[Closed] So, any web SEO 'experts' on here?

Basically they are all trying to game Google's ranking algorithm. That changes/gets tweeked on a regular basis to try and prevent such tactics.

You'd be as well looking at Google's own documentation about best practices and getting your web developers to follow those. A lot depends not just on what's on your site but how many times it gets linked to for whatever term or terms.

Send us a message, I may be able to help @mos.

Worth signing up for the Google Search Console. It will show you what Google thinks of your site, and if there's any problems.
https://search.google.com/search-console/about

Don't let Yell near your website - they ruined one of our previous clients ranking because they tried a load of black hat techniques which google subsequently punished the site for.

If there are any SEO experts on here, you might be getting off to a bad start calling them 'experts' 😀

FWIW, mskenneththecurtain does SEO as part of her job, and she has mentioned to me that Yell are useless - she has had similar experiences to what smokey_jo up there said.

edit: I'm getting a small box instead of a text smiley. I assume this is somehow my fault?

edit: I’m getting a small box instead of a text smiley. I assume this is somehow my fault?

This forum has been SEO optimised, which is why nothing works properly anymore 😉

Before choosing a SEO Company.

Find our where their company are ranked in the organic listings for "SEO Company (your county/city)". If they can't rank their own website, I wouldn't trust them with mine.

Find out what long term results they've achieved for their clients in organic search results. Ask to read testimonials from long term clients.

Choose one that doesn't contact you - if they're constantly looking for work, they're probably not up to much.

Find out what methods they will be using, what changes are to be made, links built etc.

If they promise you a set position within Google's organic results for a competitive keyword, walk away. If they could truly deliver this, they wouldn't waste time on your company and would instead be ranking high for lucrative keywords themselves.

Basically, work with a company that ranks high, is looking for an ongoing relationship, and with a proven record of both obtaining and maintaining rankings for their client's websites in the organic results.

I've got a bit of experience with it, as above though: Rule #1, don't let Yell anywhere near your website, they're charlatans and will do more harm than good.

Cheers guys, all very helpful.

Yell are big on the hard sell for seo as nobody is interested in their phone books anymore. Their staff are all just cheap suited spivs with very little knowledge of web development. I've sat in a meeting with one and heard their pish.

SEO in general does attract real bottom feeders, folk who are too stupid to learn to code and too untalented to design, but want to be involved with the internetz boom and have found a niche of smoke and mirrors that allow them to sell big pots of steaming secret sauce.

Google has some of the world's smartest scientists, mathematicians and algorithm designers, and the concept that dodgy bob with his brylcreem and o-grade in woodwork has somehow got a magic wand to get one over them is bollocks.

Snake oil!

Basically they are all trying to game Google’s ranking algorithm. That changes/gets tweeked on a regular basis to try and prevent such tactics.

Partially true. However, at the very basic end of the spectrum, Google are just trying to serve you the most relevant content. A site that does that well will always be favoured. So it's a good idea to get the fundamentals in place.

You can go the full 9 yards, constantly analysing data, and throwing endless amounts of money at it for varying degrees of success, but that's going to depend on your business needs.

If they promise you a set position within Google’s organic results for a competitive keyword, walk away.

As a general rule this is probably good advice but if any of them are actually prepared to put their money where their mouth is and only get paid on proven success then they would be worth talking to.

If they could truly deliver this, they wouldn’t waste time on your company and would instead be ranking high for lucrative keywords themselves.

But a business which is only good at SEO can really only sell its SEO skills so would be punting themselves to good businesses - unless of course the OP consider's his business a crap business. The bigger issue is how, if someone is really that good with your ranking, how you stop them going to your competitor next week and saying we got the OP to no 3, pay us money and we'll push them off.

There is a degree of irony that an SEO thread is posted by Moz sorry I mean Mos.

I'd be way more inclined to put a dat aside for a reasonably intelligent person on your staff and a demo sub to Moz or SEMRush before you pay anyone anything - your first priorities will be fixing obvious issues (meta info, broken links, back links etc.) before you need to pay anyone.

You'll also then be better equipped to see the snake oil merchants.

Snake oil!

... is my opinion also. For three reasons.

1) Google is very good at spotting cleverbollocks tricks which attempt to 'game' their algorithms. What might work today may not work tomorrow and they'll actively demote your site if they catch you playing silly buggers.

2) SEO is self-evidently not scaleable. Assuming for a second that it does work as advertised: Bill, a plumber from Preston approaches an SEO company, says "I want my company to be top of the search results if someone Googles "preston plumber." Sure, says SEO Corp, they work their magic and boom, Bill tops Google's searches. Next week, Dave, another plumber from Preston approaches an SEO company, says "I want my company to be top of the search results if someone Googles "preston plumber." Now what? Either it's simply not possible or Bill is about to be very disappointed. As Dire Straits once sang, "two men think they're Jesus; one of them must be wrong."

3) Optimising your site for Google is well documented. You don't need an SEO company, you just need to be able to read. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184?hl=en

First off the guys saying SEO is 'snake oil' have been burned. Secondly, don't use Yell. Lastly, the guys saying that you can do it yourself because it is well documented have obviously never run a business.

SEO is labour intensive any serious business owner doesn't have time to do this themselves.

It is hard to find an agency that truly cares about your business and not just their companies bottom line.

I have been in and around digital marketing for ten plus years. When you find a good SEO who takes the time to listen to your needs and, more importantly, can interpret what you are saying and translate that into a digital strategy, you have found the guy or gal you need.

Things that are important:

Don't let them ask you what keywords to target. They should be telling you based on their research.

They should be able to tell you what taxonomy and category titles you should be using and what pages you need to create, not the other way around.

If they try to sell you 8+ blog posts a month etc, set them adrift they are looking at how to milk you over the long term. If they can provide you with a content calendar and explain why they are writing each piece on that calendar and how it feeds your overall strategy, they probably have your best interests at heart.

One last thing, the guy that said 'only look at companies that have managed to rank themselves', this is a common logical fallacy. Any agency that is investing time and money into ranking themselves is probably too large for an SMB and either will sign you in to a contract and do nothing apart from automated reporting until you get fed up and stop paying or they are a small one man band that has temporarily gamed the rankings and will go ahead and apply those dodgy techniques to your site. Either way not a pretty outcome.

I used to share an office with a guy who did SEO and web side stuff, nobody in the shared office could afford him 😉

His version was working a few days a week was as above there is a lot of snake oil there to run a mile from. There are some people who can structure a site to be done properly and take the time over it. That isn't the instant tricks google are looking for. It's a longer slower process to be good and found first.

Or move into a really niche market.

adamst

Member
First off the guys saying SEO is ‘snake oil’ have been burned.

Not really, just know how to build a site. If you build it right, it doesn't actually need any seo. that's built in to the standards these days and is fairly basic in technical terms. Google will crawl and put your site in the search within a couple of days, it's not going to be where you want in search terms, but it'll be there.

I'd suggest people look at content, (all the SEO in the world isn't going to matter if people don't have an interest in your site, and a reason to return) a shit site isn't going to result in sales. After that gets sorted. Then look at a proper marketing strategy. If you've the content to go with that strategy, your site will grow naturally and it will go up the rankings naturally, far as I can see it, best to do that organically. It's also entirely possible to have a successful site without anyone ever having to google it, but well that's really up to how well you know your market and how people are finding your site.

Tbh, I think calling SEO snake oil is perfectly valid. It's a term people can use that has a certain mysticism about it, and it does nothing to inform people of what they should expect, so it's wide open to abuse. It's probably a term that should be consigned to history. Your term "a digital strategy" is a much better phrase imo and to me says much much more.

Regular updated and relevant content and a strategy to drive people to your site(both on and offline) are much better areas to spend your time on in my opinion. You do those 2 and the rankings will take care of themselves over time.

Put it this way, if someone builds a site and does nothing but fiddle with SEO voodoo and expects to get traffic from google... well... all the very best of luck with that.

Anyhow, I don't claim any great knowledge in this, but I've been looking into it recently and that's my take on it thus far. Build a site people want to use, then figure out how to tell those people about it. Everything else is noise. imo. If you aren't getting the traffic you want, I'd suggest the site needs looked at, or the marketing needs looked at or both.

This is relevant to my interests, as noone wants to buy my girlfriend's grotty knickers.

To be fair, I have done nothing more than build the site and populate it with grotty knickers. My GF said she knew where there were loads of pervs on the internet and would go tell them about it, but she hasn't bothered her arse. I don't know if I'm ready to start browsing the pervy corners of reddit just yet.

I am a bit of a lurker here but can give a bit of input if useful.

Disclaimer - I run an agency that helps small businesses with digital marketing. We are called Bowler Hat. We are some of the good guys. Not hawking for work. Totally booked up at the moment for the next six months at least but maybe I can help with some info/experience for a fellow mountain biker.

Yell - nightmare, avoid. Google "Yell Reviews", "Yell SEO", "Yell PPC", "Yell advertising", "Yell websites" to get an idea of the horror stories. Long contracts. Big promises. Small results. The biggest issue with Yell is they mostly want to sell exposure on Yell.com which is practically useless to most people (and certainly pales to good organic or paid listings on Google). The only part of Yell that is in the UK is the sales team - everything else is abroad so you never really talk to the folks doing the work for you. Just the slimy sales guys who promise the world.

SEO - can work great in the right circumstances. Depends on current situation. Competition. Suitability etc. It's not black and white. If you are an established local business then this should not be rocket science but it does need a review of sorts to identify the right approach. Typically slower but strong visibility with the right bells and whistles (local listings, organic listings, google reviews, well converting site etc) will deliver strong results in most cases.

PPC - if you want quick results google ads can be a win. Again, depends on many factors like competition, industry, website etc.

If you want to drop the name of the business here I will give you some honest feedback about which route you should take. I can help recommend some of the good guys as well as most street level SEO companies are still using old tactics that may have a transient effect but will likely do more harm than good in the long run.

Hope that helps. Happy to answer any questions. 🙂

Marcus

I built up an Ecommerce company about 12 years ago, and we sold it to another company partly because we had done so well on SEO - 80percent of our orders came via organic search on google. But those were the good old days
However, there are two major problems with SEO these days - 1 Google has a monopoly on search 2 the competition is a lot fiercer than 12 years back.
Yell as said above is to be avoided. SEM Rush is a useless tool - only Google Analytics will give you an accurate view about your website.
Ultimately, until Google's monopoly is broken up - or the next wave of innovation disrupts their monopoly - it is going to be very difficult to make a return on SEO investment. Paid ads also don't scale according to normal economies of scale because of the Google and FB monopoly. Hence why Ecom companies are now going to the wall along with the traditional bricks and mortars. Amazon has also been a massive factor here.
If you do want to give SEO a shot, I would just introduce a company blog, identify some long-tail keywords, and publish plenty of useful keyword optimised content. You can achieve just as much that way as you would spending a small fortune on digital marketing agencies. There may be some excellent ones out there, but you need to be budgeting at least £1k a month, long-term, with the right people.

'Just build it the right way'. There is no one right way to build a site. I have worked with companies that have literally spent millions on a site built on Angular JS that was completely uncrawlable by GoogleBot. At the opposite end of the spectrum, I have worked with companies that spent a couple of grand on a Wordpress site and absolutely nailed it. All sites are built on different technology stacks and require different approaches to get the most performance from them. As some of the other SEO's on this thread have already stated, a lot of this is situational and it really takes a good makreting agency that are commited to learning the nuance of your market and your business to get the most from an organic strategy.

Yes, I prefer the term 'digital strategy' these days, but SEO informs the digital strategy with data from Analytics and keyword research tools. The content writers job is to write the content based on the data provided by the SEO. They don't just go off and write whatever they feel like. There are also technical aspects to content writing such as Schema markup that is also the job of an SEO to advise upon.

It is a multi faceted role that lots of people can do, but few do well.

When you discover some parts of the business have been paying 2K a month for standard Moz output from an agency because they didn't check or get a second opinion just nodded and signed, I think snake oil is a perfectly descriptive term to apply. I blame the business more than the agencies tbh.

Equally there are some great analysts who'll optimise your site to your targets and are worth every penny. There are some in PPC that'll back that up with guarantees.

It's knowing the difference and where your requirements sit. For the majority of SMEs it could be done well enough in house with free tools with a little research.

Thanks all above again for the advice.
This whole thing on the digital strategy has come about because in the space of 2.5 years we have gone from zero spend on marketing beyond having a website to burning through cash enough to buy myself a bloody fancy sports car, but so far it has delivered nothing in business won. I'm aware marketing in general is difficult to quantify against business generated but we've spent loads and gained nothing.

Some of this maybe down to us perhaps not giving enough clarity to the agency on direction, who knows.

FYI our website is www.elitesystemsgb.co.uk

All opinions are welcomed.

I have sent you a private message that should help 😉

unless you are trying to go all black hat most of the stuff is quite well known and is largely down to how you write content if the site already exists.  Best way is usually work out who you want to find your site and then guess what they might type in to find you and finally how they will get to what they want once they land on your site.  Then make sure you have content that matches that in terms of photos, text, headings and all the rest.  Most people do it the other way round - they put stuff on their site that they want to tell people rather than what people might be looking for.  It looks great and makes management happy but is normally insubstantial.  Stuff is hidden away and people land and bounce straight back as it wasn't what they were expecting so they move on too quickly.

It takes work though and the people writing the content need to always be aware of why they are writing content and how it will attract people.  It's a change of mindset

Then, once you've done that, use Google search console to see what searches you are appearing in to get clues as to what is working and what isn't

It works but it just takes time.  If you need traffic quickly then Google AdWords but make sure that you have a goal in getting the traffic and aren't just looking for traffic as it's expensive.  You need to be able to make your site sell through to that first call

edit: just for amusement, i found that our site was ranking for 'drupal development' which made no sense even though our site is in drupal.  I bit of nosing around and I found that we still had the word 'Drupal' in the title of some pages in a language that wasn't yet showing but Google had indexed anyway.  Shows the power of page titles which are often ignored

editedit: and look at what your competitors are doing and what they are writing as well :).

If you are spending that much you need to have a plan of what you nwant and need.
Possibly get somebody on the payroll to handle this even if it's a part time position, then they are at least working for you!

Really appreciate all the advice people.