SEO Cost - does this sound about right?

[RayB]

On tuesday night too ?

Indeed There are some great SEO's on this forum - and some not so great - but I'll keep that to myself

 

well that ain't nice is it this forum is about helping out other Uk Business's,and witholding valuable information is just not cricket old chap,there are plenty of up and coming young SEO who need recommendations and are in a position to help various bussiness's improve there turnover vastly.As I said before SEO is the most important aspect of any online business.If no one looks in the window you ain't going to flog noffink

 

[awebapart.com]

Cannot comment on the site first in the results - but the site ranked a fluctating 3rd/4th I can comment on - 99.9% of what you suggest is not true....

DMOZ yes - rest no.............

Ray, my humble suggestions for the reasons why the sites are top ranked were just limited to the one site I looked at, superchrome, which was 1st/2nd. What is the name of the site fluctuating 3rd/4th which you are talking about, and I'll have a look.

If the peculiar site in question is automarks.com, which is 3rd/4th in google for printing services, then that does look strange, and I'd have to say that I don't know why that is so high.

My only humble guesses would be:

1. it still has a lot of inbound links with the text printing services and direct mail printing services, have a look at link:w ww.automarks.com (without the space between the w's) in yahoo, e.g. there are inbound links from sites like:

extremecashsite.com/high_pr_link_directory.html
best-buy-on-desktop-laptop-computers.com
lil-hoss.com
etc

again, whether these links in the future are deemed by google as link farms will determine whether the site continues to rank high or not

2. there might be a play on what google understands as related words, e.g. although printing services isn't mentioned, direct mail, paper and newspapers are, on and off site

3. dmoz entry under printing

4. other directory entries (e.g. yahoo) under dealer services

5. the site still has a fair bit of history going back to at least 2001

6. the site's url is mentioned on other sites even though there is no back link:
pr.com/company-profile/overview/4187

7. Although it is a US company with a com and has US hosting, it still ranks well on google in the uk (even though google in the UK does add some weighting to UK searches). It is still feasible that a US company can rank high here, amazon.com is still in the top ten, if the other ranking factors are strong enough. But perhaps it also shows that not all printing companies in the UK are targeting printing services so much.

8. there's a strange related link to it on:
aboutus.org/Dmoz.com
which lists it with other high profile sites like google, altavista, etc - I don't quite understand that one, either it is wrong, or perhaps automarks used to be a directory/bookmarking site (archive.org doesn't think so)?

9. there's some other gliche in google, depends whether the site has been 3rd/4th consistently or not, which I don't know.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents worth, coming from someone who isn't an SEO expert. I'd be very interested to hear what the SEO experts have to say on why automarks is so high in the rankings for printing services - I know that SEO is complex and everchanging, and there's always something new to learn!

 

[RayB]

well that ain't nice is it this forum is about helping out other Uk Business's,and witholding valuable information is just not cricket old chap,there are plenty of up and coming young SEO who need recommendations and are in a position to help various bussiness's improve there turnover vastly.As I said before SEO is the most important aspect of any online business.If no one looks in the window you ain't going to flog noffink

I think I make a positive contribution in this forum to help others. Equally there are some on here that use posts to tell people how great they are - now that ain't nice.

You never see me using these forums as a sales pitch/self promotion - save for the occasional relevent response to printing requests in "tenders and jobs".

 

[RayB]

Hi Paul,

I think you last post is some good detective work - i think those results are strange

 

[carps]

One question (that often gets missed as part of the whole SEO issue) is does being 3 or 4 on Google for 'printing services' actually do them any good?

They seem very specific in their offering, and even if that keyword gets them lots of traffic, the site and the messages don't really seem that good for that term. I think they could make a lot more money by selling that domain to someone who *does* offer general printing services, and focussing their own efforts on the niche/regional thing they actually do.

As for why it is there, the age of the domain is a big plus - the site's changed radically over the years since 2001 but the core theme has remained the same. They've invested in decent quality links (Yahoo! Directory is specifically recommended as part of Google's webmaster guidelines). They've done plenty of online PR - good quality press releases put out on several networks - which will have netted them credibility and a decent amount of the links they have.

They also seem to have done some "grey hat" SEO - building up related sites with unique content and linking strategy which then pass all their juice onto the main Automarks site (www.directmailsamples.org for example). Google's always trying to filter this kind of thing out, but if the site is hosted at a different IP it's pretty much undetectable unless done by hand.

I'd wager that many of the links use the phrase 'printing services' in the text itself, but it's dinner time and I don't have the inclination to check that hunch out!!

And of course it could be a glitch in Google's algorithm for some historical reason we can't see. In any field you always get these rogue results - just trust to Google's engineers to eventually find a way to wheedle them out. I've seen even weirder results in some markets...

 

[RayB]

Good post Paul!

Also, when a term is this competitive do you notice that "lss is more" seems to be the case with page title

 

[carps]

Hi Ray

I'd definitely recommend very focussed page titles - long rambling ones seem to perform worse, on the whole. Like all things though, it's part of the yin and yang of website marketing - it should ideally describe the page to which it applies, rather than just be a place to dump keywords.

In this case, the "less is more" approach is taken to the absurdist degree of not being there at all! From what I can see of the site, their main targeted keyword is "direct mail" (for which they don't rank at all) or "automotive direct mail" (for which they rank only moderately well).

I'm putting my money on this result being down to some historical factor that we can't see any more. Maybe they once targeted "printing services" really heavily and their current ranking is just a hangover due to aging factors.

 

[PI Guy]

how do you think my site is performing from a seo perspective?

 

[carps]

Hi Salinv

Bit hard to say without a few keywords to hand! If you're targeting the term "private investigators" then obviously you're not showing up in the first couple of pages, so there's some work to do. Whatever you're targeting, there's generic advice that's always worth following.

In terms of how the site is built, I'd probably recommend reversing the order of your page titles. Currently they all start with "Salgado Investigations". This is fine if your brand is well known and people search for it specifically (even then you'd probably rank for it if you just used the homepage for this term). You've got unique meta descriptions for most pages, which helps - but I'd maybe look at making them a bit more compelling as sales messages.

I'd probably lose the 'resources' page and find a way to seed the links into the normal flow of your content - Google generally pays scant regard to links pages (low value to visitors) but likes it when you put links in content (adding value to the visitor experience).

The blog posts read well (and blogs are a *great* idea, done well) but it looks like there's a lot of content you've lifted from press releases elsewhere. You could make better use of them by quoting the original press release, but putting your own spin on them - get your opinion to the fore. Not only is it more interesting, but it's good for that all-important search engine love!

You're going about getting some decent links by getting on forums and contributing (hi!) but the links are pretty much concentrated on two or three sites. Perhaps look at getting a couple of *decent* directory listings (Yahoo, BOTW) and maybe running some PR of your own through PRWeb, PRleap or similar.

 

[I, Brian]

Oh and another thing for the SEO's - how about a useful posting along the lines of:

My client invested £X for my services
Which resulted in a demonstrable uplift in sales of £Y
Which therefore increased my clients profit by £Z

Therefore the return on their INVESTMENT in my SERVICES was £??

To be honest, it's a very good point and I see a lot of SEO moving this way - certainly I'm training myself up in stats to be able to offer a service that will track everything in this way.

However, I think the result is that I will stop charging so little.

In the meantime, a lot of decent SEO companies will probably offer keyword rankings based on what the client states they require - after all, if the client knows exactly what converts for them (and most do via PPC) then they will know if the campaign is helping to deliver. Usually proven by a reduction in PPC spend without loss of sales.

 

Hi Brian One area of SEO which I have not seen touched on,is the increase in the value of a given website,due to the efforts of the SEO.Which I think should form part of the equasion when considering SEO charges.
A site with 200 visitors a day has a very different value to one with 5,000
especially if it is a brand leader with a very high conversion rate such as "car parts" ( usually a must have product ) see on website values

http://www.powerhomebiz.com/vol151/selling.htm

I know it is very hard for a SEO to predict what will happen to a sites profability in the future,but my own experience is phenomenal growth over a 2 year period usually in the order of 25 x or more dependent on the product and demand

 

[PI Guy]

Hi Salinv

Bit hard to say without a few keywords to hand! If you're targeting the term "private investigators" then obviously you're not showing up in the first couple of pages, so there's some work to do. Whatever you're targeting, there's generic advice that's always worth following.

In terms of how the site is built, I'd probably recommend reversing the order of your page titles. Currently they all start with "Salgado Investigations". This is fine if your brand is well known and people search for it specifically (even then you'd probably rank for it if you just used the homepage for this term). You've got unique meta descriptions for most pages, which helps - but I'd maybe look at making them a bit more compelling as sales messages.

I'd probably lose the 'resources' page and find a way to seed the links into the normal flow of your content - Google generally pays scant regard to links pages (low value to visitors) but likes it when you put links in content (adding value to the visitor experience).

The blog posts read well (and blogs are a *great* idea, done well) but it looks like there's a lot of content you've lifted from press releases elsewhere. You could make better use of them by quoting the original press release, but putting your own spin on them - get your opinion to the fore. Not only is it more interesting, but it's good for that all-important search engine love!

You're going about getting some decent links by getting on forums and contributing (hi!) but the links are pretty much concentrated on two or three sites. Perhaps look at getting a couple of *decent* directory listings (Yahoo, BOTW) and maybe running some PR of your own through PRWeb, PRleap or similar.

I have afew keywords that i am targeting.

detective agencies
process servers
private investigators
tracing services
people finders
surveillance
loss prevention investigators

 

[directmarketingadvice]

My client invested £X for my services
Which resulted in a demonstrable uplift in sales of £Y
Which therefore increased my clients profit by £Z

Therefore the return on their INVESTMENT in my SERVICES was £??

It depends on the site and business in question, but those questions should be answerable to some degree.

(though it does take some work)

Alternatively, if you take a client from page 5 (next to no traffic) to p1 for a popular search term, what's wrong with saying:

"google would charge £1.20 a click to get onto page 1 for this term. You receive 400 visitors a month for the term. So the value we've added to you for the term is £480 per month"

And then going through all the main terms like that?

(though one should remember that - unlike PPC - many people's on-page SEO restricts the use of words and that weakens the copy and reduces the conversion rate - so a click wouldn't be worth the same amount)

Steve

 

Steve goes some way to giving a rough guid but the other variable is the value of the potential product that is on offer.

We sell property world wide and also clocks on another site at £2.99 each .1 sale on the property site is worth an awful lot of clocks

 

[darren atkinson]

"google would charge £1.20 a click to get onto page 1 for this term. You receive 400 visitors a month for the term. So the value we've added to you for the term is £480 per month"

...

(though one should remember that - unlike PPC - many people's on-page SEO restricts the use of words and that weakens the copy and reduces the conversion rate - so a click wouldn't be worth the same amount)

Steve

I have just completed a 6 monthly SEO / PPC overview report for one of my clients.

The business is still fairly new, around 18 months old. I am responsible solely for SEO, the client insists on managing their PPC campaigns and spending.

The site has had a 6x increase in organic traffic over the last 6 months.

I track all online sales with analytics software, but can not track telephone sales for obvious reasons.

The clients monthly PPC spend fluctuated between £1000 and £2250 per month over the 6 month period, gradually increasing.

Towards the beginning of the period PPC generated over twice as many online sales as organic, the last months figures show that organic produced just over twice as many online sales, a complete reversal.

Over the 6 months the cost per sales (PPC / sales or SEO budget / sales) difference was immense.

PPC = £49.71
SEO = £3.47

This shows 2 main things:

- Their PPC management is rubbish
- I don't charge enough for my work...

The full figures actually show many things but you can probably get my drift here.

One final nugget of info is that over the 6 month period SEO generated more sales (just) than the PPC.

I honestly predict over the next year organic traffic should at least increase by a factor of 5 and if conversion rates and PPC spending remain constant online sales generated by SEO will be 10 x the amount generated by PPC.

For this particular client I have also found that over 6 months the organic or SEO traffic had a slightly higher conversion rate than the PPC traffic.

All in all, I think that the full report demonstrates without a doubt the high value of my SEO work for this client, yes I do charge a monthly fee for continued work for them but I feel it is entirely justified.

Without giving away figures my 6 month fees amounted to under 7.5% of the clients PPC spend, and realistically if they walked away from me tomorrow their organic traffic would not die away, just wouldn't increase as much.

I hope this gives some of you more understanding to how beneficial SEO CAN be, and how this particular SEO guy / business reports back on ROI.

*Note this is not a blatant advert for me, and I hope it doesn't get construed as one.

Regards

Darren

 

As they say "a defendant who defends himself has a fool for a client "

so it would seem with your client managing his own PPC.

Without knowing the value of your clients goods/services ,Its hard to comment on your charging ,but 7.5% of his PPC budget seems rather low,as you would seem to be creating the wealth.
Interesting Stats .

 

[I, Brian]

That's the trouble with SEO - we enrich our clients...and then get bashed over the head by people outside the industry, for being SEO's.

Great to see your stats, by the way, Darren - thanks for that - I love seeing how the different figures work out where available.

I think it's also pretty common for a lot of SEO's to not charge their full value. I figure that's because a lot of the good ones are more techie than salesman, so we charge simply solve problems, rather than try to milk clients for profit for profit's sake.

2c.

 

I don't think milking the client is the right expression.Most of the people who come to me are hovering around the zero sales from there sites.
I offer one deal only 50/50 on the website sales.As I usualy have to build a new site do all the promotion and keep it at th top of the rankings e.t.c .There end is to wrap and post the product or supply the service.

Traffic on our most succesfull site has gone from 200 visitors a day to 5,000 over a 2 year period.

I would maintain that in most cases a site without good SEO is dead in the water with exceptions of course or a huge PPC bill as Darren demonstrated
Why we are presented to the GBP as mumbo jumbo men who almost have the status of parasites is beyond me.

 

[darren atkinson]

Great to see your stats, by the way, Darren - thanks for that - I love seeing how the different figures work out where available.

I also like to see other peoples stats for comparison reasons.

I find much of SEO is shrouded in mystery, not just in technique, but in reporting and ROI etc...

I am planning an article for my site on SEO ROI based on a standard 6 month report for one of my clients. Obviously I will remove all references to the specific website (as I'm sure my client doesn't want their competitors knowing their sales figures) but I think it will be beneficial for prospective clients to look over when deciding on their SEO budgets.

Could also prove to be some nice linkbait...

Regards

Darren

 

[directmarketingadvice]

a site without good SEO is dead in the water with exceptions of course or a huge PPC bill

I think "PPC bill" is the wrong way to look at it.

If it costs me 20p for a click but my visitor value was 40p, then I'd be happy to pay £100 a day (or £1,000 a day) for clicks as it's not costing me anything, it's putting £100 a day into my pocket.

And, with numbers like that, the bigger my "PPC bill", the better.

Why we are presented to the GBP as mumbo jumbo men who almost have the status of parasites is beyond me.

I think the reason the public doesn't like SEO is that the public uses search engines to find the best and most relevant sites while SEO - especially SEO dependent on artificial linking strategies - tries to fill page 1 with pages that wouldn't be there on "merit".

While I think much of this impression dates back to a few years ago when google was dominated by keyword stuffed spam sites, SEO's still responsible for a lot of crap on p1.

Steve

 

[darren atkinson]

I think "PPC bill" is the wrong way to look at it.

If it costs me 20p for a click but my visitor value was 40p, then I'd be happy to pay £100 a day (or £1,000 a day) for clicks as it's not costing me anything, it's putting £100 a day into my pocket.

Your logic is valid here, it has been shown many times that the right website combined with the right product at the right price can make lots of money solely using PPC.

However, dragging the discussion back into the realms of SEO using your example above, if an SEO could provide the exact same level of traffic but at 10% of the cost of PPC (as my post on a 6 month review showed) then wouldn't it make much more sense to invest your PPC budget into SEO?

If each visitor cost only 2p per visit, yet still yielded 40p then anyone can see that SEO is a much better proposition.

The problems for an SEO are gaining a clients trust. If somebody walked into any business and claimed that within 12 months they could reduce the main marketing spend by a factor of 10, and actually increase potential customers (web traffic) then they would largely be met with scepticism.

I can provide potential clients with hard data and facts but more often than not people are still cagey.

It's all about perception really.

Paying a company £500 per month for a service sounds like a large outgoing for small - medium business which they resent. However, it seems that paying a large corporation (Google) 4,5,6,7x this amount is easier for them as:

- many others are in the same boat
- it has instant results
- they can directly measure items like conversion, and click through rates

If all SEO's could and did provide the same service at the same price with the same results then everybody would engage in it.

The problem is, as Steve has correctly pointed out many times before, not all SEO's are equal, and like most industries there are cheaters, liars and scam artists, tarnishing our good names.

Regards

Darren

 

Point taken about PPC Steve .I don't understand why any one would want to get a top position for some thing they either don't stock or information / service they don't have.surely people would click on there site and move off straight away to find what they wanted ,remembering not to click on that site again?

I have also noticed a decline in mini directories,which were at one time hogging a lot of top positions ,me thinks Google has updated its alogrithms in this area.

 

[directmarketingadvice]

However, dragging the discussion back into the realms of SEO using your example above, if an SEO could provide the exact same level of traffic but at 10% of the cost of PPC (as my post on a 6 month review showed) then wouldn't it make much more sense to invest your PPC budget into SEO?

If you're turning a profit at PPC - and you're getting your money back quickly - you soon don't need a "budget".

As Claude Hopkins wrote back in the 1920s:

Sometimes we find that the cost of the advertising comes back before the bills are due. That means that the product can be advertised without investment.

(see Scientific Advertising)

So, to answer your question, the PPC doesn't necessarily cut into cashflow or the money available for things like SEO.

If it's working (and if it's a business where payments come in quickly), it should be adding to the money available for such things.

I don't understand why any one would want to get a top position for some thing they either don't stock or information / service they don't have.

I agree that it makes sense that there's some level of relevance.

However, if you type in "Manchester United official site" into google, do you really want the first 3 pages of results to be "unofficial" sites selling Man Utd related merchandise?

Over the last 7 years (since I started using the internet regularly), google's gone a long way to eliminate a lot of this and (quick check) you now get the official site at the top.

Steve

 

[PeteYoung]

If you're turning a profit at PPC - and you're getting your money back quickly - you soon don't need a "budget".

I would suggest the 'law of diminshing returns' would come into play at some point, however I guess that really is picking at straws as this would merely be a case of establishing that threshold and 'setting the budget accordingly'

 

[I, Brian]

I also like to see other peoples stats for comparison reasons.

I find much of SEO is shrouded in mystery, not just in technique, but in reporting and ROI etc...

I don't do ROI reporting as yet, but am planning to very soon - it's on my todo list to set up with IndexTools this week and then start running it on a few test sites and client sites. Definitely an important area to grow into.

About the only figures I have on SEO profits is that last year two clients with big link development campaigns went away for two weeks - all marketing off except the SEO. When they came back, both had sales of over £8k from organic searches. What was really interesting is that they both had different campaigns - one was targeting major keywords, but the other I targeted at the longtail because of sandboxing.

Extrapolated, that would have been £16k in sales per month each (just under £200k per year) from SEO alone, but I'm afraid I don't know the actual profit margins on their goods - it's simply never been something I've asked clients. Both are still with me after nearly 2.5 years, so I figure I must be delivering a decent return or else they'd have stopped long ago. Hopefully I'll be able to start providing much more detailed info, and work with them to compile a better data set.

 

I don't know the actual profit margins on their goods - it's simply never been something I've asked clients.!!!!!

Well its one of the first questions I ask ,along with a detailed explaination of all there financial structure and product dispatch system.

Some orders just require a phone call to the supplier ,who then dispatched direct to our customer which entails little work on our part and no initial financial outlay E.T.C

I don't see how you can place a value on your work unless you have the full financial implications before you

I seemed to upset a few people with my outragous claim to be the No1 SEO consultant in the UK .Forgive me but I am an old age pensioner with "delusions of Grandeur I expect".I don't care if I am 1 or a 100 but I do care that I get top results on the search engines as do my partners.
Last year we had car part sales of over 1 million,most of which were generated by the websites.

Remember if a company has no sales there is no business no employment E.t.c so I would maintain that what we do is probably the most important part of any online business soon to probably be of any business

 

[darren atkinson]

I don't do ROI reporting as yet, but am planning to very soon - it's on my todo list to set up with IndexTools this week and then start running it on a few test sites and client sites. Definitely an important area to grow into.

About the only figures I have on SEO profits is that last year two clients with big link development campaigns went away for two weeks - all marketing off except the SEO. When they came back, both had sales of over £8k from organic searches. What was really interesting is that they both had different campaigns - one was targeting major keywords, but the other I targeted at the longtail because of sandboxing.

Extrapolated, that would have been £16k in sales per month each (just under £200k per year) from SEO alone, but I'm afraid I don't know the actual profit margins on their goods - it's simply never been something I've asked clients. Both are still with me after nearly 2.5 years, so I figure I must be delivering a decent return or else they'd have stopped long ago. Hopefully I'll be able to start providing much more detailed info, and work with them to compile a better data set.

I too am only really getting started with ROI reports, it is surprising though what you can find out. I may talk to a client and explain how well the SEO campaign is progressing etc... but spending the time going through all the figures along with some calculations surprised even me.

I do generally find out profit margins, but for many clients of mine the differences between certain products are large, and with some of them stocking up to 5000 items, you can only work on an average (well you could track every sale recorded against their records for definitive figures but that would be a pretty major undertaking).

My opinion is that the basic report I put together for that specific client is of immense value to them.

It showed that sales have been steadily increasing over the period, we all knew that, but what the client might have thought is that because their PPC spend was also increasing, the PPC was responsible for the extra sales.

The reality is that although PPC spend increased, actual sales stayed the same or even dropped on occasion.

Now a sensible person with this new information can make some pretty good desicions on their future business plan.

As you can all probably tell, I'm quite interested in this area of business at the moment.

Regards

Darren