SEO companies

[iron]

I run a couple of sites that are quite lucrative, but they could earn more if thier search engine positionig was better, have any of you used an SEO company, if so how much and did they help?

[JenniP]

To be really honest, its better to start reading how to do it yourself. There is a lot of smoke and mirrors in SEO. If you do it yourself and learn how to measure it yourself at least if you do buy it in later you can gage its success (or indeed failure).

Just avoid anyone who promises #1 in any search engine, thats normally a sign of black hat SEO which could get you banned from most search engines (Especially Google).

Jen

[alicelas]

A handy program for getting started in SEO is IBP (ibusinesspromoter [dot] com).

Basically, it checks the top 10 sites on a search engine and compares them to your site, then gives you a report on how you can try and match them. It's quite good for beginners, and I highly recommend it .

[JenniP]

I use IBP as well, while it does have some good advice like anything its a blend between what the program tells you and what you feel is right.

Sometimes a hard line to walk but when it works well worth it.

Jen

[attagirl2]

I agree to stay away from anyone promising #1 positioning. I have been helping sites for more than 10 years and SEO can be tricky if you do not understand how it works, when things change and so on. Learning can save you money. Most companies charge way to much for these services and promise things and then give excuses as to why you are not listed high.

[iron]

Originally Posted by alicelas

A handy program for getting started in SEO is IBP (ibusinesspromoter [dot] com).

Basically, it checks the top 10 sites on a search engine and compares them to your site, then gives you a report on how you can try and match them. It's quite good for beginners, and I highly recommend it .

Thanks for that Aliceas, I will take a look at it, I had no idea somethig like this existed.

Jen/Attagirl thank you for your advice, it was waht I tohught I might hear as I guess its one of those jobs where its extremely hard to monitor real progress

[attagirl2]

The problem with monitoring the progress when you hire someone to do it is that you will not see immediate results thus not being able to see that you have no clue as to what has really been done. There are good people out there that can do the work for you and do not charge a whole lot but you have to know where to find them and build that trust that the work is being completed.

[djlins]

Hi there,

I am primarily a software engineer, but I did get the challenge to get paid once to test and learn all about this, and since then, I do end up helping out with others websites (Not selling myself honest heheh)

Now I tend to want to hold peoples hand through the process, show the pitfalls and the legal (non black hat) tricks for them to understand what they are doing for the long term. Plus if they go and do the legwork with the backlinks and blogdirs and wotnot then it saves them paying me top wage to do what a gimp with a limp could do.

Some early advice I can give to you is, get Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools (sitemaps and keyword search reports) set up for yourself. Seeing as Google is the main engine you are going to try and hit then you may as well use their reporting tools to steer you in the right direction.
Also ----- gives a good all rounder report on how visible you are on some of the nets important listings. (aaah cant post links yet, but its SEOMOZ google it)
A blog thats updated at least once a month with intelligent links (good anchor text) back to your site can never hurt either

Umm heheh I can run on for ages about hints, maybe I will come back to this post when you have done that if you want me to, but - oooh, also make sure your website ISNT in frames. You dont want that, that is a definite no no, and if theres flash then search engines still have trouble reading .swf files so you will want html helper text to explain what is in the flash.
I guess going for the W3 XHTML 1.1 validation and CSS validation and you will be fairly future proof.



But yeah dont pay others if you have time to learn a bit and get control of it yourself as it is a long term thing that needs more than a one off effort. I tend to get requests from the people that have spent 15K with some company that shunted them up to page 1 for 3 months and then ignored them so they went back down to page 10.

Good luck, and before you start, decide on your top keyword/keyphrase searches (the searches that paying customers would type in to find you) and do some testing on your current positions so you can repeat the test once a month and see if your methods are working or not.

[stevemichael]

We are doing seo service for our clients sites. It's a manual service which includes directory submission, link exchange and so on...