Hello,

I have been asked to get a site onto first page google for keywords "document management" and "information management".

Its a highly competed keyword and will take a fair amount of tweaks to content and link building which frankly i do not have the time for.

Is anyone out there confident they can achieve first page results within a given time frame for these KW? If so name your price

G

Is anyone out there confident they can achieve first page results within a given time frame for these KW?

anyone who offers you this is either a fool or a liar.
Personally I wouldn't take on any client who's says I want to be first page for any high competition phrase, because once you have worked hard to get them there for a "willy-waving" phrase, they find that conversions and enquiries haven't got any better but they now have even more "tyre kickers" and time wasters asking stupid questions.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

anyone who offers you this is either a fool or a liar.

I see your point Chris, I have had run-ins with a lot of dodgy seo companies but genuine optimisers (like myself) do offer some guarantees without lieing. I do see however that offering guarantees when outsourcing work could get messy.

My usual method is that I dont take full payment until i achieve a first page ranking on the agreed keyword for either MSN, Yahoo or Google. I make sure not to guarantee keywords that are unachievable (i.e. "free email", "music" or the like) but instead would agree a more specific keyword by either adding their companies geographical location or some other factor to make the term less generic and limit competition.

I take a 25% deposit to cover the initial page optimisation that i do to make sure that i am not out of pocket and make the client sign an agreement to pay me when certain requirements are hit. I make my clients aware that results may take up to 12 months on google but that i will get results on msn and yahoo usually within 3-6 months. I also pick my clients very carefully and only deal in this way with well established businesses where there will not be a problem in making payment and their understanding of the seo process is good. I provide them monthly reports so that they can see that work is being carried out.

I do not believe i am a "fool" as it makes it easier for me to sell these contracts and I can charge more than my competition. So far I have achieved results for every contract I have taken on. Whether or not they stay at the top after i finish optimisation is up to them unless they want to pay me a tidy monthly fee for my services. However I am open to suggestions in how i should change the service i offer. I have currenly been thinking of offering a cheaper package with no guarantees but not sure how to price it and what to offer.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

once you have worked hard to get them there for a "willy-waving" phrase, they find that conversions and enquiries haven't got any better but they now have even more "tyre kickers" and time wasters asking stupid questions.

By "willy waving" phrase, do you mean a highly targetted keyword that every business in their market is trying to achieve? If so then my observations would tend to indicate that these improve the quality of leads. Another thing that i have now started to see is that when people move off the PPC results and on to the standard searches the quality of leads and level of trust improves. It appears people are getting wise to the fact that fly-by-night companies can set up a PPC campaign but cannot display easily in standard searches.

I understand why most seo's dont work this way but i prefer to keep the amount of clients i have to deal with low and the money I make high. I do however turn business away if they are not suitable to my process. What services can i offer these people and for what price? How easy would it be to manage?

If no-one is willing to offer a guarantee then what services could you offer? I will relay this onto the client and see if they like the offer. Their site is a good few years old, already indexed with some backlinks showing.

Anyone asking for first page position for any keyword for some bucks I tell them I dont do SEO for third parties and also there are lots of mail I get for my site we can get you on first page and they loose respect from me. Yes you can try my outsourcing site or even my competitors www.rentacoder.com www.elance.com and you will see lots of people saying the same or similar.

Ive seen the scams but i genuinely don't take money until i achieve results (apart from deposit which covers me for the on-page optimisation and initial link building). If i decide to take a very highly competitive term i will stagger payments depending on what page i.e payment 1 for top 30, then next on top 20 and next on top 10.

What services do you offer? Do they pay you a consulting fee?

I don't think I would like to say to a client, pay me £4,000 and your site may get better ranking or it may not. That seems to me like a complete scam. I have now been looking around at what other companies offer and it seems like most consumers are getting ripped off. I have just been quoted by a company £1500/month for link building and they say "we may even get you as many as 100 links a month". I could get this many links in a week without much effort as they are not even specifying that the incoming links will be related category.

I do not want to rip my customers off but i also don't want to shoot myself in the foot. I think i will start a new thread asking people how they package their services as I need some advice.

The only thing I will (or can) guarentee with any certainty is that I will do the best possible job for their site. The biggest issue with it is you could tell the client "Yes, you're at no 1 for blah". They check, and go to a different DC and they are nowhere because that one is out of synch. Instantly they assume you are lying to them, they have no idea that this kind of thing happens all the time.

The biggest problem is that everyone sees SEO simply about rankings. Wrong! It should be about conversions and improving them. Rankings mean nothing if visitors simply leave.

Clients decide what keywords you are going to target?. Wrong! You should be doing the research for the best keywords to use. If they had their way you would only be going for a handful of phrases instead of the potential hundreds of phrases that bring in serious buyers. If you don't feel you can do justice to word research then buy in the expertise such as SEO Research Labs for keyphrases.
The "high volume" phrases may bring traffic but few will be serious buyers.
I have one client who is top for what is the supposedly top search phrase they get maybe 1 enquiry every couple of months from that, but make 1 or 2 sales every day from phrases that don't make the WordTracker radar.

i agree with you in some respects Chris.

The more specific a keyword, they higher the conversion rate. For instance, for my software development website, the keyword ".net" would get me a high amount of clicks but flood my site with useless leads. However ".net development" or ".net development london" would get highly targetted traffic that would convert into sales.

In some industires, even the specific keywords can be highly competed and provide good levels of traffic. If the keyword looks unachievable i will either slap a whopping great price tag on it, making it well worth my while to at least give it a go, or i would use overture keyword assistant to find another keyword that would still generate traffic but isnt so hard to achieve. The later is the most likely as i do not want to mislead a client or give them false hope.

I guarantee that their phrase with be 1st page on either MSN, Yahoo or Google. I am now thinking that I could cut my work load if change the service I offer but the question is what do I offer as a package? I find that people like to be sold packages so i sell them a package with includes optimisation of content and usually 5 phrases which i research myself (unless otherwise asked). The problem with someone accessing a different DC has cropped up a couple of times but I had already fulfilled my guarantee on those keywords in MSN which the client could see.

Some of my clients are organisations that do not actually sell anything so traffic is the only guideline they have. Most of my other clients already have a PPC campaign and are looking for a seo to get them standard listings on costly phrases.

Occaisionaly someone comes to me with a site that is absolutley dire and costing them sales. In these cases i usually re-design it from scratch salvaging only the decent content and building new sections etc...

I am doing some research into what other companies are offering and to be frank I feel sorry for the consumer as it is very confusing. Last company i talked to simply validate HTML, add a few keywords to pages then give you a list of directories for you to submit to yourself. One SEO today told me that you couldnt get a good rank on google unless your domain was 6 years old. It seems that everyone is offering their own slant, some better than others.

Thanks for the words and good reading. For rookies like myself, good info sometimes is hard to find trying to seperate the wheat from the chaff.

chrishrist said "The biggest problem is that everyone sees SEO simply about rankings. Wrong! It should be about conversions and improving them. Rankings mean nothing if visitors simply leave."

Yes, I completely agree. I've made 4 changes to my site in the last 45 days trying to do just that.

Thanks,

Webseeker

Originally Posted by Webseeker

chrishrist said "The biggest problem is that everyone sees SEO simply about rankings. Wrong! It should be about conversions and improving them. Rankings mean nothing if visitors simply leave."

I fully agree that you need a good website that encourages people to buy, but to get people to see it you need to get good rankings.

I am not sure why their is so much bad and negative information about SEO. I can definitely help you achieve your goals, and I will provide you with an honest assessment with a 7 Point Free Business Internet Marketing Analysis. Call me at 720-985-7945 anytime.

Thank you.

Hi

interesting thread, 1500 a month for link building is not a good quote, there does seem to be a problem with SEO services, they are vastly overpriced and 9 times out of 10 some of htem dont know the basics.

My personal favorite is the website offering their services to get your site to number 1 on google, and yet their own site appears no where on serps !!

If they are so good why cant they get their own site to number 1 lol !!!

Woc

What's the point in gaining a multitude of links if the content isn't converting customers?

Originally Posted by usearchme

Hi

interesting thread, 1500 a month for link building is not a good quote, there does seem to be a problem with SEO services, they are vastly overpriced and 9 times out of 10 some of htem dont know the basics.

My personal favorite is the website offering their services to get your site to number 1 on google, and yet their own site appears no where on serps !!

If they are so good why cant they get their own site to number 1 lol !!!

Woc

Seeing this a lot this time around, quite funny if they can't even promote their own product well.

Originally Posted by usearchme

Hi

interesting thread, 1500 a month for link building is not a good quote, there does seem to be a problem with SEO services, they are vastly overpriced and 9 times out of 10 some of htem dont know the basics.

My personal favorite is the website offering their services to get your site to number 1 on google, and yet their own site appears no where on serps !!

If they are so good why cant they get their own site to number 1 lol !!!

Woc

agreed, you need to show someone before you provide him seo services.