Free SEO for Dublin based startup

dcg5

Hi I am offering a free SEO service to a Dublin based startup. If you currently have a website and you are looking to optimize your organic search results please feel free to pm me.
I am currently studying seo and looking to work with some starups to help improve their search results and also gain experience in the process.
The seo will be 100% white hat and I will give my upmost to get results.

Graham

Given that bad attempts at SEO can do substantially more harm than good I would be very slow to trust the placement of my startups website to somebody that hasn't even attempted to establish even a hint of credibility.

I'm offering a free money management service to SEO startups based in Dublin scratch that

dcg5

Hi thanks for your comment, I should have put more information in my description:) I am currently studying SEO and want to work with other entrepreneurs in Dublin that have web based businesses to improve their search results.
I am genuinely interested in SEO and want to learn as much as I can and the only way I can do so is to get stuck in, hence the Free offer. The SEO approach is completely 100% white hat legit and will not in any way harm the credibility of your service.
I am prepared to meet anyone that is interested and start working on a strategy to improve their web results.

Peterdalkey

I fear your offer is exactly the reason the whole Digital Marketing space is so negatively viewed by the business community.

I am buying new servers and network software for my business, very important function and dire consequences for us if it fcuks up! I am using a very experienced consultant/practitioner , himself a boardsie. I would never expect such an offer from even the very best IT student, and would never even consider letting them learn on my vital IT infrastructure.

I am looking to build a house on a site I have for a family member, I would never consider letting a wetback student architect be involved, so they could to learn on the job.

Is my online presence so little value that I would risk my online trade reputation to any student? If they had a couple of years proper relevant work experience with a good primary degree in Marketing and was then doing an MSc in Digital, I might chance it.


I am not trying to beak your balls here but, the Digital Marketing crowd need to get real. If you want a project, start a blog and get it up there at the top of Google organic results. If you win , you can showcase your talents, if you fail, you have not damaged anyone's business!

Axwell

If you plan to work in this area why not setup a website for your services and skip the blog. As Peter said if you can get that to rank well on Google then you have something to show potential clients to help show your ability rather than just taking a chance on you.

jmcc

dcg5 wrote: »

I am currently studying seo and looking to work with some starups to help improve their search results and also gain experience in the process.

Simple question: what do you lose if you f*ck up?

Regards...jmcc

Graham

dcg5, I hope all of this doesn't dishearten you. I don't think that's anyones intention.

Axwell has given you some fantastic advice, take that on board and you will definitely be heading in the right direction.

Over the last few years I have seen more and more people attempt to offer their services for free to gain work experience, particularly in the areas around web design, social media *anything*, SEO and anything else web related. That has to be commended and I get the impression that this approach is getting much (misguided) encouragement from teachers, lecturers and others offering career guidance.

The problem is many/most of the organisations that are looking for 'free' help also need that help to arrive with a certain amount of professional/commercial experience.

Final tip. When you believe you are ready for commercial experience, approach companies that are in that industry with the results of your own work. I would suggest you will learn a lot more from working with a professional web-shop / SEO consultancy than you would from a start-up that may know little about SEO.

Best of luck with it.

tacofries

Comments here come across fairly rough,. maybe their true, i don't know,..

Fair play for making an effort, just make sure you take these comments as constructive criticism and not as digs which they may seem as!!

Perhaps the OP should rephrase a bit and offer this to small businesses that don't have, or can't afford SEO right now.

Peterdalkey

OP you have got some very good advice above, and I genuinely hope it gives you some useful focus to help your career. I completely understand and admire your motivation.

The question that Graham raised about teachers/ lecturers advising such a course of action is an interesting one. is this the case with your own post?

Cheers

Peter

3sixty

The trouble is these courses are been offered everywhere resulting in people billing themselves as experts in a field with little or no experience to back it up. The market is essentially flooded with these courses.

The op wants to get experience and that is fair enough but he would be better off getting experience and making mistakes with his own website rather than messing up a company's website. Get an internship even.

Theory is a million miles away from the practical world of digital marketing. What if you messed up a websites rankings or even got them penalised cos of something you read on this forum.

Best of luck anyway but if your still doing a course you have a long way to go yet.

Note: to everyone double check all information related to this topic cos there is a lot of false advice given around these forums related to this area.

Peterdalkey

3sixty you make some interesting points. Normally when you invest time in reading up on and researching a topic that you are unfamiliar with, you learn. With this area it appears on occasion that the more you read the less you understand! A pretty weird dynamic indeed.
I do appreciate that the efforts to charm the effective owner of the commercial internet, Google, compels them to keep their search results ranking criteria fluid, much like software security developers seek to keep hackers at bay. Thus it is an ongoing task rather than a one off project. I find this site has some very interesting, and also some boring, daily articles on the subject http://www.searchenginejournal.com

jmcc

Graham wrote: »

That has to be commended and I get the impression that this approach is getting much (misguided) encouragement from teachers, lecturers and others offering career guidance.

What worries me is that most of these people (lecturers, teachers and churnos) haven't a clue about how search engine operators think and how they develop strategies to deal with SEO activities and related problems. Some of these courses are the equivalent of Astrology courses. And there is always the danger that some of these courses will be providing the students with information and tactics that are no longer valid or are considered blackhat by search engines operators.

Regards...jmcc

dcg5

Hi, thanks for all of the comments:) I have taken on board all of the suggestions and advice.

blue4ever

dcg5: build/develop a website - if you get your hands dirty you will learn a heap of stuff,and as jmcc said - it wont be "astrology"

Atomico

dcg5 wrote: »

Hi thanks for your comment, I should have put more information in my description:) I am currently studying SEO and want to work with other entrepreneurs in Dublin that have web based businesses to improve their search results.
I am genuinely interested in SEO and want to learn as much as I can and the only way I can do so is to get stuck in, hence the Free offer. The SEO approach is completely 100% white hat legit and will not in any way harm the credibility of your service.
I am prepared to meet anyone that is interested and start working on a strategy to improve their web results.

The trouble is that SEO and digital marketing in general is so accessible, and there has been an explosion of course-taking in this area with no real industry standards or regulations (particularly because digital marketing moves so quickly).

You wouldn't post here saying 'I've been studying accountancy, happy to work on your annual return for free'

Also, you may think you know a bit about SEO, but you also don't know what you don't know. It also depends on where you've been learning and what you call white hat. Sometimes what is white hat may be more like grey hat, and just because it is white hat doesn't mean it's going to work! Similarly, you could be spending lots of time on activity or strategy that is definitely white hat, but may not be the right area of activity for the industry in question, or when you factor in competitor activity, etc.

There are so many variables at play that generally it is in no way as straightforward as just offering to work for free and getting stuck in. I do know of a businessman who decimated his own business through thinking he was a bit too smart for Google. He was up to all sorts of tactics he thought he could use to his own advantage. Now he has no business and he is working on his brother's business instead. When I say that, I mean that. He destroyed his own business through badly-conceived SEO. And there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands like him who have done the same.

The difference between his business and his brother's is that his brother didn't do any online marketing / SEO. Yet we got his brother set up with the right approach to not just SEO but all areas of online marketing. The result - his brother's company has gone from making $1,000s/month online, to $10,000s a month over the past six months or so.

So not only can you do harm to a website / business if you don't know what you are doing, you also have the opportunity cost of not engaging with someone who does know what they are doing.

I'm not referring to you here necessarily OP, just talking generally.

blue4ever wrote: »

dcg5: build/develop a website - if you get your hands dirty you will learn a heap of stuff,and as jmcc said - it wont be "astrology"

If you want to learn web design and development, yes. If you want to learn about SEO and marketing / online marketing, no. It's useful but by no means essential, and SEO is moving in the other direction more and more - less about web design and much more about traditional marketing and online PR.

tricky D

Nice points^, a few additional thoughts...

Atomico wrote: »

The trouble is that SEO and digital marketing in general is so accessible, and there has been an explosion of course-taking in this area with no real industry standards or regulations (particularly because digital marketing moves so quickly).

Yup, almost no barrier to entry once you have net access. Just add a text editor, graphics program or cms and anybody can do web schtuff. The result is the old wild west analogy with all sorts of cowboys and snake oil, with too much work lacking in real quality. This extrapolates into the realm of courses, too many of which are out of date, use bad practice and/or are poor in other ways.

Atomico wrote: »

Also, you may think you know a bit about SEO, but you also don't know what you don't know. It also depends on where you've been learning and what you call white hat. Sometimes what is white hat may be more like grey hat, and just because it is white hat doesn't mean it's going to work! Similarly, you could be spending lots of time on activity or strategy that is definitely white hat, but may not be the right area of activity for the industry in question, or when you factor in competitor activity, etc.

Again, yup. I recall a discussion about stuff like link building, article writing and the like, a few years ago which were then touted as white hat by many operators. I disagreed with that portrayal, generally avoiding them as fundamentally these methods were manipulating the search results unnaturally so the white notion was really just a veneer which would get striped away to reveal the grey; you knew it was just a matter of time if you did even a small amount of Google watching.

Atomico wrote: »

If you want to learn web design and development, yes. If you want to learn about SEO and marketing / online marketing, no. It's useful but by no means essential, and SEO is moving in the other direction more and more - less about web design and much more about traditional marketing and online PR.

Traditionals mktg/pr melded with the new methods and opportunities online/social provides to promote and market a well rounded web/net and offline business presence.

Some are spouting SEO as Dead. But that's not really the case. It's just a lot of the rubbish is being tackled. Certain aspects still matter and will continue to: semantic markup, good nav, attention (not excessive) to keywords, etc.; but writing for your audiences and using the right channels is where it's at, using the organic, relevance, authority mantras. Using those will get you your great links, increase your audience, improve your conversion and whatever else makes you business' presence great.



Oh and experience is the trump card, almost every time.

Peterdalkey

These last two posts are very informative and interesting indeed. It is a pity that they are now buried under this particular thread heading, as they have wider appeal than the heading suggests.

It would appear that a lot of what passes for SEO should actually be called SEM, Search Engine Manipulation and from what I read generally, Google are all over such tactics with their sophisticated algorithms and respond accordingly, if they don’t like your tactics. A lot of the advice in these posts is mirrored in a site I have started following which has some interesting stuff on the topic, along with some rather boring. http://www.searchenginejournal.com/ . With so much conflicting information being propagated as hard data by vested interests, it is hardly surprising that the image of SEO and Digital Marketing is subject to a rather jaundiced views from the potential buyers of these important services.

It also appears to me that the site owner really does need to be involved in this activity at a micro level, as no outside SEO expert can be expected to have knowledge of the minutiae of one’s specific industry and target market segment. It is on this occasion actually all about you!!

With so much monitoring of surfer/consumer activities and behaviour online and their time/page views being used to rank sites, it would appear to me that bounce rate is going to become more and more important in overall ranking for organic search results. It strikes me that there is a market for an innovative piece of software that could be plugged into sites that would offer a facility to include adwords-like “negative” keywords/phrases/tags etc. Clearly this would stop at least some of the “uninterested” traffic visiting your site and help rakings by attracting only appropriate quality vistors while enhancing consumer experience at the same time. Perhaps this is just an infantile fantasy on my part?

dgerryd

I have not read all the replies because of the ones I read, here is my view kudos to you dcg5 as I see your offer as honest and you are eager to learn here's my thought.

There is no such thing as fking black hat or white hat SEO its all the same no matter what anyone tells you "Ah we are a completely white hat seo firm" why do I say that, no matter what, your end goal is to rank highly in the serps it's a game of risk management how your going to get there is up to the individual and the tactics they accomplish it through with the funding/money/bank roll they are playing with.

I am neither a black hat nor white hat seo guy as whats white hat today could be black hat tomorrow by google. There has been many many almost nearly church going kind of people that do offer REAL VALUE online get their sites kicked in the teeth and not because of shady black hat stuff - backdoor pages-spam-bad N hood links, and the real black hat stuff is still ranking.

There is no seo course online that will teach you seo it will only give you theory/best practices which are probably out of date, seo changes every day and most have not a clue about it and the ones that do can even be shot down by a google update no matter whether if it's B/H Seo

There is only one kind of white hat seo on this planet and thats the one that doesnt build backlinks or the one that has an endless manopoly of money to do marketing campaigns that don't even need links, anything else is risk management what you might have done as seo work 4 years ago is probably now black hat or hit by one of googles updates listed under gaming the system in some way or maybe not, my point is google are the gamers, the black hats of the industry with disinformation, blind eye to certain ranked sites if you have the bankroll you can rank anything so how is that an equal market or anything but whitehat once its more revenue for google you'l get the aul Bertie O H wink.

Seo is now internet marketing not just backlinks don't follow the sheep like sheep like I did (that's why I'm ranting + a few jars) @dcg5 if you want to learn seo for client work without taking any risks learn other traffic generation methods along the way, diversify, learn IM marketing or you will find it hard because of all the BS out there, once you can provide value somewhere to someones business you will be golden, learn seo but don't fall into the backlink's rankings syndrome that's for the ones who know exactly what risk their willing to take.

Even working with a search marketing company for some experience will at least give you a handle on the inner workings of the industry, or here is a little nuget for you go to your local chambers of commerce attend one of the lad's get your business online free tutorial groups for local businesses (if you don't have the confidence in your skills to rank a local search website don't do this) just approach someone that seems approachable tell them the truth and throw down your cards and offer your marketing goals + benefits for you and him I don't think that anyone going here will say no nor will it hurt them if it doesn't rank there site as it will be worthless anyway unless it's optimized.

If you rank a local site it's great for you as a starting point for brownie points plus a hook for gaining more clients with free advertising stating you achieved it. Start local with the likes of clothes shops ect. , lower competition businesses with no authority or real branding in any way, you will learn by doing and get better and better with the capital you build as long as you are investing into your virtual estate and providing value.

You cant simply rank anything without some sort of a bankroll and a system of how your going to map it out and achieve it, unless it's not competitive or you can write content, design webpages/landing pages configure email forms and outoresponders grab social media followers and code up a few custom bots for yourself or unless what you have to say and share is really worth following or ranking for real quality.

Anything that,s anyway competitive will be though unless you churn and burn your wa y to NO 1 knowing you will be deindexed sooner rather than later. I'm not trying to claim I am an "SEO GUY" i'm coming from the mistakes I have made and what I have learned and the BS I fell for coming into this arena I have a challenge for you DCG5 if you have the balls and your up for it and you are honestly eager to progress start a different thread/personal journal forget about the blog for gaining rep you can link to that later if you build and achieve rep here, go and post your examples/achievements/strategies here and ask for advice I think people would come out of the shadows to help you if you were driven, willing and genuinely saw you had a get it and try it approach.

(it's the best way to learn anything by doing.) Our education systems from baby infants to leaving cert and beyond are not there to make you smarter or reach your true potential, if it was you wouldn't be learning stuff for years that had no value what so ever other than keeping you busy and paying the fees so that the system can function LOL sorry my rant is over hopefully someone with more experience will give their input ill help where possible. I hope i made some sense to you if not I'm at a loss for going on.

Peterdalkey

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/consumers-body-denies-buying-3000-twitter-fans-29931196.html You would have to wonder if some junior Social Media bod had a hand in this!!

jmcc

Peterdalkey wrote: »

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/consumers-body-denies-buying-3000-twitter-fans-29931196.html You would have to wonder if some junior Social Media bod had a hand in this!!

Look at the somewhat ironic "comment" beneath the article.

Regards...jmcc

EIREHotspur

after writing the equivalent of the first 4 chapters of a book on a previous thread...and not having much time today...I will just say good luck with that!