SEO, Such a Farce

SEO is a process that should be built up by the client in my opinion. Why should you spend money on something thats not guaranteed. every SEO company offers the same thing.
"We will get you on to the first page of google"
OKKKKAYYYYYYYY.....So, with just 10 slots available how many thousands of companies are promising you the space slot? To me its absolutely crazy to be firing money to these companies. I have been running my own business now for the last 2 months and am starting to see my self climbing the ladder by doing basic SEO and spending a few hours a day to optimise and keep myself there. SEO really is a no brainer if you read up on a few things...
I think this article by Paul Boag is a really good one, have a read http://boagworld.com/marketing/i-dont-get-seo/
PS: If your going to moderate my posts then please give me a reason why guys.
GW
 
Just noticed you moved this
  • What really is SEO? No one can give an answer yet everyone seems to be able to Garuntee you a place on the first page
  • A continued investment on something thats not guaranteed at all
  • You can pay someone to do SEO, but with recent algorithm changes someone really really needs to know your business. In my opinion SEO can come from someone who really knows the business deep down. Not someone who just places keywords into your site
  • Pay Per Clicks are mega expensive
  • SEO via social Networks...well this can be handled quite easily in an hour or so
  • It can damage user experience and totally change conversion rate
  • Terrible for screen readers
  • Not many SEO companies know HTML Markup and Hierarchy inside out, when they really should
  • Getting people to do your SEO lacks personality
  • At the end of the day paying for SEO to me is a very very bad move, all you need is time and you should be able to get it right with the amount of resources and tools that are available to us
I'm sure a lot of people with have an opinion on this, it would be great to hear them...
 
glenwheeler said:
SEO is a process that should be built up by the client in my opinion. Why should you spend money on something thats not guaranteed. every SEO company offers the same thing.
"We will get you on to the first page of google"
OKKKKAYYYYYYYY.....So, with just 10 slots available how many thousands of companies are promising you the space slot? To me its absolutely crazy to be firing money to these companies. I have been running my own business now for the last 2 months and am starting to see my self climbing the ladder by doing basic SEO and spending a few hours a day to optimise and keep myself there. SEO really is a no brainer if you read up on a few things...
I think this article by Paul Boag is a really good one, have a read http://boagworld.com/marketing/i-dont-get-seo/
PS: If your going to moderate my posts then please give me a reason why guys.
GW
Click to expand...
I did give you a reason why? I said "I'm going to move your post into the SEO board as I'd like to expand this discussion out further." Then I moved it :) Like I'm going to do with this one! I'll drop you a PM incase you don't see it!
 
Just tried to send you this Glen...can you clear out your PMs? :)

"Hi Glen,

Just a quick heads up to say I moved the posts into the SEO forum :) Not moderating per se, just wanted to expand the issue out a bit!

Also, just seen that you noticed that I moved it, making this PM a little worthless, but yeah, no offence intended :)

Tony"
 
so basically seo isn't a farce, it's the way it's marketed that is, ie the first page guarantee... and lack of basic web development skills from said companies.
I'm no web expert but even I know you've got your obvious html markup and content and then some areas of seo that are not common knowledge to the everyday user.
I'm sure Jaz would give us a few million pages on this if he was around.
I also know that the weighting of certain elements change on a regular basis, google+ is now quite highly weighted (google pushing google+), hell they'll be changing again if the eu has anything to say about it. This is what I would expect an seo company to be dealing with, keeping the site up to date with the changes that the search engines implement.
 
SEO certainly isn’t a farce, though it does have farcical elements. For example, in the Google book it states that only two people in the world fully understand the Google search process. With that in mind it would be naive to accept that these SEO companies have the inside word on getting you on the first page. That being said, they can still guarantee such a result in the same way you have a guarantee on a blender, it’s not necessarily going to work but you’ll get your money back if it doesn’t.
Google doesn’t want you to be able to manipulate search results, which was reinforced with their latest algorithm updates which, among other things, targeted exact match domains, such as cheapalloysinlondon.com
Core SEO is essential for any website (that wants to get found). I’m talking meta-data, seo centric copywriting, page titles, alt tags etc.
SEO isn’t rocket science but it is time consuming (and not very fun). I always recommend SEO in the form of training, as clients, particularly ones with new businesses often prefer to use their free time to build links, expand social media etc in their own time. Clients who make more in an hour than you do, will likely prefer to pay you or someone else to do it.
I’m doing SEO for an ecommerce site on a daily basis and I’ve really had to go back to school for it. When you start dealing with things like Google shopping it’s a whole different ball game.
 
Must say, thats a very very fair comment from Wac.
I just think paying someone to do long term SEO is just crazy. It says a lot when every second company in the UK is an SEO company, it's easy money if you know how to do it to an average standard..
I am currently working with the biggest steel frame manufacturer in the UK and they have been around numerous SEO companies, im talking 20-30 of them and none have them have kept to their promise. At the end of the day these companies cant garuntee jack.
 
Nobody can guarantee first page ranking, it's an impossibility. You have to be consistently working on a brand/site to make it rank well, that's why it's mostly an in-house job. However, lots of places will want to outsource their SEO and I can see why. I don't they will suffer for that, but a lot of places charge a fortune and take companies for a ride.
 
And I think thats what you have to be careful of. People who charge a lot of money, for absolutely nothing.
I'd want proof that they can do what they say they they can do before I even starting moving forward with things.
 
glenwheeler said:
I'd want proof that they can do what they say they they can do before I even starting moving forward with things.
Click to expand...
Yeah, well, it's like everything else isn't it? You'd want to see some evidence/portfolio of work. Something a lot of "SEO companies" seem to lack.
 
Good points wac. The general rule of thumb is that if you're earning a lot of money then it's not really worth a CEO's time to sit around faffing with SEO. But at the same time they are likely to fall into that trap of big companies paying big sums for no apparent reason, other than that they can afford it. When realistically, if they shopped around a bit they wouldn't need to spend so much money.
These SEO companies know that the only thing people care about is getting to the top of their page for their chosen keywords. So it's an easy sell to those busy CEO's who don't really care and associate an expensive service as less risky and more likely to give good results. I agree that a lot of companies take the piss, but it's the same as these "Creative Directors" with a BTEC in design trying to sell their services. People just need to pay a bit more attention to what they're spending their money on. It's not hard to find some advice on the internet or someone (like us) to give you free advice.
 
How many SEO specialists does it take to change a lightbulb, light_bulb, light-bulb, light.bulb, light bulb?
 
in my opinion, SEO is not a rocket science nor it is a fun or as difficult as you think. if SEO companies can provide you these services and says that they will let you appear on the first page of Google although it is not guaranteed in reality that they will be successful in their promise, then i think that the client company can also itself do this job and this will be far beneficial for it than hiring an SEO company for this. SEO is just time consuming and if the companies itself do SEO by strictly following the SEO strategies, then i am sure that they can get better results as compared to others.
 
One time you have charge but after promoting your business if you got a lot of clients in fact fortunately if your page place on first page, I think it will cover your wasted money, isn't it?
 
I stopped offering SEO as one of my services.. nuff said.. I now advise instead / train a member of my clients staff to do the SEO for their own company.
 
In all honesty I think the point regarding SEO is missed, Search Engine Optimisation is exactly that, optimising a website, app, project for the best possible visibility and index-ability within the search engines.
The more accurate term people should be using is SEM (Search Engine Marketing) which is about delivering a strategy for business/app/service, promoting the brand/product awareness in all verticles within the online world. Of course a little SEO a chunk of PR and massive helping of CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) goes into this.
Another key point to make is being top of the search listing is not in its self a measure of success, for example. If I was listed no 1 for a product or service that you could by via the website and I had 10k people visiting my website each day but only converted at 2%, Id happily swap that top spot listing for position 5-9 with reduced traffic rates but higher conversion ratio.
meh!
 
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