COMMENTS
I'm a search marketing specialist and my biggest complaint is the design firm who fails to apply basic SEO principles to a website. I'm often in the position of having to turn away clients because my recommendation is a complete redesign! In this day and age, with all the free tools, forums and books on SEO, it seems unconscionable that someone would charge thousands of dollars for a website that's virtually invisible to the search engines.
I agree with you all the way we should make a SEO Check Lists for people to use when shopping for a SEO Services
Thanks
LK
Please write follow-up article! We're about to re-launch our site with a new brand name. We're also trying to boost our traffic with link love. We have a great deal of original content that will be building up over the next year. If companies take on SEO themselves....what's the checklist? Thanks again for another great article! EAD
Dharmesh - I usually run into another room quickly when non-SEO folks start writing about SEO, but this is good. :-)
Elizabeth -- there are lots of great SEO resources online for small businesses. Just do a little clicking/searching and you should find a wealth of information.
ooh, oooh, is she in Northern California? I think I have seen some of her handiwork on reddit - weird submissions touting some weird product web sites - completely fish out of water topics for reddit, clearly no clue that the stuff would get either massively downvoted or completely ignored.
My favorite was the SEO outfit that sent me an offer to create content for my site. I replied back with the numerous spelling and grammar mistakes corrected. :-)
Worse than SEO consultants are the SEO wannabes. They are thos who cause the biggest harms at companies. That guy who knows a bit of HTML code and thinks that SEO is all about imbounds links.
Actually, Matt is still running Elite-WebDesigns.com with no staff to support the services he is selling. He's also hiding assets under my company name, solutions-recovery and senior solutions... Both rehab centers being run out of his house on tenaya.
I never wrote the posted blog above.
We worked for Matt in Egypt and got screwed.
We are still holding over $27,000. in bad checks from Mr. Marlon. As far as hiding assets, He's probably having trouble hiding his ass right now from ALL the people he screwed that worked for him. In my case I don't wish to ever see or be near Mr. Marlon again.
Thank you David for the update. I will make sure he gets a visit at his house pretty soon.
The message posted on July 9th again was not me. I never wish to see Matt again. At his house or other wise. Fuck him, Traffic-power,Elite webdesigns and Maryann and anyone else affilliated with him. And you too for posting shit with my name on it. If you have a problem with Matt then put your own name on the post asshole.
I will continue to post messages untill you figure who this is. Matt A Marlon
Well written article. You need a comprehensive organic strategy to opimize what you have and grow your site with more pages. Acquiring links should still be a big part of that but publishing fresh content daily should be paramount. I've never met an SEM company I liked.
Hope there was an painful cavity check at the dentention center.
Man, I wish I' read this entry about a month ago. I just had some dealings with one of the worst SEO companies you can imagine. It's the main reason that I'm investing a lot of time figuring out what works and why?
I totally agree with Evan that fresh content is paramount but whenever i tell my friends this they do not take me seriously they believe there is a trick and hence go around looking for that trick as if it is some sort of magic pill.
Great materials! Thanks to this page it was easer to exxpalin to my boss that the email he just received is a scum. My best! RS
Give excellent tools and your friends will keep coming back.
It's really amazing how many claim to be expert at SEO! The bottom line is references and proof of performance... The tools and resources on hubspot.com are a valuable resource and I love sharing them with my clients ;)
Also, if I can make a late add. A good indicator that you should look elsewhere is if someone guarantees a result. Truthfully, if a SEO company is doing their job, you should be in the top ten results for some key phrase. I used to work for a "false seo" company, who claimed that they would give a money back guarantee that they would get people on page one of Google. There is really no way to know that they will succeed.
Thanks for sharing all this great info. Would love to see the follow up article.
I get at least one call per week from some bogus SEO expert promising to get me on the front page of Google, they all want control of my Google Adwords account. Like I'm going to give that up to a company I've never heard of!
A true SEO would come up with actionable suggestions within 10 minutes looking at your site...and then not asking for any budget commitments. Small and medium size company owners should develop trust before justifying major or on-going budget commitments.
Wow, I'd be pretty terrified if all the advice an SEO Consultant told me was to buy links...ouch, that's like saying, "it's okay if you have no clue what you're doing, just buy the traffic."
Absolutely! This is such good sense.In the beginning I spent far too much time submitting my blog and website to a whole lot of arbitrary directories with no obvious increase in traffic. Now I just concentrate on my own content and stuff that interests me and I have the same results. Message: do what you love and the right traffic will come.....even if it takes longer.....
Back in the late 1990's I was sysadmin/marketer for one of the first internet malls. Since I had access to the control of the logs I logged everything. Back in those days free-for-all were free and all the other directories were useful and I put them to good use - a full 20% of our traffic (and revenue) came from them. Now a days that is no longer true. Sad.
Main problem I find is that they have paid for design and then are quite reluctant when you start engaging them about usability and the layout of the site in terms of specific calls to action because this typically has an impact on the original design. Colour, style, image are all important but the connection has to be made between design and the potential to convert your online visitors.
My biggest problem is the clients who create their own website, and then want me to "SEO it" for them. Or they pay someone else to create it who doesn't know what they are doing. These people have a hard time understanding it's not just something that's done magically by adding a couple of tricks, but a strategy that involves the entire site.
I really enjoyed the article, you'd be amazed how many of these people there are in Spain. It almost seems that anyone with a computer is also a web designer and SEO expert, and sadly, the hard working hotel or bar owner knows no different and trusts them.
Excellent. It always makes me feel better as an SEO consultant when someone outside of the biz writes pointers that I agree with.
Thank you.
My views on keyword density: I do believe that using a spider sim tool can help you win with content and some of these will point out keyword density, & some even keyword proximity. I agree that there is no set rule of thumb for keyword usage however I use keyword density tools - I use them as only one possible measure of many but it can help show why one page on a competitor’s site may be doing better than a page on a client’s site. It can also help show differences in similar key phrases and to decide if you are wanting to target longtail vs. go for the gusto with shorter higher searched on terms.
Dharmesh, I couldn't agree more. And well written, with a bit of tongue-in-cheek.
We use social media to help drive traffic and brand for our clients.
That said, we spend too many hours instructing clients to clean up their sites, use best-practice design and navigation, and test, test, test.
Driving traffic, backlinks, content... any and all of the basics, without having a site that will perform, is a complete waste of time and resources.
Fix your home first. Then bring the traffic.
Thanks for the great articles.
Best,
Mark Alan Effinger
RichContent Permanent Media Placement
Good information. Will try all next time to see if the results are obvious.
I am just starting up on my site and am key for a follow up to this and knowing your "positive" signs as well.
Nice post Dharmesh. My personal experience is that my web hosting company offers many products (at a fee) and one of them was top-ten placement in the search engines for 20 keywords.. Guaranteed! I supplied a list of 50 keywords and they chose the 20 they would use (or else there was no guarantee).
Well guess what? I'm out over 2k and the keywords are sitting in search engine limbo with no better placement than if I had a 4th grader do it. (The keywords were low search volume words!) If I had been a Hubspot member back then, I never would have used their offer.
The lesson learned here is what Russell mentioned above, run if they offer an unrealistic guarantee and don’t look back!
Dharmesh- We just lost a prospect to your service, and while I am quite sure that we didn't hit any of the issues that would drive away a perspective customer, I really appreciate your take on the foibles of the the SEO consultants. Thanks.
Good article. Google's algorithm distinguishes between links that are purchased and links obtained for free
due to your content. Bad site structure reduces your chances of a high ranking. I have seen websites with a customised Content Management system where you could not assign a different title for each page. Keyword densities will depend on the industry as as long as your content is natural sounding to the site visitors it should be allright.