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fireworks_god
Sexy.Butt.McDanger



Registered: 03/12/02
Posts: 24,855
Loc: Pandurn
Last seen: 1 year, 3 months
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SEO/SEM Issues...
#14663710 - 06/24/11 03:15 AM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
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So I'm looking for a kind of experienced perspective to give a short opinion on a matter regarding SEO/SEM optimization. Here's the specific situation and any input is most welcome!
We want to edge our way into the first page for a keyword "psiholog", psychologist of course, which packs a punch of 246,000 local searches every month. I've found a decent company to work with to get on the top 10, verified their work using Google, they take payments successively as the specific rankings are established, etc. It'd cost us 4000 euros for the first year for establishing it, and then 700 euros a year after that for maintenance. Of course, it's a much better alternative to relying on AdWords for similar (or even worse, since it's an ad and not organic?) coverage, as it takes a max CPC of 2 euros to reap the most estimated daily clicks: 310. That's, of course, 140 euros a day.  This is keeping in mind that we did an exploratory run in Adwords for a couple of days, 24 clicks the one day and 29 the next (5 euros each day), and, in doing so, we snagged two clients.
I guess I'm wondering if it makes the most sense to rely on a service like that as opposed to just hoping it goes up on it's own or trying some feeble attempt of my own to make it happen. Considering that they're planning their approach out over 8 to 12 months for it to reach the top 10, it seems like it's a complex and taxing operation that I couldn't even begin to understand or replicate or that it would just materialize on it's own, especially considering the competition for such a lucrative keyword... We're going to start next week another more intensive exploratory campaign, 5 euros a day for all week, to see how many clients we net, to help give us a better impression as to how profitable it would be for us to be on the first page (client/click ratio).
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If I should die this very moment I wouldn't fear For I've never known completeness Like being here Wrapped in the warmth of you Loving every breath of you
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supercollider
superconducting



Registered: 10/13/00
Posts: 1,234
Loc: Waxahachie
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I'm a SEM professional, and I regard SEO people mostly as charlatans, because they overcharge people and make the process seem more complicated than it is. I can't say for sure whether or not you'll get your money's worth from the company you're considering using, but I'll spell out the basics of SEO for you so you'll know what they're going to do.
1. Use your most valuable keyword "psiholog" a lot on your site, in sentences that make sense. 2. Also use it in the page title, and make your page title something straightforward but not boring, something that will get a good click-through rate in Google results. 3. Put a lot of text on your pages, in HTML, not embedded in images or scripts. 4. Use analytics to fine-tune your pages as much as possible, get your bounce rates down and time on page up. 5. Link farming. You want a lot of other sites to link to yours, so you call in favors from your friends with websites, you link to it from any other sites you own, and you astroturf (get links posted in lots of blogs and forums, either by your friends, your unpaid interns, or pay people a nickel to do it at Mechanical Turk).
The last part is the one that big SEO companies excel at. They will use every cheap and sleazy trick to pollute the web with your link. Ever see those auto-generated pages with no content whatsoever, and a zillion fine print links at the bottom? You'll be on those, along with all the company's other clients. Again, I can't say if it's the right move for you to hire them. If your website and business are pretty solid, it may well be worth the money they're charging, if you get guaranteed results. Maybe you want to spend six months trying to do it yourself and see how far up the results you get without spending a ton.
As for Adwords, that's my real specialty. If you can really get a client for every 5 euro you spend on average, you will make a ton of profit if you keep on spending it. I recommend you keep going until you know with some statistical significance just how profitable it is. You can keep taking it slow, at 5 euro a day, and don't be afraid to bid well below the max.
If you have trouble building a campaign that runs at a good profit margin, hire a professional such as myself to optimize it. (PM me.) I flat-out guarantee that I can double the efficiency of any account not built by a professional. In fact, I've never seen an Adwords account built by anyone other than me or my partner that didn't need a complete rebuild to be up to our standards.
I'm curious to know what language/country you're talking about, by the way.
-------------------- Supercollider? I just met her!
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fireworks_god
Sexy.Butt.McDanger



Registered: 03/12/02
Posts: 24,855
Loc: Pandurn
Last seen: 1 year, 3 months
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Hey man, thanks for the input! 
I definitely know the site isn't SEO optimized very well. I've started using Google's resources to work on that. I've went through an introductory guideline of theirs and started making some changes (simple stuff, putting a meta description to replace the bad quote they used in the search index - it changed by the next day, alt tags for images, etc.). I've been waiting for Website Tools to collect some data so that I can start using it, etc.
These parts I'm not too worried about, the SEO side of it, since there's a lot of resources to benefit from and a couple people I can seek advice from.
The real issue is getting all those quality back-links! I've started working on that a bit, but it's just way over my head and it's a headache to wonder about whether or not it's even working towards anything because who knows if their quality or not and I just don't have the capacity of making it ascend in a natural, effective fashion. I'm imagining that there's a fair bit of competition for it considering the amount of monthly searches.
Regarding the company I found in particular, I don't think it's a big company, and I've seen what kind of link creation he's doing and it's pretty legitimate stuff. It's actually interesting how I found them; I had found one of those "we have 10,000 web directories and we can get your link on every one for cheap" kinda websites, and I was surfing around their directories, selecting a few websites, and then searching Google with the main keywords they listed those links with. Never found one of them, after pages and pages and pages. I was looking into a drilling/well making website, and figured, well, let's search the URL of the number one listing, and see what they did to get there. I found all kinds of blogs they created with links back, even a page on a website for creative industry people to submit their work to hopefully get hired - they signed up under website design, posted a screen shot of their website, and left a link.... stuff like that. I found a link amongst all that to the company that was doing it for them and the rest is history. 
Regarding Adwords, I think it's more likely that it'll take 50 to 100 clicks for every one client, and we got lucky to get one for every 25, but we'll find that out next week when we run 5 euros a day for a week. But that turns us back to the matter at hand. We could be getting over 200 clicks a day if we maintained a top listing continuously, but it'd cost over 100 euros a day to do it. In that sense, 4000 euros for the first year and 700 euros for maintenance only makes sense, and then it's organic too. I just don't know how possible it would be for me to be able to create all kinds of quality back-links to the site in the right way to get to the top 10 for such a solicited key word. The other matter is that I can only imagine it's time consuming and even though right now I have enough time each day to research into this, soon enough I'll be completely swamped with other things... I guess ultimately I'm trying to grasp just how possible it is to make it happen without having to pay someone like that.... my guess is not very likely.
It's a Romanian site, I imagine that means it's probably necessary to use a local service if we are to do so, for the link-building aspect anyway... If you have more info about the link-building side of things, I'd be most curious to hear about it, and if it seems that we could use some assistance with Adwords as things progress, I'll definitely shoot you a pm. Thanks a lot for your perspective!
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If I should die this very moment I wouldn't fear For I've never known completeness Like being here Wrapped in the warmth of you Loving every breath of you
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