I built my website with PMI Training/myEbiz a few months back and had SEO completed at the end of January.  Because of low traffic, a company that monitors such things called me to offer their services for a mere $1999.00 more than what I have already paid.

The man told me that the company I used didn`t set up the title, description, and meta tags properly and that it looked like they might be spanning the search engines.  I have a little doubt about this because I think PMI/myEbiz are competent, but maybe they didn`t do some stuff right.

Anyway, the man who called is from Internet Advancement (http://www.internetadvancement.com/) and this is the offer

Ideal for companies with light to moderate search engine positioning competition

Warranties top-10 ranking on at least 4 major search engines

Includes at least 30 Directory Information Pages (D.I.P.`s) for submission multiplication

Over 510,000 monthly submissions on the Client`s behalf

First, has anyone heard of this company?

Second, any more insight on DIPs?

-------------------------

The Anniversary Shop, online store for traditional and modern anniversary gifts Plug-In Profit Site Work at Home Ideas and Opportunities

In my opinion, and I have thought EXTENSIVELY about this, SEO is dying.

Because of changes in the algorithms at Google and Yahoo!, your meta tgas are pretty useless too. So if this was their selling point, I would be highly weary.

I am also weary of any company that promises a certain ranking under the new algorithms. Essentially, you have a few ways of achieving that, and a few are pretty unethical.

I think many of these "DIPs" are really just link farms, and search engines are not terribly favorable of those anymore either. They are after quality, not quantity, now. Welcome to Web 2.0!

I have not heard of this company, but for this price and these claims ... I would be highly suspicious of all of this.

Out of curiosity, can you post which site specifically you are talking about? I would be happy to take a quick look and let you know what I think ... I see you have several links listed here, so I just want to make sure which one we are talking about before I spend time digging around. (I`ll click on this email replies thing so I`ll see if you post it later.)

Why do Google and Yahoo have to make this so hard?  I suppose it`s because millions of us are trying to sell stuff online and they have to be ranked somehow.

I have wondered the same about SEO, not that I know that much about it.  But it seems to be that once people catch on to how Google and Yahoo are ranking sites, they change their criteria.

Anyway, the site I am most interested in ramping up now is The Anniversary Shop - the first link below.

Thanks.

-------------------------

The Anniversary Shop, online store for traditional and modern anniversary gifts Plug-In Profit Site Work at Home Ideas and Opportunities

I`m curious, what method(s) do you feel is/are replacing it?

Be leery, and run fast! We have been approached by these companies too. When our site was new and had low traffic, we thought their services might be the key to success. Wrong!

First of all, they promised on things they couldn`t possibly deliver ("guaranteed placement in top 10 search results"), and they were going to charge an exhiorbitant amount of money on an ongoing basis, for simple tweaks to our site that we could pay a consultant for, one time, and then handle the monthly maintenance ourself. We hired a SEO consultant, and for less than $1k, he analyzed our site and  suggested changes we could do ourselves, or pay  his staff to do. We chose a combination of both.

Since making those changes, and in conjunction with a Google Adwords campaign, our site has seen a significant rise in traffic and customers.  SEO is a constantly ongoing process, we never stop, and are always looking for new ways to get our name out there legitimately.

Google Adwords, by Rene Agredano - Tech Beat Article - 01/24/06 Times-Standard

I think that you can still use keywords in your content, and you should know what your users are searching to find you, but the whole meta tag thing isn`t really used. The problem was that people would load their meta tags full of unrelated things to get more hits, so the search engines wised up and decided to skip it.

What rules now is content. The search engines want to make sure you have relevant content within your site that matches what a person is looking for.

What is working now better than SEO is viral and organic marketing. People would rather hear from another person how a product is good, and then go use it.

And yes, cjpeeps, that is what happens ... when people find a way to exploit the system, the search engines have to change to make it harder to get in. They don`t want you to be able to artificially rank yourself #1 or GoogleBomb yourself to the top - they want you to EARN it. Unethical internet marketing has really ruined it for everyone, because they have made everything so difficult and confusing that it is hard for even the pros to stay ahead in the game! The best idea is to make the best site you can, entice your users with reasons to visit, and market your site in a more traditional way than just relying on SEO.

As for the anniversary gifts site, I love the idea ... but I think your site could use some work before you proceed.
* The navigation is a bit confusing. I think it could be reworked to be a lot more clear.
* I think you should consider adding some informational pages to entice visitors as well ... perhaps the history of gifts per year, or just like gift ideas, or maybe some articles from people about this topic, etc etc.
* Behind the scenes, I think your code is very cludgy and inaccessible. You are using an old style of tables which I think will make the site more difficult to crawl as more and more sites are moving towards standards-based design.
* I think your front page is not very catchy and your main points appear too far down. I have a 12-inch laptop, so my screen cuts off after only seeing the welcome and 4 lines of text ... and this is at 1024x768 with the window open as large as it will go.

I`m sorry to be so blunt ... I just want to be honest so you can effectively evaluate your situation and make the changes to market yourself better.

I also think that there are many outlets you could pursue that would help you with some organic marketing ... for example, find other sites that have topics similar to yours and see if you can get a mention over there.

Hope this helps! If I said anything confusing, please feel free to let me know.

I completely agree with all of this. These people thrive on making claims they can`t back up. This used to be how it worked "back in the day" ... but this is exactly the reason why it doesn`t work anymore! People were exploiting the system.

A good consultant will give you the options, and yes there are many things you can do yourself, and you should be pointed in that direction and given those options. Heck, for $2K - that offer should include a completely new site! Cjpeeps (or anyone), if you do need help, I would suggest going this direction instead of hiring one of these too-good-to-be-true companies. MarcomAndPOP has the right idea!

Totally agree (and thanks for the compliment NHG). Thanks so much for the insight, it`s well thought out and informative.

And cjpeeps, I`ve found that our subscription to Marketing Profs is really worth the money. Their webinars have taught us a lot about getting our name out there, you may want to check it out.

NHG, have you ever considered teaching a webinar through Marketing Profs? I know you`d gain a lot of clients that way, you have a ton of relevant insight to offer.

Rene and nhgnikole,

Thank you for the feedback and the suggestions.

I appreciate your honest review of my site.  I am limited in the code behind it because it was built with myEbiz.  Even though I did the work, I used their template and tools to build it.  It was clunky to work with, so I`m not surprised to hear you say that the code is a bit outdated.

I would like to speak with your further about changing my site.  I am not sure I can do all the things you suggest within the parameters of myEbiz, but maybe I can.  If not, maybe I`ll consider a complete redo with the help of a web consultant - maybe nhgnikole.  I like the clean presentation of the sites you have in your portfolio.

-------------------------

The Anniversary Shop, online store for traditional and modern anniversary gifts Plug-In Profit Site Work at Home Ideas and Opportunities

Thank you for the heads up - I`ve bookmarked that site. I`ve been looking for some outlets to do things like this since realunching my business after having my daughter. I will look into this.

And cjpeeps, you may be able to make some of the other changes, and a see if it helps ... sometimes some small things can do wonders. I think your main issues are the navigation and logic of the site - making the site so easy that your users don`t have to think is always the way to go!