SEO Recommendations

[J Detailing]

I don't know about you lot but I fed up with SEO organisations trying to get my custom. I'm already fairly high up on google without their help. Can anybody explain what they actually do?

[Botico]

Links building and optimize you website in order to get ranked. Lots of them just trying get some money out of you until point you kick them out.

[ClickS1]

Best techniques I found whilst doing SEO for clients was writing blogs to help users with something or to explain a product etc. with links to your website, Facebook page, google plus page etc.

 

Don't buy links these can prove costly and google could remove your site from their engine.

 

Simply use relevant, helpful and knowledgable content pointing to your site.

 

Hope this helps.

[mmitchell]

Nigel Dodds does my seo, his number is 07931642656

[Nickscape]

You are doing useful SEO work just by replying to threads on this forum. I've never met an SEO who hasn't achieved what they have promised, the problem with it is you often don't see the work that is going into the improvements. If you make sure you set agreeded targets and a monitoring system they will easily be able to show you how your money being spent and how this has affected your website.

[ZoeMarciniak]

I met Nickscape this week and think he talks a lot of sense.

[ubermaus]

As someone who has worked as an seo analyst / consultant & director client side / agency side for years and after working with hundreds of clients across different industries, overseeing millions of visitors and revenue per year and seeing the mistakes clients and agencies make (made plenty too!) this would be my advice for any small Business looking for seo services:

 

1) ask for testimonials - any decent seo agency / freelancer will have clients lining up to give either a verbal or written recommendation. For instance, on arrangement, I would allow a potential client to speak to current clients. You also get a feel for how that agency works with it's clients. Ask to see screenshots from analytics, if they claim certain results.

 

2) consider you might not be a good candidate for seo services - if you're a small Business / one man band I would recommend learning as much about organic search / paid search as you can before investing. Some unscrupulous agencies will take your money and not deliver. I've lost count of the number of hashed jobs I've taken on - mainly bigger agencies who have huge clients and shuffle smaller fellas to the side but some freelancers too. You generally get what you pay for!

 

3) If you do go with an agency or freelancer be prepared to invest (and work out the ROI). A good consultant should work this out for you at the start of your campaign, and advise on how to move forward. You need to include the money you are spending on fees with that agency + costs. Look at worst case scenarios or you could lose money.

 

4) Choose 2 or 3 tactics, as part of a marketing mix. Get some knowledge. For instance SERPS are teeming with paid search results making it much harder generally to rank in organic search results. Don't underestimate paid services like Twitter advertising or Google Adwords for getting eyeballs on sites and achieving good return. People still think SEO is just optimising a website, getting inbound links and MOVING to the top of the organic rankings for random keywords when it is so much more than that.

 

Essentially what is a better barometer of success is traffic and conversions (and ROI) - not rankings.

 

5) You've got to keep ADMIN access of all web properties! That includes GWT, Analytics, website admin, FTP. Don't ever trust your seo or webmaster to do the right thing. I've had more than one client denied access to GA , more than one client who has taken their previous agency to court. Don't be one of them!

 

Hope that helps!

 

[NewBiz]

A heartfelt thanks for all the helpful replies and pm's.

 

I was at MADE yesterday and bumped into another client of mine, who do SEO and have developed a great platform for correllating results from various web activities, and I've recommended them to my other client (they hadn't entered my mind before yesterday, as I haven't worked with them for a long while)

 

Thanks again everyone

[ubermaus]

A heartfelt thanks for all the helpful replies and pm's.

 

I was at MADE yesterday and bumped into another client of mine, who do SEO and have developed a great platform for correllating results from various web activities, and I've recommended them to my other client (they hadn't entered my mind before yesterday, as I haven't worked with them for a long while)

 

Thanks again everyone

 

More than welcome fella. Hope it works out for ya

 

---------- Post added 26-09-2014 at 15:15 ----------

 

A heartfelt thanks for all the helpful replies and pm's.

 

I was at MADE yesterday and bumped into another client of mine, who do SEO and have developed a great platform for correllating results from various web activities, and I've recommended them to my other client (they hadn't entered my mind before yesterday, as I haven't worked with them for a long while)

 

Thanks again everyone

 

More than welcome dude (dudette). Hope it works out for ya

[NewBiz]

Just for the record it's dudette. For some reason people on SF often think I'm male, it must be my butch way of writing!