Dear DP members; My friend was looking for solution to quickly upgrade his SERPs, and trying to use some company that charges him $1k upfront fee + $199 monthly charge. Well, that sounds quite amount of money, and I'm not sure if he can get the *guaranteed* result. Even if he gets it, then will it go down again as soon as he stops using their service? My question here is that if anyone 1) heard of, or 2) used this type of service before.... I'm not concerned about how much it cost (he can afford to it ), but just curious if it's real. Other than that he's wasting money and time. Also if it's real, then isn't that a kind of addiction? Like all those drug problem with famous athlete whenever there is a big game, to boost the performance? What in the world is the SEO criteria? If google keeps changing this criteria, then won't they have to keep up with this new technology every single month? I don't know much about this standard for SEO, but there seems to be a lot going on every month. Let's share some thoughts here.. Thank you.
Consider it like a mechanic... It is hard to find a good one so make sure your check out the person/company carefully. A good SEO consultant or company will deliver results with time and can indeed stay ahead of the curve. I do my own SEO, so I can't recommend anyone for you but please check the references closely.
Find out exactly what he is getting for the money. An SEO strategy can vary. If he has the time and would like to do the work himself, please have a read of my post here: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=2333412#post2333412 PM me if interested.
I wouldn't say it is like a mechanic because a mechanic has a clear job description. It's a little shady, it is a business that was implicitly created by the way search engines work, but it is not an operation search engines approve of. it's more like the IRS with the taxes - you do it once an year and there's way to save on money but if you get carried away with the write offs you will get audited. (or banned in the SE case)
Thanks for your thoughts. Asen-. I'm little bit concerned about the statement of "NOT an operatoin search engines approve of". If that's the case, it's more like buying a Viagra that FDA didn't approve at the corner of street. (Even if it's proven to be effective...). Is there any way that I can find related article, or official statement from google or yahoo? Thanks.
That's ridiculous. Doing SEO(White Hat) is learning to play the game the way the Search Engines WANT you to play, not trying to trick them. Google likes backlinks, so you promote your website within your industry to make yourself look like an authority. What's wrong with that? Google directly states that they will help you to become more applicable to their searches. Read what they say, don't believe me. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769 They have put guidelines in place that all white hat SEO practictioners use. It's not shady, it's what google has said makes you rank higher. Ultimately google wants to provide a good user experience for their users, they can do that by helping you and I provide relevant good content for their users. So Maui check out Google's Webmaster blog and site, there is plenty of information there for you. As far as $1k and $200 a month, it all depends on the competition of his website. As long as you get references, and get a clear breakdown of what exactly will be delivered at that price point and feel comfortable with the return you'll get on that investment. As an example, I SEO'd my wife's website and almost instantly turned her business from grossing $1,500 or so a month to over $5,000 a month, and this is for a very small specialized regional niche market. HTH, MR
This is just a suggestion, if some SEO company or freelancer guarantees you or your friend for a Result, be aware as these types of SEO Services are not good at all. Any good SEO Expert/specialist would never guarantee you any Ranking nor Position, nor will they guarantee you a specific amount of Traffic.
It may not be a 'gurantee' - but our performance based contracts are usually for a 'top 10' or 'top 5' ..... and we work until we achieve it....
It really comes down to the performance of the SEO. Ask what you get: Global recommendations, Sitewide navigation/architectual recommendations, easy-to-implement redirect strategy where appropriate, analytics set-up assistance (very important for SEO), keywords/title tags/description/content recs on a page by page basis. Top phrase recommendations that you should create a page around. Monitoring and rankings reporting.... The amount you pay should really be based on the amount of actual work that you get, not just their "expertise". There is nothing wrong with out-sourcing SEO but you want to make sure that they aren't having some loser email you a "best practices" document. A good SEO gives you everything you need from a custom written robots.txt fie, .htaccess files, coding recommendations, to page-by-page cut and pastable content suggestions. I would never let an out-sourced SEO have direct access to your site unless his/her trust is firmly established through a longer-term previous business relationship. Do NOT let an SEO implement an automated linking strategy (that is likely to get you banned by MSN within days). When it comes to link-building, let the SEO give you the list of prospective sites with webmaster emails and a sample email template, do the linkbuilding yourself. It works better emailing from your own domain AND you can ask them to change the link or make a payment if it's a purchased link but ultimately, you have control. Once your site is properly SEOed, you shouldn't need on-going services to keep it ranking unless A.) you somehow get yourself into trouble, B.) you make major changes to your site, or C.) you are interested in some on-going evolving changes like having the SEO churn out some updated content every-so-often. Ultimately, a good SEO will get you more organic traffic from the aggregate of key-phrases that people use to get to your site. You SHOULD start ranking higher for everything. Getting hung-up on any particular key word is not a good way to judge an SEO. Instead, use analytics to measure your total organic search traffic. Remember, ultimately, the SEOs ideas don't mean anything if you aren't willing to implement his/her suggestions.
You definately have to do some research into it. There are good deals and scams out there. I taught myself everything I know and I do my own SEO. It wasn't till recent that I started outsourcing it also. The price you mentioned doesn't sound too bad but you will want to look into the credentials of the service provider. If your not happy with the results then do they give a refund? Also SEO is never a quick thing.
Our services actually cost more than what you listed and we do not make any promises to our clients. And they are happy to pay because we give them results. And the bottom line is that they want more sales. I have clients that pay 20,000 a month and 1,000 a month but the programs are drastically different. Both work. It is nearly impossible to compare services with SEO companies. Some offer the same services some don't. Others only offer on-page SEO services (insert joke here). So you need to know what you are shopping for.
Thank you for your thoughts. Here's another question that I'd like to ask; What if there are 2 different companies (actually competitions each other) walked in to this SEO service provider and ask exactly same service + result? For ex, campany A paid the agreed fees and got the result. They're at #1 now on google. Company B came in, asking exactly same service and they're under same category that company A is under (skin care, automobile, hotel,,,etc). They got the result and now they're at #5 on google. What? How come I'm lower than my competition? Why can't you push me up where those competition is? Didn't you say that you *guarantee* the result? What's so special with company A...???? We're selling exactly same products + services... What's the difference? Well, I'm just trying to make a scenario here. But isn't it possible to happen in the real world? And furthermore, how is it really working in this real world? If they did the same SEO work on 2 different places....
I like the Viagra example more... Black Hat SEO = Viagra not approved by the FDA White Hat SEO = Pill approved by the FDA both will get it up but ideally what you want is a hot chick where it gets up naturally! (Good website that doesn't need Viagra)
I would like to post a few comments about your concern... The fee that the SEO company charging to your is pretty cheap compared to other companies than ranges from thousands monthly. The thing is, no one(even the experts) can guarantee a quick upgrade in ranking. If that company promised to your friend a quick high ranking position, then, I'm doubting about the credibility of that company. In the world of SEO, there's no such thing as guaranteed high ranking. Not unless, you pay the search engine. The primary reason why SEO is a constant work is that, the search engine in which you're targeting to rank well is constantly evolving. I mean, their algorithms (A mathematical formula used in calculating search engine ranking. The goal of any SEOP is to understand the algorithm as best as possible. Algorithms of course are very closely guarded secrets and I have never met anyone who has "cracked" an algorithm. Search engine algorithms change regularly to prevent anyone from gaming the system.) is constantly updating in terms of their factors in rating and ranking a site. I suggest that your friend should be familiar with the SEO basics before hiring an SEO company. That's all. Hope it'll help you...
How can you claim that the charge is cheap without knowing the field for which the work is being done? If the company is a Piano Tutor in Tucson Arizona that wants new clients, then how can you say that what he is charging is cheap. But, if the company wanted to get into national debt consolidation, then obviously it's way cheap. Cheap versus Expensive is all relative to the actual work being done. As far as guaranteed ranking, yes I think within reason you can make guarantees. If I was working with the Piano Tutor in Tucson, I can guarantee a top 10 ranking. I know what that would take, and know that I could get it done with very little work. For the national debt consolidation, without a $10,000 a month budget, I probably wouldn't guarantee a damn thing, and even then it would have a VERY long timeline. So, yes I feel comfortable offering guarantees to my clients, but I mostly do regional niche clients. And if I can't get a regional niche client in the top 10 then I don't deserve the work. For my non-regional niche clients, the timeframe is longer, but if you know what you're doing, and have a solid game plan, you should know where you will end up after 3-12 months of solid effort. MR