SEO in 2024 - is it all just onsite now?

unwashed potato!

unwashed potato!

unwashed potato!

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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.
 
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.

developers.google.com

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 developers.google.com

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

developers.google.com

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 developers.google.com

If you want to promote the site, I'd expect the money would be better paying for Google Ads.
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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?
 
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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
 
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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.
 
Temujin said:
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
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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.
 
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.
 
LePhuronn said:
Having actual keywords populated in your meta tag will be a big help.
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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.
 
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visibleman said:
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.
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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.
 
Genaroa said:
I’ve noticed good content alone doesn’t cut it now — I had to work more on internal linking and improving site speed before seeing any decent movement in search rankings lately.
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But surely there's only so much that can be done for this. Like once you have decent speed, and so does your competitors, how does Google decide to put one above the other
 
SEO (onsite) is worth it once you've picked up all the other low hanging fruit. We tend to not go for retainer contracts but instead will have periodic audits. These cover the gamut of content optimisation for target search terms (and the SEOs have great tools like conductor / semrush etc), to page speed and content organisation.

Offsite stuff is so hit and miss that you end up hitting paydirt then a core update comes out and you're either back to where you started or worse. I think in the age of AI anyway it's better to focus on having good content and be an authority in your space and google will infer that from things like parsing authorship and there's at least if not more value there than many low quality inbound links.
 
update on this. been with a new firm for almost 2 months now, at a cost of approx £500 p/m. i have the same issue i always have at this point, which is, wtf am i paying them for going forward.

this is their latest brief given but i just struggle to see any reason to be paying this £500 p/m for this little of work, especially as once it's had it's initial improvements and tweeks done, there's really f all that gets changed. ok we can change a few pages meta data one month, and then again tweek it a few months later. but £500 each month for this?

here's their brief any way

Monthly Report
Your monthly report is due soon, and once it becomes readily available, I will send that over and review it. If you'd like, we can have a catchup call to discuss, and create a plan of action.

Website Critique
We will be conducting a comprehensive website critique aimed at identifying opportunities to improve the overall user experience and increase the likelihood that visitors will take action.

Schema/Data Highlighter
We will be tagging the website using Google Data Highlighter Tool. The Data Highlighter is a Webmaster tool which is used for teaching Google about the pattern of structured data on your website. We will tag the data fields on your site so Google can present your information more attractively (and in new ways) in the search results and in other Google products, such as the Google Knowledge Graph (the table of data that appears on the right when you search for a business by name).

Additional Metadata
We will be reviewing your website page by page, writing additional meta titles and descriptions for any pages where these have not yet been completed. As part of this process, we’ll ensure that relevant target keywords are strategically included to support SEO performance and improve visibility in search engine results.

Target Page Improvement
I will conduct an in-depth review of your landing pages to ensure that keywords are being used effectively and consistently. As part of this process, I’ll complete a comprehensive audit to identify areas for improvement, helping to enhance both SEO performance and user engagement.

Health Check
We carry out regular health checks and closely monitor your website's performance, as this plays a significant role in your overall SEO. If we identify any issues such as speed or technical errors, we’ll notify you as soon as possible. Site speed in particular is a key ranking factor, so it’s essential that we stay proactive in addressing any problems that could impact your visibility or user experience.

Article/Content writing
We create original, keyword-rich articles tailored to your industry and target audience. These are sent to you directly, for you to upload to your website to support your SEO campaign, strengthen topical relevance, and help improve your rankings in search engine results. The articles we write will also include carefully placed internal links, helping to strengthen your site’s internal linking structure. This not only improves navigation for users but also supports SEO by distributing link equity across key pages naturally.

Backlink Profiling – Each month, we monitor your website’s backlink profile to ensure it remains healthy and beneficial to your SEO. If any new toxic or potentially harmful backlinks are detected, they will be flagged in our system and submitted for disavowal to prevent any negative impact on your search rankings.

Sitemap Optimisation – Whenever updates are made to your website, we ensure your sitemap is kept up to date and resubmitted through Google Search Console. This helps search engines access and index the most recent version of your site, improving visibility and supporting ongoing SEO efforts. We also regularly check Google Search Console for any issues affecting specific pages, such as indexing errors, mobile usability problems, or crawl issues, ensuring they’re promptly addressed to maintain your site’s SEO health.
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checking for bad backlinks, not a thing to worry about really.

updating the sitemap. big whoop. for articles wordpress can do this automatically, and the main site doens't get new pages often that this isa big deal, and i can update a sitemap.

metadata. surely once improved, this isn't an on-going tasks.

article writing, ai does this perfectly fine for the seo improvements. what they write is just junk any way and written entirely for seo and not something a user would actually read.
 
unwashed potato! said:
this is their latest brief given but i just struggle to see any reason to be paying this £500 p/m for this little of work...
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What you deem as "little work" is your opinion but given what the typical SEO agencies charge around here, i would say that's a pretty fair cost considering what they're doing.

unwashed potato! said:
checking for bad backlinks, not a thing to worry about really.
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If you deploy backlinking as part of SEO/marketing strategy then bad, or "toxic", backlinking can possibly cause issues with ranking - it's usually lumped in with the term 'negative SEO', pretty contested subject but worth a read around.
But i would add that a lot of the issues around backlinking usually stems from shady practices in the first place.

unwashed potato! said:
updating the sitemap. big whoop. for articles wordpress can do this automatically, and the main site doens't get new pages often that this isa big deal, and i can update a sitemap.
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True although Wordpress and some of the SEO plugins like Yoast can cause you more hassle with sitemaps, especially on the larger sites.

unwashed potato! said:
metadata. surely once improved, this isn't an on-going tasks.
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Metadata is usually tweaked to help with ranking and honing the target audience. Arguably i would want to see some evidence of the monthly changes and how these are having a positive effect on traffic as i personally think that's a bit too regular but, it's certainly not a one-and-done task.

unwashed potato! said:
article writing, ai does this perfectly fine for the seo improvements.
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If they're using actual copywriters then that's great and the cost is worth that alone.
If it's AI content they're producing, then i would want to them to demonstrate or offer up some evidence of them not simply generating 'AI slop' but rather crafted content specific to your site/content/industry and that it's actually helping with driving traffic/SEO.
At the moment, Google doesn't care whose generating the content but they have guidelines (https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content) and it's possible 'slop' could have a negative impact - plenty of discussions around on this.

unwashed potato! said:
what they write is just junk any way and written entirely for seo and not something a user would actually read.
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99% of time, these blog sections to company and service websites are purely for SEO, nothing more. Let's be honest, the only "user" reading your article on cleaning and mental health is a bot :cry:

At the end of it all, i guess only you as a business owner can determine if this is worth cost and whether it's translating but poo-pooing it all because you've got the faintest of ideas is a bit silly.
It's the typical small business owner mindset that they've spent X on SEO so it should be generating them Y sales when it reality, it's no different to marketing and them spending a few grand on a billboard or a newspaper advert for a week or two - if you're really, really lucky then you might cover your costs.
 
visibleman said:
It's the typical small business owner mindset that they've spent X on SEO so it should be generating them Y sales when it reality, it's no different to marketing and them spending a few grand on a billboard or a newspaper advert for a week or two - if you're really, really lucky then you might cover your costs
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I disagree. The issue I find is that I know more than most in my field about SEO and see the list above as being tiny work and something very easily done.

The meta data is something that fair enough in one month, maybe 2, we tweak some stuff and change the titles, the description on some pages.

The same with checking any negative back links now.

But in 4 months what am I paying for then?

For them to tell me yep, still no new negative back links.

The reports they make are all automated and almost entirely what Google analytics gives them, so they are just reading me the analytics information once per month to see how things have changed.

Lets say they see after 2 months one of our pages isn't moving up in the ranks. And their advice is change the meta title to add 2 new keywords and the description too.

Is that all?

And it seems this is what all SEO companies do these days which is why I struggle to stay with any for any length of time.

Maybe what I'm after is a social media marketing firm to better promote the site and services we do
 
You would be better off focusing your efforts on all round marketing, e.g. Google Local listings, are your photos good, Trustpilot, local radio, local billboards, you know the myriad ways to market local businesses.

Once you've got the initial basics of SEO right in a site, I don't think continually "tweaking" will make much difference. After you've done a basic site check, there's not much further gain. I don't really regard it as particularly effective, unless they can get you literally top for your most important keywords, which they rarely can.

There are better forms of marketing, e.g. local radio, YouTube, PPC which will give you better ROI.
 
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