SEO Expertise Needed

Caeva

Hi - I need some help with both of my websites - www.QuoteMe.ie and www.QuoteLine.ie. Can anybody recommend an SEO expert to point me in the right direction please? We need a "to do" list as well as have our internal link structure checked and assistance with building an external link strategy. Any tips and suggestions appreciated. Thank you.

Sully

At a quick glance, it seems okay. You would need to build up a link exchange with other websites which will help you in terms of ranking. As for who to recommend, Trojan has been a great help to me in the past. Try giving him a shout.

You seem to have it fairly well covered from what I can see anyway.

Mick Regan

Some immediate thoughts,

One view is that you should'nt have repeat keywords in your meta keywords tag.
Maybe making 'insurance' the first or second word and just mentioning it once might be better.

Check for yourself but seems to be the concensus.

Also run your sites through the W3 validator, eg:
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.quoteme.ie%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0

There's a few errors you could probably tidy up.

D.W

Hi Caeva,
the core basics of the site are in place as both lads have alluded to. Internal linking can be improved easily-external takes time. Personally I would tidy up the metatagging on ALL pages and especially make the Desc tag shorter and punchier and reflect this in my on page content.

Your niche is VERY competitive with regards organic rankings but nothing is insurmountable however you need to be willing to give someone/ a company a good 6 months in reality before you will see real improvements. SEO is a long, slow process and depends on a huge ammount of factors-one being the age of your domains!

Personally I have ranked hundreds and possibly thousands of pages/terms in the top 1-10 on Google for both my own sites and some clients I have taken on (on a very select basis) but a top 1-10 is no guarantee for any success if not backed up with a good deal of other angles also.

I think also you have to be realistic and know IF you pay peanuts you get monkeys-go with a person/company with a proven seo track record. Ask to see results they have attained.

If I were to recommend someone personally I'd recommend David Quaid from Primary Position based in Limerick-His details can be seen at PrimaryPosition or simply Google- SEO, SEO Ireland etc.. and see if his or what other sites rank. Proof of the puddin as they say.... I'm in no way affiliated with him or his company but know he is eager to deliver and does for his clients.

Best of luck with the sites.

RedCardinal

D.W wrote: »

If I were to recommend someone personally I'd recommend David Quaid from Primary Position based in Limerick-His details can be seen at PrimaryPosition or simply Google- SEO, SEO Ireland etc.. and see if his or what other sites rank. Proof of the puddin as they say.... I'm in no way affiliated with him or his company but know he is eager to deliver and does for his clients.

That's a really well targeted anchor text to use. If I was a sceptic I'd be inclined to think there'd have to be some relationship for you to link that way...

Sully

RedCardinal wrote: »

That's a really well targeted anchor text to use. If I was a sceptic I'd be inclined to think there'd have to be some relationship for you to link that way...

Possibly, so I replaced the well placed anchor just to be fair.

link8r

Firstly, thank you to Mr Dara Ward for the kind recommendation - but clearly this has upset the sensibilities of both RedC and Messrs Sully.

In addition, I recommend you all the time - if anybody is talking to me about SEO I recommend the people I think that are good all the time - and often I suggest that they talk to you - whether or not I'm bidding for the project. I do this because I think people should get as much information together from the right sources so as to make an informed decision. Given that is there a relationship between us ?

Really, this is so lame, I wonder if someone has my name on a Google Alert - I wasn't even aware of this post and look who's there ready with the flame thrower. Interesting. Clearly this Island isn't big enough for all of us.

But seriously, a quick cursory glance for recommending SEO at IWF lists both of us and often by people who do (in their own words) work with/for/in association with you. We're just not sad enough / not conspiracy minded enough to actually moan about it.

Sully

Mod Note:
link8r: If you have a problem with the moderation, please send the mod a PM or visit the Help Desk forum. That's how it works on Boards and no exceptions will be made. If you want me to answer your rant, which has me baffled, please send me a PM.

(Its worth noting that no link was removed. The recommendation remains the same, but the text over the link was clearly done to help for Search Engine ranking so was changed to reflect the business name instead of just "SEO". Over reaction? I think so.)

Back on topic thanks.

Mick Regan

I'm a bit of an outside observer here, but maybe it would be a good idea to delete all posts on this thread from about number 3 or 4 onwards? - including this one. (Not sure they give a good impression of what this particular forum is about).

I guess you'd all need to agree, on the other hand you could just tell me to butt out!

Just a thought,

Mick

Sully

Mick Regan wrote: »

I'm a bit of an outside observer here, but maybe it would be a good idea to delete all posts on this thread from about number 3 or 4 onwards? - including this one. (Not sure they give a good impression of what this particular forum is about).

I guess you'd all need to agree, on the other hand you could just tell me to butt out!

Just a thought,

Mick

I don't see the need. If someone wants to make a fool out of themselves in public, thats their business. I have no issues with people recommending each other as long as its done fairly. So much so, I just changed the text on a link which seems to have upset the business effected (oddly).

Lets carry on with the topic at hand, ill keep it clean from anymore irrelevant posts to avoid further embarrassment and derailing of the topic. Sadly, I do not know either businesses (nor have I used them, or spoke with them in the past) so I cant pass any recommendation on them.

I think a lot of this should be done by the developer/designer (the basics) and any improvement can easily be made if you have the time to put in some research. Its when you do not have the time it becomes hard to pick out a hard working, reliable company. The market is awash with people claiming to be SEO experts when they are far from it. So forums like these can be good for recommendations (expect tit for tat recommendations) as you can see where the crowd tends to go, what the recommendations say and how (if at all) the business interacts with the board (some Irish SEO businesses are members of Boards.)

D.W

Keep the knickers on people-I was just trying to assist! No agenda, motive or otherwise. Caeva as per my origional post if you want an seo expert then see who ranks for seo... simple as.

Sully

D.W wrote: »

Keep the knickers on people-I was just trying to assist! No agenda, motive or otherwise. Caeva as per my origional post if you want an seo expert then see who ranks for seo... simple as.

Sure if you can master the art of ranking for that keyword - but its not all about that. Is the company reliable? Honest and hard working? Good value for money or complete rip off? Are they a respectable company (present themselves well, decent etc). But yes, in theory, its a good start.

link8r

Becareful of all the "on-site" SEO tips - you can't pull yourself up the rankings by yourself - you have to develop authority. If two sites had the exact same inbound links and authority, then by creating more relevance using different onsite SEO techniques may rank that site better - but exactly similar conditions dont really exist - and as Google is constantly re-indexing the web and changing every sites authority (which has a knock-on to the sites they link for depending on the relevance between them) and so forth.

Wherever you have a list, you are going to have people who see a business case for being listed at the top. The old plumber/electricians trick in the Golden Pages was to call the company "AAA Electrical" thus guaranteeing a first listing based on alphabetical A-Z listings...

If you have a site with many inbound links that are from high ranking, relevant, regionally located sites - competing sites cannot outrank them by using things like H1 tags, keywords, meta-tags. Simply put - if you search for "hotels dublin" - all the sites will have the words on the site - page title, domain name, page description. Google doesn't need that many flags to indicate which search index the site belongs. But that doesn't affect where in that index your site is placed.

Many really strong SEO's don't publish the strategies they use - and why would they? They've spent years developing and testing them...you have to ask yourself how much of the free SEO advice you get on the web is worthwhile.

The real factors affecting your business (and I've worked a lot on insurance sites over the years) are:

1. The domain name - the name and the age and the association/authority that they've built up is probably the biggest factor in their favour. If you have a 6-month domain up against a 6 year old, the 6 year old has been found many times, it has built up a nice link list, they've probably established their keyword research etc. Even when your site is another 2 years old, so is theirs. I'm not saying it's impossible - it's just a big factor.

2. The domain name is important too - there is a strong relationship between search phrase and domain name. Again it's not impossible - I rank for SEO/Search Engine Optimisation without using either phrase in my primary domain (primaryposition.com)

3. The quality of links, the quality of the Keyword research, the way the content is presented - this is something learnt over years working in a number of different sites

4. Multiple domains can be a very good strategy in a case like this - if you search for insurance, cheap insurance, budget insurance, car insurance, motor insurance - you get different domains in different orders. Its very hard to rank 1 domain for different search phrases

5. Another strong reason for multiple domains is that, according to research provided by RedCardinal for example, your top placed link, on average, may not get all of the traffic. thus having more than one domain may increase traffic over different searches because the content or listing content (like the description) will appeal to different people or the domains may rank better than each other over different searches.

Caeva

May I point out please that this is a genuine enquiry/call for help. We have engaged 3 SEO experts in the past few years and are still struggling. Two of these "experts" would be well known and reputable companies.

Thanks to all, and expecially Sully, Mick Regan and Link8r for their interesting and constructive input.

If anybody would like to put a proposal to me, please do so.

Thanks.

tomED

Caeva wrote: »

May I point out please that this is a genuine enquiry/call for help. We have engaged 3 SEO experts in the past few years and are still struggling. Two of these "experts" would be well known and reputable companies.

Thanks to all, and expecially Sully, Mick Regan and Link8r for their interesting and constructive input.

If anybody would like to put a proposal to me, please do so.

Thanks.

I'm not surprised your existing SEO experts have had trouble - insurance is a difficult one to be ranked for.

We worked on an insurance site many moons ago - even though all onsite optimisation is now pretty much non-existent, they still appear at the top of the results for pretty much all the phrases we worked with them on. Lucky for them, they've been around a long time and they've built up their authority.

There is a bit of onsite optimisation that could be performed on your website, but you really need to be working on your off-site optimisation. It's not going to be an easy task and any serious SEO will need sometime (which means money) to complete it successfully.

There may be other options available to you to get a return in the meantime though!

link8r

Apologies that your thread got taken over - just wanted to clear something up.

My 2c: You definitely don't have a very high inbound link count, well not from what I can see. I guess reputable can be hard to assess given the lack of way to determine an SEO's reputation. It certainly doesn't look like SEO from anyone I know...but I haven't completed an exhaustive search.

I'd also query why your site's name is in your Page Title - a few curious things, I would never have guessed that the site is that old, given the low enough PageRank/Rank

I'd also say that you may be targeting too many sectors with 1 domain - it would be easier to specialise a site for car insurance, travel insurance etc. If you look at the search market, thats whats going to happen - some sites will rank very well for different niches or areas, except really big sites with really huge PR/general publicity like Ryanair.

RedCardinal

link8r wrote: »

Firstly, thank you to Mr Dara Ward for the kind recommendation - but clearly this has upset the sensibilities of both RedC and Messrs Sully.

In addition, I recommend you all the time - if anybody is talking to me about SEO I recommend the people I think that are good all the time - and often I suggest that they talk to you - whether or not I'm bidding for the project. I do this because I think people should get as much information together from the right sources so as to make an informed decision. Given that is there a relationship between us ?

Is that directed at me? I just thought the anchor text was dubious. If someone was directing users to me I wouldn't expect them to link to me like that. Just looks unnatural.

link8r wrote: »

Really, this is so lame, I wonder if someone has my name on a Google Alert - I wasn't even aware of this post and look who's there ready with the flame thrower. Interesting. Clearly this Island isn't big enough for all of us.

But seriously, a quick cursory glance for recommending SEO at IWF lists both of us and often by people who do (in their own words) work with/for/in association with you. We're just not sad enough / not conspiracy minded enough to actually moan about it.

Again, not sure if that's directed at me? Nothing wrong with referrals, and nothing wrong with the referral above. If anything it's great to see people recommending you. But the anchor text just made me wonder about authenticity. I can see now the poster was just trying to help, albeit perhaps misguided.

And as for the alerts comment... I drop by here once or twice a week for a read. I have more pressing things to do than track forum posts about you

RedCardinal

D.W wrote: »

Caeva as per my origional post if you want an seo expert then see who ranks for seo... simple as.

One comment on this - I'd try to avoid using rank as a proxy for quality or otherwise. There are a few Irish SEO sites ranking very well for competitive terms that do so my marshaling their own site networks.

If I was on the other side of the fence looking for a provider I'd use one yardstick only - referrals. And then do a whole lot of due diligence.

Sully

Mod Note:
Ill say it only once more before bans/infractions are issued.

Stick to the topic at hand. That includes posting off topic and then immediately on topic.

Lets not derail the thread any further please. Thanks.

(Any queries to this or to any other users post not related to the actual topic - please do so via PM).

D.W

Caeva wrote: »

Hi - I need some help with both of my websites - www.QuoteMe.ie and www.QuoteLine.ie. Can anybody recommend an SEO expert to point me in the right direction please? We need a "to do" list as well as have our internal link structure checked and assistance with building an external link strategy. Any tips and suggestions appreciated. Thank you.

Caeva,
did you get sorted or not out of curiousity? You had some of the top seo heads in Ireland posting here whether you realised or not so want to see if you got what you wanted or are still requiring assistance in this very competitive niche or not.

Johny5

Thanks a bunch for the input. It sounds great


making SEO

Caeva

Many thanks to all who replied to my query. I have lots of good leads for SEO experts as well as recommendations for immediate action. I will be in touch personally with all people/companies who were recommended to me. We are a bit snowed under right now, however, setting and implementing an SEO strategy is at the very top of our to-do list.

In the meantime, we are working on a link strategy - something which many of you advised needed to be done.

This forum has been of great help to us and I will certainly be back.