Top 3 Myths On Search Engine Optimization Companies

Originally Posted by festerized

Organic results are gathered by search engines’ web crawlers and ranked according to relevance to the search terms. This relevance is calculated by criteria such as extent of keyword match and number of sites linking to that website.

It is much more valuable to be listed highly in the organic results than in the PPC advertisements.

Organic results are listed based on the search engine’s measure of your relevance and quality, not your advertising dollars

Most people click the organic search results, not the paid advertisements, Organic Results (75% of Results, Paid (Pay Per Click) Results (25% of Clicks)

Research shows those who click on organic search results more often have a higher level of education

Originally Posted by MEL

Your posts are hard to read. You can remove the font formating by selecting the text and clicking the A in the far upper left corner. Also it helps to put spaces between paragraphs.

Originally Posted by DKnafo

Do you have anything that backs that claim?

Originally Posted by festerized

Originally Posted by electricohio

Can I say google doesn't do something similar...no... but I highly doubt it.

Originally Posted by THINKPAINTING

(such as $49.95 per month)

Originally Posted by Rocha_Const

Last company that called offering SEO services wanted to charge me $8,000 for the first year (including website modifications) and $2,500 every following year...

Originally Posted by alanmoore

I would hope they guaranteed their results as well. That IS what you should be paying to play in the SEO space. Hardscapes is a very competitive area in the DC DMA that you operate in. A lot of initial work MUST BE done to get you pushed up to page one for the top 10 keywords that will result in organic traffic to your site.

Do you want to know why there are SEO companies who offer $49.95 and $99.95 a month services? Because they know there are thousands of suckers out there who will give them your money, agree to be dinged monthly and at those rates you wont worry about the charge.

You get what you pay for when it comes to doing SEO and SEM on the cheap. Those with healthy budgets are reaping the rewards. Those who arent are complaining about poor to no results and always seem to have an opinion on why it doesnt work.

Originally Posted by alanmoore

Its not too competitive in that area obviously. I searched for roofing company auburn hills mi on Google. 7,970 results. Swap out for Detroit and it goes up to 158,000. The average CPC for those terms in your area is $2.86. So your question should be this. Will I receive enough clicks organically from hiring this SEO company to justify the cost up front and maintanence? Or is my "investment" better allocated towards PPC because I know that is guaranteed and know I will get exactly the clicks I am paying for?

In my humble opinion, you really have 2 options that are proven to return money in your marketing dollars.

(1) Direct targeted mail. Buy the list, target the affluent in neighborhoods prime for shingle or roof issues.

(2) Do targeted paid search and ONLY bid on keywords/phrases that target those areas you WANT to service and those clients you WANT to work for.

Hope this helps.

Originally Posted by alanmoore

Whats your website url?

Originally Posted by pcplumber

I don't believe one word about search engine algorithms nor do I have any belief at all that Google nor Yahoo has any secrets about your ranking.


Type in 'Convert Floor Furnace To Wall Furnace' and Bestline will alway come out on top because these are one-of-a-kind and very unique keywords on our home page. But, as mentioned in the first paragraph, an internet yellow page company beats me by one position.

This is a trick I think a lot of people do. Make a separate web site for your most powerful keyword and use this keyword as the title for the index page. For example, I could use the title 'Plumber Gardena' and this will (maybe) put me on the very top of the search results for every surfer who types in 'Plumber Gardena' because search engines retrieve web sites by 'Title' first. So, if another company has the keywords 'Plumber Gardena' somewhere on their home page, my site will always be first.

How much do you think one keyord could make you every month. I am willing to bet paying for a separate web site would be far more effective and far less expensive than paying for 'Pay-Per-Clicks'.

I think Search Enging Ranking is a myth and I always think the software developers at Google are always laughing.

Originally Posted by alanmoore

Its not too competitive in that area obviously. I searched for roofing company auburn hills mi on Google. 7,970 results. Swap out for Detroit and it goes up to 158,000. The average CPC for those terms in your area is $2.86. So your question should be this. Will I receive enough clicks organically from hiring this SEO company to justify the cost up front and maintanence? Or is my "investment" better allocated towards PPC because I know that is guaranteed and know I will get exactly the clicks I am paying for?

In my humble opinion, you really have 2 options that are proven to return money in your marketing dollars.

(1) Direct targeted mail. Buy the list, target the affluent in neighborhoods prime for shingle or roof issues.

(2) Do targeted paid search and ONLY bid on keywords/phrases that target those areas you WANT to service and those clients you WANT to work for.

Hope this helps.

Originally Posted by electricohio

I've not heard this one before, I usually stay quite up to date on changes as they happen.

I can tell you that yes Google most definitely always is changing the way they opporate. The reason for this is obvious because as time moves on more tools are created that complement the internet. People are spending more time "playing" on the net rather then just working or searching for information.

I can tell you that just in the past few months Google has unveiled what it calls "Live search" this means that google is now monitoring what people are saying about certain topics 'right now".

They are collecting this information from places like Twitter and facebook and sending it straight to the search results. Now this is still in its infancy stage, in order to see these results you would need to search for something that has a very high perch volume.

I just checked twitter for a trending topic "kuyt" is currently a very much so tweated topic (I guess he's a soccer player) do a search for it and see if the "live results show" they may not if it isn't a highly talked about topic when you search.

The point is that things are always going to change. The social media craze is here and it's very real. Will it be around in the future...I certainly think yes. It may not be Facebook or Twitter but will certainly be a reincarnation of something that was the genesis of this movement.

Many ask me "Why should I use Twitter or facebook if they aren't going to be around in the future?" Why would you not? It works here and now, rife the train till it ends, and who knows where it will end.

OK back to seo. Yes you need to watch who you deal with. Many seo companies will promise page one results for a few key words. If you are looking to hire a company to try and get more traffic to your site make sure the words that they are going to have you rank for are words that people are actually looking for.

I can get a business name that doesn't contain any keywords to post #1 in a few hours it really is not difficult at all. It gets more involved when you are trying to rank for a particular well searched for keyword or keyword phrase.

Think of goolge basically as a big "catch-all" it goes out to each site and looks for information on every published site. It then will cross reference that with other sites. If it sees a link pointing to your page from a very popular website then it feels you must be important.

In High school you had different clicks of people. Cool Kids, Nerdy Kids, Athletes, ext...
Most people would look up to the cool kids and want to be one of them but very few ever got to be in this exclusive group. Every once in a while you would have one of the "cool kids" befriend an outsider. Because the one cool kid accepted him so did the rest of the group.

Consider google the "cool kid" and high traffic websites are all cool kids too. The more 'cool kids" who accept you the more google will notice you and reward you with moving up in the search engines.

Oh yes one more thing, it has also been well documented that a "less caliber searcher" is more likely to click on one of the paid search results then the organic results. this doesn't mean that google is against you getting higher in the search results. Actually quite the opposite. If your site is a very targeted on topic page they want you high in the results.

There are many people that would love to bump google of it's pedestal. I personally know of 3 different people who are creating "hand made" search result web sites. Meaning you would search for something on their site and the results that would be displayed would be results that some actually input into the system. A person actually reviewed the web page and determined it to be a very relevant site. (personally I think these guys are crazy but to each their own!)

Any rate it's all about service. Just like in the contracting business. You provide a better service then your competition and you'll be more successful. Same goes with goolge. If someone else figures out how to give someone the information that they want when they want it then they will provide a better service then google.

Originally Posted by alanmoore

Again, more people click on organic BECAUSE it takes up MORE space on the page. There is a direct correlation between 75% of the traffic going to the organic listings and the 75% of the overall page space that it takes up.

Some of these things are not rocket science guys. Dont take a leap that isnt there. Sure organic is good, I'm the first to recognize that but most on here have not the time, money or education needed to effectively make SEO work for them. Its not easy, its not ever guaranteed and its limited in its scope to reach your target audience. Its just one piece of the advertising puzzle.