SEO - are there any genuine experts ?
Discussion
Henry-F said:
alock said:
Maybe I'm missing something, but surely anyone claiming to be good at getting a website near the top of search results will have a web site near the top of some search results.
The thought did occur to me as well, I'm clever like that 
The problem is just because someone manages to get their site at the top of Google for a bit doesn't mean they will do the same for you.Henry
From my own experience there are a few things that help massively and have helped us stay on the first page for most things that matter in our industry:
1) A really good blog. This is not one written by marketing/sales people who just making boring announcements. It needs to be written by the technical experts in your company writing about the industry and the challenges your products solve.
2) A homepage that includes excerpts from the most recent blog posts. This means our home page gets new content about every 4-6 weeks and is therefore deemed to be up-to-date.
3) Follow good web standards. Use H1s, H2s, H3s etc... correctly. Provide good alternative text to images. Make sure the site is structured well and doesn't appear to be tricking someone to click something they don't want to, i.e. a link called "About Us" goes to a page called aboutus.html and that page has a H1 tag called "About Us".
You have to remember Google is on a constant mission to return good results. Anyone who tries to trick their way around this will eventually be penalized for it.
Dave_ST220 said:
"the attacker will not have a ready list of sensitive directories to attack"
They don't need to, they use generic strings to find weak sites. My servers logs are full of such entries where an attacker has tried searching generic directories & files paths.
For sure. Dirbuster has huge text files with them. It's just easier on a time sensitive engagement when the client has helpfully left all the pertinent directories in robots.txt.They don't need to, they use generic strings to find weak sites. My servers logs are full of such entries where an attacker has tried searching generic directories & files paths.
I do believe that there are genuine experts, but I have also encountered some real idiots.
When I used to work freelance as a web developer, SEO was one of my biggest sellers. I offered an analysis with "DIY" action points for under £100 which covered enough to get ANYONE to first page. Very few people followed through with it despite using plain-English and no jargon.
Thing is - 90% of the report was copy & paste in most cases. So many people make the same mistakes and focus on the wrong things. They all want valid HTML and a million crap links. Not that I'm saying valid HTML is bad, but if it's genuinely your biggest priority then your site is already number one.
A very short summary of the most common action points (out of a typically 15 page report):
1) Pick decent keywords. This is a big topic and requires thought, but one mistake a lot of people make is "London's best dealer of used cars". Are they trying to promote "London"? "Used cars"? That's not going to work. If they go with "Used car dealer in London" they also get "car dealer in London" and "car dealer" and "used car dealer", and it's a phrase you can easily use in the body a couple of times.
2) Stop buying Indian links. How stupid do you think Google is?
3) Look at the top three results for your chosen keywords. Read the websites start to end. Pay attention. Doesn't matter if you like them or not - Google likes them. If they all use the phrase "used car dealer" in the page title - then so should you. If they spam every page with 100 keywords, then you should too (DO NOT put more than them, either in quantity or percentage - but be comparable). If they have very little text and mostly images, that's what you need.
4) This is 2015 - your website needs to be active. Blogs, regular updates, new pages every once in a while, testimonials, discussions, etc. The more interesting it is, the more time people will spend on your website and Google will love that - but even if you can't make it fascinating, at least make it relevant and don't spam keywords because that's not the point.
5) Get realistic back-links. A stand-alone car wash in Orkney shouldn't have 15,000 back-links. You need regularly added back-links, not absolute numbers. One new link per week is a squillion times better than 1,000 in one go.
6) Get customers to visit and engage with your website. No I don't know how, I'm a programmer. If I knew how, I would be running your company and obviously doing a better job than you! Spend time and money on marketing.
If you do all of that over the space of a year (not faster - don't be spammy) and aren't on the first page then I'll eat my white hat.
When I used to work freelance as a web developer, SEO was one of my biggest sellers. I offered an analysis with "DIY" action points for under £100 which covered enough to get ANYONE to first page. Very few people followed through with it despite using plain-English and no jargon.
Thing is - 90% of the report was copy & paste in most cases. So many people make the same mistakes and focus on the wrong things. They all want valid HTML and a million crap links. Not that I'm saying valid HTML is bad, but if it's genuinely your biggest priority then your site is already number one.
A very short summary of the most common action points (out of a typically 15 page report):
1) Pick decent keywords. This is a big topic and requires thought, but one mistake a lot of people make is "London's best dealer of used cars". Are they trying to promote "London"? "Used cars"? That's not going to work. If they go with "Used car dealer in London" they also get "car dealer in London" and "car dealer" and "used car dealer", and it's a phrase you can easily use in the body a couple of times.
2) Stop buying Indian links. How stupid do you think Google is?
3) Look at the top three results for your chosen keywords. Read the websites start to end. Pay attention. Doesn't matter if you like them or not - Google likes them. If they all use the phrase "used car dealer" in the page title - then so should you. If they spam every page with 100 keywords, then you should too (DO NOT put more than them, either in quantity or percentage - but be comparable). If they have very little text and mostly images, that's what you need.
4) This is 2015 - your website needs to be active. Blogs, regular updates, new pages every once in a while, testimonials, discussions, etc. The more interesting it is, the more time people will spend on your website and Google will love that - but even if you can't make it fascinating, at least make it relevant and don't spam keywords because that's not the point.
5) Get realistic back-links. A stand-alone car wash in Orkney shouldn't have 15,000 back-links. You need regularly added back-links, not absolute numbers. One new link per week is a squillion times better than 1,000 in one go.
6) Get customers to visit and engage with your website. No I don't know how, I'm a programmer. If I knew how, I would be running your company and obviously doing a better job than you! Spend time and money on marketing.
If you do all of that over the space of a year (not faster - don't be spammy) and aren't on the first page then I'll eat my white hat.
One of the great joys of being thrown off the Google ladder is being able to actually write web content for customers rather than search engine robots. The reality is by doing one you probably do the other as well. It's hard to sell Umbrellas without using the word unbrella but I found the customer experience was being ruined as we tried to conform to the SEO company's requirements.
Having quite a large and broad site allows us to concentrate on key areas particularly when giving advice. We don't have to cram in all the key words onto one page, there will probably be a page specific to that topic / keyword.
I have always thought that Google genuinely wanted to serve up the best, most relevant information. These days I'm not so sure. The link posted earlier about the most current algorithm change offers a glimmer of hope but we shall have to wait and see.
Henry
Having quite a large and broad site allows us to concentrate on key areas particularly when giving advice. We don't have to cram in all the key words onto one page, there will probably be a page specific to that topic / keyword.
I have always thought that Google genuinely wanted to serve up the best, most relevant information. These days I'm not so sure. The link posted earlier about the most current algorithm change offers a glimmer of hope but we shall have to wait and see.
Henry
Henry-F said:
One of the great joys of being thrown off the Google ladder is being able to actually write web content for customers rather than search engine robots. The reality is by doing one you probably do the other as well. It's hard to sell Umbrellas without using the word unbrella but I found the customer experience was being ruined as we tried to conform to the SEO company's requirements.
Having quite a large and broad site allows us to concentrate on key areas particularly when giving advice. We don't have to cram in all the key words onto one page, there will probably be a page specific to that topic / keyword.
I have always thought that Google genuinely wanted to serve up the best, most relevant information. These days I'm not so sure. The link posted earlier about the most current algorithm change offers a glimmer of hope but we shall have to wait and see.
Henry
You want to be creating engaging content for your users first, and google second. If a lot of users spend time on your site, reading your content (eg a blog post) and then clicking their way through the site - google likes this. If you have a good bounce rate then google will rank you higher. Moz explains it better than I do:Having quite a large and broad site allows us to concentrate on key areas particularly when giving advice. We don't have to cram in all the key words onto one page, there will probably be a page specific to that topic / keyword.
I have always thought that Google genuinely wanted to serve up the best, most relevant information. These days I'm not so sure. The link posted earlier about the most current algorithm change offers a glimmer of hope but we shall have to wait and see.
Henry
'When a search engine delivers a page of results to you, it can measure the success of the rankings by observing how you engage with those results. If you click the first link, then immediately hit the back button to try the second link, this indicates that you were not satisfied with the first result. Search engines seek the "long click" – where users click a result without immediately returning to the search page to try again. Taken in aggregate over millions and millions of queries each day, the engines build up a good pool of data to judge the quality of their results.'
https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/how-usabili...
99% or seo companies are snake oil sellers, there are lots of tricks that work for a while and then google figure it out and you get penalised.
there is no substitute for good, related updated content, with all your images marked up etc etc.. and proper back links etc. The trouble is to do it properly takes time, and to cheat is quicker to get short term results, thus its harder for decent companies to compete.
then you throw in the fact that its not an exact science and you cant guarantee anything its a night mare to work in.
I wouldnt trust anyone who is just an seo company ( i.e doesnt build sites and host ) and if they guarantee anything then run a mile.
its also something that needs to be looked at constantly with new content and news etc. you need to be looking at the analytics your self as well as anyone managing the site for you. if you dont understand the analytics they should be explaining it to you. its not all about pure traffic numbers, as thats easy to spoof. proper traffic analysis is a key part of optimisation. Its all very well getting people on your site, but if they bounce straight off because they've been tricked to going to the site, or it doesnt tell them what they want the traffic is pointless.
is the sales funnel or call to action confusing, you need to know how well the site is working now many people go from the landing page to a confirmed sale etc..
every now and then one of our customers gets blinded by an seo salesman and wanders off 6 months later and a lot of wasted cash and lost sales they come back... I dont even like the term search engine optimisation, its site optimisation you should be working on to make sure the site is optimised in all angles to achieve what is aims are...traffic numbers and search position is a small part of it.
sorry rant over lol
G
there is no substitute for good, related updated content, with all your images marked up etc etc.. and proper back links etc. The trouble is to do it properly takes time, and to cheat is quicker to get short term results, thus its harder for decent companies to compete.
then you throw in the fact that its not an exact science and you cant guarantee anything its a night mare to work in.
I wouldnt trust anyone who is just an seo company ( i.e doesnt build sites and host ) and if they guarantee anything then run a mile.
its also something that needs to be looked at constantly with new content and news etc. you need to be looking at the analytics your self as well as anyone managing the site for you. if you dont understand the analytics they should be explaining it to you. its not all about pure traffic numbers, as thats easy to spoof. proper traffic analysis is a key part of optimisation. Its all very well getting people on your site, but if they bounce straight off because they've been tricked to going to the site, or it doesnt tell them what they want the traffic is pointless.
is the sales funnel or call to action confusing, you need to know how well the site is working now many people go from the landing page to a confirmed sale etc..
every now and then one of our customers gets blinded by an seo salesman and wanders off 6 months later and a lot of wasted cash and lost sales they come back... I dont even like the term search engine optimisation, its site optimisation you should be working on to make sure the site is optimised in all angles to achieve what is aims are...traffic numbers and search position is a small part of it.
sorry rant over lol
G
Do you think a good engaging site with everything laid out properly, image tags in place, meta descriptions - I hear conflicting attitudes to meta stuff, unique content etc. can and will rank well regardless of back links ?
Would we be better off with someone who manages and maintains the hidden part of the site and probably also keeps tabs on Google Ads to make sure people are clicking on who want to stay on the site rather than an "SEO" company per se.
Henry
Would we be better off with someone who manages and maintains the hidden part of the site and probably also keeps tabs on Google Ads to make sure people are clicking on who want to stay on the site rather than an "SEO" company per se.
Henry
The thing about good content, is that it works with people, even if for some bizzar reason a google algorithm decides to favour something say twitter links because its a tuesday. if you have good content it will work with real people once they get to your site.
There is nothing worse than getting to a site because it was number one in google only to find it bears little or no relation to what you were searching for. you've got traffic but im never going to by from that site.
if say your further down the page but i click on you and your site tells me everything i want to know, has lots of related information and i can easily see what i want to buy and how to buy it thats where I'll buy from.
do you know things like number of site visits that lead to a sale, or number of site visits that get as far as items in the kart but never completed? that sort of analysis is even more important than raw traffic numbers imho as it tells you how well the site is converting.
I would tend to recommend someone who can manage your site as a whole, as they will have more understanding of what your doing and what really qualifies as success ( i.e. in your case sales)
There is nothing worse than getting to a site because it was number one in google only to find it bears little or no relation to what you were searching for. you've got traffic but im never going to by from that site.
if say your further down the page but i click on you and your site tells me everything i want to know, has lots of related information and i can easily see what i want to buy and how to buy it thats where I'll buy from.
do you know things like number of site visits that lead to a sale, or number of site visits that get as far as items in the kart but never completed? that sort of analysis is even more important than raw traffic numbers imho as it tells you how well the site is converting.
I would tend to recommend someone who can manage your site as a whole, as they will have more understanding of what your doing and what really qualifies as success ( i.e. in your case sales)
dmsims said:
Henry
it's odd things that can put people off a site
e.g. I just went and clicked search
I was expecting to be able to type in it but no it spawns a bar with nowhere obvious to type (no input box)
so you have click on Search (again FFS)
to me that's just perverse
I presume you mean on our site. it's odd things that can put people off a site
e.g. I just went and clicked search
I was expecting to be able to type in it but no it spawns a bar with nowhere obvious to type (no input box)
so you have click on Search (again FFS)
to me that's just perverse
I take your point, but I hope you agree that the actual search facility is quite good in terms of layout and how it delivers results.
Henry
Graham is bang on with this. SEO is mostly snake oil. Make sure your site is of good quality (well structured HTML which is easy for the robots to parse, structure in nice HTML5/CSS without over zealous javascript creating the layout), is updated regularly, is accessible (forget META, but make sure things like images have alt tags completed - basically if it is accessible to the disabled then the robots will like it), and these days it MUST have a mobile version for google to rank it highly.
Google move a s
t load faster than the SEO companies. A good SEO company will simply cause you to end up with a good quality site and then you let google do its job - a bad SEO company will try a multitude of "tricks" which google will catch on to and possibly derank you. Google are all about "organic" search results - don't force it, let the page rankings come to you.
Google move a s
t load faster than the SEO companies. A good SEO company will simply cause you to end up with a good quality site and then you let google do its job - a bad SEO company will try a multitude of "tricks" which google will catch on to and possibly derank you. Google are all about "organic" search results - don't force it, let the page rankings come to you.Henry-F said:
dmsims said:
Henry
it's odd things that can put people off a site
e.g. I just went and clicked search
I was expecting to be able to type in it but no it spawns a bar with nowhere obvious to type (no input box)
so you have click on Search (again FFS)
to me that's just perverse
I presume you mean on our site. it's odd things that can put people off a site
e.g. I just went and clicked search
I was expecting to be able to type in it but no it spawns a bar with nowhere obvious to type (no input box)
so you have click on Search (again FFS)
to me that's just perverse
I take your point, but I hope you agree that the actual search facility is quite good in terms of layout and how it delivers results.
Henry
Type dvr into the search and you get 1 dvr (no price) and 3 leads
so no I don't agree
I only learned the basics of SEO but that was enough to make me realise that no-one can honestly say they can be an expert as they will always be second-guessing google's next move. That said, the crude techniques that were widely used to improve sites ranking years ago are a liability today, so any "expert" should at least know what to steer clear of.
Personally I find SEO too tedious and just use Adwords!
Personally I find SEO too tedious and just use Adwords!
Also to think about that load times can make or break a ranking. A well setup hosting environment is essential now days.
The SEO of old, "Lot's of links = Must be good" has gone as others have said, today SEO is a multitude of objectives all put together.
Key things that come to mind:
1. Well structured, well coded "responsive" or mobile/tablet compatible website. Not just your basic HTML elements but also data queries to your database, a poorly coded query can slow your site. A well structured website will very much take into account device types and the load speeds around them. (Sure the 1080p image looks great on a pc but takes an age to download to a mobile device).
2. Website Speed - Hosting environment, If your website resides on a 10 year old server somewhere it's likely it would benefit from a move. Shared hosting for an ecommerce site is a no no imo. It should always reside on a VPS or larger away from other sites for a multitude of security and speed reasons.
3. Using advanced hosting technologies can massively boost performance. Caching, serving the client static files online on content that does not update frequently.
4. SSL! (Pretty sure google announced a little while back that sites using SSL will rank higher than sites without a valid SSL Certificate.)
5. Good old content, be that blog posts, articles or products. As I saw another post here, write for your customer NOT for the search engine.
6. Spread your wings, harness social media, allow customers to register for newsletters -- write newsletters (link to content on your site).
I apologize it's gone a little further than just SEO specifically, but companies who are wiser to the whole picture will spend less to rank higher. A company I know of was spending silly figures on SEO, Keywords and such without any of the above (thinking throwing money at the problem fixes it).. They still ranked horribly low, had regular fallouts with SEO partners and in general had a horrible online presence.
I think the same goes for SEO companies, if the sum of the conversation only covers keywords, and other basic google/search engine features it's worth looking else where. Any company that wants to help you succeed will look at the bigger picture, help set goals and possible advice as to how correct wrongs.
Certainly my first step before throwing money at "SEO Only" would be to visit: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/ - run both the web and mobile tests and see where you stand, also visit: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ and do the same.
The SEO of old, "Lot's of links = Must be good" has gone as others have said, today SEO is a multitude of objectives all put together.
Key things that come to mind:
1. Well structured, well coded "responsive" or mobile/tablet compatible website. Not just your basic HTML elements but also data queries to your database, a poorly coded query can slow your site. A well structured website will very much take into account device types and the load speeds around them. (Sure the 1080p image looks great on a pc but takes an age to download to a mobile device).
2. Website Speed - Hosting environment, If your website resides on a 10 year old server somewhere it's likely it would benefit from a move. Shared hosting for an ecommerce site is a no no imo. It should always reside on a VPS or larger away from other sites for a multitude of security and speed reasons.
3. Using advanced hosting technologies can massively boost performance. Caching, serving the client static files online on content that does not update frequently.
4. SSL! (Pretty sure google announced a little while back that sites using SSL will rank higher than sites without a valid SSL Certificate.)
5. Good old content, be that blog posts, articles or products. As I saw another post here, write for your customer NOT for the search engine.
6. Spread your wings, harness social media, allow customers to register for newsletters -- write newsletters (link to content on your site).
I apologize it's gone a little further than just SEO specifically, but companies who are wiser to the whole picture will spend less to rank higher. A company I know of was spending silly figures on SEO, Keywords and such without any of the above (thinking throwing money at the problem fixes it).. They still ranked horribly low, had regular fallouts with SEO partners and in general had a horrible online presence.
I think the same goes for SEO companies, if the sum of the conversation only covers keywords, and other basic google/search engine features it's worth looking else where. Any company that wants to help you succeed will look at the bigger picture, help set goals and possible advice as to how correct wrongs.
Certainly my first step before throwing money at "SEO Only" would be to visit: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/ - run both the web and mobile tests and see where you stand, also visit: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ and do the same.
Henry - you seem to know what you're doing and I'd carry on doing the same and don't go to an SEO "expert".
I too was stung by an SEO company creating thousands of spammy links when I didn't appreciate how black hat this was. When Penguin came along my very highly ranked website disappeared off the rankings altogether. It ranked very well before this SEO company came along due to the great content and my own basic SEO efforts. It stopped the growth of my company for two financial years.
I had a local web design company create a new e-commerce website using Magento on the same domain name. Despite creating some great landing pages I still couldn't any of them to rank. Then one day, it was as though somebody at Google let go of a restrained elastic band and the landing pages began appearing one-by-one within days of each other.
It was as though Google was holding a grudge for two years for the spammy stuff. That's pretty mean IMHO when I had spent a lot of time disavowing the crap and spent a lot of money on a new website.
So I think the same will happen to you if you carry on what you're doing.
I know there are lots of tools available but I've found Fruition.net to be very useful as it will show you how Google updates might have affected your website. Here's the result for mine.
I too was stung by an SEO company creating thousands of spammy links when I didn't appreciate how black hat this was. When Penguin came along my very highly ranked website disappeared off the rankings altogether. It ranked very well before this SEO company came along due to the great content and my own basic SEO efforts. It stopped the growth of my company for two financial years.
I had a local web design company create a new e-commerce website using Magento on the same domain name. Despite creating some great landing pages I still couldn't any of them to rank. Then one day, it was as though somebody at Google let go of a restrained elastic band and the landing pages began appearing one-by-one within days of each other.
It was as though Google was holding a grudge for two years for the spammy stuff. That's pretty mean IMHO when I had spent a lot of time disavowing the crap and spent a lot of money on a new website.
So I think the same will happen to you if you carry on what you're doing.
I know there are lots of tools available but I've found Fruition.net to be very useful as it will show you how Google updates might have affected your website. Here's the result for mine.
dmsims said:
If people manage to get through the barriers you have put in place clicking on the search icon gives you precisely nothing - what is the point of that ?
Type dvr into the search and you get 1 dvr (no price) and 3 leads
so no I don't agree
Well, the search entry box has been changed to make data entry more intuitive - incidentally I have to give a mention to Applecado who built the site and are helping us settle it down. A fellow "Header" and a company I would have no hesitation in recommending if you needed a website. I've just come back from a meal out to be told they'd changed it in view of the comment on here.Type dvr into the search and you get 1 dvr (no price) and 3 leads
so no I don't agree
As for the results, in site searches a really tricky. I'm not sure I've seen the perfect solution so much so that for a long time we had the search facility disabled. I think our solution is an interesting one. 2 areas, shop and advice so we aren't funnelling you into spending money. You can't flood the screen with results and you don't want to leave the area your were in, I hate sites that dump me somewhere new.
In your case there is a DVR suggested. You aren't going to buy straight from the search, you just want to be pointed in the right direction. So you click on to it and sure enough it's a CCTV DVR recorder. It may not be the one you want but you can easily click the breadcrumb just above the photo to see all the DVRs available.
https://www.cctv42.co.uk/shop/dvr-recorders/hd-108...
Indeed you could navigate to the Shop, the Home page, Help & Advice, About us or Contact without scrolling. I think that's a reasonable result. It isn't the Carlsberg of results because it didn't read your mind but it's having a good go and I hope pointing you in the right direction.
Henry
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