How hard is it to make money selling genuine SE...

I get a lot of email and phonecalls about SEO and how these companies can get me on the first page of Google. They all vary in charge and all seem to be from people who have less of an idea about SEO than I do. (My knowledge is very limited)

Latest email through my site.

Name: Ron

Email address: roncheney81@gmail.com

Where did you hear about us?: Internet Marketing Services We would like to get your website on first page of Google. All of our processes use the most ethical "white hat" Search Engine Optimization techniques that will not get your website banned or penalized. Please reply and I would be happy to send you a proposal.

Simon

SEO is an ongoing process not a quickie, for that you need a company that does it all day, every day and is focussed on you. There are people on here that do it [I don't] but its not cheap and not easy unless you do it for a living and know all the tricks.

If you WANT to be numero uno, then there are 4N'ers waiting for your call but remember this

There can be only ONE !

Simon by posting on this forum and having the links in your profile sig as they are you are actually doing your own off-page SEO. don't ever reply to the dodgy emails like the one you have shared here, the first sign of dodgy-ness is the fact they are using a gmail account to mailshot. just delete them.

you can easily make sure your website is well optimised (in terms of keyword tags and the copy on your site) yourself or with a little help from members from this forum who provide free seo reports which are valuable to have.

as for off-page SEO you're doing well by being active on this forum. try and get active on forums within your industry too if you aren't already doing so.

Also, don't worry too much about chasing google. focus on your content (articles, videos, blogs etc) and google will come to you and bring you targeted traffic for people looking for your services.

Hi guys, it's not that I'm chasing Google ranking or actively seeking seo advice, just wanted to know what it's like to be working in a market place where there are so many fraudsters.

It got to the point that I thought SEO companies that do adwords campaigns etc. for you are all crooks.

I've managed to get to page one, 2nd spot for my desired search term on Google with the help of some rather wonderful 4N'ers.

It's not done too much for me tbh, just a few more hits from local people.

Peeps,

I met a very nice lady who had a stand at a very large networking event last year, who when engaged in conversation about her business, quite happily declared that she was spending £12K a year to an SEO company to maintain her number one slot in fairly specialist catagory of which one key word was the name of her local city.

I almost dropped and was somewhat taken a-back when she then told me she considered it good value for money when I challenged the cost.

Was I wrong to think she was / is being ripped off? I'm Curious.

at first glance it looks like she is being robbed, but it depends what this company was doing for her.

if her main keywords were fairly uncompetitive (i.e. local city keywords) then she could have probably done it herself and saved 12k but if her seo company were constantly (on a monthly basis) writing & distributing articles/press releases, blog content, video distribution, keeping the web 2.0 sites happy etc etc then that might justify paying them a fair bit (although £1000 a month is a lot).

Nah! - Her site is a virtual catalogue with lots of photos of stock items, very little text, no video ( didn't manage to convince her that she would have been better off giving me the money to do just that! Ha!) no blogg but she is used to spending regular sums of money on full page print adverts in the local press.

So for her I think it was relative. She felt that she couldn't take the risk of not paying what it cost while she she didn't know for sure what she was getting for the money.

I felt sorry for her but she seemed a tad blinkered. Nice bit of brain washing on the part of the SEO company was my thought but I'm sure she is not alone.

Ignorance can be bliss and expensive.

SEO could cost 100 times that, as long as it's bringing trade, at a profit, then it's worth it.

Lee - Agreed

My concern in this particular case was / is that having trawled through her site ( She asked me to have a look and pass comment ) I found that the meta tags and keywords on the lady's site are all targeted at a local market. The name of the city she is servicing is in the title of her domain and there don't appear to be any out going links to anyone other than the SEO company.

She doesn't appear to be paying for Google advert insertions and isn't listed anywhere on Google ( I went as far as Page 20 for 3 different search criteria ) under more general searches using all of the key words and variations there of for her products but leaving out the region or city of origin.

Yes she probably would be getting value for money if she appeared anywhere on page one under these broader search criteria but that's not the case.

I just think she is being ripped off and that there must be many other businesses out there who are also being ripped off by SEO companies given how big the outfit she is using seem to be.

Well in that case, if she's getting no return then of course she could be ripped off even if it only cost £50.

SEO, adwords, PPC etc should always be looked at as investment, not cost, just the same as, for example, the 4N passport, and as any investment, if it's not working then pull out.

We carry out SEO for clients and charge the time we spend which can be a lot - Can I suggest that it should really only be a large expense for the companies that totally rely on their Internet income and actually do get a significant income.

Most of the remainder of our clients do not need specialists SEO because our product Kontrolit does all the basics right from the start and only needs them to follow some simple steps which do not include coding!

www.homephonesonline.co.uk is one such case who have a standard Kontrolit site and just do the right things. They are on first page of Google in the UK for the very competitive terms of "telephones" and "digital telephones"

You don't need to be a big company or a guru to get results but you do need to do SOME work.

We carry out NO specific SEO work for 4Networking on this site but it seems to do the basics right. Mind you you the members do that for yourselves by keeping the content moving...

As Paul said (kind of) if it's built right in the first place then a lot of the work is done.

One thing people don't get is the time and effort that it takes to build a site properly.

It's exactly the same as building a house - get the foundations and the shell right and the rest will be fairly straightforward.

Lee, we should start a double act - I'm originally from London so maybe we have the same genes somewhere?

I get mine from gap ...

Paul / Lee

Don't you guys sleep?

I've got an excuse. I'm trying to print off some new stuff for the Bumpf tomorrow and its not going to plan!!