SEO Experts - What Do You Do?

[andicrook]

Originally Posted by BDW

The truth for most small businesses is that if their website is properly optimised in the first instance no monthly charge is required. All it takes is a few inbound links, interesting content and an occasional review.

I agree if the service was limited to one time on page SEO optimisation, which I would have to question as a suitable long term strategy.

However, many SEO experts I have met go far beyond on page SEO and many get involved in the whole sales process something which is also never "Set & Forget".

[SuperKarim]

From time to time I received "quotes" from seo firms, and one of the thing I found was that the seo firms were HUGELY overpriced.

Making comparisons to "other trades" is a bit of a cop out IMO, SEO is a unique industry and comparable to none.

SEO firms are a bit of a cess pool of "seo experts" who can't put money where their mouth is, because any seo worth his weight can make far more money doing his/her own seo projects.

From time to time I get seo consultations from established seo sites, and I'm horrified at the amount of money they charge for such little work.

I had an seo firm guarantee #5 > #3 assurances in 12 months for £1,500 a month.

And the bulk of that work was through 15K+ automated submissions, social bookmarking, web 2.0 pages etc..

I was horrified, this is a very outdated technique and google would regard these methods as spammy or blackhat, I would have expected a market leading seo firm to at least opt for a more PR and long lasting seo, writing guest posts for highly regarded websites, press releases, linkbait marketing etc.

More to the point it was extremely overpriced, no doubt to the fact that the work is going to be outsourced to India, and the seo firm would make huge markups on these, added to that the agency fee. It all mounts up.

Anyone with a little bit of seo knowledge could go onto vworker or elance and find a good writer who will charge £20 per articles, and get tonnes of very good articles to guest post and post on highly regarded article directories, like EZA, buzzle etc.

Which could get them ranked, costing less than £1000, where it would have cost £18,000 to go with the seo firm.

[andicrook]

I don't think SEO is a unique industry and comparable to none. I think it is exactly like any consultancy industry, varies in price, packages and offers.

A SEO expert doesn't have to put money where their mouth is via their own sites. They can do that via testimonials from clients that they have given results. I wouldn't ask to see a mechanics own car before they done any work for me, however, I may talk to a client of theirs.

Can make far more money doing his/her own seo projects.

Well they are because their marketing their services. However, many do have their own projects, doesnt mean they have to divulge details. You don't ask to see a bank managers personal investment portfolio when getting advice (example).

If you think SEO experts should sit around affiliate marketing all day or make info products. get real. I would much rather work with an exciting company with great products or services from the inside. Again why should a bank manager have a job when he's good at investing? (example)

Not every SEO expert will come up with the same results, not all SEO experts are equal. Like I said many SEO experts are also marketing experts in other areas or help with the complete marketing process. Also some firms have a collective pool of talent. You also have to put the price of such expertise into the equation. For example I know one guy who is a psychologist who also offers great sales advice based around human behaviour.

You are absolutely right there are poor experts that don't know what they are doing, over pricing and people making guarantees when they shouldn't. However, I can say the same for ANY industry.

I also think if you think online marketing is just about the SERPs your missing a whole host of other avenues that "real business" owners can use to their advantage. Personally I would advise people to look for a online marketing or business consultant, I hate using the term "SEO expert" anyway, who can help with marketing (and no marketing isn't just about advertising like many people think).

[andicrook]

I also see people bashing web designers in the same way, saying that you can just set up a web site yourself. Often, I look at their site and it kind of goes against their argument

I am sure Mark gets the same regarding logo design?

[matt.chatterley]

Originally Posted by andicrook

I also think if you think online marketing is just about the SERPs your missing a whole host of other avenues that \"real business\" owners can use to their advantage. Personally I would advise people to look for a online marketing or business consultant, I hate using the term \"SEO expert\" anyway, who can help with marketing (and no marketing isn't just about advertising like many people think).

I had to chip in with a big "+1" for this paragraph.

SEO is one part of an overall marketing strategy - and SEO itself is multifaceted. To my mind, as Andi has implied as well, it includes *making a sale* - even if you rank 1st, with a double listing, for your chosen key-phrase, you can still make no sales.

You need pages which will convert at a good rate as well as traffic - 10 hits and 1 sale is 10x better than 1000 hits and 10 sales!

[andicrook]

Yes I agree. However, marketing is about finding problems and demand, researching, coming up with a solution and delivering a solution (product or service) to the consumer. In some respect you can also add customer service and support to that. Therefore, most of the processes in modern businesses can be referred to as marketing in some way.

Online marketing is, therefore, applying one or more of the above to a online medium. SEO is only one cog in the machine, getting traffic is one thing however, without a demand, knowing the customer, a good product or service, good web design, good copy, good deliverance and great sales and support people to follow up it means nothing. I also totally agree with your conversion analogy.

Now most of the people I know that provide good SEO services overlap their services into these other areas (SEO is just apart of their package), which is why working from the inside of a clients firm is essential and very rewarding.

This is also very far from sitting at home marketing affiliate products.

Online marketing is, therefore, applying one or more of the above to a online medium.

We seem to have moved well off the subject matter. The thread is not about marketing. It's about SEO and why SEO people have to charge a monthly fee.

[William Debauchez]

Hi, Alison,

This is a really good question.
I remember not really understanding this either before I got into SEO, so thanks for asking it here.

Your SEO efforts will bear fruit after 2 to 3 months and it's the result of a momentum that gets built around your site.

When you get started with your site, you can perform keyword research and adjust your onpage SEO. Once that is done you won't need to do much to it except if you create a lot of posts or new content and products.

But for the offpage SEO, essentially the backlinking, you need to be at it all the time, so that your efforts compound like interest, instead of gradually degrade as some of the links you got in your first month wear out.

Google likes fresh content, and it also likes fresh links.

The following will give you an idea of what can be done off a basic monthly package with many SEO companies. I've excluded the numbers as the point is more to show you what SEO companies do on a monthly package. As you can see it's a lot of work.

Colleagues will no doubt correct me or add other types of services you can get if I've forgotten some.

# Targeted Article submissions: +
# Targeted Press Release submissions: +
# Major Search Engine submissions: +
# Targeted Blog submissions: +
# Targeted Forum submissions: +
# Targeted Directory submissions: +
# Targeted Online Groups submissions: +
# Targeted Classified Ads submissions: +
# Targeted Social Bookmarking submissions: +
# Targeted Social Media Network Submissions: +
# Articles Written:
# Press Release Written:
# Classified Ads:
# Groups:
# Submissions Per Month +
# Guaranteed confirmed links +
# Guaranteed links with home page PR of 1-2+ per month +

Hope this is informative.
William

[andicrook]

Originally Posted by BDW

We seem to have moved well off the subject matter. The thread is not about marketing. It's about SEO and why SEO people have to charge a monthly fee.

I agree Sorry! So easy to do when you get carried away.

My first point was that good SEO normally comes as a part of a internet marketing or marketing package, this is perfectly acceptable to be a monthly charge and can be worth its weight in gold.

My second point is that many internet marketers and indeed business owners don't really know what the word marketing means, they talk about SEO and link building. A good indercation of their true knowledge when looking for a service provider, even if it is just for SEO.

I'll leave as that

[dazarooney1987]

Originally Posted by andicrook

I agree Sorry! So easy to do when you get carried away.

My first point was that good SEO normally comes as a part of a internet marketing or marketing package, this is perfectly acceptable to be a monthly charge and can be worth its weight in gold.

My second point is that many internet marketers and indeed business owners don't really know what the word marketing means, they talk about SEO and link building. A good indercation of their true knowledge when looking for a service provider, even if it is just for SEO.

I'll leave as that

Well said and also thumbs up for your other posts, they were very well explained!

[SuperKarim]

I have to retract my initial statement after reading some of the subsequent posts on here.

While it boggles my mind why seo people would choose to work for businesses whether inhouse or agency, I can at least understand. There are plenty of professions where someone can freelance such as as a journalist or graphic designer and be a lot better off financially, however they prefer a 9-5 scheudule for whatever reason. It doesn't always mean that the 9-5er will be any worse than the lone ranger.

Personally, I would much rather build my own sites that earn money than forever work for someone else on a salary. It just makes common sense to me, why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs when you can have eggs for the rest of your life..?

I don't agree with the SEO = just ranking in serps, and just ranking in serps = is not the way forward.

Two assumptions both wrong.

Firstly ranking is everything, without ranking you have no traffic and therefore no customers [not every niche is economically viable to pay for traffic]

The fact is lead capture, conversion optimisations, sourcing good offers to promote, social media optimisation etc is so easy,

I can set up a good lead capture system, i can find ways to improve conversions and put the concept to task within days by my programmer. I can optimise adwords campaigns in less than 2 hours for a moderatly sized campaign.

All of these things take very little time, and I dont talk about it because it's easy to do.

The most time consuming and labour intensive task is to run an SEO campaign. that stuff takes months to refine and implement, and is the bread and butter..

But anyways as BDW stated.. the point was about SEO and only SEO, so let's not derail from that point.

[makeusawebsite]

I'd just like to say what we do every month;

Firstly, some work which takes place before on SEO;

Analysing the competition
Finding keywords
Checking HTML Validity of the site
Ensuring on site-seo is in place

This allows us to begin working on the initial set of keywords.

Monthly work usually involves;

Creating web 2.0 Sites
Social Networking
Finding new keywords
Analysing performance
Profile backlinking
Analysing the competition

That said, every website and every niche is different.

What we always do is to create a full log of work done and provide this to the customer. We always keep customers informed about their keyword progress so that they can alter their adwords campaigns accordingly, and ensure that they have a comprehensive record of web 2 and profile back links created.

We also provide analytics reports about visitor counts month on month.

[William Debauchez]

@makeusawebsite, I like your company name withe the "usa" in it. Smart :-)

[makeusawebsite]

Thank you You would not believe how many American customers call us "Make USA Website"!

[FunnyBusiness]

I would actually like to know the answer to that as well. I am a qualified Web/ Graphic Designer with a Distinction at the Cartoon Academy. I find myself in a bit of a quandry (sic?) with having my site optimized. I frequent Freelance sites and it is part of their protocol to disallow any contact information on URL's to portfolios.

http://www.funnybusinesscartoons.co.uk/

[SuperKarim]

Originally Posted by makeusawebsite

Thank you You would not believe how many American customers call us \"Make USA Website\"!

Don't blame them. I got that impression as well, my thought was why is a US company on ukbusinesslabs, this is a flaw in your branding [could be a bonus in an online business], and the brand name is misrepresenting the message you're trying to protray.

people distinguish multi word domains by initial capitalisation, however the browser and google will display in lower cases, and in your case the first thought will be make usa website, rather than make us a website, and worse, make usa website reeks of poor grammer by cheap non0english speaking companies.

[FunnyBusiness]

Originally Posted by SuperKarim

reeks of poor grammer by cheap non0english speaking companies.

That's pretty rich from someone who can't spell grammar.

[William Debauchez]

Make us a website has a nice brand. Full stop.

[FunnyBusiness]

That's just it though. Anyone can build a website. It's the optimization of it that this thread is about isn't it?

[makeusawebsite]

No offence to SuperKarim - But I think you have been dealing with the wrong SEO firms.

Originally Posted by SuperKarim

SEO firms are a bit of a cess pool of \"seo experts\" who can't put money where their mouth is, because any seo worth his weight can make far more money doing his/her own seo projects.

I was horrified, this is a very outdated technique and google would regard these methods as spammy or blackhat, I would have expected a market leading seo firm to at least opt for a more PR and long lasting seo, writing guest posts for highly regarded websites, press releases, linkbait marketing etc.

Anyone with a little bit of seo knowledge could go onto vworker or elance and find a good writer who will charge £20 per articles, and get tonnes of very good articles to guest post and post on highly regarded article directories, like EZA, buzzle etc.

Which could get them ranked, costing less than £1000, where it would have cost £18,000 to go with the seo firm.

Totally unfair to the genuine and quality SEO workers who spend a lot of time and effort on their projects. SEO isnt a fast process, it takes many hours per month (even on a simple project) which is why it is expensive. However, most SEO experts should be able to work with any sized budget, but would target less attractive/competitive keywords.

Saying "because any seo worth his weight can make far more money doing his/her own seo projects." is kinda like saying that any builder worth his salt shouldnt need to work on other peoples property...he should just build his own. Or any marketting expert should just work for him/herself marketting their own projects.

As for "Anyone with a little bit of seo knowledge could go onto vworker or elance and find a good writer who will charge £20 per articles," . SEO isnt just about articles....it probably represents around 5% of the work.

I think you are grossly underestimating what is involved in SEO work.