ray

 

[Steve Alphabet]

If you're spending loads on ads, then are you getting visits as a result? Sometimes the problem is less with getting people on a site, than getting them to stay and convert.

What's happening after people arrive on your landing page (you're using landing pages I hope? Sending PPC traffic to your homepage doesn't work – too many distractions). What's the conversion rate?

 

[GodOfSEO]

I think we need to get 2 things very clear here:

1) You can't expect miracles for a couple hundred quid a month.. Effective SEO requires a LOT of knowledge, a decent budget for things like link acquisition and a lot of time investment to do proper analysis and then carry out said analysis.

2) There are a lot of cowboys out there.. Even the bigger agencies (Not going to mention names, but you can find them with a quick search) have incompetent staff or simply don't know how to do effective campaigns on a budget of thousands a month, let alone tens of thousands.

95% of agencies, even if you spend £1k - £5k per month with them, won't do an active link building campaign. Despite what a lot of people will say, it's been proven that links are the major ranking factor ( http://backlinko.com/search-engine-ranking ) time and time again.. And if someone is spending a large amount of money with you, then you should be creating a proper campaign to help increase the authority of the clients domain.

A lot of agencies also just generate OnPage reports or audits, without ever giving specifics or actually carrying them out. I realise it may be tricky to access a client's site sometimes, but that's 0 excuse to not implement anything at all.. Especially as SO many sites don't even have basic optimization or site structure in place. I've worked with clients that spend £5k+/mo with us on a weekly basis, and almost all of them have the majority of their pages meta data automatically generated, or use stupid site structure with random folder names that aren't needed, some didn't even have a sitemap in place or webmaster tools setup.. Even really basic things can help in the long run and not attempting to carry out any changes is inexcusable.

I'm lucky, my agency can pick and choose it's clients and we don't really take on anyone under £3k/mo.. but at the same time, we realise any client that works with us is going to spend more with us if we help them grow.. Most agencies now-a-days setup with little real knowledge and as such, end up only signing short term clients because they can't show the results.. That then hurts the small minority of good agencies out there.

 

[neils3]

What GodofSEO said

 

[The Byre]

Dear God! There's some arrogant tosh being written here!

It's right up there with "Well, Sir, if you have to ask the price, then you almost certainly can't afford it!"

I have a friend who runs a consultancy. If you google the business type and the word 'business', his website comes up not only on page one, but also in position one. It's a good website. No bogus back-links, no YouTube channel, no metadata, no daily changes to texts, just one very good and informative website, written in plain html and with no pictures, no animations and no monkey business!

And no effort at any SEO either!

 

[justinaldridge]

You're in an increasingly competitive market! We've actually been working with a lot of our clients to incorporate live chat on their sites as we are finding that for many applications it's really helping to generate leads/sales.

I haven't come across yours before so I will take a look.

Have you done any work with SEO/PPC agencies for them to promote your Live Chat to their clients in return for a commission? That would definitely be a route I would take. We have a lot of our clients running LiveChatInc software very successfully.

Also, it looks like you have links in "noscript" tags on all your clients' sites where they have, or have had, your software installed. These links in theory are counted by Google but they aren't "earned" links so you need to be careful with this strategy. Google penalises hard for websites that hide links in widgets. You should really make them nofollow to play it safe.

Like I say, live chat is a competitive niche so apart from "regular SEO", I think you should work with agencies and do some content marketing to get more people using and knowing your product. I had never come across it and we have researched live chat solutions recently!

I would also just like to say that there is no demo on your site and as a user of this type of software I know that I did check out demos before deciding which ones to test.

Best of luck!

 

[boring-friday]

I'm lucky, my agency can pick and choose it's clients and we don't really take on anyone under £3k/mo..

Not gunna lie, I didn't enjoy your blackhatworld posts but thought I'd say congrats for moving on so fast from living at your mums,getting your bhw account banned over a few $s and the little hacking and 'indecent images' issue, surprised you're even allowed to sell internet marketing whilst still on a suspended sentence for hacking tbh:
http://www.itv.com/news/central/2015-10-16/man-sentenced-cyber-attacks-home-office-fbi-solihull/


@OP its hard, you really need to learn the basics yourself first in my opinion

 

[The Byre]

What GodofSEO said

There's an old German saying - "Sag mir wer Deine Freunde sind und ich sage Dir wer Du bist!"

Trans - "Tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are!"

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

I'm lucky,....

Charles Floate was arrested on September 12, 2014 and searches identified 111 prohibited images of children on his computer.

P.S

20 years old guy and 9 years in business . Can I ask what kind of business you have mentioned on your website, is it about SEO or is it about collecting shady images?

Nice sunglasses dude.

 

[justinaldridge]

Charles Floate was arrested on September 12, 2014 and searches identified 111 prohibited images of children on his computer.

That's really disturbing to know. I have 2 young kids and these things make me feel sick. I will block this user.

 

[sirearl]

I think we need to get 2 things very clear here:

1) You can't expect miracles for a couple hundred quid a month.. Effective SEO requires a LOT of knowledge,

It does not require a lot of knowledge.

It requires a small amount of the right knowledge.

 

[Hospitality_king]

It requires a small amount of the right knowledge.

Wrong, it requires much of the right content, that only certain sites can get away with publishing, and no - wacking up 35 blog articles won't cut it either. Such articles will be so targeted that only very specific sites are willing to house, and that's why its impossible to get the results these top SEO's claim they can get.

The specific sites will get so much inbound traffic, they won't let you in, so your screwed on that one. We get article writers approaching us wanting to put their client articles on our site, so we charge em $40 an article, then we make the point of wanting many to make it worth our while in this partnership, then the article writer says its not possible as it depends on what they got coming in, so partnership more often goes pear shaped. Just another reason why the seo thing fails - there's more reasons for failure ofcourse..... much more.

 

[Tin]

It does not require a lot of knowledge.

It requires a small amount of the right knowledge.

I would have to agree with that

 

[GodOfSEO]

It does not require a lot of knowledge.

It requires a small amount of the right knowledge.

I would have to agree with that

I disagree.. Just to understand the wording the SEO industry use would require about a months worth of work. In terms of doing ACTUAL SEO, it requires a general knowledge of development, for site structure, meta data, internal linking, sitemaps, content auditting, site auditting and a hell of a lot more to do technical SEO, especially for larger campaigns/sites - Generally E-Commerce sites have a minimum of HUNDREDS of pages.

Not to mention offsite campaigns.. Everyone in here saying you'll be able to rank well with the right content and no OnPage isn't on a high enough level of competitiveness to be able to say that. Try going into any market vs a large E-Commerce business, and you'll be crushed in the SERPs with that mentality/work attitude. Try competing with Amazon, eBay or any of the big boy companies (DFS, Bathstore, Skyscanner, Argos, Boots, John Lewis, eBuyer to name a few) with your "great content".

It might work for your local store with 3 others in the area competing with you, but actual online retail you'll be smashed into oblivion.

In respect to my ARREST record, and not conviction.. Don't really have to explain myself here, but being arrested at 15, and charged (not convincted in the end) with pictures of an ex-girlfriend isn't really disturbing in the slightest. Look up prohibited images, NOT indecent. 2 very different charges, though the media obviously dislike making it sound any different, and the police/government aren't really going to be too concerned about the image of a "cyber terrorist", as I was called.. At 15.

20 years old guy and 9 years in business . Can I ask what kind of business you have mentioned on your website, is it about SEO or is it about collecting shady images?

Nice sunglasses dude.

In respect to my business record, my blog recieves over 30,000 pageviews/mo in a relatively small industry, I own the biggest SEO group on Facebook, LinkedIn and Skype, I own the biggest premium (monthly) SEO group in the world and have sold over 350 copies of my SEO Course, priced at 2x that of your course Tin - $499.

My agency does over half a million pounds a year revenue, and I've been working in SEO for 8 years, as detailed by the interviews I've been doing in the industry since the age of 14. Here's one from 3 years ago when I was the 2nd in charge of SEO for one of the largest agencies in the UK: https://distinctly.co/seo-interview-god-seo-charles-floate/ or 1 from a year later ( https://ahrefs.com/blog/charles-floate-interview/ ) on Ahrefs, " Charles is by far the most talented SEO of his age with a wide skill-set."

Peace.

 

[sirearl]

I disagree.. Just to understand the wording the SEO industry use would require about a months worth of work. In terms of doing ACTUAL SEO, it requires a general knowledge of development, for site structure, meta data, internal linking, sitemaps, content auditting, site auditting and a hell of a lot more to do technical SEO, especially for larger campaigns/sites - Generally E-Commerce sites have a minimum of HUNDREDS of pages.











" Charles is by far the most talented SEO of his age with a wide skill-set."

Peace.

Wait till you are 70+ then you will be able to go to town.

One site I look after has 580,000 pages ,easy peasy.

 

[ZeroDouble]

...and have sold over 350 copies of my SEO Course, priced at 2x that of your course Tin - $499.

That's all well and good, but your course isn't even in the same league as Tin's. He actually knows what he's talking about, and doesn't just parrot (for the most part questionable) seo advice that's he's heard from others.

 

[GodOfSEO]

Wait till you are 70+ then you will be able to go to town.

One site I look after has 580,000 pages ,easy peasy.

580k? Is that it?

I'm also not too sure how many 70 year olds are great at SEO

That's all well and good, but your course isn't even in the same league as Tin's. He actually knows what he's talking about, and doesn't just parrot (for the most part questionable) seo advice that's he's heard from others.

Because you've been inside my course? Don't remember your username at all..

Tin's course and mine aren't very comparable.. He focuses on OnPage for business sites/newbies and covers basics > semi-advanced technical SEO tactics.. Mine is focused on building websites to promote affiliate offers/products and covers everything from the site build, to Onpage, to link building (white, grey and black hat), growing your site further and then selling your site.. 2 very different target audiences.

I'm not bashing Tin in any way, I was just referring to the comments others made about my info knowledge/course.. I've been inside his course, and it's decent and well explained. And I'm a little confused how you think I don't know what I'm talking about? I'm not exactly a white hat SEO, yet my blog is all "content marketing" based, and growth isn't doing too badly:

Feel free to read the case study in my signature, and tell me I don't know what I'm talking about

 

[boring-friday]

Charles Floate was arrested on September 12, 2014 and searches identified 111 prohibited images of children on his computer.

P.S

20 years old guy and 9 years in business . Can I ask what kind of business you have mentioned on your website, is it about SEO or is it about collecting shady images?

Nice sunglasses dude.

In fairness I think he was only 17-18 at the time so 'images of children' could of been the same age as him and probably were or he'd be in prison

In respect to my business record, my blog recieves over 30,000 pageviews/mo in a relatively small industry, I own the biggest SEO group on Facebook, LinkedIn and Skype, I own the biggest premium (monthly) SEO group in the world and have sold over 350 copies of my SEO Course, priced at 2x that of your course Tin - $499.

No you don't mate stop being silly. Think you're supposed to have your address on your website btw. You're vat registered also right?
How did they 'restrict your internet access' btw? Like not letting you sell stuff online and that maybe?

 

[GodOfSEO]

No you don't mate stop being silly. Think you're supposed to have your address on your website btw. You're vat registered also right?
How did they 'restrict your internet access' btw? Like not letting you sell stuff online and that maybe?

I don't sell products on my website, it's a blog.. No need for address or vat registration on that page. If you look at the bottom of my homepage, it has the company name and number?

Oh yeh, my blog doesn't do 30k pageviews/mo at all.. It actually does about 33k+ -

(That's last weeks traffic)

Biggest SEO Facebook Group - The Proper PBN Group, nearing 9k members, with 1.9k active weekly members.
Biggest SEO Skype Group - BH.C Chat (Has to have 7 different groups, because we've maxed out now 6 group limits in Skype)
Biggest Premium Group - BH.C (478 paying members @ $69.99/mo)
And so on..

They restricted my internet access whilst on bail, by setting my bail conditions to not have access to a computer or the internet. They're not allowed to (once convicted) disallow someone from accessing a computer or internet if they're in the IT sector, thanks to the EU's ruling.

 

[Kat Haylock]

This thread has turned into a rather unpleasant series of personal attacks, so I'm closing it. If you'd like to continue discussing SEO, please start another thread.
Thanks.