Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Anyone know a good "SEO" person?  I've worked with half a dozen and never seen any results...can you refer me to someone on Elance?  I'm an email marketer and have a background with QuickBooks, Constant Contact, iContact, and Twitter.

Hello Jason,

I've gone the route of trying various companies that promised to SEO for me.  What I got was a lot of bills, bad advice, and no results.

Here's what I suggest...

Learn at least the basics of what it takes to get SEO... Google has some tools that are outlined in this video... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yKjrdcC8wA

A good SEO person should at least know how the basics of SEO outlined in this video.

SEO requires the right URL name, keywords, site structure, and approach to make sure you can supply exactly what the searcher is looking for at the right price.  Words are important and you have to be better than your competition.  Relevant backlinks are also important for getting ranking.  Make sure your main page addresses ONLY your main keyword.  Sub-pages can address another keyword, but just one.

Hope this helps.

I've run across a lot of "Experts"... that aren't.  It's easy to find someone that thinks they're good, but aren't..

Eric

Hello Jason,

One thing to keep in mind when searching for a good SEO -- a good SEO expert would not guarantee your business web site to be listed on page 1 of any search engines just over night.  As an SEO consultant working with Cheap Dedicated Hosting Company, it would take approximately 2-3 months, the least, to get your site to first page.  And, as ejmiller mentioned, keywords, url, site structure, etc. matter.

Hey Jason,

I agree with 1CheapHosting... SEO doesn't happen overnight. While there are a few ways to get on the first page of Google quickly, they don't work for your main web site. These are usually press releases, videos, etc.

Another piece of advice I would give you is to be very specific about what it is you want to be optimized for. Don't leave it up to them. They will pick the easy way out.

Duston

SEO requires months of patience. How many months did your SEO person worked on your site?

Hello Jason,

When it comes to dealing with SEO is like looking for a needle in a hay stack. I've been doing SEO for almost 7 years and found out that it is hard to stay in the number one spot.. The reason for that is that Google is constantly changing the algorithm making it more competitive and frustrating for SEO people....

I'm not sure what your approach is but "The days of Organic Ranking are over", Google has made it more competitive in a sense that they want you to use AD-WORDS as a secondary tool.

@ 1cheaphosting, One two three months to rank? then you don't know anything about SEO, I don't want to sound rude but there's still more room for improvement....

There are lots of factors that take place when you're doing SEO...

1. Is your web site SEF (search engine friendly) meaning, is there any coding bugs?
2. Are you following the right structure, using H1,H2, H3 .... and semantic coding practices?
3. Are you separating your CSS from your Design? meaning NO INLINE CSS crawlers tend to jump to the next site..
4. How well is your sitemap developed?
5. Is your content and Keywords relevant to the search?
6. Are you bolding the keywords that you're using? What is their density?
7. Did you do a Rank check to see what each keyword ranks?
8. Did you ADD ALT tags to all your images? Titles to your Links?
9. Have you verified your Web Site?
10. What about your Site map? are there errors?

Hiring an expert is really a task, and if you have a new website than you should hire some one expert as new site may go up but also disappear from search engine if your hire SEO experimenting on it. Before hire some one read some thing about SEO, what it is and what factor helps in ranking..

I think your biggest mistake was going to Elance and not to a SEO consultant or agency, on another note did you do any link building?

PBaxter,

One of the major reason why someone should ever hire a professional to design and develop your web site is because. A professional Web Designs (with SEO experience) knows exactly how to structure the web site... It is always easier to code a web site correctly from the beginning , than having to revisiting the web site and fixing the code...

Love to see the community stepping in with so much effort and depth.

NICE!