Hi, I'm totally new to SEO and heard it has a 6 month learning curve. I'm a busy person and don't have time or patients to learn all I need to know about it. I have a few questions concerning google/Yahoo. I have a site that sells "widget gifts" and want to get it in the top 5. Right now on google there doesn't seem to be many optimized sites for my specific niche. The closest competition is a couple sites for "everything gifts" and the rest are amature crap. Some of the sites that show up in the search have little to do with the exact keyword "widget gifts". That being said, How much could I expect to pay someone to get me listed in the top 5 for my keyword "widget gift"? I've heard of the google sandbox and how sites get stuck waiting to be listed for 6 months. I'm not familiar with it. How do the SEO companies get past this when they guarantee top 10 placement? My site will have a catalog of products with short product descriptions. Not many articles just a store basically. It has no back links either yet. Do I need back links to get listed in the top 5 or does the SEO company do this if needed? Also what happends when google re-indexes and I get bumped from my position? Do I have to pay the company again to get listed? How long does it take to get listed? Sorry for all the questions, Thanks for your coments...
You would normally work a contract out with the company for a period of a year or so. Are you actually going for the phrase "Widget gifts"? For SEO, be prepared to pay anywhere between $500 and $50,000.
No, I'm not selling anything to do with widgets LOL. WOW, upwards of $50K for 1 year? I was thinking $500. My keyword "widget gift" doesn't have much optimized competition! I would think it would be eaiser and cheaper to get a high ranking?
If you don't know SEO how you know there's no optimized competition. I would be wary of SEO that guarantee top 5, top 10 etc. You could post your site here and ask for quotes or some of us might be willing to discuss it by PM.
You pay for what you get I guess... There are plenty of people on here that could do you some good work for $500 bucks though... My suggestions would be to get some directory submissions done ($50-$100) Get your site template tweaked ($100-$500) Get your meta et all sorted... ($100-X - depends on how many pages you need doing) Set up a semi-automated link exchange page on your site... (Free - there are scripts for this kind of thing). Best of luck!
First, there is no way to even begin to answer your question without the exact keyword you want to be ranked for. One keyword can be 100X harder to rank for than another. The google sandbox doesn't affect all keywords, and I have never seen it last more than 3 months. I believe people who say six months are not really in the sandbox but may not be ranking for a number of other reasons. There is no secret way to avoid the sandbox. If you site is less than 3 months old and you have a keyword that google sandbox's, then no professional can get around it imo. You can pay for traffic or go after Yahoo or MSN traffic. There is no way to guarantee a top 10 placement - unless it is for some keyword phrase that has no competition - or they use some black hat SEO that can get you banned from google. I would assume you have to pay more if you fall out of the top 5. When google makes changes, why should they do more work for free? Yes, you will need backlinks. You can do this yourself or pay someone to do it for you. How long will vary. If you are starting from scratch, I would think a minimum of 2-3 months. Again, it all depends on your exact keyword. You can probably expect to pay $1,000 to $50,000. Some companies budget over $100K a year for extremely competive keywords.
The reason I don't think there are many sites optimized for keyword "**** gifts" is because when I run the search it comes up with crap not thats not exactly for "**** gifts" if I was searching for "**** gifts" I don't want to see a bunch of sites that sell "any gifts". Thats my logic behind saying that.
welcome! sounds pretty easy to compete with. The sandbox may not even apply to you as it sounds as if it's not so competitive - the phrase you want to compete on. They don't get past it. The sandbox either effects a search result or it doesn't. Be wary of these guarantee's either the phrase is piss easy to compete on that they can absolutely guarantee it, or they are claiming they can wave the magic wand (which they are probably tugging), or it's a case of sure - we will get you top 5, you just need to pay the big bucks to put the money behind a very serious link building campaign. Yes, you will need back links. Depending on the company they will do it for you - for a fee. Depending on the competition you will need between 1 back link and 100,000,000 back links. Probably closer to 1 back link. Once listed you typically remain listed. It's just your site may go up or down in the rankings for a search in different search results in different search engines (e.g. Google, yahoo, msn). What you would pay the seo company for would be outputs e.g. an ongoing campaign to accumulate links to your site. They don't control your inclusion in the search results or ranking. Search results change daily, well, more accurately, they change from moment to moment. When a big re-organise comes along, the order sites are listed in can change very significantly. All depending on what search phrase you are chasing and what the competition is doing compared to what you are doing and what search engines decide they are going to favour in terms of seo strategies from update to update.
Scrappers, CRAP etc can be well SEO If you don't post your site and keyword none here will be able to help much
The first thing you should do is use the keyword suggestion tool to see how much traffic you can expect if you rank #1 for you keyword. A lot of people are surprised that the keyword phrase they want to be ranked might get an average of zero or one search for a day. $500 isn't very much for SEO, but it isn't worth paying $100 if you aren't going to get any traffic from a #1 ranking. I have many #1 rankings for various keyword phrases but some aren't worth paying anything for because they don't bring traffic. I know someone who concentrated on 5 keywords because he figured it would be easy to rank #1 for. He ranks #1, but gets about 5 visitors a day and almost no business. Picking the right keywords is everything. If you really don't have any competition, then try google adwords and bid 5 or 10 cents and you'll start getting traffic today.
I checked overture for my exact keyword and there are aprox 20,000 search per month. If I went with the broader keyword it would be 150k a month. When I say no real competition. I'm refering to the organic search results. But Adwords does have a few decent niche speciffic "**** gift" sites. 1 in particular would be my only direct competition. But I don't have the same line of products as them. There are apox. 20-25 ads on Adwords for "***** gifts but most are either not directly related or they have a VERY small selection of "***** gifts". My site is specialized in "**** gifts" and I think I am one of the few I have found that doesn't look like amature crap. The problem with my target keyword is that there are alot of "all-in-one gift stores" out there with small sections for "***** gifts" and thier selections kidna suck. Those sites come up when you search for my keywords. Because of the keyword "gifts" alone. Also there is a similar word that is related to my keyword but for the general overall "****** occasion gifts"
Optimizing and Ranking(consistantly and safely) for "-anything- Gifts" is going to cost you. Unless the -anything- term is specific, uncomepetitive and unique IE "-branded term- Gifts", or "-unpopular geo specific term- Gifts" For $500 I can get you on MSN - Hah (j/k you can manage that for free) Seriously though - to rank on Google for "-anything- Gifts" is likely to take contiued work not just a one time optimization, so if you really want to rank, and stay up there, look at a little more $$, or learning enough to tweak and maintain your sites SEO - this community can keep you 'in the know'
your keyword is harder to SEO than you think: 1) 20,000 searches a month 2) 25 ads on overture 3) gift - good palce to make money online. prepared $2k - $5k for SEO, or go PPC.
if it's niche and not competitve. the keyword is the money. If you have a well-established site, you can put a page and to rank top 5 in 48 hours on Google.
If you thought you had a good site, would you tell the webmaster world your keywod if you thought there was no competition? C'mon man... this business is cut throat! Thanks for all the great posts.. You guys are an assest!