SEO Sucks or should that be Suckers !

[FunkyBears]

A guy comes on these Forums posting how great his SEO services are, he tells me how terrible my site is, and on his website he shows an example of his fanatasic SEO work.

He is Number 1 Page! Google UK, WOW! That's impressive I'm going to give him £700 to do my SEO Work.

Hey but before I do that I should at least check the keyword to see how tough the competition how many local searches to ascertain how difficult that term is.

Well that particular search term gets a massive 73 local searches a month ! Now the guy starts going on saying if I knew anything about SEO I should appreciate the value of long tail keywords blah blah blah!

Now would you give him £700 a month ? I bet some people do

 

[RadiusBPO]

local search volume could be wrong, or even if low competition could still be high

 

[m@rk B]

I am new member to this forum but have been on here a lot and read a lot of post

Now £700 sound like a lot to me, is it just one key phrase that's getting targeted or is is a whole bunch of them?

Do a quick search yourself to see what sites come up top for that key phrase, you will need to check the age of the top site and check their backlinks.

Normally a long tailed key phrase is easy to rank for

P.M me the key phrase and I'll be happy to take a look!

Mark

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Depending how local 73 may be good after all how many people in a town look up SEO in a month

 

[FunkyBears]

Depending how local 73 may be good after all how many people in a town look up SEO in a month

That was 73 for the whole of the UK !

 

[Curious]

I'm really intrigued to know who it is!

 

[m@rk B]

I'll do it for £699 lol

 

[m@rk B]

At Funkybears, that's 73,000 local searchs a month for that key word and your competition has 8000 backlinks (well one site did)

Didn't look to much into where the backlinks came from but it a competitive keyword

Now it depends if £700 is worth you being on page one or not I suppose?

Mark

 

[FunkyBears]

At Funkybears, that's 73,000 local searchs a month for that key word and your competition has 8000 backlinks (well one site did)

Didn't look to much into where the backlinks came from but it a competitive keyword

Now it depends if £700 is worth you being on page one or not I suppose?

Mark[/QUOTE

Thanks Mark, I got a inner page from one of my other sites to page 1 for the keyword I PM'd in under 4 weeks, its now settled on page 2 and I'm sure with a few decent links I could move it up a bit. I contacted another guy from this forum and he told me not to worry too much as adding quality content would get me to page one. So to me £700 a month for a year seems extremly high.

 

[FunkyBears]

Thats really overpriced and the google keyword traffic estimator is wrong 99% of the time

however i've always said i would rather than have 73 targeted hits a month that convert than 73000 more general ones that don't.

So you think out of 73 UK searches a month you would get a better return than the 73000? If that's the case I would suggest your website needs improving.

The point I was making is the guy was trying to make out his firm was fantastic at SEO and the example he gave was poor. He showed his site was number 1 for a keyword term that a monkey could get to page 1

 

[BlinkBrian]

Hey,

I'm a big believer in competitive keyword research. Particularly when it comes down to conducting ethical and straight to the point Search Engine Optimisation.

I'm on page one for keywords that are competitive and receive a good few hundred visitors per month. However; I'm also on page one at the top for a fairly competitive keyword but "delivers" a few thousand visitors per month to search.

I've seen some keywords that are very very competitive but only delivers a few hundred searches per month.

However; paying a few hundred pounds for search engine optimisation that delivers traffic and maybe it is only 73 people per month if you convert just 10 maybe the return on investment depending on your industry would be high.

I'd also question what else do you get? Article writing? Link building? If it's just on-site optimisation you can be sure that the keyword is certainly uncompetitive.

I'd also look in to doing on-site optimisation yourself and having a Google+ button on your website get a few friends or organically grow how many counts you get with the button and you'll receive a high rank. This seems to only be temporary as there are sites offering this service for a few pounds for thousands of Google+ clicks.

It works but as I said I think in my view it's grey hat and will only be a temporary solution. If you find that your traffic is increasing then certainly look in to having some dedicated SEO done for that keyword.

I'm also on Google for uncompetitive keywords, but I have had conversions through theses uncompetitive keywords. Articles are great way of targeting less competitive keywords.

A few things here to think about.

Regards,
Brian

 

[VinceSamios]

There are too many monkeys who think they are SEO's... In some ways I don't mind, because my competitors (in my businesses, not in SEO services) are chasing an imaginary pot of gold at the end of a long and expensive rainbow. 95% of services offered by SEO companies could be done in-house by a business owner with a spare half hour a day.

 

[lynxus]

Wouldn't pay ANY SEO "expert" money ever!

SEO is not rocket science and can be done by anyone with half a brain.
All the information you could ever want is online for free.
Simply do some research and try it out.

There is no magic way to do SEO.
Google, Bing etc never tell people how to do it the best way.
Why would they?

Matt cutts does explain some best practises however if you followed all of googles "best practises" you wouldn't get anywhere as your site would just become mixed in with other so called good sites.

If you want to hear me rant properly about this visit this : <removed by mod>

I wont be replying to this thread anymore due to the risk of a heart attack from anger.

 

[terryuk]

The guy sounds like he knows his stuff for sure... or not. But yeah you should always ask how many visitors are expected for top results.

Lots of people will go for the small phrases to look like big billy with a big w*****

No doubt the client soon realises with a #1 spot and losing money.

 

[Michael-Bush]

That's incredibly over priced!!!

If it's just the 1 keyword you should not be paying anymore than £100.

All our SEO packages give the same amount of power, it's just the more keywords the more expensive.

Out of interest, who was it?

 

[MASSEY]

If it's just the 1 keyword you should not be paying anymore than £100.

£100 quid wow that's cheap. I know where to come when i want my payday loan site optimising.

 

[m@rk B]

That's incredibly over priced!!!

If it's just the 1 keyword you should not be paying anymore than £100.

All our SEO packages give the same amount of power, it's just the more keywords the more expensive.

Out of interest, who was it?

I think the price also depends on the keyword as well!

Getting a key word that has no competition to 1# of google is achievable, but getting a keyword to 1# of google for a phrase that has millions of competing pages and some that are getting some good authority backlinks would require a whole lot more effort!

Then I could see it maybe being more than £100, I guess.

 

[mobyme]

That's incredibly over priced!!!

If it's just the 1 keyword you should not be paying anymore than £100.

All our SEO packages give the same amount of power, it's just the more keywords the more expensive.

Out of interest, who was it?

Dear oh dear; this forum is getting sillier and sillier!

 

[MASSEY]

Dear oh dear; this forum is getting sillier and sillier!

I didn't have you down as an seo.

 

[VinceSamios]

I wont be replying to this thread anymore due to the risk of a heart attack from anger.

There is a lot of incorrect information in the post you linked us to... There is also a lot of Google parroting waffle...

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Wouldn't pay ANY SEO "expert" money ever!

SEO is not rocket science and can be done by anyone with half a brain.
All the information you could ever want is online for free.
Simply do some research and try it out.

There is no magic way to do SEO.
Google, Bing etc never tell people how to do it the best way.
Why would they?

Matt cutts does explain some best practises however if you followed all of googles "best practises" you wouldn't get anywhere as your site would just become mixed in with other so called good sites.

If you want to hear me rant properly about this visit this : <removed by mod>

I wont be replying to this thread anymore due to the risk of a heart attack from anger.

My question would be do you have the time and skills to do every job in a company yourself and do it well or do you employ a experienced person to take some of the workload off you so you can consentrate on the wider picture

Unfortunatly SEO is the easiest skill to advertise whilst being the hardest to prove, so a large number are cowboys learning as they go and looking for easy money

 

[Professional SEO Ltd.]

I think there is a problem with people who thinks that they will read some old articles about SEO and they know everything about SEO.

Amount of searches per month isn't accurate in Google Adwords, and it is very weird to check amount of traffic basing on that. Also if you think that you are so great in SEO why your website is so badly optimised ?

Only good way of doing SEO in light of Panda update and future updates is to focus on onpage seo as you should doing that for people, Google will reward you.

Remember you cannot check traffic for keyword on Google adwords, to do that you have to spend money on Adwords campaing for certain keyword and run it for around 2 weeks than you will traffic from Google.
Also you should remember that most well optimised websites have xxx keywords starting from main keywords ending on long tail, it's giving you best value in terms of conversion.

Articles are no longer so powerfull like they use to be, read about Panda update, you made wrong choice if someone told you that you can just add content to poor web
site and it will be fine in 6 months, 12 months, 18 months. If you will made grate unique website Google will rise your pagerank (whivh cannot be rised for most of uk companies)...

My opionion about your choice ? You will get what you paid for, for now....

 

[RadiusBPO]

I think there is a problem with people who thinks that they will read some old articles about SEO and they know everything about SEO.

Amount of searches per month isn't accurate in Google Adwords, and it is very weird to check amount of traffic basing on that. Also if you think that you are so great in SEO why your website is so badly optimised ?

Only good way of doing SEO in light of Panda update and future updates is to focus on onpage seo as you should doing that for people, Google will reward you.

Remember you cannot check traffic for keyword on Google adwords, to do that you have to spend money on Adwords campaing for certain keyword and run it for around 2 weeks than you will traffic from Google.
Also you should remember that most well optimised websites have xxx keywords starting from main keywords ending on long tail, it's giving you best value in terms of conversion.

Articles are no longer so powerfull like they use to be, read about Panda update, you made wrong choice if someone told you that you can just add content to poor web
site and it will be fine in 6 months, 12 months, 18 months. If you will made grate unique website Google will rise your pagerank (whivh cannot be rised for most of uk companies)...

My opionion about your choice ? You will get what you paid for, for now....

From my EXPERIENCE not from reading silly blogs like seo-we-love-matt-moz I see more crappy articles ranking now than ever. And thats not for silly keywords, its for Whiplash keywords with a lot of competition.
I also have a bunch of page 1 results because of the juice from articles... Go on tell me my time is limited and the rankings won't be sustained.

 

[Professional SEO Ltd.]

Why do you think that power from articles will work forever ??? Don't you think that articles aren't created for free promo and backlinks but for READERS ?
Don't you think that Google knows that ?

Please PM your keywords and I will tell if I can do better work WITHOUT SINGLE ARTICLE (this isn't advertise but to show what I'm talking about).

Of course articles works NOW, but Google still improving their algorithms so I think you should stick with White Hat Methods instead Black Hat as it won't last forever...

Google loves natural and ethical way of ranking improvement, if you don't know about what I'm talking about read about link wheels and what happened after Panda, it will happen again, if you doing SEO, make sure that you following Google guidelines, maybe it is harder, maybe it taking more time BUT you are safe and you will be rewarded (PR, better positions with time, safer, better conversion etc.)...

Beside more and more article directories removing backlinks from articles... It's coming... Just wait some time...


It's your choice... Black Hat or White Hat, what you will choose ? Don't forget lessons which we getting every few months, thousands huge multi million website bankrupt in US lately because of Panda update...

Remember Google to maintain their share of market must improve their search results, to do that they have to make sure that everything what people are getting is relevant and natural, it cannot be some cheap advertising of x or y company done with black hat methods...

Of course you can still using articles, but with time most of black hat sites will loose their positions, if you are doing business you shouldn't build your brand awareness basing on black hat methods...

 

[Annoying Donkey]

Maybe something's been lost in translation, but since when has article marketing been blackhat? :|

I tend to agree with Andy...

 

[Professional SEO Ltd.]

Read Google guidelines..

Almost everything what involving "unnatural" link building is black hat.

Why do you think Panda had influence on Article power ? Of course I do not saying that nice 10-20 articles submitted manually to directories are black hat, but automatic submission of xxx spinned articles is just black hat...

If some one says that he using only articles as their main power this mean that he had to use it a lot for competitive keyword (like much bigger than whiplash as it is pretty easy keyword for UK)...

Like I said already if Google would approve free backlinks from articles wouldn't decrease their power in last Panda update...

Won't you agree with that ? If you do not agree with me, please read Google guidelines...

 

[Askaprice]

Hi there, came across this post and just thought I would comment.

I have just started in SEO so I am probably not the best person to comment, but £700 a MONTH does seem very high.

From my look on the subject, I looked at your website and what your products were. I then thought if that was what I was looking for, I would type in 'personalised teddy bears' where your site came up in 11th just off the first page.

So taking this in to account ( although this depends on your personal keyword targets ), I think your site is doing pretty well, and probably wouldn't need much to raise it up the rankings.

However you go about it, I would maybe start with looking for any errors that your homepage might have, iron them out first and then maybe concentrate on the link building or find someone else who would do it for a lot less.

Good luck.:redface:

 

[alanjgrainger]

From my EXPERIENCE not from reading silly blogs like seo-we-love-matt-moz

Haha, gotta admire the sentiment in that statement. In the latest version of their OSE platform they've gone as far as to not count links from sites that they don't think are worthwhile, always a little dubious IMHO.

Again, from experience, many sites in my niche are doing just as well, if not better, from links that are purely sourced from spun articles and paid links that if you believed everything you read had been nuked by Panda.

Still a while until the whiter-than-white Moz eutopia becomes a reality methinks.

 

[Annoying Donkey]

Almost everything what involving "unnatural" link building is black hat.

And exactly what is "unnatural" link building? How does a link occur 'naturally'

If a website cannot link to another website there would be no ranking in G and no web.

 

[Professional SEO Ltd.]

And exactly what is "unnatural" link building? How does a link occur 'naturally'

If a website cannot link to another website there would be no ranking in G and no web.

Natural link building is when we allow "people" to link your website, just because they think it is good quality, or sometimes they can use your link in their own article, (which isn't ordered by you)...

As SEO consultant you should know exactly what is natural/ethical/white hat and what it's not. Because most of SEO companies using that doesn't mean that it is white hat.

You should create in first place great website for people, which will get links naturally just by getting links from them, also there is a lot of other WHITE HAT AND NATURAL ways of obtaining backlinks...

I won't say that it is bad to use article marketing, but it isn't natural and it's far from ethical way of doing SEO, you have to be aware of that.

I can assure you that it is possible to put website into TOP10 WITHOUT UNNATURAL LINK !! Just be creating great quality website which is really good for visitors. You cannot forget that google also checking what conversion rate is on your website, how long visitors sitting, how many pages they are visiting etc.


Article marketing working fine, same like worked Xrumer shots which are used commonly by most of SEO companies, same like link wheel strategies etc.

Because something is working doesn't mean that it is WHITE HAT, white hat mean that everything what are you doing is following google guidelines.

If you want see what I'm talking about, let's make competition, give me keyword, we will register NEW domains (you and me) and we will START our SEO competition and we will see who will be higher (in terms of visitors, conversion, pagerank, SEPRS) after one year.

Ready to try ?

 

[RadiusBPO]

When people say stuff like "TOP10 WITHOUT UNNATURAL LINK" we all know they've just set up as an SEO.

 

[eog]

Natural link building is when we allow "people" to link your website, just because they think it is good quality, or sometimes they can use your link in their own article, (which isn't ordered by you)...

As SEO consultant you should know exactly what is natural/ethical/white hat and what it's not. Because most of SEO companies using that doesn't mean that it is white hat.

You should create in first place great website for people, which will get links naturally just by getting links from them, also there is a lot of other WHITE HAT AND NATURAL ways of obtaining backlinks...

I won't say that it is bad to use article marketing, but it isn't natural and it's far from ethical way of doing SEO, you have to be aware of that.

I can assure you that it is possible to put website into TOP10 WITHOUT UNNATURAL LINK !! Just be creating great quality website which is really good for visitors. You cannot forget that google also checking what conversion rate is on your website, how long visitors sitting, how many pages they are visiting etc.


Article marketing working fine, same like worked Xrumer shots which are used commonly by most of SEO companies, same like link wheel strategies etc.

Because something is working doesn't mean that it is WHITE HAT, white hat mean that everything what are you doing is following google guidelines.

If you want see what I'm talking about, let's make competition, give me keyword, we will register NEW domains (you and me) and we will START our SEO competition and we will see who will be higher (in terms of visitors, conversion, pagerank, SEPRS) after one year.

Ready to try ?

is your site seo-ltd.co.uk?

if so your seo packages offers forum profile links, directory submission, social bookmark links etc. which of course as we all know are natural links

http://www.seo-ltd.co.uk/order-search-engine-optimisation.html

 

[Professional SEO Ltd.]

When people say stuff like "TOP10 WITHOUT UNNATURAL LINK" we all know they've just set up as an SEO.

I guess you are one of those who using Xrumer/Scrapebox/SENuke/Dripable and other s*** to your clients...

Of course it is your choice but when you selling service to your client do you telling him that you will be doing everything against Google Guidelines and you will use black hat methods ???

You should be also ethical service provider.

I can assure you that I worked as SEO consultant looong time before you ever heard about Xrumer or Scrapebox and other s****.


Maybe tell the whole truth to your clients ? It is easy to use that kind of remarks when you are hiding after some nick. Please tell us your company name, and other details, then start doing those remarks...

Not everyone can sign in here with his real name/company name...

 

[Professional SEO Ltd.]

is your site seo-ltd.co.uk?

if so your seo packages offers forum profile links, directory submission, social bookmark links etc. which of course as we all know are natural links

http://www.seo-ltd.co.uk/order-search-engine-optimisation.html

This is link building campaign, but our clients have a choice... They can go for optimisation and natural way or if they want they can go for NATURAL way which is working also very well.

 

[Professional SEO Ltd.]

Just for clarification.

I don't saying that BH doesn't working, I using link building as well BUT !!! our clients can choose and we also focusing on ON-PAGE OPTIMISATION (70% of success is from optimisation according to us)...

Before we "leash" the dogs we always making sure that website will be optimised so well how it could be, it is time taking task but it's working ! We saw some pages without that but with x,xxx BL, and what ? What for ? Any change on Google and website flying out TOP10...

I just want show to some people that SEO isn't just one simple path to get nice and successful website, you have to spread SEO and focus first on on-page optimisation than some high quality link building, not some spam of spun articles on x,xxx article directories...



But any one who selling SEO have to be aware what he selling, how can he provide service without using link building etc. In these days any one can use crappy software and start building links, but it won't last forever...

SEO is mostly about knowledge and experience not about software which you are using.

And most of you so smart guys using ONLY SB, Xrumer, AMR, BMD, SEN, etc... Do you think it is ethical way to make business ?? You are selling mostly your times and claiming how much time will you spend on SEO but in real you creating project or buying crappy links and re-selling it to clients, and most of that kind of guys have NO IDEA what in real is SEO...

 

[mit74]

WTF!!! £700 a month!!!???? to do what? even on the grossly over-inflated hourly rate of £50 an hour that's 14 hours a month on your website. Based on a 40 hour, 4 weeks in month this man can only potentially have 11 customers on his books? yeh right. I could understand a one-off fee with guaranteed results but monthly?????

It's also in many instances quite easy to get top of google if you have a local business and bloat keywords.

I charge my customers £20 an hour to work on their websites, usually I recommend 2 hours a month more if national, making not just keyword improvements but general website improvements such as performance, layout, content and checking security/logs etc. I will also work on adwords in those 2 hours insuring the best click through rates and compile reports on improvements for the following month. Every website is different and spending more time than needed is simply overkill in my opinion. Quite where this price of £700 a month comes from I don't know.

 

[Professional SEO Ltd.]

And for end, if any one want we can make competition, we will choose keyword, we will register brand new domain, build html, then we will start SEO, we will report results every 2 weeks (for 12 months), I will spend most of my time on on-page optimisation and only 30% on link building (let's we will create limit up to 2,000 BL, articles will be only 10% of all my links), and we will see who will get better positions and traffic with time...

Of course my competitor won't optimised too well his website... so we will see how it will work.

It is just simple fun

Any one ?

 

[mit74]

And for end, if any one want we can make competition, we will choose keyword, we will register brand new domain, build html, then we will start SEO, we will report results every 2 weeks (for 12 months), I will spend most of my time on on-page optimisation and only 30% on link building (let's we will create limit up to 2,000 BL, articles will be only 10% of all my links), and we will see who will get better positions and traffic with time...

Of course my competitor won't optimised too well his website... so we will see how it will work.

It is just simple fun

Any one ?

Quite how you would 'optimse' a website with English like that I'm not sure. I wouldn't let you anywhere near my site. Are you even UK based?

 

[Professional SEO Ltd.]

Quite how you would 'optimse' a website with English like that I'm not sure. I wouldn't let you anywhere near my site. Are you even UK based?

Like I said we can make competition, we will see who will better optimise website.
I'm living near Edinburgh btw

 

[mit74]

Like I said we can make competition, we will see who will better optimise website.
I'm living near Edinburgh btw

sorry that sentence doesn't make sense