Maximising the affects of SEO services.

Me and my business partner are deeply considering using an SEO company to put our website to front page of google for "poker forums".

The problem with this is that we need to maximise the affect by getting the most conversions from UVs to members as we are a forum and don't just require views.

My business partner disagrees with me but I think that if we are going to get SEO help then we need our forum to be well designed, growing and very much active with unique and interesting content as to stop views bouncing.

Is there a maximum point where you will get the most efficiency from an SEO company? Or will being front page google for a competetive keyword such as "poker forums" be enough to drive traffic and get sign ups?

 

Hi Platefish...
well you need to have SEO services, which drives rich visitors to your forums.
Let say like me.. i will surely click on link you mentioned below...
Because i am doing seo with the same niche and want to get good success forum registration in any niche required.
I am now member of your forum with the ID : dom-casino
Send me PM if you need SEO services...

 

Hi casino. While you're there do you mind just giving a quick review of first impressions of the site? Things I could do with changing etc.

Thanks.

But is my thread question right? I should only use SEO services at an optimum level to make the most out of my money?

 

You can get the better results with SEO services, but patience required,
As in SEM and paid listings people are using more than $ 5000 / mo.
That's is not long lasting, when you spent money, you will get visitors, otherwise not.
But in SEO it's different. It will take time to come up your website in listing but it will remain over there for long time, with minimum investment.

 

Yes I Feel Seo Can Increse Your Visitors And It Can Change Your Visitors Into Customers

 

That's my question. SEO just brings my site to the front page? But what use is that is my site has no good content?

 

Good question you have asked,

ofcource seo can increase results of your website and can bring to the higher SERP's.

Content should be unique, rich, informative , Google likes these kind of sites, which are unique at the content.

And content really effect on SEO. as what i believe is Good content and internal linking makes SEO easy for your website.

 

Platefish--

First get your content right, Then approach the getting the traffic part...HOWEVER, you will NEVER be perfect in conversion, so as soon as you feel reasonably comfortable with the conversion rate, then go for it.

The secret to this is cost / converted forum member...that is the metric you need to keep in mind IMO/

Best;

Eric

 

Well, I think you are getting your concept incorrectly.

What SEO does is to get you ranked well, say top 10 on google, in term of how you make money off that position, has nothing to do with SEO.

Once the user clicks on your link, it becomes of a question if your site is well-designed or attractive enough to make them stay. And this has nothing to do with SEO.

 

Say for example, I make a domain and post absolute 0 content on it. The only page is a blank one, no content whatsoever. Then I dish out $500 on SEO only to get a lot of traffic to my site but absolutely noone hanging around and click adds etc.

So is it worth buying the SEO when my forums are rapidly growing and it is as active as ever. Is it a waste of money to buy SEO services when your site is pretty dead??

 

SEO is very important and professional help can be a good idea but as you have eluded to, you really need to ask the question up front 'why do i want people to visit my site?' may seem like a stupid question but let me explain. Do you simply want lots of visitors or is the real goal to get your visitors to do something once they are on the site such as buy a product, become a member or sign up for a service. It is through these things that you will actually make money and a ROI on the SEO services. My suggestion is that when you speak to an SEO company you tell them you goals for the site and get some help not only improving traffic to the site but make sure that improving on-site conversion is part of your strategy. This may involve a little bit of redesigning but could have a big impact on ROI

 

Completely disagree, optimizing a website is fast becoming more then hammering some links at it and getting it to rank.

It's all about metrics and tweaking the whole system to perform, that includes everything from diversifying the traffic sources, analyzing entry/exit/bounce pages, click and navigation patterns throughout the site right through to the final call to action.

PlateFish, if you are getting someone just to help you rank then to answer your question i'd improve your site somewhat first. It's "ok" but certainly not something i'd say wow i'll have to join and yes a lot of your traffic would be wasted at this stage. Have a look at some of the leading poker forums for ideas.

For now, include the term "Poker Forum" in your homepage title and add a link in the footer to the homepage with "Poker Forum" as the anchor text. All your inner pages will help weight the homepage for the term.

Also Nofollow and block with robots text your calendar.php. This is 1,000s of pages of nothing you are wasting link equity and crawl budget on.

Edit: Another thing, do a 301 redirect on your index.php page back to just the straight domain name. You are splitting "link juice" because most your forum pages are linking back to index.php rather then your .com

Good luck.

 

Thanks a lot sweetfunny, really useful information. I am not too sure how to go about changing these things. What's the coding for adding a footer to every page on vbulletin? And I'm really not sure how to nofollow my calendar.php.

 

In your template called Navbar find:

Replace with:

In your template Footer find the code similar to this:

And change to just

This will kill two birds with the one stone by swapping that calendar link with one to your forum home because you don't need 2 seperate links to the calendar.

 

Thanks a lot sweetfunny. Excellent information for a noob scripter. +rep

Is this all safe to do? I'm not erasing anything I shouldn't?

 

Famous last words... "Trust me"

Nah this is fine, all you are doing is adding Nofollow to the calendar link in the header and adding an anchor text link to the homepage with your primary term in the footer in place of that other calendar link because you don't need 2 links to a calendar that nobody uses.

That calendar is 1,000's of URL's of nothing (duplicate content) and is a complete waste of "link juice" and crawl budget. Google could be crawling your new content instead of all them pages.

 

I'd have to agree with this phrase

 

Couldn't had put it in better way. well said.

 

I'm having trouble finding anything of that script in the Navbar. Maybe it has already been replaced?

 

i think, seo can increase your business, you just need to increase visitors