Are SEO services worth it?

sunama

sunama

sunama

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I am going to be setting up a website, as part of a business. The website is not the main focus of the business, however, it shall be used to allow customers to check what services we offer and what we are about.

Now, I've read about SEO services and how companies can help ensure your company gets a high rank.

Q1. Are these companies for real? I mean, there is one campany that offers a money back guarantee, if you website doesnt get a top10 listing in Google.
Q2. How do these companies work - is it usually a one-off charge, for a one-off optimisation or do they charge on a monthly basis, optimising your website, when your website begins to drop down the search engine ranking?
Q3. What are you opinions of SEO services? Does anyone have any advice on how to select companies offering SEO services?

Any opinions are welcome.

Thanks.
 
You pay for them to optimise your website.

As google's searching changes (due to development) and due to the flux of other companies doing the same then this becomes a continuous requirement as it changes second to second, month to month.

For those that offer a money back guarantee, then you're probably looking at a business model that plans to lock you to them for X months, they probably have a either a sliding scale such as top 250, 200, ..., 50, 20, 10 at which points you pay. Now they may get you into the top ten for 10 seconds for the year but contractually they've fulfilled their side thus you pay..

Just get an set of pricings, then ask - how do they make their money? It should be pretty straightforward.
 
It's actually quite easy to get your site at the top of Google Search Results. I spent 4 months (or so) working on a church site and managed to get them to number one. All I had to do was put the relevant meta data on the website pages and submit the URL to Google every day.
 
citycm said:
It's actually quite easy to get your site at the top of Google Search Results. I spent 4 months (or so) working on a church site and managed to get them to number one. All I had to do was put the relevant meta data on the website pages and submit the URL to Google every day.
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If that's ALL you did, then believe me, there's a LOT more to SEO than that. And if you mean they were ranked top for the name of the church, well then that's why it was so easy. If however you're talking about being in the top 10 for a very common term - such as "web design" - then your work is going to be a lot harder.

To answer the OP, yes, some are worth it, but like any other service or product, some are not. Look for testimonials or working examples and don't trust anyone who says "we can get you into the top 10" before they've even looked at your target keywords or website. Also, find a service that works for you and your business.
 
Right. I'm getting mixed messages here gents.

Some of you are saying it could be worth it. Others are suggesting that all you need is a good website with good content.

I'm getting confused here.

I shall find out the pricing and check if it is worth it. The company I have in mind have posted examples of the websites they currently do SEO for (and guarantee top10 results). I run the key words through google and they weren't lying - top10 rankings in every case.
 
sunama said:
Right. I'm getting mixed messages here gents.

Some of you are saying it could be worth it. Others are suggesting that all you need is a good website with good content.

I'm getting confused here.
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YOu need both.

A well designed, well coded and keyword rich (E.g. all the on site stuff you do) site is just the start and essentially forms the basis for any further seo. Further to this, you should have content that people want to read, that is updated regularly.

A good seo company will do you an initial anlaysis of your site and tell you exactly what they'll be doing for their money. They shoudl aslo give you regular reports to prove their activities are actually working. Also, make sure they won't be using doing any black hat seo - while this may give you an initial climb in the serps, google will eventually realise what's going on ban your site - if its a business site the implications are big.

However, the proof is always in the pudding and you should see examples of sites they've optimised.
 
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sunama said:
Right. I'm getting mixed messages here gents.

Some of you are saying it could be worth it. Others are suggesting that all you need is a good website with good content.

I'm getting confused here.

I shall find out the pricing and check if it is worth it. The company I have in mind have posted examples of the websites they currently do SEO for (and guarantee top10 results). I run the key words through google and they weren't lying - top10 rankings in every case.
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depends what the keyword are really. If they are common, competitive terms then yes. I found its fairly easy to get a good ranking using local and long tail keywords.
 
Russinating said:
If that's ALL you did, then believe me, there's a LOT more to SEO than that. And if you mean they were ranked top for the name of the church, well then that's why it was so easy. If however you're talking about being in the top 10 for a very common term - such as "web design" - then your work is going to be a lot harder.
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Actually, I got them to number 1 when 'googling' church (followed by the city where the church is located) as well as a couple of other terms.
 
From other posts, you've determined that your startup business only needs a cheap, basic, informative website design/implementation.

Low price appears to be a high priority. That's fair enough: you only have limited funds, after all.

This makes your SEO enquiry a bit perplexing. By asking about SEO, you're implying that you also want your site to work as a self-promotional tool. This is an extra facet to a site's core design/functionality that, as suarve and others have noted, isn't something that you can just 'bolt on'. The phrase "throwing good money after bad" springs to mind.

I'm worried that you're under the impression that all you'll have to do is put up an optimised site, sit back and wait for the inevitability of potential customers hammering at your door.

This is very unlikely to happen.

I've seen a number of startups fail because they spent so much time and effort in the presentation of their business that they neglected the core business. Heck, I've been involved in a few myself: clients have been so obsessed with having a knock-'em-dead online presence that they spend weeks and months fussing over minor presentational details to the detriment of the very thing that generates revenue.

Always remember that people will overlook crappy presentation if what you're offering is valuable to them. I need only point you in the direction of Craigslist as an example. Or hey - early OcUK sites!

So my advice would be: Put up a basic website that supports your business' informational needs, forget about SEO until you can see that your business needs a more serious site design/implementation, and concentrate on providing a better service. :)
 
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simisker said:
So my advice would be: Put up a basic website that supports your business' informational needs, forget about SEO until you can see that your business needs a more serious site design/implementation, and concentrate on providing a better service. :)
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This is exactly my plan, however, my peronality is such that I like to know a little about everything, so that in the future perhaps I may be able to use that knowledge somehow.

Furthermore, the reason why I'm looking so deeply into web design now is because once the company launches, I will be busy doing other things and will have little time to worry about the website.

What I hate doing is starting a project and then getting caught out because I didn't do enough research. In a startup company, this invariably costs you time, money and possibly sales.
 
sunama said:
Furthermore, the reason why I'm looking so deeply into web design now is because once the company launches, I will be busy doing other things and will have little time to worry about the website.
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That's the thing I think you're overlooking here - SEO is an ongoing thing. You don't just press the 'big seo button' during the web dev stage and leave it. You need to continually be doing things such as tweaking your content based on current user searches. For example, last week I tweaked some of the main keywords for a fancy dress e-commerce store I made a few months ago, to incorporate terms such 'halloween fancy dress' - obv., as halloween is fast appraoching.
 
So, as I understand it, SEO is an on-going thing. The company that promises top10 google results, will obviously want to be placed on a contract.

At this point though, as we are a startup, we simply don't have the funds to outsource websites development to highly paid companies. It really is as simple as that. If we do this, we will be spending more money than we make and will go bust. The first 3 months of my business plan relies heavily on not making a loss and to this end, I shan't be spending money unless it is absolutely required (eg. paying someone to build a company website).
 
citycm said:
It's actually quite easy to get your site at the top of Google Search Results. I spent 4 months (or so) working on a church site and managed to get them to number one. All I had to do was put the relevant meta data on the website pages and submit the URL to Google every day.
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You are joking right? There is zero need to submit your site to Google - it makes no difference. If it's got links then it will be found through those links - heck if you've got Analytics on it then Google will know about it. Google will not crawl it again just because you've resubmitted for the millionth time. There is just no logic in submitting every day.

In regards to meta tags, when exactly was this? Google has not used meta tags for ranking purposes for years - and yes they've gone on record and admitted this. Meta description is useful for increasing click-through rate, but meta keyword is useless for Google.

I'd strongly suggest staying away from any company that guarantees certain listings. In the end of the day you can't force Google to do anything. The better companies will set targets and target dates, but will explain to you that rankings don't matter nearly as much as traffic - and if you're getting tons of traffic through long-tail keywords you shouldn't worry too much about exact rankings. This is especially true considering that if you look at Google results in Guildford, for example, and then look at them in Manchester you will get different results as Google geo-locates results even if you don't add a location specific keyword to your search.

SEO is an on-going service. If it's not producing visible increases in traffic over a six month period then ditch it. What I say to people is that if it's not more than paying for itself then you should stop. As an example of what it can achieve, this year I've taken a solicitors that's been on-line for a good four years and doubled their business. They have far more than double the traffic to their site, but what's important to them is business through the door - and they've had to taken on a load of new staff because of the doubling of their business whilst their competitors are downsizing :D

When looking for an SEO ask them what they plan to do and how. If they refuse to go in to it and treat it like its some magical secret then they're not right for you. There's nothing secret about SEO - so they should talk openly about how they link build, how they monitor traffic and do their keyword research - and usually a shopping list of changes they want to make to your site right now.

If you're wanting to go it alone and not hire an SEO then the best advice I can give you is to get involved in social media - have a page on all the major players. When doing so make sure to have fresh content - on your site and the social media that you're interacting with. Turn yourself in to an industry expert rather than a salesman - that will get you the links and the content you need to rank highly in the SERPS.
 
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fini said:
If you're wanting to go it alone and not hire an SEO then the best advice I can give you is to get involved in social media - have a page on all the major players. When doing so make sure to have fresh content - on your site and the social media that you're interacting with. Turn yourself in to an industry expert rather than a salesman - that will get you the links and the content you need to rank highly in the SERPS.
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So hang on, are you saying that I should actually give links to other companies/competitors on my own website? Surely, this would be the equivalent of advertising other companies on my own website...surely this would be crazy?
 
No, sorry to be unclear. When I referred to 'all the major players' I meant within social media (twitter, facebook, linkedin etc). I.e. you should have a page for your company on each of the major social media sites.
 
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