Thread: SEO Services Nixer

Hi there,

Suppose the two golden questions are how much and for how much!?

Hi Byron,

I am looking for someone to take an overall analysis of the site, make some recommendations as far as keywords & tags go & do some link building. How much would you be looking for to do something like that?

Cheers

Moved to marketplace

There are a few SEO specialists here Captain, browse here (http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com/s...-optimisation/) and you'll soon get a feel for who might best suit your needs. Most are business owners and such a service you require is what they specialise in.

Hi Captain Crunch

What you are looking for is the classical conundrum of time v. budget v quality. I assume that you have spoke to some SEOs and they have given you prices that have possibly 'scared' you off. The activities you mention do take time and effort and knowledge (should I use three ands in a sentence what the hell its one of those wild days). A good SEO - and there are precious few of them out there - should and will bring traffic to your site which in turn should convert to business so the investment IS worth it.

I am not getting on a high horse here as I do not advertise an SEO service. I can talk to a lot of the basics and have a better than working knowledge of the topic but it isn't what I do but is something that I feel that I understand from a distance (the basics that is). There are several good SEOs on this forum who will probably give similar feedback.

I am looking for someone to take an overall analysis of the site, make some recommendations as far as keywords & tags go & do some link building.

With some research you can do some of this yourself e.g. get your site in shape for what your original basic design should have delivered. If you read around the Interwebz you will get some good basic advice to give your site a health check and make the basic improvements

However to to it properly - for properly read with actual results consider using a good SEO. Engage with one, develop a plan of attack on specific keywords and markets and integrate that with a multiple strand approach.

If I was starting off with a business I would 'skimp a little' on design (and that is my bread and caviar) and put a large focus on my SEO and Internet marketing plan. Think about it if you have a product and service and it sells for say 100 Euro (easy sums here for the Cork man). and you get targeted traffic that converts into 10 sales a month of this service then you male 1000 Euro. If you are getting zero traffic at the moment then I seriously think taking a half baked approach to SEO will never give you this type of results and conversion.

Now I know we are all on budgets and time are tight. People have less money that ever before and are fighting for new business and payments (insert screenshot of unpaid invoices :-)) but I really think SEO should not be skimped on.

Last but not least make sure that you choose the right person for the job. There are hundreds of people out there claiming to be SEOs and short and sweet they aren't just because they have a web page that says it doesn't mean they do it - you might end up with a cleaned up site and some Google Adwords traffic (in other words no results).

So in summary pick an SEO wisely, spend the money. If you are short of cash you can do the basics your self that others will sell to you but don't look for great results just using this tactic.

Best of luck....

Kieran

The problem with link building is that it's easy to focus on numbers. Obviously you want lots of high quality links but the best high quality links are negotiated between businesses - for example - Microsoft linking to a partner or a supplier linking to a reseller. These, the best types of links are also often hidden from backlink watchers and even from Google Webmaster tools - which expressly only shows a "snapshot" of inbound links. Google really doesn't like its search engine being used for any other reason than a valid search as this costs money to build servers (Google is the 3rd largest computer maker on the planet - and just for themselves) but also because it plays with CRT/QS rates for advertisers.

So while I've made the point about the ethics or perceived ethics of checking other people's backlinks and their meta-tags (I just dont like it personally, no high horse here) - trying to score and trudge for backlinks is, a big waste of time. There is a system involved and it goes through many hundreds of points.

So everyone is looking for "high quality" links and in abundance but it can be hard to create more than 10 per month! So there are Asian-based link builders who set the floor on link building prices but I've ranked sites with less than 10 links. Consider XXX sites - very hard to get links there but they rank.

99% of the "link building" from Asia consists of forum and comment spam - this is crazy and unsustainable and it doesn't work. I've played with it often enough. I'm not saying that there is no value or that it never works but not really. Good for hiding the good links though

I would only be interested in working on my own strategy for a website per se.

Hey Captain Crunch

If you havent found anyone yet. PM me your URL and I wil run a full analysis on the site for you, free of charge, at least then you will have an idea of what is required to be done on the site.

Cheers