ForumsInternet/eCommerce

You can prove whatever you want my friend, I decide what is best for my business and nobody will tell me what I need to do.

I don't need $135 per month SEO, I do my own SEO with results !

Getting ranked at #1 will do little for your web traffic if no one is searching for your key phrases. A lot of SEO companies promise high rankings knowing darn well that its a cinch when there's no one competing simply because there's no traffic to be gleaned from it.

Here's an example . . .

I'm in the marketing software business and I just came out with a new tool that creates an exit survey on a site when a visitor leaves. If you do a search for "exit pop" or "exit pop up" you'll see there are quite a few competing sites.

In spite of all these competing sites, I ranked rather quickly at #9 by simply creating a blog that points to my sales page. I wrote two quick articles, published them and submitted each to the social networks.

Piece of cake because no one else had updated their exit pop sites in a long time due to the fact that, even though there are thousands of competing sites, they're all competing for less than 50 searches a day.

On the other hand, I also promote the best article submission software on the market. I dominate the searches for the product name, of course, but I wanted to target traffic to the most popular key phrase relating to the product, "article submission."

I put together a blog, just like for the exit pop, but with this one I update it almost daily with good, solid content.

Regardless of how much content I put on the blog, I can rarely get ranked above #64. Why? Because I get 30 to 40 Google Alerts every day about new articles submitted for "article submission". The key phrase gets 640 searches day, so competitors are actively trying to grab those hits.

So there's a big difference between competition and active competition!

The work around is to target the long tail key phrases relating to the main one. You do this by clustering smaller sites, like blogs, optimize them for the less popular key phrases and point them to the main key phase site.

This will give you back links, and get these smaller blogs ranked higher adding more "weight" to them. You'll start drawing traffic from searches for the lesser key phrases to your main one.

This works! I'm actually getting more hits than I'm supposed to for most of the key phrases I target, and it didn't cost me a penny.

There is so much to SEO that you need to be very carefull with paying someone without knowing exactly what they are offering. The main idea behind SEO and SEM is keyword/keyphrase analysis. If you are marketing a product that has a lot of competition online, then it is not really worth the money. No one can gurantee you top ranking for any keyphrase that you choose, its simply not possible. Each SE has different algorithms and they are constantly changing them just for this reason. If you are marketing a product or service that is somewhat unique online, then your chances are much better and I would say is worth possibly paying an SEO company for its professional services. Just make sure that you get references and that they are legitimate. Do your research about SEO and find your own keyword/keyphrases that you feel will drive traffic to your site. Check out wordtracker.com free service to test them out. I wouldnt pay them the monthly fee. Just get yourself comfortable with keywords and the competition.

Nat - I've been "doing SEO" before it had a name I stumbled into it back in 1997 when I was designing websites. I think someone on an alt group coined the term SEO

I had a small wedding DJ business in San Francisco and was getting booked like crazy through Alta Vista, Excite and the big names of the day through one simple web page it may still be around on the wayback machine www.thepartydjs.com

Of course I got really curious as to HOW and WHY I was ranking well (dominating in fact) in the Bay Area and booking all these terrific weddings - particularly in Berkeley, Palo Alto, San Francisco and areas - of course these were all Sun, Yahoo! et al employees and UC Berkeley and Stanford students.

I went on to find out why I was doing so well on the se's and turned it into a small business - I mean small just me, my wife helps with PPC sometimes and my Mother in Law is a great copywriter.

Of course with that new GOLD RUSH came all the scamsters which for me was a battle at first - i shifted my model to local only and am doing OK. If I can't meet the potential client then most of the time I will say no as it's not worth the hassle.

I do have some clients that came with me from the Bay Area to Charlotte and I am flattered to say the least

If I see scammers here they will be reported and I will not troll for jobs.......

Yep my phone rings everyday with people telling me they can get me #1 on Google when I already am (where I want to be) it drives me nuts as I know they are scammers - I usually ask how they do it which ends the conversation right away!

I do PPC for my small business through the big three as not everything is free in this world and even Google need money!

Free listings are not a given!

Just please watch out for the scammers! SEO is relatively easy but also a nightmare trying to explain new "ways" to clients.

Social is the new blog - software? No way - not even keyword finding - want totally free keywords??? www.quintura.com WAY COOL FREE!!!!!

David

Nat to find out how you are doing with your site (and anyone else reading this) try www.xinu.com if that's dead do a Google for Xinu Returns - SO much free intelligence for the web

AND No - I don't know who they are or where they are but it is nice to check almost everything on your site

Let me know how it is for you - I like it

Bear in mind that much of seo comes down to you participating in the social web. This means posting to forums in your industry, writing articles, writing a blog that people consider relevant and would link to, etc. Google favors content over anything else, so this could help you considerably.

Regards,
Michelle Greer
http://onlinebusiness.volusion.com
http://www.volusion.com

Thank you for the helpful suggestions.