website management

[doctor Bob]

Hi,
Does anyone employ a company to do their SEO on a website?
I currently do but think I should find another company as I feel my site is slipping, the guy does it as a hobby really and takes a small payment each month. I think I need a professional company and pay the going rate, my estimate is £200-£300 a month.

Can others enlighten me, I have a company coming to see me on Monday about managing it.

 

[peps1]

The dark arts of SEO!!!

What is the guy actually doing each month (seriously dose he even tell you, or just take the cash?), and what do you expect a professional company to do for your site?

If we are talking about the one in your sig, it looks to be pretty much fixed content, so there is only so much editing/optimising of the sites code that can be done, and its not like you will have issues with ever changing site map structure, web page errors and use of JavaScript that will result in crawling issues?

There is only so much chucking money at SEO companies will achieve, after all they are just a middle man for paid Google AdWords.....and its important to keep in mind that paid advertising on Google will have no effect on your search ranking.

And some techniques used by SEO guys, link farms and keyword stuffing will have the adverse effect.

I would be asking this SEO company exactly what experience they have with clients in your field, and short of buying add space on your behalf and pocketing a commission, what do they plan on doing that's not already been done to your sites code?

 

[Paul Hannaby]

There are quite a few basic things you could do yourself to potentially improve your search engine ranking without spending large amounts of money on it. I guess it depends if you have the time or the inclination to do it yourself?

 

[templecarpentry]

If you do a little bit of research in the net, you will find all of the info you need to SEO your own site. Mostly it requires regular updates of material even if it is just an extra paragreph or re-arranging a paragraph. Each page needs a good bit of text with keywords recurring throughout, but dont over-keyword your page as this is classsed as spamming. Go into each of your pictures at their source ie. computer hard drive and rename them with keywords too. Crosslinking your site is good too, so get some links to your page from elsewhere ie facebook, twitter, other sites, business listings etc.

Thats the jist of it, but its easy to read up on the whole lot and its worth it.

Phil

 

[mickthetree]

Your site is built using word press. You already have the SEO pack installed which is good, but you (or the guy you employ) have to put in the time to get the results. Also male sure you are keeping you word press install up to date. They are all too commonly hacked if not.

As the others have said, there is a wealth of information out there on the net if you are so inclined.

I would ask the guy you currently use to sit down with you and show you what he has done and look through your analytics to see what results he has achieved. Then you can compare what he is doing against what this company will offer.

Don't forget that what you see when you search on google is not necessarily the same as what I will see. Google remembers your search history and tailors the results it gives you based on your historical profile.

Renaming your images and using the alt tag will also help. Most of your images are named 1.jpg for example with no alt name.

You are already running a blog, but make sure you are linking back from each blog post to relevant pages on your site.

Do you have any videos running on youtube? This can drive a surprising amount of traffic if done well.

If you have any specific questions feel free to ask.

 

[bugbear]

SEO is the dark art of trying to LIE to google. Google has really rather clever people trying to stop this.

The best way to "SEO" your site is to make it as genuinely good (HTML/CSS guidelines, decent content, regular updates) as possible.

BugBear