Can anyone recommend me an SEO company

kie120

louisaL wrote: »

Thank you everyone once again, I did my site myself but the SEO is a baffling world to me, I even went out and got the search engine optimisation for dummies book from the library today as well lol

Good stuff!:T

There's a good book called 'get into bed with google' - not so much a massive SEO booster but certainly helps you avoid some of the pitfalls and you don't need a computer science degree to understand it.

Savvy_Sue

kie120 wrote: »

Am I forgiven?

:rotfl: Almost, I've sent you a PM. But yes, I did see that you had edited pretty promptly, both in response to paddy and I! so thanks for that.

pinkclouds

paddyrg wrote: »

the fact that "worgybab" has now got 6 mentions on this thread means it is without question the world's #1 authority on the subject.

Sooo off topic (and so very sad) but I find this hysterically funny.

Anyway, back to Louisa. I fear we are putting a bad spin on SEO specialists. There *are* people who can do perfectly acceptable SEO but (I think) it's more to do with their skillset rather than their job title. A copywriter, an account manager, a web designer - and *you* - could all have the right skillset. I haven't read the book you've borrowed but the Dummies range is pretty good (for the cartoons if nothing else - I think they're on par with Dilbert but then I've already admitted to being sad ). I think some of the first things I'd do, when working on SEO, is decide on your most important keywords/phrases, tighten up your copy and ensure your file/page names and links all have good descriptive words i.e. silverbangles.html instead of page1.html and "my company makes <a>fabulous bespoke jewellery</a>" instead of "<a>my company</a> does whatever". As you've done your site yourself, I assume you've already done all the standard things like alt and title attributes, alternative content for non-text elements, sitemap, etc? Remember, search engines are dull as ditchwater and read everything as plain text.

paddyrg

Kie, I'm sure you'll be a great asset here now you're getting settled... it can be frustrating sometimes when you see a job with your name on it and someone asking for help, but to be honest that's why I'm posting here, not on another small biz and whatnot forum - the fact that as the advice is all non-touty, it means it is pretty uncoloured. That's important, especially on this board, as sometimes the honest answer is "don't do it" or otherwise harsh. A lot of people watch The Apprentice, and so think that setting up a fashion label/handicrafts business is a case of "just get a website and some stock", when we both know that isn't even the start of things!

I have learnt a load of stuff on some of the boards here, and can occasionally chip in something useful in return.

Back to the OP, very often the search engines will like the best citizen sites the most. Nice clear language, well spelt, interesting articles, relevant content and links. One thing which may help is that people like to buy local, so make sure your city/area is mentioned in relation to your product "Orange Babygrows of Bradford" means anyone searching for Orange Babygtows in Bradford who entered those three words into a search engine would find you pronto. Links are also localised, so if you have your business pinpointed on Google Maps (and similar services) they will tend to steer local traffic towards you over the guy in Maidstone in the same market, all else being equal.

Don't forget though, that your Google search results and mine will be somewhat different for the same term. Apparently Google currently look at 50-something factors and nuggets of information about the search/searcher before deciding which subset of their database to present to you in which order - this means the days of everyone fighting for the #1 page are almost over as it will be the relevance to the searcher that will drive the results more and more.

Horace

I do all my own SEO, I was taught by my webgeek. On my main website I have got first page google rankings for several pages because I have internal links. Using Wordpress is easy peasy and I use that and do my own SEO. If your tame webgeek built your site then ask him/her about SEO and ask them to show you how to do it.

It takes me about an hour a day to SEO my site if that...certainly an hour a week.

paddyrg

Pretty much by definition, if you google 'SEO <yourtownname>', the highest up the list are doing the best job of SEO, they're the ones to go for. Anyone not on the first page of results is as good as useless.