SEO How Can This Work?

silvertree

I read some posts about Search Engine Optimization. Get your website to show up by using key words. I am no techie so can anyone explain this.
Lots of companies offer SEO and they all promise better website rankings. How can this work if we all subscribe to it? If 100 of us hire the SEO company do most of us get screwed? And were talking thousands of companies doing this. I don't get it.

Cole

Don't waste your money!

Read, Read and do some more reading and you can do just as much and get even better results, yourself.

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Tulsa's Leader in Outdoor Living Construction | Facebook | Tulsa Pergola Builder | Tulsa Outdoor Kitchens

dougchips

If you search enough you will find at least a 100 companies that promise you the #1 spot on Google.

Any monkey can get you results for a few keywords so long as they are not the really popular ones. Nobody in their right mind can promise results for the popular keywords. I have a bunch of good first page listings, anyone can beat my listings if they have a good SEO guy and plenty of money. Results change daily, some days are good and some days suck.

To answer your question, if 100 of us were in the same trade and all hired SEO companies about 90 of us would get "screwed". The lead services can buy 5 spots on the first page (at least) and the industry leaders(for windows Andersen & Pella) will get a few of the other first page results.

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To get the best replacement windows, or sun rooms contact the replacement windows experts at FHI Vinyl Window Company.

Susan Betz

Here's basic SEO.

Choose your keywords. Make sure they involve your trade, location, and similar ideas to what you are actually doing. Think like your clients would think if they were looking in a search engine for you.

Next, make sure the text on your page reflects these keywords. Repeat the main keywords more than once. Make sure you cover all different variations of a word, e.g. paint, painter, painting. There are tools out there to check keyword density - use them to make sure your keywords are reflected.

Put your keywords in your meta tags. Make sure your TITLE tag reflects keywords! Your title tag is the first thing the search engines see, and this gets you more "points" than anything else.

Make sure you have "alt" text for all pictures. Alt text is what you see when you "mouse over" a picture, and it's located in the html code. Don't describe a picture inaccurately, but do use keywords in your description.

There are other tweaks, but these are the basic ones. If you follow these, you're 90% of the way to optimization.

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Fences of Distinction, Ocala, FL
http://www.fencesofdistinction.com

silvertree

Thanks, I get the drift and will write out some script for my website. My web person is waiting to update my site with more photos, so the timing is good.
What got me going on this was the web guy saying he would charge me by the hour, and then I got a long email from him full of web builder language and I thought I have to control this guy. I speak English to my customers so they know what they are getting into, I would like the same from my service providers. Hope full thinking on my part. I appreciate the the help.

Susan Betz

Good web work, whether it's design or optimization, takes time. Either you do it or you pay somebody to do it. I would recommend most tradespeople take the time to develop their page with the person doing the design. Very few code monkeys will know your business like you do. But don't underestimate the time involved on the code monkey's end. It takes longer than most people realize to do this stuff. And you have to keep at it, continually.

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Fences of Distinction, Ocala, FL
http://www.fencesofdistinction.com

porkchop

Silvertree, I have some friends that are very good, in fact SEO for small business will prolly be my next business. But to give you an example my partner worked with IT supplies for the last 12 months to improve their ranking. Now when you google "supplies" they are number one. Notice that this is a one word key word and they rank above office depot etc. That is just one example of what is possible. My advise to the other guys, phone books will not be around in the future and internet marketing will the primary way of advertising. As PPC (pay per click ads) increase in price, organic listing will ensure future success. The only way to do this is hire someone who knows what they are doing or start reading to figure it out.

Some easy things you can do is submit yourself to internet directories. Start with dmoz. org and yahoo directory (yahoo charges $300 bucks but it can help your listing very quickly) Edit your signature as a hyper link with your keywords that would create 316 incoming links. Create a sitemap see (without the spaces)
www .auditmypc. com / free-sitemap-generator. asp
Edit you meta tags- focus on the description, make it as accurate as possible. Have no more than 20 keywords. You can check your meta tags with (without spaces)
www .widexl .com/ remote /search-engines /metatag-analyzer. html These steps are simple and will put you in the right direction. Start reading blogs on SEO and you will figure it out.

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- Chris
My construction company- Chicago Painting Contractor, Chicago Handyman, Chicago Remodeling. Chicago Internet Marketing by LSB.

silvertree

I've started the learning process, and I have a couple of those sites( the ones for keyword rankings and meta tag information on my favorites menu). Part of my concern was that my web guy is a do it yourselfer and I gave him a bid for a doing a second floor on his house 3 years ago. he ran his own job, took over 2 years, countless problems with everything and it's almost done now. My hard costs for his addition came in at a little over 90K. He told me he did it for under 80K. He is a good web person, but I would not trust a guy with that frame of mind to write my website scripts. Thats what got me going on this whole thing. I think I will do OK with this SEO process.

MattCoops

Have you tried an Adwords campaign?

Getting to #1 spot for a few different keywords took me months.

When you can spend cents on the dollar to be right there on first page with adwords campaign.

I think we're going to start a yahoo ppc (pay per click) too. And see how much of an increase in calls we get.

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Matt with Cupan Custom Tile & Paint of Lowell, Massachusetts
Design and installation of ceramic tile and natural stone for floor, wall, and countertops
(978) 601-8774 | cupantile@gmail.com | view tile pictures and more

kpj5br

There are so many scams out there relative to SEO that I have pretty much stopped even offering it as a service (I'm an IT contractor).

Yes, there is a methodology to SEO, but it's not "do 5 things and you're set", it has to be well thought out and planned.

For example, if I do 5 electricians websites, and I use the same SEO tactics on all 5, none of the 5 are any better off. Very simple example, but it really is an art.

My suggestion is to make sure your web contractor is constantly drilling these things into you:
- Content
- Some more content
- Getting links to your site on lots of other sites
- Add some more content

Watch your Google PageRank (I can explain how to do this) and shoot for a minimum of 3, with 4 or 5 being outstanding.

And never, never, never go with something that sounds too good to be true (which unfortunately for my portion of the contracting industry there is a lot of).

dougchips

LOL, I can find at least 100 people that will get me on the first page for any keyword I want. Not sure why they want the money up front

__________________
To get the best replacement windows, or sun rooms contact the replacement windows experts at FHI Vinyl Window Company.

gofrugal

I think if you get more click from word , google will increase the quality.
All you need to do is, use the most relevant words.