SEO in 2024 - is it all just onsite now?

[unwashed potato!]

i ask because i am once again looking for another SEO company for our website, and every single one seems to just want to do onsite work and absolutely nothing off site. back 15 years ago it was all back links, off site stuff, and making sure on the on site basics are there (h1 tags, keywords etc).

i'm getting quotes around £400-£600 per month, all reasonable, but i don't then get what the ongoing cost is. once they decide on a different title they want for the key pages, sort out the density of the key word etc, what am i then paying them £600 per month to do, given it's all just on site? it's not like in the past i could say "ok i can see this month they have gained us 20 new back links, shared our articles on these sites etc", now it just seems like "ok i can see they updated 3 pages titles last month, and nothing this month".

they all say it's the minut details and small changes that they try and figure out what works best and gets the best results, but also that seo is a task that can take 6 months before you see improvements. so in theory within a year, they may change the titles and text twice.

doesn't make sense to me.

especially when i consider our site to be mostly pretty decent with on site stuff already.

also sorry in advance to the mods for the posts in the future that they will have to delete due to spam accounts.

 

[Bug One]

IMO SEO is a big con.

Perhaps paying for a consultant to make recommendations to your site may be worth it. But realistically, all you really need to do is follow Google's SEO guide.

SEO Starter Guide: The Basics | Google Search Central | Documentation | Google for Developers

A knowledge of basic SEO can have a noticeable impact. Explore the Google SEO starter guide for an overview of search engine optimization essentials.

developers.google.com

If you want to promote the site, I'd expect the money would be better paying for Google Ads.

 

[unwashed potato!]

I'd expect the money would be better paying for Google Ads.

trouble is it's just so expensive now so very poor results. £340 in 2 weeks for not one booking. and the average booking is less than £300 any way. ppc prices seem to be through the roof lately.

 

[superleeds27]

trouble is it's just so expensive now so very poor results. £340 in 2 weeks for not one booking. and the average booking is less than £300 any way. ppc prices seem to be through the roof lately.

What about social ads, FB, Insta etc?

Speciality sites and directories

 

[superleeds27]

IMO SEO is a big con.

Perhaps paying for a consultant to make recommendations to your site may be worth it. But realistically, all you really need to do is follow Google's SEO guide.

SEO Starter Guide: The Basics | Google Search Central | Documentation | Google for Developers

A knowledge of basic SEO can have a noticeable impact. Explore the Google SEO starter guide for an overview of search engine optimization essentials.

developers.google.com

If you want to promote the site, I'd expect the money would be better paying for Google Ads.

Would have to agree and I'm someone who works in and around that industry!

One off payments for a site optimization, is fine. As long as they can show what they've done and the stuff they're changing is relevant (PageSpeed web dev)

Ongoing is just no longer needed I don't think. Unless they're adding new content/posts/blogs etc and that's generating traffic?

 

[Temujin]

What sort of industry is it? Is there an ability to trial sponsoring influencers or rather content creators in your circle? Entirely depends on the product and whatnot I guess hah

 

[unwashed potato!]

What sort of industry is it? Is there an ability to trial sponsoring influencers or rather content creators in your circle? Entirely depends on the product and whatnot I guess hah

Cleaning

Mayer Cleaning | Professional Cleaner | Professional Cleaning Services

www.mayercleaning.co.uk

It's difficult as I need to improve our ranking as we have dropped, but unsure where to turn at this point as seo feels so wasted.

 

[Temujin]

Unsure. I know basically nothing about SEO but I guess realistically it's not something that's marketable to content creators or anything like that.
If your social media presence is lacking I guess could be good to concentrate on that? But again, I'm generally talking out of my bum at this point.

 

[alex24]

What sort of industry is it? Is there an ability to trial sponsoring influencers or rather content creators in your circle? Entirely depends on the product and whatnot I guess hah

Definitely an opportunity for some ASMR style YouTube vids of the team tackling some tough stains. I’ve seen weirder.

Sorry I’m not an SEO expert but I do work on websites and have suspected beyond the basics it must be a bit of BS. I mean if you implement what Google suggests then that must be decent. Look at what the higher ranked competitors are doing.

 

[LePhuronn]

Having actual keywords populated in your meta tag will be a big help. None of your pages have it. Also, the description meta content shouldn't just be a copy of a paragraph in your body text.

I'd be inclined to go through everything in Google's SEO doc first and make sure your site is up to code (no pun) before considering any external paid scams services.

 

[visibleman]

Having actual keywords populated in your meta tag will be a big help.

Both Google (since late 2000's) and Bing don't support the 'keywords' meta tag as part of their indexing, so it won't be of much use there unfortunately.

@unwashed potato! - Not a SEO/SEM monkey, just work with them but these are my two pennies.
As others have said though, look at Google's SEO recommendations and make sure your site is up to scratch. Your linked data ideally needs to be within either the HEAD or BODY tags, Google recommends HEAD tag; at the moment it's sitting outside of the html.
And obviously try and drive traffic via social media platforms. Get your open protocol tags sorted and then regularly throw out quality SM posts (testimonials, special offers, quick tips, random guff like staff birthdays, perhaps get a regular blog going and you can always get a content writer).
Otherwise look at PPC/SEM but it's an expensive route if you're in a competitive market.

Alternatively hire a company, get them to do the major changes and recommendations going forward and then you can always knock it on the head after a few months.

 

[LePhuronn]

Both Google (since late 2000's) and Bing don't support the 'keywords' meta tag as part of their indexing, so it won't be of much use there unfortunately.

There are other search engines and indexers besides Google and Bing. No reason not to support everything on the internet, especially with the increasing move towards browsers and services such as Brave and DuckDuckGo.