SEO How It has Worked For Me

[business1directory]

:lol:

Hi there. I wanted to write a small article about how to implement SEO in to your business website. I own a few online businesses and I do all my own seo optimisation. Main reason is quite simple I used to get companies to do it and they charged a small fortune with little or no results. I then thought why not I have ago. I purchased loads of books read articles blogs and three years down the road I am still doing it and I must say I like it it's hard work. One of my sites decorative living which offers unique gifts worldwide has page rank of 3 with google and i get anything from 300 to 1100 hits a day.
I have blogging site that is doing quite well with a google rank 4. What I am really trying to say is you can do it if you want why pay these guys a small fortune when you can do it.

I hope you liked this article. Please feel free to comment but be kind in what you say thanks

Michael
:thumbup:

 

[Canary Dwarf]

Glad to hear you've had success by going it alone. You must have picked the wrong companies Michael to do your SEO.

It is possible to do it all yourself, but SEO is a time-consuming passtime particularly if you take the learning curve into account, and many businesses do not have that time to spend, and that's why they get others in.

It is a minefield, but with the right company, it's an investment, so should be viewed as such.

 

[Dizzydiza]

I have to say that I agree with both points so that kind of puts me on the fence.
I am always doing little things to my website to try an improve its search engine ranking and I enjoy the learning experience from it. I do it because I can't afford to employ someone to do it for me and when I have a quiet time in my business (usually the winter months) then I have the time to potter about with it.
On the other hand if I could afford it, then I would employ someone to do it for me but then I would need to be totally business focused which at the present time in my life, my family come first and my business second. So I could probably not be able to handle the increase in business that professional optimisation would do for me.
By the way its amazing what happens when you talk about SEO...suddenly I had a text from google telling me I had lost my first page ranking with them. I didnt even know I had first page ranking!

 

[Gordon N]

I think Marc is spot on here, keeping up to date with the latest theories and trends in SEO is in itself a full time job! That means you have very little time left for actually running your business!

It strikes me that this is another area where in order for a business to progress there are certain elements that are better outsourced - anything specialist in which you are not yourself qualified. I have partnered with an SEO firm that I trust in order to offer my clients a valuable SEO service, and it doesn't cost the earth (not even a small fortune!).

A well developed site will have a good number of SEO requirements built in (if it's produced by a professional that is) so the work required by the SEO firm/consultant will be less - therefore costing you less. And whilst they are tweaking your search engine performance, you can concentrate on what you do best - running your business.

 

[Canary Dwarf]

Diana, Google doesn't send emails out to say you've dropped of the front page! That sounds like a phishing scam to me, or SEO spam. What else does the email say, eg, does it provide a link?

 

[laserads.co.uk]

TEXT from google ? very strange !

Over the years i have doen most SEO stuff myself ... employed a couple of companies at one time for £600 a go .... in the first case it was a waste of time , in the second case turned out they used blackhat that got me banned for 6 months until i used google webmaster tools to beg my case after removing blackhat offending HTML ...

I think theres good hinest companies out there I just wouldnt put money towards it again unless I was feeling rich ... i think the biggest advantage of a decent SEO compnay is they will work on longtail , which can bring more targeted visitors than first page ranking in some cases

PAUL

 

[Kevin]

I must say as great as SEO is in its self will not bring you more sales through your website. If you don't have a good usable website then with SEO all you will have is more un-converting traffic.

Its the leaky bucket effect, if you don't plug the leaks then your efforts will be in vain. How many of you know the visitor value of your website? I bet not many of business on here do.

There is a large misconception in the online world where business think all they have to do is create a website and watch the sales come in. I would really recommend that you all check out Google's website optimizer as with a little conversion optimisation you can see some large increase in conversions. Let your customers design your website.

Its not been uncommon for MOU to see our clients increase their conversions by 30-40% by just doing a few tests. Then concentrate on getting more targeted traffic through SEO.

 

[business1directory]

I must say as great as SEO is in its self will not bring you more sales through your website. If you don't have a good usable website then with SEO all you will have is more un-converting traffic.

Its the leaky bucket effect, if you don't plug the leaks then your efforts will be in vain. How many of you know the visitor value of your website? I bet not many of business on here do.

There is a large misconception in the online world where business think all they have to do is create a website and watch the sales come in. I would really recommend that you all check out Google's website optimizer as with a little conversion optimisation you can see some large increase in conversions. Let your customers design your website.

Its not been uncommon for MOU to see our clients increase their conversions by 30-40% by just doing a few tests. Then concentrate on getting more targeted traffic through SEO.

Hi Keven,

Yep I got done over for £1750.00 that's one of the reasons I did a lot of hard home work and read a lot I mean a lot of bookes did reasearch my other business was getting about 100 hits a day that was a good day now since I do all the SEO it has gone to 400 on a bad day to over 1,200 hits and I am Google rank 3. And the great thing is I did not pay a penny for it. Yes there is really good solid SEO guys out there but there is some real horrors out there you just have to find the good guys

Michael

 

[Kevin]

Hi Keven,

Yep I got done over for £1750.00 that's one of the reasons I did a lot of hard home work and read a lot I mean a lot of bookes did reasearch my other business was getting about 100 hits a day that was a good day now since I do all the SEO it has gone to 400 on a bad day to over 1,200 hits and I am Google rank 3. And the great thing is I did not pay a penny for it. Yes there is really good solid SEO guys out there but there is some real horrors out there you just have to find the good guys

Michael

Has the amount of increased traffic resulted in greater percentage of conversions?

 

[business1directory]

Hi Keven
Yes I am more visiable hits are turning in to sales that's the most important thing people have found us!! and want to purchase
Michael

 

[Kevin]

Hi Keven
Yes I am more visiable hits are turning in to sales that's the most important thing people have found us!! and want to purchase
Michael

I do see that your website does have problems in Google Chrome. When you click on the category pages Chrome brings back an error.

 

[business1directory]

Thanks for your reply but chrome is new and there is known issues with this chrome I have spoken to Google and they are aware of this

 

[Gordon N]

Thanks for your reply but chrome is new and there is known issues with this chrome I have spoken to Google and they are aware of this

Chrome is far from new! Plus it's based on webkit along with a number of other browsers including Apple's Safari so there should be no excuse for errors. That said I am using Chrome 4.1.249.1042 and didn't see any obvious errors being thrown on your site, just some rather slow loading content and some missing banners. Other than that it was quite happy.

What was the error you were experiencing?

 

[Canary Dwarf]

Has the amount of increased traffic resulted in greater percentage of conversions?

Kevin makes a very good point here that a lot of people miss. More hits will inevitably lead to more sales, but a focus on usability first to increase the conversion rate will lead to the same percentage increase leading to higher sales

 

[Adventurelife]

There is no right and no wrong on this one because it depends on your business ambitions.

If you plan to build a reasonable size business employing a bunch of people, you really have no choice but to use an SEO because you have not got time to learn it all. If you have a website or sites and it is just to support your own personal income then yes it can be learned without doubt. Nothing is hidden and their are no secrets.

I always ask those who think they can do it themselves how much is your time worth? I know exactly what each of my working days are worth and it is worth a lot more than I am going to pay a SEO.

That said like every part of business be it marketing, sales, finance , logistics etc etc you should as a business owner know enough in order to be able to hold a professional conversation with potential suppliers in order to know who can deliver and who are full of bull.

I am not a seo but I know enough after 10 plus years of running sites in different industries

1. You need to be in a sector or industry that can sell on the web. Not all can!
2. You need to be found for searchs people are looking for ( so that means page 1)
3. The site needs to convert those that find it into paying customers

Straight forward enough the hard bit is that it never stops if you want to keep growing and the dynamics keep changing and the customers are taking control so what you do today will not be what you are doing next year.

Hints for the future

1. Get niche and niche within the niche then dominate it on the web.
2. Get you customers do do a lot of the work for you

Peter