Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I see a role for SEO firms -- they can really help tiny companies clean up codes, design compliant pages, and meet the basic standards of a search engine (though you can achieve same results by hiring a teenager these days who is taking an HTML class at the local high school).
Any other promises are very risky because they are designed to manipulate the search results.
Seriously, PPC placement can be guaranteed if you have the money. So no worries there (added - about legitimacy).
On the organic side there is a LOT you can do beyond your own site. You do have to make sure that your site is properly (and not over) optimised first, but in many markets you HAVE to get links to compete.
But - and this is important - how you go about getting them will determine
(a) whether they work at all
(b) whether they have any longevity
I too would be very wary of some 'hot-shot' who has tips and tricks up their sleeve. If they're so damn good, are they rich? Ask them to show you what they've done, that it works and how they did it. Then you can get advice on whether or not it is risky. What will they do to your site? What will they do to get links?
Ask them to show you what they've done, that it works and how they did it.
Better yet, ask for a guarantee in writing and a performance bond.
If these companies are approaching you, odds are they are approaching your competition as well. It's generally not the best idea to get involved with an SEO company that is working for your competitors.
there are no gurantees on Google correct
There are no guarantees. Some SEO's will provide guarantees - but it's important to recognize that they're not guaranteeing ranking, they're guaranteeing money back if they don't get rankings. Important difference. If they're going to guarantee top rankings, make sure it's clearly defined:
- the specific search terms to rank on
- the timeframe to get those rankings
- the penalties/money back if the rankings on those search terms are not achieved in the specified timeframe.
If they're just 'guaranteeing' serp positioning, they're a bunch of cowboys.
As for the discrepancy between SEO and SEM, anyone here will tell you that if you get 1 visitor for a top SEO spot and 1 visitor for the top PPC spot, then you'll get 3 visitors for having both. They're complimentary (and that's not just them saying 'hey! have you lost weight?). Seems like the SEM guy isn't even aware of that which would cause me concern.
That, and from your two sentence description it doesn't sound like this company is up on long tail stuff either. That'd worry me on either the SEO or SEM front.
not heard the term over-optimized? but I have been pitched some programs that will not change your website but give a landing page, would this be helpful in natural search or a case over "over-optimizing"?
Over-optimizing means keyword stuffing, too many links, too narrow a 'theme' i.e. not natural enough text around your keywords. Threads on this forum about the -950 penalty or other 'dings' that pages or sites get are concerned with this.
Landing page *generators* are definitely to be avoided in my view. Leaving aside any possible penalties they might or might not incur, the real issue is that no program is going to write a better page relevant to your business than a human.
You can use separate landing pages for your PPC ads if you want (they're not going to get you in trouble with Google), but bear in mind that they also need to be optimised to a certain extent to pass Google's 'quality guidelines' for AdWords and that they need to be blocked from spidering if they are similar to your organic landing pages.
I personally use the same pages for PPC and organic, with the 'sell sell' stuff at the top and more information further down the page. Imagine the page split into two halves with all you need to know in a hurry in the top half and extra information for interest (and to target extra search terms) in the bottom half.
I would ask to see sites the SEO firm has worked on that are resulting in high rankings -- and then look at the code and text on the pages and particularly look for spammy links, keyword stuffed alt tags or hidden text and other dishonest means of attaining high rank.
