Hiring an SEO

[padre]

Need some advice....I have a proposal from an SEO who is proposing to get my website much higher in the "organic" section of Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com for certain keywords

His price is $5000 for the year with monthly reports. He proposes/does not promise to get site into the top 3 positions of about 15 keywords.

What would you recommend I do? Thanks, Padre

[JWJ]

Hello Padre, and welcome to the forum.

You will know better than we will how much revenue you might be able to make if your site is highly ranked for those keywords, so it is hard for us to judge. My personal take on this is that I would only consider the services of an SEO if I had already exhausted all I could do for myself and, if I may be blunt, it is my opinion that you can do a lot more yourself quite easily. These things take time and you may be wanting things to happen quicker than you might manage for yourself, but $5000 is a lot to pay out in the hope of getting more sales.

Some work on your site to make it more attention grabbing, fixing a few errors in your code (like missing Document Type) and working hard to build good backlinks and generally optimise for search engines and I think you can make a big difference for free. There's a lot of great help available here and I would recommend you throw 6 months at it yourself and then see whether or not the SEO guy thinks he can still do more. ;)

[EconMan]

I agree with JWJ. $5000 is a lot for an SEO with no guarantee. Besides, everytime Google does a big update it shakes everything around, so it's hard for me to believe that he can get you to the top and that you'd stay there.

Go to sites like webmasterworld.com and seochat.com and you can learn a lot about site optimization.

Could you do something else with $5000 that would be just as effective? Like a Google AdWords campaign or something?

[Sharron]

That is alot of money! I'd think long and hard and research those types of companies before I made any decision like that.

[activewebs]

Hi guys

Wohhh 5K is a lot of money for NO promise :shock: , like john says give it a punt yourself for a couple of months, get your key word and content to match, and your on a winner , BTW I would edit your post and get them key words out of there or any one with that type of search will end up here :cry:

Rich

[padre]

I appreciate all of your comments and advice...I have taken out keywords.....I am not a "techy"....am a construction CEO...Your advice is sorely needed.....keep it coming....padre

[EconMan]

I bet the forum members here could give you some tips on optimization and how to make your site better if you tell us what site you're talking about. Is it the one listed in your profile?

[padre]

Econman, yes the url is www.myuglychair.com which is listed in my profile. Thanks....suggestions welcomed!

[examish.com]

Hello Padre, and welcome to the forum.

You will know better than we will how much revenue you might be able to make if your site is highly ranked for those keywords, so it is hard for us to judge. My personal take on this is that I would only consider the services of an SEO if I had already exhausted all I could do for myself and, if I may be blunt, it is my opinion that you can do a lot more yourself quite easily. These things take time and you may be wanting things to happen quicker than you might manage for yourself, but $5000 is a lot to pay out in the hope of getting more sales.

Some work on your site to make it more attention grabbing, fixing a few errors in your code (like missing Document Type) and working hard to build good backlinks and generally optimise for search engines and I think you can make a big difference for free. There's a lot of great help available here and I would recommend you throw 6 months at it yourself and then see whether or not the SEO guy thinks he can still do more. ;)

Like try this site: convertlinks.com, they have some good ideas, and say they make xxx,xxx monthly, so check it out (NOT my site btw)

[webado]

Sure - they don't say what they do, why they do it and how they do it, but click here to downlaod stuff and fill in your email because we won't spam you .... errr... just what is that site? Does anybody have X-ray vision? I don't.

It's a spammy site if ever there was one. At best useless, at worst nasty.

[StevenQ]

A year ago, I used a SEO company to write articles for me and they said my website would rank higher in the "organic" search engines. I was very unsatisfied with the results. It was a very costly error on my part. The work they did for my cost $3000 for the year, and I barely got any results at all.

My advice to you is if you have the time a patience to learn about Search Engine Optimization on your own. You might not get results right away, but if you keep working at it I'm sure your page rankings will improve.

[examish.com]

Sure - they don't say what they do, why they do it and how they do it, but click here to downlaod stuff and fill in your email because we won't spam you .... errr... just what is that site? Does anybody have X-ray vision? I don't.

It's a spammy site if ever there was one. At best useless, at worst nasty.
they recently sold 50 memberships in 30 seconds at 800 a month, I doupt they are anyone to fear. (they own stumperblog, where they sold those memberships, and myweddingfavors.com.)BTW, They changed the site since I last visited, it had videos of how they do it last time. I just checked now.

[Cyrus255]

Don't do it!

Take the $5,000 and hire 10 CONTENT writers to do you a total of 500 pages of original content.

THAT will boost your placement more than a few tweaks. TRUST me. Google is trying to work out SEO because it allows people to manipulate rankings. Just focus on the two main factors: content and link popularity. Moreso on the content.

Content is king.

On a side note how many pages is your site? If you have a 10,000 page site than the 500 pages won't matter much, and it might be better spent on SEO, but if you have like a 150 page site (anything less than 1,000 in my opinion) and are considering spending this on SEO, don't! 500 quality content pages would do you an insane amount of good.

[examish.com]

Don't do it!

Take the $5,000 and hire 10 CONTENT writers to do you a total of 500 pages of original content.

THAT will boost your placement more than a few tweaks. TRUST me. Google is trying to work out SEO because it allows people to manipulate rankings. Just focus on the two main factors: content and link popularity. Moreso on the content.

Content is king.

On a side note how many pages is your site? If you have a 10,000 page site than the 500 pages won't matter much, and it might be better spent on SEO, but if you have like a 150 page site (anything less than 1,000 in my opinion) and are considering spending this on SEO, don't! 500 quality content pages would do you an insane amount of good.

So true, that is why sites like youtube are hot, cause they have content, and in thier case, they don't pay for that content...

The convert links guys were basicly saying instead of all those links, have relevent content. Use good ketwords to together. Wordtracker can bring out words you can use on your pages to let google know what the sites are about. If you just put fork in your page, they may thnk it is a fork in the road instead of a dinner fork. So use words about pasta too.

[Wing Chun]

Need some advice....I have a proposal from an SEO who is proposing to get my website much higher in the "organic" section of Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com for certain keywords

His price is $5000 for the year with monthly reports. He proposes/does not promise to get site into the top 3 positions of about 15 keywords.

What would you recommend I do? Thanks, Padre

I've seena lot of dodgy seo proposals on the seo forums that i chat in....

$5000 is way too much - you're out of your mind. i could probably do the same for $500.

tell me what keywords you're focussing on and i'll tell you what results can be achieved and how much should reasonably be charged for them.

[Sharron]

I was doing a bit of research the other day as a result of a question on this forum the other day. Google of course.

I found some stuff that is out there for anyone to find. Of course all advise, suggestions, spouts of positive results and so forth are subjective and must be taken with much deliberation and thought. I'd not take anyones word without thinking seriously about it.

I didn't spend much time on it, but did find a few forums where some persons had listed long lists of directories for SE, some paid and some free.

It was suggested that linking with a site of higher page rank was helpful, but since things are changing with SE, not the sole answer.

Content like others have said, using your keywords in your content, using titles and alt tags with images, page titles and page description play a hugh part. It also depends of what your site is about. Are you selling merchandise, articles, services?

I don't know how those particular sites consistantly turn up in top spots for certain keywords, but I guarantee they don't always deserve that position.

I won't post the page of links to directories I found with page ranks of 5 or higher. But they do exist and you can find them. This is just one search term search I did. (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2006-08,GGLG:en&q=forums+with+high+page+rank) I didn't go into the results any further then a couple of pages.

And as I said, take any advise with a grain of salt.

[Wing Chun]

SEO is all about gaining backlinks and stuffing keywords in page titles, headings and content. Simple.

My site has a list of the highest PR webmaster forums if you need it for whatever reason. My site also has a good article about web marketing which u may find more helpful :razz: