Just wanted to ask the community about their experiences with their own personal or their business website.

Have you experienced the deep madness that is internet website promotion,optimisation and marketing, did you understand it? Do you understand it now?  

How where you sold the service and how was the quality?  All that you expected or more?

And what was the cost against the return?

 

The reason I ask is that its the question and requirement that's everyone's lips, even above and beyond having a functioning website made and in my experience with our clients the expectations in all apsects of Search Engine Optimisation for the likes of Google vary to the point of insanity.  Some people will simply have no idea what to expect in return, they just know they have to do it and others will expect the sun, moon, stars, two pints and a chicken sandwich for one Euro a month!

Whats the communities feelings to costs, levels of service, expectations and beneifts for marketing your business online from your personal experiences?

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Justin Parks
123 Marbella Web Design SL
www.123marbella.net
... long windy roads make for long windy walks...

I have a blog, www.marbellastyle.blogspot.com and i get 200 hits per day from all around the world.  I use Blogger platform which is owned by Google and because it is owned by google, my site appeared on the search engine only after 3 weeks!  For blogs, the best way to be seen on search engine is to link other blogs to your site and vice versa.  Also, join online forums and put comments on bigger, more popular blogs.  Bandwagon effect. Also sign up for different Blogads, Adsense etc to moneytize your blog.  These sites make you appear easily as well in search engines.  Also use loads of tools like feedburner, technorati digg and d.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s..  These are great for reader subscriptions etc.  I don't suggest for people to buy optimisation stuff.  You'll appear on search engines anyway after a couple of months. Be Patient. Link, link, link, your site and stick with big players like Google, Yahoo, or AOL if you want an instant appearance on the search engines.

 I hope this helps.

Cheers!

Miss J.
 

www.marbellastyle.blogspot.com
 

 

 

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Miss J.
www.marbellastyle.blogspot.com

marbellastyle:

I don't suggest for people to buy optimisation stuff.  You'll appear on search engines anyway after a couple of months

A very short sighted view if you're trying to be a successful business especially in these times of "global credit crunch". Yes you can sit back and wait and see what happens but if you're in a competitive market you'll never rank page 1 Google just by linking to it from a few blogs especially if your site hasn't been written in a SEO friendly method

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I apprecite your point Miss J but maybe you have misunderstood what im asking.

In regards "not buying optimisation stuff" in the business world most business people will not have the time, patience or experience to run anything web based personally, so the hiring of a specialist company or individual to perform this type of marketing is not an option its essential. 

Im more asking about personal feedback on the subject of using an Search Engine Optimising company or person, and how the process went and the cost and benefits (if any) involved, not the actual techniques involved in gaining rankings or visitors etc as this is all subjective on the inal aim!

Any other thoughts?

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Justin Parks
123 Marbella Web Design SL
www.123marbella.net
... long windy roads make for long windy walks...

I guess we need to differentiate between two things here; 1) Buying a tool or a piece of software that will supposedly get you ranking on all your key terms in a week and 2) Hiring a specialist who will develop the SEO of your website as an ongoing project and gradually get you ranking.

Option 1 is typically a waste of money, whereas for most businesses option 2 is a must. Most businesses that operate on the internet are not totally 100% focussed on the internet alone, i.e. a Real Estate Agent's core business is selling houses and the internet is a vehicle to create exposure which will in turn create sales. To try to learn something as complex as SEO from day one will typically pull you away from your daily duties.

Before the internet was born you probably used to advertise in newspapers and magazines, but you didn't start to plan where the Daily Express or Property Guide should distribute their copies!.

I would advise any business to either contract in an expert to help you with SEO, or at least attend courses, seminars and read up a lot before attempting it yourself. Good SEO professionals are in high demand, so they will usually walk you through every step of what they do so you can carry on after they have worked for you and they move on to their next project.

In terms of Miss J's thoughts, I think the world of blogging is very different to delivering traffic to a typical website, blogs do tend to get picked up and spidered a lot by the search engines as the content changes so much. Blogs can go viral really quickly, especially when linked to eachotehr in the way Miss J outlines.

Beware of blowing all your budget on mediums such as Google AdWords etc, you may be number one on your key terms today, but then the pot of gold runs empty and you have no lasting results!.

Christian

 

Justin, just curious but can I ask why you want that information!?

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justinparks:

I apprecite your point Miss J but maybe you have misunderstood what i'm asking.

Hmmm...as I've said, I was talking about blogs and just about blogs.  I understand very well that it is a MUST to buy these tools if you have a website especially when you are a company.  As for your questions, I don't know as I haven't got these tools nor hired an SEO expert. Although I believe people should understand and be educated first on how optimization works so not to expect too much before actually buying or hiring an expert to do their website. Even Google itself said that No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. 

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Miss J.
www.marbellastyle.blogspot.com

Hi Shinyandy,

Im asking the community as I hate to assume things!  I work on websites, web projects, SEO databases, etc etc all day so its nice to actually ASK people about the subject rather than just assume I know the ins and outs of it then I can better service their business needs!

Miss J has made a good point by mentioning the fact that even Google cannot guarentee a number one ranking but I see it all the time where a well run business will be approached in one form or another to take their business to the number one spot and these businesses do it time and time again even without consulting anyone only to blow their marketing budget with no return becuase of a well spun sales pitch!

I know people expect alot from SEO as well and thats because its being sold as the answer to all your prayers but I try to inform my clients about SEO, the risks, the time required, and indeed the costs involved but alot of the time it goes over peoples heads, especially the pricing aspect!

Does that answer your question?

 

 

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Justin Parks
123 Marbella Web Design SL
www.123marbella.net
... long windy roads make for long windy walks...

It does! Be sure to share your findings

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Thanks Shiny, Im kind of hoping everyone will be able to see the results here though as they post!

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Justin Parks
123 Marbella Web Design SL
www.123marbella.net
... long windy roads make for long windy walks...

marbellastyle:

I use Blogger platform which is owned by Google and because it is owned by google, my site appeared on the search engine only after 3 weeks! 

You waited 3 weeks? Getting your pages listed on google is easy. A few weeks ago I registered a brand new domain name estateagentscannes.com, set up the hosting on a UK server with UK dns, submitted the domain to google.com/addurl and was listed with 48 hours and ranking for the targeted keywords that we wanted within 10 days.

The keywords I targeted are "Estate Agents in Cannes" (and these are not rubbish keywords either, its a competitive term!)

It comes up 12 right now and that's without doing anything fancy. (it was ranking 6 the other day so has dropped 6 places since then)

The client has already gotten a couple of leads on the back of this so he is ecstatic.

**pat on the back and 5 gold stars for Craig then**

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123 Marbella Web Design and Internet Services
For Web Design in Marbella Spain
please visit www.123marbella.net

You think that's good?

I quickly threw together a onepage website for a snagging company in Murcia and it's organically ranking #1 Google within 7 days on the keywords snagging & murcia

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It is important to remember that SEO is just one aspect of 'Inernet Marketing'. What many websites fail to do is actually look beyond just getting good rankings in SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages). Your website MUST also convert i.e. drive the visitor to point of contact.

 Ahhh if only it were as easy as setting up hosting in a country, using Googles submit tool and then zooming to page 1.

Believe me in MOST cases in is not that simple at all. There is a lot of 'on page' work and 'off site' work that goes in to getting good positions and then MAINTAINING them.

Always consider targeted keywords for your business i.e. the main terms people are likely to type to find out about your product or service. Build individual pages for each subject, submit a sitemap to Google, insert webmaster tools to see if there are any issues with crawling your site, add a robots.txt file, insert Google Analytics to your site and set conversion goals to see what is working for you.

 You MUST monitor your visitors and see what pages they view most, how long they stay on pages / the site, what the bounce rate is of your visitors, what search terms they use and your conversion rates (amongst other things).

OK that is just some of the 'SEO best practise' stuff