SEO is vexing me....

rosstheboss

Retrobike Rider
Is SEO just a tarted up version of google adwords? It seems very expensive to me!

What other factors can you change to influence the ranking of a site, other than text in the website itself and search terms?

Is it a lot more complicated than I imagine it to be or are the IT crowd taking us for a ride!?!?

We are only a small company (There's four of us!), and the amounts these companies are asking seem a lot - a couple of hundred pounds a month, which is quite a dent into the company purse as you could imagine.

All comments welcome!!!
 
Alot of SEO is based on links pointing towards your website. Basically the way that Google for example ranks sites is determined by the results of web crawls by it's googlebots.

These automated programs follow the internal and external links on a website. More links to a website is interpreted by googlebots as being a more relevant and important site. This is then reflected in the search engine positioning.

There's also stuff like AdWords whereby you are paying to position your site higher up the search engine placing.

Alot of SEO companies will have lots of well established sites which link to each other multiple times. This creates a big result in terms of a googlebot crawl.
By paying for their services you will be paying for your site to be included in that network. They will also likely use AdWords or similar too in the interim, as it normally takes about six weeks for site results to fully propagate through and appear in the rankings.

It's also very important to have good meta tags and keywords, as well as relevant text on the main site pages. These all allow google to refernce the site in terms of relevance when somebody searches.
 
rosstheboss":nx43x6qx said:
Is SEO just a tarted up version of google adwords? It seems very expensive to me!

What other factors can you change to influence the ranking of a site, other than text in the website itself and search terms?

Is it a lot more complicated than I imagine it to be or are the IT crowd taking us for a ride!?!?

We are only a small company (There's four of us!), and the amounts these companies are asking seem a lot - a couple of hundred pounds a month, which is quite a dent into the company purse as you could imagine.

All comments welcome!!!


Think wikipedia as ever give a good synopsis on SEO (or Search Engine Optimisation) > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization. It is far more than 'a tarted up version of adwords'.

A few books around on the subject, might be worth picking one up and having a read to at least get a better overview on the subject if you plan of spending cold hard cash on getting someone in. I read this one which whilst not as exciting as 'The Hunt for Red October' gives a good overview on the subject. One thing I did take from the book which holds true from my own experience is that search engines are geared to recognise good, solid, original content. SEO can help improve your ranking by presenting any content in an optimal way but ultimately there are no shortcuts.

Value is very subjective. If you think you might get a lot of extra business through people finding the site through search then perhaps it is worth considering.
 
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SEO is in the long term well worth the money

A close friend of mine did the SEO on the website for the bike shop I work for

We rank higher in Google than the bike companies that we stock

Money well spent.

www.artsgraphica.com is his company
 
Thread resurrection!

Another question - how do you find out you're not getting completely shafted by said SEO company?
 
rosstheboss":2jf8uabe said:
Thread resurrection!

Another question - how do you find out you're not getting completely shafted by said SEO company?
Type your company name into Google?
 
Your own company name isn't much of a test. Google for whatever it is that your company does and see how you do :)
 
Are you sure SEO is the most effective way to spend your marketing budget?

Where does the bulk of you new business come from? I have seen a few companies spend significant amounts of money on website redesigns and SEO and gain very little new business from it.

Its important to have an online presence but could you money be better spent else where?

Just a thought...
 
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