In the recent past, we have written on the subject of selecting the best SEO expert and the best Web designer for your projects or websites. Revisiting the subject is warranted after reading a blog post over at Blazing Minds regarding SEO Packages for Small Business. It’s an important subject, and understanding it or the lack of understanding it can effect your long term business goals.
In our article Selecting a Web Design Firm and SEO Expert we highlighted these points:
- Avoiding the SEO Amateur – This continues to be a problem among startup businesses and those that do not do their research. We have rescued a few of these since the writing of our original article.
- Avoiding the Submission Scam – Be weary of anyone who tells you that they will submit your site to 100′s or 1000′s of sites. First, that’s probably not going to do much for you. Second, submission of your site is a tactic and not a strategy in search engine optimization.
- Understanding how keywords are really used – It is a common understanding that being ranked #1 for a keyword is the goal of SEO. Well, it’s true, if you are using the right keywords. If you are ranked #1 for keywords that no one uses, then your keywords are junk. An expert SEO will help determine the best keywords to attract the visitors to your site that convert into leads or sales.
The Blazing Mind’s article points out these concepts in regard to buying an SEO package.
- Bulk Link Building – Root domain authority building should be one of the primary goals of any SEO package and not building low quality links.
- Results in Less Than 3 Months? – While real resultscan happen in less than 3 months, it often takes more time to develop solid ranking results that will stick around for the long term. Usually those 3 month promises is a good indicator that you are talking to a used car salesman. (No offence to used car salesmen.)
- Are you Being Offered a Complete Package? – Avoid the SEO package that doesn’t include keyword anaysis or competetor research. An SEO strategy that doesn’t include these will leave you wanting for more and few conversions from visitor to customer.
You can read the complete article about Selecting a Web Design Firm and SEO Expert here at the Abraxas website and you can read more about understanding SEO Packages for Small Business over at Blazing Minds.
Abraxas offers a highly effective strategic approach to search engine optimization and provides custom SEO packages to small businesses and startups (we’re not just a Chattanooga SEO company). Please contact us for more information.
I’d say that the two main dangers when searching for your SEO solutions are hiring an amateur and the lack of patience.
I know that we all want money and we want it now, but expecting the results right away and going for the promises of “getting ranked #1 tomorrow” end up being a disaster.
The way to be safe when signing up with someone to do SEO work for your company, is to work with an established team of marketers. The freelance guy will never be able to deliver the results a dedicated team of professionals will be able to.
SEO is a great thing, but it takes time. I don’t think relying on others to do your SEO is a good idea, I think you should learn it yourself. That way you know you’re doing something right, thus the reason I don’t sell my SEO services.
Timmy, It could be a good option for some to do their own SEO. However, many small and large businesses do not have that option, so they hire a company like Abraxas to guide their SEO efforts. It’s the same principle as hiring any sort of consultant or service provider such as accountant.
Before buying any SEO packages, you must check what’s inside the package. It must always contain market/keyword research, market potential analysis and do follow link building. If you get good satisfying results in less than 3 months, then you can always rely on their service.
The worst is those that offer thousands and thousands of backlinks but when you check their work, it’s just all junk. It’s the quality and definitely not the quantity when it comes to that!
However, most small businesses only have a small budget allotted for their SEO so usually they get what they pay for.
There are different packages that offer different strategies to help you build links for your site, be cautious. In SEO I’ve learned that you have to be associate with successful blogs and take a lot of patience with you when you are trying to do your research.
SEO is great as well as necessary for all the people but it takes more time to get better. There are many packages but they need proper way to follow up these packages. So, it is better to do our site SEO with mind and time…
I’ve looked at a lot of SEO packages from different SEO experts, I believe you really have to avoid those that promise thousands of one way links.
There are so many crappy “SEO experts” out there. I tried some of them, but it was so disappointing, that i read some books on my own and got better results than those experts. But your points tell me there is much more in SEO than i expected. Perhaps i should try a real expert this time…
SEO is the soul of offsite optimization, to get a high rank and high traffic volume over the web you must have a good SEO tatics.
@Clemens:
You’re totally right: real experts are really rare. But as long as there are enough innocents to this field there will be the so called “experts” as well. I’m happy that i found a quite good SEO-Agency on my own. But this post here is right: you’ve got to know the basics of SEO to chose an appropriate agency.
I love this article, i agree that you could get bad advice and only time and reading articles like this can help you achieve your goals in SEO
I admit to being one of these who can’t seem to wait to see the results of linkbuilding. Sometimes the wait is long and then you find out you were unsuccessful. You need to have an alternative plan of action.
I think understanding the proper uses of keyword has this huge factor on how you can succeed with your SEO strategy.
Good list. I often wonder what draws people to use submission scams. If you suddenly have hundreds or thousands of links overnight, this is probably going to look pretty suspicious from a search engines point of view. I have seen a few on ebay that offer up to a million links.
SEO is getting more more and interesting and off course fruitful.
Well done little list. A lot of common sense stuff, but to the beginner this is perfect.
theres so many so called SEO experts in the net. this is is great especially for newbie.
When the company I work for first went online (over 10 years ago), they fell for the submission scam. They also promised top 10 rankings. They charged thousands, and we got nowhere – after 10 months, we weren’t even listed on Google, never mind ranked highly.In the end, we did it ourselves, and have also employed a reputable local SEO.
I’d say beware of anyone promising quick results, especially on competitive phrases.
The fact that I now get more spam about SEO Services than Viagra or Replica Rolexes says a lot. SEO must be the latest “Get Rich Quick” deal that unemployed people searching for new career paths are jumping into. The hardest part about real SEO is there really are no short cuts and it takes patience, kind of like growing fig trees.
This article is a fantastic read for the beginner. SEO is definitely one of those research-heavy topics. And sadly, or rather fortunately for a lot of us, not a lot of people like to do their research…
You’re right.
Get good backlinks is no easy task, because the search engines value the reputation of the site pointing to yours. And also the semantics and the use of anchor text. So I always say that a backlink is better quality than 1000 do not provide.
Thank you!
SEO is a very slow and painful process that requires significant investment. For most small businesses this simply isn’t possible, hence they rely on cheap solutions that simply don’t bring the results they expect. A 3 months strategy simply is not realistic and in many instances, it’s more like 3 years.
Submission scam is really plenty nowadays that is why you have to do a background check. Cheap offers are really tempting but is it worth the risk? Let us all think about it.
I think that one should allways hire pros. Amateur can make website banned or sth.
Great article! I like the emphasis on quality link building and the realistic expectation of results.
I know that I should hire a pro but how can I recognize a pro from an amateur?
Nice list. I had always wondered about the SEO 1,000 link back offers. Why wouldn’t it do much for you though?
You’re absolutely right about taking care not to buy into promises of 1000′s of links and guarantees of being #1 in the rankings. Ranking well (and especially ranking for relevant terms that are being searched for) takes time, effort and patience.
3 months would be nice. I hate to be patient
Those 1000 links will probably be very low quality and in bad neighborhoods that Google will never know about. Plus, if your Onsite/Onpage optimization isn’t up to snuff, Google won’t think much of you.
The best way is to have a basic understanding of SEO yourself. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Auto submitters are the worst!
It will only hurt the website you’re trying to promote, never use them
Small businesses do not really need any SEO expert. Good content, a valid html structure, meaningful title tags will help a lot.
For large-scale projects, operating in competitive environment, experts in this field are however a must. As stated in the article: ‘be wary of unsolicited emails..’, those are the worst.
Spending time on searching for the real pro’s out there, or asking your web designer to find one for you helps!
Really Thomas? Small Businesses don’t need SEO? Tell that to the small business on page one
miracleman12, don’t get me wrong, every website benefits from SEO. My point is that a small site/small business can do without hiring an expert. Assuming that small businesses have limited finance resource it just seems out of scale to me.
Ive learned not to go with anyone that gives an SEO guarantee such as BE #1 ON GOOGLE IN JUST 30 DAYS! That very seldom happens and if it did it would most likely be a junk keyword/phrase as you suggested.
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You have to be very careful with who you select for your SEO work. Just look at all the people that used Build My Rank and now they are all getting penalties or even worse de-indexed. If you want to succeed at SEO slow and steady wins the race.
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Man there are some really ill-informed posters on this comments thread
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The challenge in 2012 with providing packages for small businesses is being able to include all the new elements that are now part of an SEO service, that is, online review acquisition, social media promotion and reputation management. Its a hell of a task on a budget that a typical small business can afford.
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I am very happy that i found this site. I have bookmarked this site to visit again and find out the new post.
Good article, the bottom line is good inbound marketing campaigns take time, especially since the Penguin update back in April 2012. Link building should be more about earning links through great content such as infographics, tools or useful information to the reader.
I agree link building is a necessary component in order for SEO to work, however, the direction Google is heading to social media and original content will be the final deciding factor.