Add People SEO Marketing Help please
Discussion
Afternoon all.
I have been in business for 3 or so months now and my website traffic is poor to say the lease. I do have a google add words campaign running but it's not helping that much. So after a call today out of the blue from the 'Add People' SEO pointing out a few problems with my site im wondering if i should give them a chance.
Will i be throwing £150 down the drain a month or is it worth a go.
At the moment i am the only one who looks after my site and seo.
Any advice would be good.
Cheers Andy
I have been in business for 3 or so months now and my website traffic is poor to say the lease. I do have a google add words campaign running but it's not helping that much. So after a call today out of the blue from the 'Add People' SEO pointing out a few problems with my site im wondering if i should give them a chance.
Will i be throwing £150 down the drain a month or is it worth a go.
At the moment i am the only one who looks after my site and seo.
Any advice would be good.
Cheers Andy
OK it seems after a little more digging I have answered my own question. Avoid, they were called 'its Cold Outside' and not rated very well. Think I have had a narrow escape.
Russell thanks for the response, yes its the website in my profile. I spent a few days doing everything myself and haven't done much since. What are your ideas? The Add People have confused the ... out of me!
Andy
Russell thanks for the response, yes its the website in my profile. I spent a few days doing everything myself and haven't done much since. What are your ideas? The Add People have confused the ... out of me!
Andy
Nice site. I haven't read all the text but just a couple of things stand out. Your homepage isn't as optimised as the other pages. Sometimes difficult to do because that's where all the graphics are but even they can be tagged. Try and get a heading in there if possible.
Also, where's your website hosted? Denmark?
If I search for "flat screen installation midlands" you're in position 6. Hardly a disaster! You need to work out which search terms are the most important to you and optimise accordingly.
Also, where's your website hosted? Denmark?
If I search for "flat screen installation midlands" you're in position 6. Hardly a disaster! You need to work out which search terms are the most important to you and optimise accordingly.
I pay out £100 a month to Itscoldoutside/Adpeople and wish I'd never got into it. The reason being that I now feel locked in because all their backlinks are, I think, hosted on websites created by them and if I stop paying the direct debit then they will of course remove those many backlinks in one go which may damage our rankings.
This is on the assumption of course that many links from page rank zero websites are beneficial in the first place.
I did spend several hundred ££s on Adwords mentoring recently which I think was probably a good investment as my Adwords campaign is now far better optimsed and my understanding of Adwords has improved which will hjelp in the future.
This is on the assumption of course that many links from page rank zero websites are beneficial in the first place.
I did spend several hundred ££s on Adwords mentoring recently which I think was probably a good investment as my Adwords campaign is now far better optimsed and my understanding of Adwords has improved which will hjelp in the future.
andy.blue.mini said:
So after a call today out of the blue from the 'Add People' SEO pointing out a few problems with my site im wondering if i should give them a chance.
andNotDave said:
We get a LOT of companies phoning offering their services, £900 a time some of them
Isn't it strange how companies that claim to be experts in SEO feel the need to rely on cold calling to get customers? SEO optimisation is the one time you want to search for a service and use the 1st result from Google. If they're not first then your first question to them needs to be 'why not?'I work in Digital Marketing but in PPC.
Your site is fine. I'm sure that SEO could help you for certain generic keywords but for around £200 a month I wouldn't expect much at all!
A couple of things you can do to help a little are:
Get some Reviews on you Places page. Google looks favorably on well rated Companies.
upload some more Images to your Google Places page and also give them Relevant tags (product names etc)
If you went down the PPC route you would need to Budget around £600 a month to cover the Midlands and other clients we have use brand names as Keywords etc.
Your site is fine. I'm sure that SEO could help you for certain generic keywords but for around £200 a month I wouldn't expect much at all!
A couple of things you can do to help a little are:
Get some Reviews on you Places page. Google looks favorably on well rated Companies.
upload some more Images to your Google Places page and also give them Relevant tags (product names etc)
If you went down the PPC route you would need to Budget around £600 a month to cover the Midlands and other clients we have use brand names as Keywords etc.
alock said:
Isn't it strange how companies that claim to be experts in SEO feel the need to rely on cold calling to get customers? SEO optimisation is the one time you want to search for a service and use the 1st result from Google. If they're not first then your first question to them needs to be 'why not?'
It isn't quite that straightforward. A large percentage of the SEO agencies at the top of Google are there by unethical means, and whilst on the surface it means they look like the best in the game, the truth is you wouldn't want to touch them with a bargepole.A few of them are there as they put links on their client sites back to theirs, meaning they are doing the exact opposite for the client that they are being paid to do (link out, rather than link in) and others have link profiles full of blog spam and paid links, which is not what Google wants to see, long-term.
It's a real problem in this industry and I have been shocked with the scale of it. When I set up a few years ago, I wrongly assumed that almost everyone would be offering a solid service, putting their clients best interests first, and there would only be a few bad eggs, but the reality is the dodgy agencies, out for a quick buck, outnumber the good ones quite a bit.
We are in a market where, for the most part, the client has no idea what you are doing or how you are doing it. All they see is that rankings go up or down, and traffic increases or decreases. What they don't see is if the work is being shipped out to India on the cheap, if short-term links are put in place, if automated software is running things, or in the worst case scenarios, no work is being done at all for the fee. What this means is it's incredibly easy to make a lot of money in the SEO world if you are willing to screw people over.
The company named at the start of this thread are a well known example that put themselves in front of clients and whilst it's not a long-term way to survive in business, I bet they make a lot of money right now. We have a few local and national rivals that do exactly the same thing (even though they will look you in the eye and say they don't), yet they never seem to run out of clients, despite negative press online. It's quite good for us though as, when we find out a prospect has been using these types of agencies, we always win the work as we can highlight it and why it isn't good. This week alone we won a car garage that wasn't getting any work for a £700/month link building fee, an online sports store that was paying £500 a month and getting zip, a hotel who was having all their work outsourced to the Far East by the agency and a training business whose website ranks well but it's made of paid links, meaning it's very susceptible to a Google penalty. What a crazy market - I struggle to think of others that are similar.
It isn't just the smaller deals either. Whilst the scammers are more likely to ask for £100/£200 a month and work on volume of clients, we recently took over the work from a big, high profile agency that was charging our client £8K+ a month and all they got for that was some article work that my guys can do in an afternoon.
If you are looking for an agency then there are a few things to consider...
Use http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ to see the back-links pointing at their site (the free version doesn't show much, unfortunately). If these links are from their clients or from junk domains or tonnes of meaningless blog spam then walk away, as that's exactly the work they will do for you. Also, check the testimonials to see if they are real and stack up.
If they are an agency that says they have worked on hundreds/thousands of sites but have a couple of testimonials then that says a lot.
Maybe check out some industry sites like Econsultancy, SEOmoz, etc to see if they are listed and if they contribute to the industry much. If staff members are given guest blog posts or guest speaking opportunities then these usually show that they know what they are doing, and are doing it the nice way.
If I think of any others I'll post them up. Need to get on with some work now.
An interesting post and comments here from one of our SEO team members on his own blog: http://www.seofosho.com/blog/seo-ethics-and-our-in...
We are in a market where, for the most part, the client has no idea what you are doing or how you are doing it. All they see is that rankings go up or down, and traffic increases or decreases. What they don't see is if the work is being shipped out to India on the cheap, if short-term links are put in place, if automated software is running things, or in the worst case scenarios, no work is being done at all for the fee. What this means is it's incredibly easy to make a lot of money in the SEO world if you are willing to screw people over.
The company named at the start of this thread are a well known example that put themselves in front of clients and whilst it's not a long-term way to survive in business, I bet they make a lot of money right now. We have a few local and national rivals that do exactly the same thing (even though they will look you in the eye and say they don't), yet they never seem to run out of clients, despite negative press online. It's quite good for us though as, when we find out a prospect has been using these types of agencies, we always win the work as we can highlight it and why it isn't good. This week alone we won a car garage that wasn't getting any work for a £700/month link building fee, an online sports store that was paying £500 a month and getting zip, a hotel who was having all their work outsourced to the Far East by the agency and a training business whose website ranks well but it's made of paid links, meaning it's very susceptible to a Google penalty. What a crazy market - I struggle to think of others that are similar.
It isn't just the smaller deals either. Whilst the scammers are more likely to ask for £100/£200 a month and work on volume of clients, we recently took over the work from a big, high profile agency that was charging our client £8K+ a month and all they got for that was some article work that my guys can do in an afternoon.
If you are looking for an agency then there are a few things to consider...
Use http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ to see the back-links pointing at their site (the free version doesn't show much, unfortunately). If these links are from their clients or from junk domains or tonnes of meaningless blog spam then walk away, as that's exactly the work they will do for you. Also, check the testimonials to see if they are real and stack up.
If they are an agency that says they have worked on hundreds/thousands of sites but have a couple of testimonials then that says a lot.
Maybe check out some industry sites like Econsultancy, SEOmoz, etc to see if they are listed and if they contribute to the industry much. If staff members are given guest blog posts or guest speaking opportunities then these usually show that they know what they are doing, and are doing it the nice way.
If I think of any others I'll post them up. Need to get on with some work now.
An interesting post and comments here from one of our SEO team members on his own blog: http://www.seofosho.com/blog/seo-ethics-and-our-in...
Hello Andy.
My background is online marketing, including partnerships (and marketing those partnerships), and search for a range of companies.
Firstly you are correct to be wary of SEO guys that cold call you. It is almost impossible to measure the real impact of SEO over a few months. I would only hire someone that comes personally recommended to you. There are also a few things I would consider:
- New domains are handicapped by Google for a number of months if not years until they are fully trusted. If you've only been going a few months, you should not expect to rank highly. Keep adding content, building good links and so on to build trust. The importance of this depends on who you talk to, I have no doubt it's important though.
- Regarding on page SEO, I would agree with the above comment that there isn't much content on your homepage. Google dislikes ranking purely commercial pages highly (I was working at Yahoo when the algorithm changed to punish Kelkoo, most of their traffic disappeared overnight!). Your blog and other content is hidden away and could be integrated into the homepage, as well as some text about you and the company. Try looking at your website as a search engine, http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simul... and all you get is some links and keywords - Google has to work out what your site is about from this, I'm sure you can give it a hand!
- Rather than building a large number of worthless links, search for your target keywords in Google and list the top 100 website results. These are the domains you want to target getting incoming links from.
Some, of course, will never link to you (direct competitors), however if you only get 1 in 5 you may see dramatic improvements in your position. For example:
1) Partner with a local TV/audio supply firm and offer 25% discount off installation, or free cables in exchange for some promotion on their website. Get them to offer your customers something as well.
2) Do a free demo install for a AV mag website inc cables in exchange for a mention and link.
3) Offer to write a blog column or answer questions integrated into a website so long as the blog is credited (with link)
4) Swap links with as many installers outside your target area (eg "we install in the Midlands, but if you are looking for installation in Scotland we recommend company XYZ" and vice versa).
5) Write a number of guides, eg recommending cables and offer to link from them in exchange for incoming links.
I'm sure you will be able to come up with better thoughts as you know the industry. These links will be seen as a meaningful 'vote' for your website from those in the know, and will not be devalued by future algorithm changes. Keep plugging away and approach each website using a personal email, letter or call that massages their ego a bit.
Consider writing press releases. I have been testing pushing local domains with as many free press release submissions as possible and it seems to be working for those I have been promoting. Perhaps writing a release and submitting it would be worthwhile if you have the time. An SEO guy I knew swore by this method.
With regards to paid search, a poorly run campaign will tell you very little and is a good way to lose money. If you are not confident in setting them up, make sure you do some good reading around first or get help. For example, you will want to build individual landing pages by product type rather than using your homepage.
Lastly, it probably doesn't need to be said but make sure you have Google & Bing webmaster tools running. Perform analysis of what your competitors pages/tactics/links look like and adopt anything that looks like it's working.
I hope this is of some use to be going on with. As always this only represents my personal experience and the approach I would take!
0a
My background is online marketing, including partnerships (and marketing those partnerships), and search for a range of companies.
Firstly you are correct to be wary of SEO guys that cold call you. It is almost impossible to measure the real impact of SEO over a few months. I would only hire someone that comes personally recommended to you. There are also a few things I would consider:
- New domains are handicapped by Google for a number of months if not years until they are fully trusted. If you've only been going a few months, you should not expect to rank highly. Keep adding content, building good links and so on to build trust. The importance of this depends on who you talk to, I have no doubt it's important though.
- Regarding on page SEO, I would agree with the above comment that there isn't much content on your homepage. Google dislikes ranking purely commercial pages highly (I was working at Yahoo when the algorithm changed to punish Kelkoo, most of their traffic disappeared overnight!). Your blog and other content is hidden away and could be integrated into the homepage, as well as some text about you and the company. Try looking at your website as a search engine, http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simul... and all you get is some links and keywords - Google has to work out what your site is about from this, I'm sure you can give it a hand!
- Rather than building a large number of worthless links, search for your target keywords in Google and list the top 100 website results. These are the domains you want to target getting incoming links from.
Some, of course, will never link to you (direct competitors), however if you only get 1 in 5 you may see dramatic improvements in your position. For example:
1) Partner with a local TV/audio supply firm and offer 25% discount off installation, or free cables in exchange for some promotion on their website. Get them to offer your customers something as well.
2) Do a free demo install for a AV mag website inc cables in exchange for a mention and link.
3) Offer to write a blog column or answer questions integrated into a website so long as the blog is credited (with link)
4) Swap links with as many installers outside your target area (eg "we install in the Midlands, but if you are looking for installation in Scotland we recommend company XYZ" and vice versa).
5) Write a number of guides, eg recommending cables and offer to link from them in exchange for incoming links.
I'm sure you will be able to come up with better thoughts as you know the industry. These links will be seen as a meaningful 'vote' for your website from those in the know, and will not be devalued by future algorithm changes. Keep plugging away and approach each website using a personal email, letter or call that massages their ego a bit.
Consider writing press releases. I have been testing pushing local domains with as many free press release submissions as possible and it seems to be working for those I have been promoting. Perhaps writing a release and submitting it would be worthwhile if you have the time. An SEO guy I knew swore by this method.
With regards to paid search, a poorly run campaign will tell you very little and is a good way to lose money. If you are not confident in setting them up, make sure you do some good reading around first or get help. For example, you will want to build individual landing pages by product type rather than using your homepage.
Lastly, it probably doesn't need to be said but make sure you have Google & Bing webmaster tools running. Perform analysis of what your competitors pages/tactics/links look like and adopt anything that looks like it's working.
I hope this is of some use to be going on with. As always this only represents my personal experience and the approach I would take!
0a
Hi Andy,
I am a web developer with sound SEO knowledge. There is some good content on your website but I can see some very obvious and important areas for improvement. In particular, your title tags and meta descriptions are virtually non-existent and they are vitally important, not just for SEO, but for drawing people to your website in the Google listings and encouraging them to click through in order to see your site and learn more.
This is how google currently displays each page in your website: http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome&...
You could definitely improve your titles and meta descriptions to be better for Google bot and more user friendly for humans. I prefer not to get bogged down with ongoing SEO campaigns but I'd happily discuss/quote you to implement some one-off fundamental improvements to the website. Let me know if you are interested.
Thanks,
Kenny
I am a web developer with sound SEO knowledge. There is some good content on your website but I can see some very obvious and important areas for improvement. In particular, your title tags and meta descriptions are virtually non-existent and they are vitally important, not just for SEO, but for drawing people to your website in the Google listings and encouraging them to click through in order to see your site and learn more.
This is how google currently displays each page in your website: http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome&...
You could definitely improve your titles and meta descriptions to be better for Google bot and more user friendly for humans. I prefer not to get bogged down with ongoing SEO campaigns but I'd happily discuss/quote you to implement some one-off fundamental improvements to the website. Let me know if you are interested.
Thanks,
Kenny
Thank you everyone for the huge amount of input. I am hoping to get some free time this week to try and make some progress with the website. Its one of those things that keeps getting pushed back on my list of things to do. I think at the moment i will try and work through each section and try to improve it. As i'm a new start up business the cash is not really there to start spending it on SEO just yet, it's just been highlighted that i need to do something about it. I don't want to get into a situation where i am paying a set amount each month.
Thank you again for your advice, some good ideas Oa, i will look into them.
Kenny at the moment i don't have the budget but in a couple of months i may be in touch.
Cheers Andy
Thank you again for your advice, some good ideas Oa, i will look into them.
Kenny at the moment i don't have the budget but in a couple of months i may be in touch.
Cheers Andy
No problem Andy 
This first part of SEO is to think carefully about exactly which keywords each page is designed to target.
Use Adwords Keyword Tool to see approximately how often things are searched. Take it off "broad search" for more accurate results as broad will include every sentence that contains those words where as phrase and exact are more specific. The keyword tool will give you ideas you perhaps hadn't considered and show you how often terms are being searched, etc.
This first part of SEO is to think carefully about exactly which keywords each page is designed to target.
Use Adwords Keyword Tool to see approximately how often things are searched. Take it off "broad search" for more accurate results as broad will include every sentence that contains those words where as phrase and exact are more specific. The keyword tool will give you ideas you perhaps hadn't considered and show you how often terms are being searched, etc.
Edited by Splats on Wednesday 18th April 17:07
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