M
MASSEY
Birmingham is joking, im not a pro just spend too much of my life in the seo section of this forum.
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SEO help - problems with my SEO
- Thread starter minerals
- Start date
Birmingham is joking, im not a pro just spend too much of my life in the seo section of this forum.
If it makes you feel any better, I too signed up to a 12 month contract with a company who ranked on page one for SEO, SEO Company, SEO Companies etc... I assumed that a company who could achieve rankings for themselves would in turn be able to do the same for my 5 keywords. I'm now 9 Months down the line at a cost of £800 + VAT per month.
We were advised from the outset that they couldn't guarantee lead times, but we could expect to see movement after about 3 months and be reaching page 1 anywhere between 6 and 9 months.
They were going to be building links to our site and writing articles as well as some v basic on page seo.
At around 6 months time, we jumped to page 2 for the majority of words. I spoke to my account manager and explained how pleased I was and said that it was a relief to see that it was 'working' and that I would consider expanding the campaign to include additional more generic phrases in future. They started to monitor these alongside and it was clear that these too were already starting to rank in the top 3 pages.
The next month, we disappeared from the top 10 and only a couple of keywords have since returned to page 8... I questioned them about it and they couldn't understand why it had happened and we hadn't been penalised by google.
I did a back link report and a large number of links pointing to our site no longer had a link or anchor text. I questioned the company and they said that these links had been replaced with higher quality links at the end of august but that new ones were built before they were removed - I might just be getting suspicious, but it just seemed odd.
The articles that had been written were industry specific from article sites, which had been written by competitors and which linked to their website as well as ours. I was assured that this is normal practice.
The contract expires in February, we're still outside the top 8 pages for all keywords. So they have 2 months left, but it looks unlikely that things will change. Although it wouldn't surprise me if we just reached the bottom of page 1 just as our contract comes up for renewal...
I've checked the contract and there are no guarantees on results and no mention of what they promise to do. Anything said verbally outside of the contract doesn't count. So that salesman who advised me of timescales means nothing. Watch this space...
We were advised from the outset that they couldn't guarantee lead times, but we could expect to see movement after about 3 months and be reaching page 1 anywhere between 6 and 9 months.
They were going to be building links to our site and writing articles as well as some v basic on page seo.
At around 6 months time, we jumped to page 2 for the majority of words. I spoke to my account manager and explained how pleased I was and said that it was a relief to see that it was 'working' and that I would consider expanding the campaign to include additional more generic phrases in future. They started to monitor these alongside and it was clear that these too were already starting to rank in the top 3 pages.
The next month, we disappeared from the top 10 and only a couple of keywords have since returned to page 8... I questioned them about it and they couldn't understand why it had happened and we hadn't been penalised by google.
I did a back link report and a large number of links pointing to our site no longer had a link or anchor text. I questioned the company and they said that these links had been replaced with higher quality links at the end of august but that new ones were built before they were removed - I might just be getting suspicious, but it just seemed odd.
The articles that had been written were industry specific from article sites, which had been written by competitors and which linked to their website as well as ours. I was assured that this is normal practice.
The contract expires in February, we're still outside the top 8 pages for all keywords. So they have 2 months left, but it looks unlikely that things will change. Although it wouldn't surprise me if we just reached the bottom of page 1 just as our contract comes up for renewal...
I've checked the contract and there are no guarantees on results and no mention of what they promise to do. Anything said verbally outside of the contract doesn't count. So that salesman who advised me of timescales means nothing. Watch this space...
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V
Vacman2000
Yes I can
my seo got me to no 1 in google
my website is
www.leafletflyers.co.uk
key words
leaflet distribution no 1
leaflet delivery ?
leaflet drop ?
Pm me for his number
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hey videolondon, this is a classic example of how chasing after inlinks from other people's sites is a very insecure & short-lived investment. this is the very logic behind my satellite site service which is about making & keeping the sites that the best inlinks come from :redface:
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W
webstore
Unfortunately these companies charging hundreds per month are a racket and you would be far better served spending your £800 pm with Google Adwords.
The bottom line is that if you are in a keyword highly competitive marketplace and you don't have "natural third party relevant inbound links" that are being recognised by Google then you don't stand much of a chance of online success.
Also don't be lured into using "paid for inbound links" - Google quite rightly see these as cheating and once caught you'll find you appearances in Google getting worst. (They even have a form in webmaster tools to report cheating).
If you would like some more free advice please PM us with your URL and we will take a brief look at your site - given we don't like to list all our SEO tips in public.
Remember its all about :- "natural third party relevant inbound links", "natural third party relevant inbound links", "natural third party relevant inbound links"
The bottom line is that if you are in a keyword highly competitive marketplace and you don't have "natural third party relevant inbound links" that are being recognised by Google then you don't stand much of a chance of online success.
Also don't be lured into using "paid for inbound links" - Google quite rightly see these as cheating and once caught you'll find you appearances in Google getting worst. (They even have a form in webmaster tools to report cheating).
If you would like some more free advice please PM us with your URL and we will take a brief look at your site - given we don't like to list all our SEO tips in public.
Remember its all about :- "natural third party relevant inbound links", "natural third party relevant inbound links", "natural third party relevant inbound links"
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well, that's a 6th of it at least. there are other sides to seo like on-site accessibility & onsite relevance
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webstore
"natural third party relevant inbound links" is by far the most important factor for success with Google SERPs and a site without "natural third party relevant inbound links" in a highly competitive market sector is a dead site when it comes to Google SERPs - That's what we at Webstore keep reminding all our customers.
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and if you have no keywords on your page, you won't rank either. words on your site should come first. "content is king". third-party inlinks is a secondary issue. inlinking is harder to control and therefore produces less stable return on invesment than content creation, and the idea that you can't compete at high levels without big inlinks is a myth - big content is just as powerful
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JohnnyCash
What keywords were you targeting?
Easy to say with hindsight, but it perhaps wasn't the smartest idea to agree to pay £10k with absolutely no guarantee of anything at all.
A company ranking for "seo" or something on its own isn't reason enough to just blindly hand them cash and hope for the best.
Its an extremely hard set of search phrases to rank for since most of the seo companies want a "big" term to show how "great" they are... and the only way you can do it is more than likely going to involve either an exact match domain and/or dubious link building.
For most seo buyers, an exact match domain is almost always either taken by a competitor already, or priced out of the market. And the dubious link building is too risky, so all of the tactics used to get that ranking you were impressed with, are not viable options for you.
Personal recommendations, along with solid (and fair) contracts are the way to go, not how far up the search rankings they've managed to force their own site, imo.
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Well contract cancelled, from my side anyway. Long winded letter drafted to them, payment stopped. i'll let you know if there are any updates
This thread/forum has been so helpful thank you to everyone who helped, especially Dave
Glad to hear its been resolved for you.
Have you name-and-shamed the cowboys?
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Backlinks are important no one can disagree but all the internet marketing is not about purchasing backlinks search media marketing is now becoming very powerful tool, no need to say that you are ripped off by the company you can make 30 quality backlinks in a week by just spending an hour or two daily if you are new in the internet marketing I or someone expert can make them just in a day. I recommend you to do the internet marketing by your self their is nothing really difficult about it.
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I'm not and I'm sure many on here will vouch that I do know my SEO for me.
We are too busy with client work to concentrate on our own website and rankings. We have also never once chased those terms even though it is our most sought after service.
It is true that many others share the same opinion as you but ilogically, it really isn't "necessarily" the case. There are many large agencies ranking at the top of the SERP's for terms such as what you have quoted and their employees don't have a clue about SEO beyond page titles and metadata (and even this they've got wrong).
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JohnnyCash
Although I agree with the point that ranking top doesn't particularly mean anything on its own, to an ill informed customer "we're too busy to work on our own site" is going to come across as an excuse.
Whether customers are right or wrong in how they select seo companies, you need to give them what they want - and that means ranking for one of the big phrases. It makes it easier for front end staff to close deals, and gives the potential customer more trust in your ability (again, rightly or wrongly is irrelevant at this point - you need to get them signed up then show them it was a right decision in this case).
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Vacman2000
That would not give me a lot faith in a company that did not have a website and was ranked high.
However saying that I have use a company that did not have a website, so had no ranking.
But we worked on a performance scale 30 % up front 20 % on page 10 20% on page 5 and 30% in the top 10 for my main keywords
He got us to No 1 for all our terms
But to be charged 700-£900 per month, that is a lot and I would want some kind of garantee for that kind of money, however mine didnt cost me 2 months of those rates, but another company quoted me £750 a month, and said it will take the 6 months to get me up there, well we did it in 6 weeks
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Vacman2000
This time I am doing it myself and I have about 12 keywords
that I want to rank for and I am currently ranking on average 27th for them, but its only been 5 weeks
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JohnnyCash
Doing it on that basis is dangerous I think.
30% up front is fine, but from there it went a bit downhill. Absolutely anyone could rank any garbage site in the top 100, its just not a good indicator of anything really being done, imo. Even getting to page 5 isn't much to talk about. Not enough to deserve 20% of the money.
I think for both the service provider and the buyer, if you are going to do it on pages where you rank, a chunk up front, then more on page 2, then more one page 1, (or just a deposit then page 1 payment) is best, because you aren't getting any traffic when you rank 92nd or 51st.
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forumpost
generally speaking, what happens is if someone sees that his/her sites is being regularly crawled by the search engine crawler and its pr not increasing then there is always a possibility that search engine has found something which to it is spam or black-hat. So while performing seo of a site, one must be careful of not doing such spam.
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