If We Were To Pay £350 a Month To An SEO Company Then How Much Should We Consider ...

[webmto]

@AnotherSEOGuy I know what SEO means, more than lots of agency that is ads/seo service providers.

I saw how SEO is done by person and agency, I'm interesting in price and their method.
Do the agency use some data analysis that help them to use the right words? What kind of mechanism is used by people / agency?

And of course, price is interesting for my enterprise.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

A alternative would be to hire a apprentice geek who loves computing at say above the minimum wage for 16 years old say £5.00 for 8 hours a day and 5 days a week = £200 plus NI etc for that you get someone interested in learning the trade working for 40 hours a day, so for your £800 you get 1600 hours of learning a month which should see great advantages over the long term and a very effective member of staff

Compare this with some of the freelancer rates quoted who only work at £30-50 per hour and you have no idea of how much they no or do and it takes you a year to find out they are useless and spent the first few months just re=doing the previous persons work but to a more useless standard

Am I bitter yes I am after starting in 2003 and still finding out the cowboys in 2017

Do your own research into both SEO and PPC and then do a really deep recorded interview with who you are going to use and let them talk themselves out of a job by their limited knowledge, a few hours doing a Google course does not make a expert

 

[webmto]

@Chris Ashdown, I developed SEO tools, I worked with small and big customers and I can tell you that genuine SEO has nothing to do with "hire a apprentice".

SEO is much more than scrabble game, and if sometimes appear to be easy is just a decoy.

I don't want to hire anyone. Just to find out the natural balance value between quality of SEO service vs price in UK.

 

[Page]

Interesting interesting

Lots of ideas and comments

We are doing the spend and going through xmas and will then pass judgement afterwards

The idea is to get time leverage from them with advice etc and then they do - er whatever it is they do

We have done some learning in house - so that we were placed to make a better judgement on the time it takes up - and what sort of company we might want to build a relationship with

My view is that I can learn almost anything and supervise/train others - but that there are only so many hours in the week not everyone is that good at learning/thinking/implementing and so get the experts and lets see how we get on

 

[Page]

Keep the comments and debate going

 

[AnotherSEOGuy]

@AnotherSEOGuy I know what SEO means, more than lots of agency that is ads/seo service providers.

I saw how SEO is done by person and agency, I'm interesting in price and their method.
Do the agency use some data analysis that help them to use the right words? What kind of mechanism is used by people / agency?

And of course, price is interesting for my enterprise.

@webmto

The method of pricing is purely based on complexity (at least on my side it is, anywho), size of site and the results the client decides. I don't believe 'packages' can be a possibility in SEO pricing because every client will vary in every one of those factors wildly.

So I'll just give you a kind of makeshift formula that may help;

Competition (how competitive the vertical is) + Location (and size) + Niche (what the vertical is) + Size of site (how many pages there are that are actionable to me) = Price

Very + National + Accountancy + Small = Very Expensive (£3-4,000+ p/month)

Semi + Local + Plumbing + Small = Cheap-ish (£1,000+ p/month)

Hope that helps!

 

[webmto]

@Page there is a big difference between learning how to and making the how to.

How to is what the google support team will tell you on the phone. Nice and good advice if you know what to ask. If not, it will be just another payment into google pocket.

Making the how to is to understand how the ads is working and this save money and provide de best results at lower costs for customers.

"making the how to" for me was years of research providing the best results with standard budget.

 

[webgeek]

Often it's heck of a lot easier to go in and audit the work of others than to build it right from scratch.

For example, if you're going to audit a PPC campaign, one of the first steps I do is to check conversion data versus day of week, time of day and for some, whether it's urban or rural.

If a provider hasn't segmented PPC data and adjusted targeting based on these segments, then you know they've either not got a clue, or are too busy to spend the time in setting it up this way.

FYI, a high priced clothing company in Glasgow did well by only targeting those outside a major metro area, because those people had less options for local shopping and were much more likely to buy expensive gear online.

Another example was a training company who tended to get a lot more wasted clicks on Monday morning before noon and on Friday afternoon. By excluding those times from ads being shown, ROI went up substantially.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

webMTO

Are you really stating that a plumbers say 5 to 10 page local web site needs £1k of SEO a month to rank when in all reality a local plumber by there nature will only operate within say a 20 mile radius of their company premise's, if so that's garbage. any reasonably well made site for a local company would need no seo as long as it had the nearest town and what they do in the title of the home page like plumber-Exeter.co.uk, Smiths-plumbers-Exeter. the competition is so low you are guaranteed a first or second page listing

 

[AnotherSEOGuy]

@Chris Ashdown

Was me who said all that by the way, okay fantastic, we'll take the actual analogy I used and we can run a test to see if your assumption is correct?

What I suggested is a semi-competitive local area, think small-medium City, I had Cardiff in my head but maybe that's more a medium-Large UK City. We'll take Exeter as an example area then. The two you've used as references, neither appear on the first 3 pages of the SERP's for 'plumbers exeter'.

Two that do appear on the first page of SERPs are:

'totalph' - has some spammy shit quality PBN's or SAPE links, clearly done by a crappy SEO who got them to first page with said links and these guys probably think they did a great job
'hamish-the-plumber' - Have a couple of PBN links and some grouped link sharing links, not a huge amount, enough to get them first page, plus a decent NAP presence and decently optimised GMB page. Again, clearly had an SEO.

^^ I can't post links apparently!

So you're suggesting to me that as long as you have a reasonably well made site and put your keywords in your title you can outrank these?

Just as a preface, there are plumbing companies on the 5-10th pages with keywords in their title of the homepage, they're still on the 5th-10th pages.

Super interested to get your take on why £1,000 per month is rubbish for a business where their ATV lies around £350, a decent contract can land them in the region of 5/6 figures and anything involving a boiler pretty much makes back 6 months worth of their SEO investment in one payment.

As I said, more than happy to run a test with you privately, I do a tonne of SEO tests at any given time, no skin off my teeth!


Cheers.

 

[webmto]

webMTO

Are you really stating that a plumbers say 5 to 10 page local web site needs £1k of SEO a month to rank when in all reality a local plumber by there nature will only operate within say a 20 mile radius of their company premise's, if so that's garbage. any reasonably well made site for a local company would need no seo as long as it had the nearest town and what they do in the title of the home page like plumber-Exeter.co.uk, Smiths-plumbers-Exeter. the competition is so low you are guaranteed a first or second page listing

You make a confusion here. If the plumber name is Joehappyplubmber and you will search for him using as keywords his name, yes, that's not need for SEO. But what if the all 10 plumbers decide to change their name to joejoehappyplumber?

Perhaps is better to read the @AnotherSEOGuy post again.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

@Chris Ashdown

Was me who said all that by the way, okay fantastic, we'll take the actual analogy I used and we can run a test to see if your assumption is correct?

What I suggested is a semi-competitive local area, think small-medium City, I had Cardiff in my head but maybe that's more a medium-Large UK City. We'll take Exeter as an example area then. The two you've used as references, neither appear on the first 3 pages of the SERP's for 'plumbers exeter'.

Two that do appear on the first page of SERPs are:

'totalph' - has some spammy **** quality PBN's or SAPE links, clearly done by a crappy SEO who got them to first page with said links and these guys probably think they did a great job
'hamish-the-plumber' - Have a couple of PBN links and some grouped link sharing links, not a huge amount, enough to get them first page, plus a decent NAP presence and decently optimised GMB page. Again, clearly had an SEO.

^^ I can't post links apparently!

So you're suggesting to me that as long as you have a reasonably well made site and put your keywords in your title you can outrank these?

Just as a preface, there are plumbing companies on the 5-10th pages with keywords in their title of the homepage, they're still on the 5th-10th pages.

Super interested to get your take on why £1,000 per month is rubbish for a business where their ATV lies around £350, a decent contract can land them in the region of 5/6 figures and anything involving a boiler pretty much makes back 6 months worth of their SEO investment in one payment.

As I said, more than happy to run a test with you privately, I do a tonne of SEO tests at any given time, no skin off my teeth!


Cheers.

The two names were obviously just made up examples not rea sites

But searching Plumbers in Exeter brings up about 12 companies, most I imagine spend nothing on SEO whilst the larger ones may spend a bit, but basically local searches have so few trade related sites you are bound to come up, the skills obviously come up when a Exeter company wants to get work over the whole of the uk

 

[webgeek]

Two that do appear on the first page of SERPs are:

'totalph' - has some spammy **** quality PBN's or SAPE links, clearly done by a crappy SEO who got them to first page with said links and these guys probably think they did a great job
'hamish-the-plumber' - Have a couple of PBN links and some grouped link sharing links, not a huge amount, enough to get them first page, plus a decent NAP presence and decently optimised GMB page. Again, clearly had an SEO.

An SEO "link builder" will look at backlinks and ignore on-page optimisation, on-domain content, reviews, social media activity. A "social media geek" will tout their social profiles, activity, engagement, likes, content posted there, follows, brand mentions. .......

There's a lot more going on with those top of SERP's than their backlink profile. Often sites rank well DESPITE their backlink profile, not BECAUSE of it.

And to answer your question - yes, it wouldn't require massive on-domain effort to rank near the top of the SERP's for 'plumber in essex' or 'essex plumber', without using backlinks - spammy or otherwise. It would require some decent content, optimised quite well, including internal linking, running on a pretty fast hosting account with good enough trust signals, pics and design so the bounce rate wasn't crap.

I've done it with 'managed VPS' and 'managed VPS hosting' previously (taking site from concept to #1 ranking in just under a year) - until the company was sold to HostDime, who then ran the web presence into the ground. The only real backlinks were forum mentions on WebmasterTalk. It was virtually all down to on-domain publishing and optimisation.

 

[AnotherSEOGuy]

An SEO "link builder" will look at backlinks and ignore on-page optimisation, on-domain content, reviews, social media activity. A "social media geek" will tout their social profiles, activity, engagement, likes, content posted there, follows, brand mentions. .......

There's a lot more going on with those top of SERP's than their backlink profile. Often sites rank well DESPITE their backlink profile, not BECAUSE of it.

And to answer your question - yes, it wouldn't require massive on-domain effort to rank near the top of the SERP's for 'plumber in essex' or 'essex plumber', without using backlinks - spammy or otherwise. It would require some decent content, optimised quite well, including internal linking, running on a pretty fast hosting account with good enough trust signals, pics and design so the bounce rate wasn't crap.

I've done it with 'managed VPS' and 'managed VPS hosting' previously (taking site from concept to #1 ranking in just under a year) - until the company was sold to HostDime, who then ran the web presence into the ground. The only real backlinks were forum mentions on WebmasterTalk. It was virtually all down to on-domain publishing and optimisation.

Hey, that wasn't the flow of conversation though, the suggestion from the gentleman I was speaking with was that you can rank for semi-competitive local keywords just by changing your metadata, which, as I'm sure you'll be aware, is fundamentally not how search engine optimisation works in 2017. That was it, there was no mention of any of what you have mentioned so although I may be inclined to agree with your suggestions, it bares no relevancy to what you have quoted and is taken completely out of context.

Super interested in your 'managed VPS' and 'managed VPS hosting' site by the way, when was it and what company if you don't mind divulging? I have a client at the moment competing in that space, would be cool to hear your experience (PM if you'd prefer!).

 

[webgeek]

Was done once for VPSLatch, who sold to HostDime, then later for KnownHost - who still compete in that space.

 

[AnotherSEOGuy]

@webgeek Cool, how many years ago was it? The guys I'm helping out are blowing up Internationally but not really taking off as greatly as predicted in the UK/USA. The space has obviously got much more competitive in the last 2-3 years hence me bugging about a time period!

 

[fisicx]

...the suggestion from the gentleman I was speaking with was that you can rank for semi-competitive local keywords just by changing your metadata, which, as I'm sure you'll be aware, is fundamentally not how search engine optimisation works in 2017....

If you include the page title in the metadaa grouping then it's still possible to rank locally by just tweaking the metadata.

 

[AnotherSEOGuy]

@fisicx it's possible to build a website and rank first page for 'best gambling website' nationally, doesn't mean it's going to happen.

You genuinely think you can rank for a medium sized CIty in a semi-competitive niche (as discussed) just based on metadata?

Super interested to hear what findings you have to back that up as I have seen literally nothing published or mentioned by any reputable SEO's to even suggest that would be mildly within the realms of possibility.

 

[fisicx]

Read my post again. It's the page title that's important. This hasn't changed in years. Keywords and description aren't ranking signals but the page title is still one of the most important.

I just question your statement as some of your other posts contain misleading advice (like suggesting there is still a sandbox).

 

[AnotherSEOGuy]

Read my post again. It's the page title that's important. This hasn't changed in years. Keywords and description aren't ranking signals but the page title is still one of the most important.

I just question your statement as some of your other posts contain misleading advice (like suggesting there is still a sandbox).

My post is misleading because I say there is a sandbox when there have been multiple studies in the last 3-6 months that literally prove there is not only a new domain/site sandbox (as there always has been of sorts), but also a re-purposing sandbox? See Charles Floate (and his guys) and Matt Diggity's most recent tests on sandboxes, mainly re-purposing. Where on earth are you getting your information from?

The Page Title is also known as a Meta Title (to people who have very little idea about SEO, hence using it here), it's metadata, a Page Title is Metadata, I have literally no idea where you're trying to go with this but you're making very little sense for somebody who seems to talk a lot about SEO...

 

[fisicx]

I launched a new site for a client last week. It was indexed and ranked within 24 hours. There was no sandbox (in the way there used to be). I looked at your sandbox references and couldn't see any evidence of a Google sandbox.

The <title> is metadata and a key ranking signal, I read your post to suggest you didn't need to optimise the page title as it's not fundamental to modern SEO.

 

[AnotherSEOGuy]

@fisicx

So you're accusing me of spreading misinformation based on a client site you launched last week (which may or may not have happened) being indexed and ranked within 24 hours vs robust studies done by industry experts within the last few months. I honestly don't have much more to say about that, you're talking complete nonsense there with nothing to back it up.

Metadata is markup used to describe, in this case, the title of a page. Again, absolutely no idea where it being a key ranking signal comes from, it's not even in the top 5-10 ranking signals, again, as proven by actual, tangible studies.

Not trying to be confrontational here, but you're accusing somebody of spreading misinformation when you do so yourself, you have no resources, studies or data to back up the majority of what you're saying and I'm questioning your credibility based on quite a bit of what you say. Probably best we end this conversation here and let the person asking questions in the thread try to find valid answers. If you have any more allegations please feel free to PM, by the way, link building is currently and has been by far the single most potent ranking factor, guest posting isn't dead, PBN's are still hyper-effective and Google isn't an all-seeing eye, just to debunk about 75% of what you say on this forum.

 

[webgeek]

Any new site launch, if you want rapid indexing, a couple of dofollow blog comments on site like huffpost (high authority and traffic) and it'll be indexed within hours of launch. It's a technique we've used for 5+ years and hasn't stopped working.

 

[AnotherSEOGuy]

@webgeek

HuffPost is no-follow, has been since Nov '16, actually the majority of the supersites are nofollow in comments and have been for a few years, so no idea how you manage that..

 

[UKSBD]

Some kind of sandbox or filtering system definitely sill exists.
It may not be on a whole site basis but can be there for specific phrases or keywords on new sites.

 

[webgeek]

I said LIKE Huffpost only dofollow. You pick sites LIKE Huffpost that are dofollow and high traffic, like I said.

Actually, I believe you can still put a nofollow link on Wikipedia footnotes and Google will crawl/index the site, just not pass the PR.

By the way, why are you trolling so many in this thread?

 

[AnotherSEOGuy]

@webgeek

How is fact checking people trolling?

The other guy said I was spreading misinformation on something he is factually wrong about, I don't get how that's trolling, everything I've said has been referenced and factual, nothing you've said is.

Can you name a few of these High DA sites with high volumes and traffic that have do-follow blog comments to 'rapidly index a new site'?

If you can't handle being fact checked then maybe you should accurately reference what you're saying instead of posting pablum with no actual legitimacy behind it.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

link building is currently and has been by far the single most potent ranking factor,

Never understood the value of this statement since it was highlighted in the early 2000's and abused by every one since

With the amount of data available to the search engines why on earth would they pay attention to such a easily manipulated set of data

If you were Mr Google how much weight would you attend to it in ranking any site

 

[fisicx]

Thousands of sites are launched everyday around the world, and as long as google can find and index these sites they will be ranked, often within a day or two. There may be some sandbox for certain keywords and topic but it's not anything most sites ever need to worry about.

And as to the page title not being a key ranking signal, try to rank a site without it. It's possible but it's far more difficult.

 

[webgeek]

"If you can't handle being fact checked then maybe you should accurately reference what you're saying instead of posting pablum with no actual legitimacy behind it."

I'm using, and recommending, the lovely mute 'ignore' function so that no more fake fact checking trolls will be fed by me today.

 

[StevePoster]

I can handle a fact checked and referenced by my years of experience in the field. Is it legit to you guys?

@fisicx And as to the page title not being a key ranking signal, try to rank a site without it. It's possible but it's far more difficult.

Page title not as a basis for ranking signal but still needed to find your content easily by the users. However, without page title, this will give a hard time for the search engines to understand your content instead of telling them what kind of content is all about.