With so many SEO companies to choose from, it can be very difficult to distinguish between them and work out which SEO company is best for you. When times are hard, and the recession tightens its grip around the budget of most companies, it is often very appealing to go for the cheapest option. Companies are also tempted to take on the job of SEO themselves, which can lead to disasterous consequences as we wrote about in our post on the dangers of DIY SEO.
So why not go for the cheapest option? Well there is certainly no harm in trying to get a competitive price, although when marketing budgets are limited, SEO companies generally thrive as they are a cheap and cost effective method of marketing your product or business online. However if a company is offering prices that are too good to be true, then you would be right to be suspicous. Here are just a few things to look out for:
- What are you actually getting for your money? Is it just a homepage optimisation, or are you getting a full service for your whole site including an on-page and off-page strategy?
- What are the associated monthly fees? Are you getting a cheap deal upfront, and then being hit hard by a monthly cost? If so, what are you getting each month and how much time are the SEO company actually spending on your site?
- If you’re getting a report such as an on-page optimisation report, is it a generic report based on a template? In order to save costs, SEO companies offering cheap services normally have templates for all their reports which are simply filled in by a junior web programmer. These reports are normally non-specific containing quite general information about your site. In a lot of cases, these are recommendations and best practices as opposed to actual issues with your own site, and as such involve quite a lot of analysis from your side to check all the points listed in the document.
- Additionally, these reports can lack the crucial amount of detail required to optimise your site properly, and can often miss elements of your site that might infact get you penalised or removed from the search engine index (normally a naive mistakes as opposed to any kind of black hat intent).
- Finally, you may find it very hard to get hold of the company once the invoice has been paid. The account managers might have 100’s of clients each and so the proper amount of time isn’t being invested into monitoring your site’s progress and reporting back to you. For a successful campaign, it is imperative that the traffic is analysed and your site is adjusted as required.
To find out more about a full service SEO company then check out the information provided on our website or get in touch to speak to us directly. Remember that the success of your website / online marketing campaign can have a huge effect on the success of your business, so think carefully before investing your money.
During the first couple of weeks in March there have been many sites seemingly affected by a Google Page Rank update. Unfortuntely, most webmasters are complaining after seeing their Page Rank drop quite drammatically i.e. from 5/10 to 0/10. There is normally some fluctuation that occurs during the update of the Page Rank algorithm, which is commonly known as the Google Dance. However, changes aren’t normally as extreme as they appear to have been this month.
There is a lot of uncertainty around the update to the algorithm after Google announced that it is only updating 3-4 times a year now as opposed to the monthly change. A lot of webmasters are claiming that this recent change is due to a glitch with the Google Page Rank tool bar, but others think that a new element has been added into the algorithm. Most of the sites heavily affected are blog and news sites, which have all dropped to a Page Rank of 0. SEO experts think that this could be related to the introduction of an age-deflation factor, where news and blog items over a certain age lose their importance.
Personally we do not think that a Page Rank update her happened just yet, although everybody is waiting to see what happens when the first update occurs.
A referring site (or a referrer) is the source from which a website came from. For example, a web user might find some recommendations for a restaurant on a good food guide website. If the website includes a link to the restaurant website then it is referring the user to the site. This link is referred to as an inbound link.
If you have are using Google analytics on your website, you can track to see where your visitors are coming from by clicking on traffic sources. This data is divided into direct traffic, referring sites, keywords etc. If you click on referring sites, you will be able to see all the sites that have directed web users to you and how many people they have referred.
In terms of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), it is important to build the amount of inbound links to your site. Not only do they provide traffic to your site, but also improve your Page Rank which can improve your rankings within search engine results pages (SERPs).
A common question we get asked when explaining the many benefits of integrating a blog into a clients website is, “what do we write about?”. Well here are just a few things that you can write about:
Industry news (current events)
Writing about the latest industry news is a great way to get more relevant traffic to your website. As well as writing about events, make sure that you add your own comments and thoughts to make the article unique. Whatever happens, make sure that you don’t just copy and paste from other blogs / news pages or you could end up with content duplication issues!
Personal experience
People are always interested in personal experiences, especially within business. For example, this very blog is based upon my own experience with clients that are new to SEO. Providing this information in this kind of context is very useful to helping other users understand the importance of what you’re writing about, or trying to achieve as a business.
Top 10
If you’re ever stuck for something to write about, a top 10 list is a great blog to write. If I’m looking for a good website, I will also search for other peoples top 10 lists. I like to see their recommendations, and these lists will show that you know the industry well. For example, a web design agency might list their favourite top 10 websites for a particular year, which will provide their readers with an indication of the level of quality and how uptodate they are.
Advice and tips
Some people may advise against putting advice and tips on a blog. After all, why would you give users tips for performing the service you’re charging for? Another way of perceiving this, is that by providing tips and advice you will be perceived as an expert within the industry, which in turn will lead to more business enquiries. You don’t have to give away all your secrets, but showing that you know what you’re talking about is definitely a plus.
If you don’t have a blog on your website, you’re potentially missing out on having unique, regularly updated content added to your site which is a key part of your SEO campaign. To find out more about blog integration, you can contact Elevator or read more on this site.
YouTube has recently made the decision to block nearly all of its music videos to UK visitors, after failed negotiation attempts with British Royalty collectors for the PRS (Performing Rights Society) for music. Both are holding each other to blame for this decision, but they are still hoping to come to an urgent agreement.
The result of this decision is going to leave a great number of users in the UK very disappointed, and is one of the key key selling points to YouTube’s service. However, Patrick Walker of YouTube said that their hands are simply tied by PRS, and that all videos will be blocked until they can strike up a new contract that is “economically sustainable” for both parties.
Patrick Walker said:
“But PRS is now asking us to pay many, many times more for our license than before,” he wrote. “The costs are simply prohibitive for us - under PRS’s proposed terms we would lose significant amounts of money with every playback.”
YouTube isn’t the only company that has struggled with licence agreements in the UK. The popular music genome project “Pandora” also blocked UK viewers after being unable to afford the licensing costs.
When PRS were asked to comment, they seemed more interested in talking about how much revenue YouTube were making per quarter than actually explaining the justification behind their changes in costs. PRS most likely want to increase their costs because they see how much money YouTube is making with their videos. What they must also consider is that YouTube is a great service for the music industry, helping to get as much exposure as possible to their artists. If the videos are removed from YouTube permanently, then users will go elsewhere and often to illegal downloads where both parties will miss out on money making opportunities.
