SEO Work/Link Building Services

micromary

My new website is almost finished. It is looking well and since it is a new business of course I am going to look for work to be done with SEO etc to get it more recognisable etc. The work is being by a section of the company that did my website. Well it sounds good in practice,

I find the fees without any guarantee of success frigthening - almost €400 for onsite development, and almost €500 each month for 3 months on links development etc. That is almost €2k. I was thinking of paying for 1 months and seeing if there is any success full stop before going any further with it. What does anybody think about this?

Does anybody have any idea re this and how much somebody pays for this? I am starting training myself in the matter. Cheers

Graham

Other than backlinks, what else is included in their SEO work? What results have they suggested/promised you will achieve?

Who else have they done SEO work for? What results did they achieve? Was that in a competitive market? What search terms did they target? What backlinks did they get (use a backlink checker to look for them). How will they optimise your site? Why wasn't this optimisation done during the development phase? How are they going to get links back to your site/why shouldn't you do this yourself?

1) Do you know what search terms you'll be targeting?
2) Google a few of those search terms.
3) Who appears at the top of the results?
4) How many backlinks do the sites/pages that appear at the top of the results have?
Given the results from 1 - 4 is there any correlation between how many/type of backlinks and their position in the ranking? What sort of sites are the high results getting links from?

JMR

I would agree that onsite SEO should have been a consideration during the design and build stage and not an additional cost after the site is launched.

In my opinion €500/month is a tad excessive.

Unless you have absolutely no spare time to spend on it, then you can achieve a certain degree of SEO success yourself with a little self education, with the caveat of course that your keywords are not too competitive.

I would ask the web developer for a list of directories to which you should submit your site.
Doing this can be a bit tedious but easily achievable once you have a list to work through

Here is a list to get you started
http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com/online-marketing-discussion/15791-list-irish-directories.html

Also look to get links from sites in your niche, which will be harder to get but more valuable.

Also, social media links - Facebook, Twitter etc etc

micromary

Thanks guys. Appreciate your feedback.

micromary

I have met a few people thru Boards who have helped me and after talking to a few friends I would be interested in hearing from college graduates who may be looking at working on a exciting project regarding Search Engine Optimisation etc. This will also help me when I am training myself up.

Like the video job that was done yesterday and was excellently done by a member on Boards, I will pay a agreed amount as long as I know something re the person helping out. I believe that there are enough positive people out there who would be interested in hearing my proposals and the possibility of meeting up re proceeding further. If anybody is please pm me and we will talk further.

I agree that the previous proposals I outlined originally are more then a tad expensive, especially when you don't know what you are going to get for this.

flynnlives

one month isnt enough time to see if the methods they are employing is a success.

pm me the details and il have a look at your site and tell you how they are doing.

i have experience in web dev and in particular SEO where ive always built sites with it in mind.

The Apprentice

Send on your details to me also mary, be more than glad to help in any way

riveratom

JMR wrote: »

I would agree that onsite SEO should have been a consideration during the design and build stage and not an additional cost after the site is launched.

In my opinion €500/month is a tad excessive.

Unless you have absolutely no spare time to spend on it, then you can achieve a certain degree of SEO success yourself with a little self education, with the caveat of course that your keywords are not too competitive.

I would ask the web developer for a list of directories to which you should submit your site.
Doing this can be a bit tedious but easily achievable once you have a list to work through

Here is a list to get you started
http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com/online-marketing-discussion/15791-list-irish-directories.html

Also look to get links from sites in your niche, which will be harder to get but more valuable.

Also, social media links - Facebook, Twitter etc etc

You can do a lot yourself with the right knowledge for sure.

Just be mindful that directories are a bit old hat, there are very few worthwhile ones, and they have been massively devalued by Google.

Social media links won't do much for you, not unless you are getting tonnes of retweets, shares on Facebook, etc.

Axwell

Thread moved

JMR

riveratom wrote: »

Just be mindful that directories are a bit old hat, there are very few worthwhile ones, and they have been massively devalued by Google.

Social media links won't do much for you, not unless you are getting tonnes of retweets, shares on Facebook, etc.

What methods would you suggest for better effectiveness?
I currently try to identify where competitor sites have links from and if those sites have any sort of PR, I approach them myself.
This can be a lot of effort for little return to be honest...

riveratom

JMR wrote: »

What methods would you suggest for better effectiveness?
I currently try to identify where competitor sites have links from and if those sites have any sort of PR, I approach them myself.
This can be a lot of effort for little return to be honest...

Directories have their place, especially ones like DMOZ and Yahoo Directory, but these are hard / pricey to get a link from - mainly because they are worthwhile.

I'd suggest guest-blogging (don't overdo it though), approaching websites yourself like you say - but the best strategy is to create valuable, useful content that people will derive benefit from and be compelled to share. A classic example is that Analytics link The Apprentice shared via this forum - somebody created a stellar piece of content and as a result it got shared instinctively.

Create great content and cross-promote on social media (FB, Twitter, LinkedIn - depends on your sector/niche). Going after long-tail queries is a good approach too.

Draper666

Spend some time on it for a week trying different things and you will learn a few tricks for yourself

Trojan

I think that saying things like "€500/month is a tad excessive" is missing the point of these types of services. What if the €500/month investment nets a €500/month return? Or €5000/month?

I recently wrote a blog post summarising an SEOmoz survey. Here are some pertinent take-aways: 1) Hourly SEO costs vary, but $76-$200/hour is most common. 2) By-the-project SEO pricing is popular and most commonly $1,000-$7,500. 3) Monthly retainer pricing is very popular.

SEOmoz SEO pricing survey wrote:

Monthly retainers are certainly the most distributed of the price questions asked in our survey. The two most common were $251-$500/month (13.8%) and $2,501-$5,000/month (11.3%).

And here's an infographic from SEObook on why great SEO is expensive.