Will so called SEO experts be killed off by their silly prices
- Thread starter Chris Ashdown
- Start date
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S-Marketing
It looks to me that the best way to become an SEO and to prove your 'worth' is to purchase a domain name (or several) and then optimise it to Page 1 in Google for a selection of search terms and keep it there for a period of time. How long a period of time is probably a whole new discussion
I'd agree with that. But it depends on the search terms really. I reckon I could get a site for the term 'gardeners who will mow my back garden really nicely' to number one position and I know as much about SEO as, um, your average SEO.
That does then beg the question ' if they can get their own sites for competitive terms to number one, why would they work for someone else'.
Personally I think all the best SEO's are probably busy with their own projects, or more likely joint ventures with shares or profit share contracts.
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Possibly good marketing, but client would still have to have a clue to know if the term(s) had any competition or no...It looks to me that the best way to become an SEO and to prove your 'worth' is to purchase a domain name (or several) and then optimise it to Page 1 in Google for a selection of search terms and keep it there for a period of time. How long a period of time is probably a whole new discussion
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On the button since the better SEO's have seen the light,I suspect they want a slice of the cake instead of making other people rich.
Earl
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realmaverick
Good results definitely help prove worth. But of course, anybody who knows the basics of link building, can likely get number 1 positions for many keywords, without really knowing what they're doing.
I think it's important to give the client an outline of your strategy. But even then, unless the client has a decent understanding, they'll be non-the-wiser.
Perhaps business owners should only pay for results. That'd help eliminate getting stung by random cowboys.
I think it's important to give the client an outline of your strategy. But even then, unless the client has a decent understanding, they'll be non-the-wiser.
Perhaps business owners should only pay for results. That'd help eliminate getting stung by random cowboys.
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Hardly likely.
Having beaten wikipedia on many occasions.
I can assure you I would have a tough time catching up with the 234 million links they have.
Earl
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realmaverick
Personally I think all the best SEO's are probably busy with their own projects, or more likely joint ventures with shares or profit share contracts.
That's definitely true for many. I personally don't like making other people rich. I very very rarely do SEO work for anybody else.
I do know a couple of great SEO's, who earn most of their income from clients and love what they do.
Several years ago, I was working for a company who I ranked for some massive keywords and their income was up 100s of percent and I continued to earn an hourly wage, while their daily earnings reached 5 figures. *shudders*.
That's definitely true for many. I personally don't like making other people rich. I very very rarely do SEO work for anybody else.
I do know a couple of great SEO's, who earn most of their income from clients and love what they do.
Several years ago, I was working for a company who I ranked for some massive keywords and their income was up 100s of percent and I continued to earn an hourly wage, while their daily earnings reached 5 figures. *shudders*.
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Or are affiliate marketers who like to help a few businesses as a sideline (diversity = stability and all that)
Good question! For me it was simply a need for social interaction - 3 years just me and the screen left me in danger of becoming a recluse!
Stepping back out into the real world, delivering seminars and presentations, negotiating deals, sharing solutions with other people and just generally meeting enterprising people is rewarding in itself.
Add to that the gratitude and respect gained form genuinely helping other business owners - it also addresses some more fundamental human needs as well.
(plus I enjoy it!)
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S
S-Marketing
Or are affiliate marketers who like to help a few businesses as a sideline (diversity = stability and all that)
Good question! For me it was simply a need for social interaction - 3 years just me and the screen left me in danger of becoming a recluse!
Stepping back out into the real world, delivering seminars and presentations, negotiating deals, sharing solutions with other people and just generally meeting enterprising people is rewarding in itself.
Add to that the gratitude and respect gained form genuinely helping other business owners - it also addresses some more fundamental human needs as well.
You make many good points.
I get asked exactly the same question as a Marketing consultant as many SEO's are asked.
'If you are so good, why don't you just make a fortune from your own businesses'?
My answer is always the same. I do own several of my own businesses, and they are all doing well. My consultancy work acts a bit like a parachute in that I can do whatever I want with my businesses, and take risks I wouldn't normally take, as at the end of the day I know I can teach others how to improve their businesses and earn £100 K a year doing it. If earning 100 grand a year is the worst position ill find myself in, I reckon i'm doing ok.
It may not suit everyone, but I have carved myself what I think is a pretty nice little place to be.
Ill just add, i'm only 35 so have a few years left yet to make my millions.
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Couldn't have said it better myself. Once the issue of paying the bills is out of the way, life spent helping others is very satisfying...Good question! For me it was simply a need for social interaction - 3 years just me and the screen left me in danger of becoming a recluse!
Stepping back out into the real world, delivering seminars and presentations, negotiating deals, sharing solutions with other people and just generally meeting enterprising people is rewarding in itself.
Add to that the gratitude and respect gained form genuinely helping other business owners - it also addresses some more fundamental human needs as well.
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realmaverick
I enjoy helping people. But when it comes to paid work, I'm very selective. This might sound like a rather odd principle, but if the person who wants to hire me, is a decent person or their website offers great value, I'll be much more likely to want to be part of it and help them make it a success.
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Well put. The option of being able to select what we do and who we do it for means that our integrity has a better chance of staying intact.
Plus we'll feel more inclined to go the extra mile for them.
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Yes I am a classic example of someone who isn't an SEO expert. :|
I still don't understand your tracking methods. Are you saying when people call you asked them what they search for in the search engines?
Knowing where the business comes from isn't the same as knowing how many more sales you produced from your SEO. If you raised a search engine position from 6 to 3 for 'blue widgets' you don't know how many extra sales that produces as there is no result at position 6 to measure against. Also how do you KNOW the position was raised due to the work you done and not some natural third party linking?
For me there is too much immeasurable mystery in profit linked SEO.
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No - Each visitor gets their own phone number, which means we can track how they landed on the sites, and if they converted to a sale, we can even see which pages on our site they viewed before, during and after calling us.
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Actually it's good SEO that stops those sites being flushed down the toilet - you'll possibly find that in some cases that SEO was done by an SEO person.
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realmaverick
But keep in mind, what was "good seo" once, might not be tomorrow.
Link sculpting was once useful, it's not anymore.
I've never personally had a site flush down the toilet. But I don't think somebody is necessarily a bad SEO or performed bad SEO, if their site was flushed down the toilet during the panda updates.
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JohnnyCash
Exactly. Up till Panda landed, creating 10's of thousands of spam pages could have been called "good" seo - it generated a return.
Bit of an extreme example, but if you're stuck in 2nd place for a keyword and a competitor is getting the lions share of the sales, if they then do something to get deindexed you take their spot by default. The seo has done zero to make that happen. They wouldn't even need to be penalised - they could mess up their page titles, lower budget means they don't renew link rentals etc etc.
Its not easy to measure an seo's performance - if you fall in rankings its not always his fault, and if you go up in rankings he can't always take the credit.
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Aha - I think we are talking about different things.
By 'good' SEO I mean the type of SEO that is immune to Google's twitchy algos. This is because the content returned on the pages is what the searcher is looking for. Google knows this over time by analysing their click trail, time on site etc.
SEO that uses spammy or otherwise temporary tricks and tactics is not what I would consider 'good' (even it if gave good rankings for a while)
By 'good' SEO I mean the type of SEO that is immune to Google's twitchy algos. This is because the content returned on the pages is what the searcher is looking for. Google knows this over time by analysing their click trail, time on site etc.
SEO that uses spammy or otherwise temporary tricks and tactics is not what I would consider 'good' (even it if gave good rankings for a while)
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JohnnyCash
So how did it get to 2nd place? Voodoo?
(Hint: It was probably good SEO)
Very good... you know the exact point I'm making but just seem determined to ignore it. Lets just say for the sake of this specific example, it was already ranking 2nd and the seo was hired because they couldn't get to first themselves.
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Then you're quite right! The SEO person was not at all involved in getting that ranking any higher.
He may have been involved in getting dozens (hundreds even) of other keywords higher rankings.
He may have introduced hundreds more keywords that weren't previously represented on the website and got rankings for them.
He may have implemented testing and tracking to see which keywords were bringing leads/sales/roi.
He may have gone over the entire site to ensure every page was optimised as well as possible.
He may have added lead capture and email marketing.
He may have studied the websites already ranking for the target keywords and compiled LSI words and phrases and themes for each one.
He may have added some great backlinks.
He may have built lead-gen satellite sites based around exact-match domains.
He may have introduced the business owner to some other businesses for the purpose of joint ventures.
He may have conducted SEO training to the businesses in-house staff.
All worthless endeavours designed for extracting silly money of course!
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Exactly. He MAY have done all that and it MAY have increased rankings and sales. BUT it's impossible to measure. I'm sure everyone agrees SEO is a valuable service but I think linking it to profit is wrong unless the SEO invests in the business.
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May have increased rankings? If you're going for a moderately competitive keyword, you're not gonna rank accidentally. As to sales, if you set up analytics, you can tell where your sales are coming from.
As to the original question, no, I think SEO experts will be killed off by their low prices. That's the reason I stopped doing SEO for clients quite a while ago. For example, I'm currently working on a term that most agencies would charge 2k a month for, and rank fairly quickly. That term has 500k phrase match searches per month, and a CPC of ~$3 (although I'll be advertising a physical product where I'll get paid by the sale.
Now, who's gonna make more money? (assuming a 40% CTR at #1, and a reasonable amount clicking on the ads) Me, or an SEO agency.
The answer is me, many many times over.
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Or decides to set themselves up in the same business and makes even more money.
I think many people on the forum have no idea as to how powerfull SEO can be in generating profit.
Earl
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realmaverick
Exactly. Of course, not all traffic is equal. But targeted, organic traffic is the most valuable traffic. And for big keywords, you need good SEO, both on site and off.
Let the doubters doubt and whine and enjoy their mediocre results. After reading some of the messages on here, I'd rather join the dole queue than work for some of them.
Let the doubters doubt and whine and enjoy their mediocre results. After reading some of the messages on here, I'd rather join the dole queue than work for some of them.
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Yes you can rank 'accidentally'. For example, if you feature on TV and get a load of natural links. That's not the SEO's work is it?
Yes you can tell where your sales are coming from in analytics but you can't compare them to what you would have been getting without the SEO work. Also, as has already been mentioned, the change in ranking might not even have been down to the SEO's work.
I think many people on this forum overestimate how powerful SEO can be in generating profit.
I don't think anyone doubts the results of good SEO, the only point I am making is you can't measure it accurately.
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realmaverick
I think many doubt the results of SEO. It's not really that hard to measure the results is it. You can measure the increase in traffic as well as the increase in sales. The increase in sales isn't always as high as the increase in traffic, sometimes it's higher. It depends how targeted the traffic is.
The more stable the traffic before the campaign, the easier it is to measure. Sure, nobody is going to be able to give 100% exact figures, but then you absolutely don't need that either.
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A recent client of mine doesn't really give a toss where that extra £50k profit came from - he just knows that it was from the interwebs and it wasn't there in the previous 9 years of having a website.
Exactly that is what 99% of business's are interested in.
Not how many boy scouts you rub together to get them the dough.
Earl
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MASSEY
Of course not ,but as the site has a certain authority so I am told.....
Earl
The page you target has about as much competition as people targeting the term "hbfreiufbreifbruf".
It is because of wikis authority that when it has pages that very vaguely resemble a topic they get thrown into the index.
To put it in perspective someone could very well write a blog post that targets the same term as your page and lodge under you and above wiki...
What was the competition again, i think it was 58 from memory :redface:
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Many people h=who are misguided and misinformed may be.
But by reasonable deduction you can predict possible increases.
There is a saying you can lead a horse to water but you cant make it drink - Unless your a clever internet marketer who would hold the horses head under water till it did.
But by reasonable deduction you can predict possible increases.
There is a saying you can lead a horse to water but you cant make it drink - Unless your a clever internet marketer who would hold the horses head under water till it did.
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