£1850 does this sound right for SEO

[TWD-Tony]

Q for everyone: How am I supposed to get good inbound links to my site if nobody know about it???

A good start would be to submit to directories - now you probably will not get many human visitors to your site from the directories (unless you are in a niche and submit to a directory targeted at your niche) BUT what you will do is raise the number of inbound links that can be crawled by the search engine spiders.
I know that submitting your website is directories is a PITA and very boring but it is probably the best way to get inbound links at an early stage.

You should also consider "traditional" offline marketing - SEO is not the be all and end all of online business - If you are serious about your website then you should be interested in SEO, i'm not saying otherwise - but if you are in a competative keyword industry then other methods of marketing need to be looked at too

[ian_IGCTechsolutions]

Again thanks for all the really great advice.

For the question from CanzDesign : - here is a break down of the costs

Hours Total
Analysis
Website content/structure analysis 1 20
Keyword research (10 to 15 key phrases) and competitive
analysis. 2 40
The on-page search engine optimisation
Tweaking the existing website copy to optimise it for the
previously researched keywords (6 pages). 12 240
Revising title tags and meta tags (6 pages), developing
unique tags for every page. 2 40
Validating the HTML code for one sample page (currently,
the home page shows 31 validation errors). 4 80
Basic consultancy. 2 40

Submitting to free general and UK-based web directories 8 160
Submitting to paid directories (Premium package,
submission expenses included). 6 950
Total 37 1570**
VAT (17.5%) 274.75
Total+VAT 1844.75

[ian_IGCTechsolutions]

sorry for the above post I did a copy and paste. The first number is for each item is the numbers of hours and the second is the total costs for that number of hours. They charge £20 per hour

[fisicx]

If they are goig to write unique page titles and descriptions then they will need to discuss the focus of each page with you. If that is the case then you might just as well DIY as all they will do is regurgitate what you told them. And there's not a lot wrong with what you already have.

Validation is free. A simple firefox extension and you get a report ready made and the option to auto fix. In any case, validating your site wont affect you SEO as it is mostly closing a few tags.

Submitting to directories needs careful consideration. I'd check with them as to which directories they want to pay for as most of them are not worth the money - ie: zero ROI.

Keyword research maybe worth paying for but that's about it.

IMHO

Graham

[www.infoebookstore.co.uk]

Hi, I would suggest doing a bit of keyword research to determine what people are actually searching for, not sure if people actually search for "IT support".

It depends who your target customer is, joe bloggs searches differently to IT/Techy person.

You can use some free tools to find out what is being searched for and think about some niche phrases.

Try http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/ or http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/

I am NOT an SEO expert by any means, I have read a lot though!!

P.S. If you want a very clear guide to SEO, visit my ebook store in my signature for a great video ebook on the subject.

Jim

[PintoPotts]

We are a firm of Solicitors and use an SEO company, still early days with them.

Does the £1850 quoted also include a monthly management charge, they nearly all charge something like that?

Also, are they going to build mini-sites and buy relevant domain names to increase link-popularity?

In my opinion, choosing the right SEO is easy, use the one who is top on Google!

[fisicx]

The one on top in google may simply be there because of an agressive marketing campaign not because they are any good. It's like saying the #1 solicitor is the best.

And linking from mini domains is only any good if the mini-domain ranks high in the first place.

Why are you playing for monthly management? What are the doing for their money? Remember that it can take 4-6 weeks for the search engines to update so tweaking every month is pretty much a waste of time unless you are indexed regularly. If of course they are just doing directory submission then it's about 2 hours work a month.

[JustOneUK]

Originally Posted by PintoPotts

We are a firm of Solicitors and use an SEO company, still early days with them.

Does the £1850 quoted also include a monthly management charge, they nearly all charge something like that?

In the interest of the thread, are you going to tell us how much they charge you?... and what monthly fee will they be stinging you for?

I would say £40 month is adequate (as fisicx says) to cover a few hours link building and possibly a couple of website tweaks.

James.

[ian_IGCTechsolutions]

Hi All

I have been away for some time but I can see this thread is still active, Again I would like to thank you all for your advise and I think Fisicx talks a lot of sense.Thanks Fisicx!!! I have not paid anyone for SEO instead I spent the money else where and joined a business networking group. The website is up and I think it is finished, but the reality is that its never finished

Fisicx - Where do I submit to these directories you keep talking about?

P.S. I can find my website in Yahoo by doing the odd search for IT related keywords and "northwest" tagged onto the end, but only in Yahoo. Why am I appearing in Yahoo and not in MSN and google?

Thanks again

[fisicx]

Directory submission is a daily chore and becoming less and less important everyday. Do a search for 'submit site' or 'directory submission' or 'submit URL' and see what pops up. Do a search for your own keywords and see if any directories turn up in the SERPs.

But a listing in a thousand low level directories is almost worthless, much better to aim for a link from a popular and respected site.

Other things to consider are newsletters, blogs, rss feed and other social networking sources. And the more competitive the market the more difficult it is to get noticed.

As to the SE listing, google does know you exist, it just isn't very impressed with your site at the moment: google results