Hi,

My first post, but I have been reading this forum for a while but only just joined. I've been online making money for about 5 years now and in this time I've had a few hundred websites on and off trying to chase the quick buck.

I've got to the stage where I dont want to make more content website, write 100's of articles, use scraping to setup website I've used blackhat, grayhat and whitehat to help pay the mortage and sometime it's worked really well.

I have a day-time job like most on this board I guess and about 3-4 weeks ago the marketing department showed me a proposal from an "SEO" company to do some work on the company website, to say I was shocked at what they where charging and what they said they could do is an understatment. Cowboys just comes to mind.

Anyway as I'm really getting tired of creating website for Aff. and adsense I think at this stage I want to build an online business for the future and not adsense. So I'm just looking for some advise from some of the expert SEO guys on this forum to try and get a feel where you think this business will go in the next few years.

Are you thinking of starting your own business or do you simply want people to predict the industry's health over the next couple of years?

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The SEO/SEM business in Ireland is very healthy at the moment and demand for people who know their stuff is extremely high (believe me). Customers are becoming more educated and the "cowboys" are now being seen for exactly what they are.

We are getting a flood of clients who are sick to death of their current online marketing company "offerings". You should see some of the work some of these guys try to pass off to their clients and these are "big" (read:advertised well) players.

Also, I have seen so many people set up SEO shop over the past few months and years and failed. Especially in Ireland. SEO is only a small part in the overall Internet marketing game. Just because you have done SEO on a few adsense sites in the past does NOT mean that you are a suitable candidate to consult on and perform SEO on large corporate players. It is a very different game. Branding mutli channel advertising is as important as SEO and there are so many pitfalls.

By all means set up shop. There is lots of money there. But it's only there for those who really know what they are doing.

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Thanks for the reply guys,

David I'm not expecting to know everything overnight like most business I'll learn as I go, I've not just run Adsense website I also ran a big jobsboard a few years ago until we ran out of money and had to get real jobs :-)

I know SEO is only one part of getting traffic to a site and PPC, Banner Ads offline marketing can all help. But I see so many Irish business online that can not get the basics right.

I guess we all start somewhere, I'm in the middle of helping one company setup an online store if I can do it for them I guess it's a start....hopefully

[deleted]

yeah give me a couple of months I'll rank for "seo ireland " and maybe a few others...now it's off to find a domain name thats easy to remember

Doesn't anyone actually design and develop websites anymore?

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Hi Colm

The thing that really strikes me here is that the very first port of call should be to the company you work for. Why dont you pitch for the work? You have history with them, and it might be a nice break to get into the business.

There is lots and lots of work here in Ireland, and the drivers for online business are both compelling and growing. I think your background may make you ideal for the job given that so many of the cowboys you refer to are just that. Believe me - I've seen quite a few of the pitches you refer to above.

Rgds
Richard

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[deleted]

I'm crap at design and development, thats my excuse.

Colm fair play in going for it and best of luck.

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