Sorry, I am getting my dates screwed up. We are allowing 4 weeks, so the trial will end at 9am Sydney time on Saturday 2nd October with results announced 9pm Sydney time on Sunday 3rd October. Almost 5 weeks really. Sorry about the error.
I'm actually really interested in how this works out. There are so many shonky operators in the SEO field that i'll be really interested to see who comes through as legit and effective. Good on you Toplink for putting in the time and thought to organise such a trial - I knwo it's for your own good, but there a side benefit to anyone else who values good SEO providers. Nothing like an impartial review of different services to inspire confidence. Could I suggest one other cirtieria though toplink? value for money/cost effectiveness. cheers,
A few links are appearing for a couple of the sites. Mainly from blogs and social networking profiles. Too early though for any changes in SERPS ranking for the specific keywords to show through. Though one site has managed already.
Just checking progress. Links are starting to appear. Some sites still at zero links. The best at 27 links. Still too early for any SERPS rankings to change though. Very little feedback / reporting though.
Yet again my apologies. I have just realised that Monday 4th October here in Sydney is a holiday, a long weekend. If I work all weekend my wife will kill me! So I will post the results of the trial on Tuesday 5th October. Thank you once again to all those taking part.
Well, I have now reviewed the results of the trial. But first let me just thank all those who participated and again apologies to those who wanted to partcipate but could not as the trial was full quite quickly. I would like to just recap and highlight a few things, before getting to the results. There were 7 participants in the trial. Each person was given a single page website, that has been active for 2-3 years, but has had no off page SEO done. ie no links or anything. Each participant was paid to carry out about one week of work on the site. We then waited another 5 weeks to see how their work resulted, giving time for Google to pick up the links and change SERPS. Regular Results Checks Regularly during the trial period and again today, I have checked each website with a number of tools and recorded the results. These tools included Google Webmaster Tools, Firefox with SEO quake, Market Samurai, and Free Monitor for Google. I used a variety of tools as they all give slightly different results and this would be more fair. I checked SERPS results for each keyword, I checked the number of links being built, and I checked each of the links themselves to assess their quality. I probably ended up doing more work that you guys, because I did this each week for each site, during the trial It's not easy to assess the results of this SEO work, and so my assessment has been as objective as possible. I have assessed the effectiveness of the work, based purely on the results delivered. Quite what and how the various SEO'ers have done their work I cannot comment on. Only the results. So please do not flame me because you worked really hard and I did not seem to appreciate the work for some reason. This is a commercial trial, and it's the results that count. SEO Techniques There were quite a variety of techniques used. It is interesting to see which were most effective. Least effective were Link Wheels when used in isolation. Most effective was a combination of link types such as Sig links, articles, blogs and directories. Not many of the links were relevant though. i.e. from relevant sites. Attitude and Communication Attitude and communication varied considerably. Such as "I'm not getting paid enough to do this" (So why participate?) Most sent a report after the initial work was completed. Some seemed to ask me to do too much in the early phases, like write a press release, write an article etc, whilst others did this themselves (and quite well). I think English Language ability was an issue here. Reputation/Professionalism Most participants had a good reputation here on DP and acted professionally during the trial. Though I suspect one participant, based on his posts on DP, actually outsources the work.. The Results OK, the results. I will not identify the websites involved or the names of the SEO'ers except for the name of the winner. But the results varied considerably! In fact I wonder if a couple of the SEO'ers actually did anything at all. The worst results indicate 1 link only and the best SERPS ranking from 30+. (Excludes primary keyword - Given that all of the sites had their primary keyword in the domain name, they already ranked top 3 for that keyword and the SEO'ers knew that at the start) The real challenge was to rank the other keywords for the site. The best results indicate a good number and variety of links 30-40, and a SERPS ranking ranging from 1-20 for all keywords for a site that had easier keywords (1 keyword was in all the long tail keywords and the url) to another good result that had 1-100 SERPS for a site that had more generic keywords. Apart from these 2, the other results were lagging behind a bit. None of the results were quite as good as I expected. Perhaps I expected too much. But two SEO'ers stood out from the rest. If you recall, the winner/s selection was to be based on a range of criteria, such as: Success at boosting the SERPS ranking of the keywords provided on the website provided. A professional approach and attitude to the work. That they are easy to deal with. They are pro active in offering solutions, not just coming to me with questions and requests for information that they should be able to provide themselves. That they can communicate effectively and in English. A good track record of posts and feedback here on DP. An innovative approach to their work. An approach that does not rely too much on one particular method. So I would like to announce two joint winners. These are: Blog4Fun and DexSmart. So I will be discussing with these guys the potential for a longer term relationship. Either one of them, both of them, or neither. We'll see what we can work out. As they say in the small print of competitions, the judges decision is final and no further discussion will be entered into. If you think the selection was unfair, I am sorry. But I have judged the outcome based on the 8 criteria listed above as objectively as I can and also the potential 'fit' for a longer term relationship. These 2 guys delivered a better overall outcome. So well done to DexSmart and Blog4Fun Note, there were two credible runners up as well. If it is OK withthem, I will mention their names too. I will PM them shortly.
Our 2 winners have now been given additional projects on some of our main websites. Hopefully this will be the start of a long term relationship.