EKM Powershop price and adding extra costs! SEO?

xKayx

I had a quote from EKM Powershop after shopping around for 6 months for an ecommerce website for my business. I tried all the free ones like wordpress, webeden, moonfruit, shopify and it just wasn't enough for me in terms of functionality. I asked for quotes far and wide and they were all quoting opposite ends of the spectrum from £995 to £9000 for the same thing and the same platform.

EKM have quoted me £2000 + VAT but I have noticed in the order confirmation it says this is just for the static website and no back end functions would be included I would have to pay for these functions per month and log in to ekm powershop website to access my sales etc?

Now they are sending me details of adding on their ekm healthcheck for search engine optimisation for £350 + VAT but they will knock me £100 off. Saying they can get me to the top of google and direct traffic to my site.

This is what is included:

Page Titles tick
Meta Keywords
Meta Description
Introduce relevant H1 tags
Consultation Call
Before / After Report
Link Building Suggestions
Knowledge transfer

I thought this all depends on which keywords you use, how often you update your website etc? And would have thought this would be simple enough to include in the price.

I am completely lost now as I just can't trust anyone there seems to be no regulation for this kind of thing how do you know if you are getting a trustworthy service and value for money?

paddyrg

You don't. You're a business and so there's no consumer protection, it is up to business people to be responsible for deciding if they are getting value or not. Your criteria and mine may be different.

That said, it sounds like £250 wasted to me - the ONLY way you can guarantee to get #1 ranking on Google is by paid advertising. And there is no 'google front page', but a different version for every single user. What you see when you search for <search term> will not be what I see, based on browsing history etc.

Lubbyloo

Wow, SEO does not work like that! I would be VERY wary of any organisation that promises to "get you to the top of search engines," it's not that easy and takes hard work over a long period of time; using social media, producing quality content and updating your website. Be wary of off hand promises as some underhand types will practice black hat SEO, get you to the top of listings in the short term and then you will be punished by Google for cheating the system! What really matters is that you are targeting relevant customers and converting business, not sitting at the top of search results.

I recommend you check out Create as they are low cost and you get a lot of these features as standard, plus there are no hidden costs for these "extras."

GolfBravo

xKayx wrote: »

This is what is included:

Page Titles tick
Meta Keywords
Meta Description
Introduce relevant H1 tags
Consultation Call
Before / After Report
Link Building Suggestions
Knowledge transfer

And why is this service optional?

The above (H1 titles, meta descriptions, etc.) are the basics of SEO - this ensures that Google can see and read your website and its structure correctly, and to make sure that it indexes it well.

Before and after report?
Knowledge transfer?
Link building suggestions?
£350? Are they having a laugh?

When I work on websites, the above is part of the website design process - without it you have no chance of Google ever indexing your website correctly. You have to think about keywords/content before you start designing the website.

Re: keyword ranking reports - this can be quite pointless. Your website can rank for a whole range of keywords. And where they rank depends on location, time of day, search history and so on. There are way too many variables for a simple keyword report to cover everything.

The best SEO strategy is to give people a reason to link to your website = good content.