Time to Spend?

[frankb]

Hi, Need some advise regarding SEO, I have used various 'free' site checkers - most pick up different things wrong with my website , so i'm not much the wiser, I have read the 'webfaced' sticky, and various other articles. I love trying to do jobs myself ( not just for financial reasons) but am beginning to realise that despite all my fiddling round the edges i'm not improving my sites visibilty. How do I pick an SEO company - someone who could give me an idea of whats involved, there are so many online( they have got there SEO right !) or do I try a 'paid for' software first.
Thanks Frank

www.past-reflections.co.uk

[leehack]

Your problem is 3-fold to be frank:

1. You will find one good company in every 50 you find who actually delivers
2. You will want to spend far less than proper SEO over time will cost you
3. SEO is an ongoing continual thing, so many people see it as a job to get done and then that's it, you have to be looking at consistently spending on SEO to stay as a well ranked site

This is why the industry is full of sharks, 99% of people would not want to pay what it would actually cost to do it honestly and more importantly with the slow longevity that is paramount. So it becomes an auction on buzzwords and who can promise the most from the least. People's expectations against their desired spend is incredibly different, that is why it is so hard. Give up trying to get an SEO company, either learn it yourself or bolster the site with adwords, which at least you fully control and have no excuses not to do well with.

[Webfaced]

Lee is absolutely right in terms of SEO being an ongoing task and he is also correct in saying that an SEO agency worth their salt will end up costing a substantial amount over the course of a few years. That said, in cases of good SEO work, the cost is earned by consistent high standards of work, however, many companies just don't put the work in!

First things first, you should update your site to ensure it is as SE friendly as possible. Just a quick scan of your site shows that there are a number of fundamental flaws in the structuring of your pages and their markup. Losing the 'acatalog' subfolder would also help as will perhaps 30 other tweaks that can all be carried out within a single day.

The next step is to focus off-site and start building some links and getting some external interest in your content. One of the problems here is that anyone who wants to do well in terms of SEO has to ask themselves an honest question... "Do people want to link to my site and products?". In your case I would say your products are fantastic, really different and so yes, they would, however, you need to think carefully about how your site looks too and whether this is as appealing as possible and also how easy you are making it for people to link to you. For example, the presence of a blog, RSS feeds, Social Network sharing icons etc will all help.

Lastly, SEO is an ongoing slog, you have to be 100% committed to one of two options: 1) Paying someone to do what they need to do each month or 2) Getting your hands dirty and doing it yourself, every day, week, month and year for as long as you want to keep improving.

I agree with Lee that there are a lot of sharks out there, for starters, steer clear of anyone that "guarantees top search engine positions"! If you want to chat through your requirements in more detail feel free to give us a call or drop us an email.

[Steve G Griggs]

steer clear of anyone that "guarantees top search engine positions"!

Especially the calls that start with Hi I'm (pick your name) I represent Google (OH YEAH?) I would like to talk to you about optimizing your website...
I totally agree with the comments about SEO form Dominic and Lee.

[Sean Williams]

Losing the 'acatalog' subfolder would also help ...

Can anyone explain why that should be?

[leehack]

I'm not sure of all the reasons, but two that stick out to me are that it's a sub folder, so further down the structure, often meaning less important page as you move further away from the home page. Second one is the name, there is no business that will benefit from a folder called acatalog, it doesn't mean anything. You can now of course change the name in v9 onwards.

[robinantill]

Interesting comment about the /acatalog/ as a sub folder. Do you mean that all the pages would be

http://awebsite.co.uk/

and products pages

http://awebsite.co.uk/product1.html
http://awebsite.co.uk/product2.html etc

Would it be worth changing an existing site by removing the /acatalog/ and setting up redirect 301?
Robin

[leehack]

You could do that yes or rename the acatalog. You'd always use the www version of your URL though to avoid problems.

[Mike Hughes]

I don't think losing the 'acatalog' from your website will make a blind bit of difference. Google and the other search engines don't care about the directory structure of your website. If it's still only one link jump from your home page to another page it doesn't matter if it's in the home directory, '/acatalog/' or '/acatalog/section/products/type1/widgets/small/'. If you're unsure about this then try and come up with a logical reason why the same page would be more relevant to the searcher just because of the directory structure on the server.

Using an alternative to 'acatalog' can boost your results for certain searches if it contains relevant keywords. So a webpage located in '/widgets/red/' would do better for a search on 'red widgets' because the naming of the directories is a pretty good clue as to what kind of information is stored there. You can see this operation on Google as they will highlight keywords in the directory structure in their search results.

Here's an example result which is second in Google for 'elephants'. I've highlighted the same bits Google's search results do.

About Elephants
All about elephants on the Elephant Information Repository! This page includes a summary of elephant related facts to get you inducted in to the world of ...
elephant.elehost.com/About_Elephants/about_elephants.htm - Cached - Similar

Mike

PS. I agree with the comments about SEO companies. It's a bit of a catch 22 situation. Good ones are going to be expensive. You're talking specialised technical knowledge that adds a lot of value to the business. The ones that promise a service you can afford are best avoided. That's why we so often recommend you spend some time and do the best you can yourself (at least until you have the budget to afford it)

[TraceyHand]

'fess up
how many people googled "elephants" after reading that?

*raises hand* LOL

[Duncan Rounding]

I would like to see subdirectories named the same as the parent section.

[Mike Hughes]

Hi Duncan, I can see how that would be usefull.

Just to confirm we're talking about the same thing, are you saying that you'd like Actinic to create a directory structure on the web server to duplicate the product section structure in Actinic?

i.e. if a product is in the 'Printers > laser > HP >' subsection that the webpage should be located in a '/Printers/Lasers/HP/' subdirectory?

Mike

[Duncan Rounding]

That's right.

[Mike Hughes]

Sounds like a good idea to me.

And it's not just a 'nice to have' option either. This is an advantage that software using dynamic pages with 'search engine friendly' rewrites will have so Actinic should probably consider this as something to implement to remain competitive in SEO.

Mike

[Darren B]

hmmm one for the wish list then (i wont hold my breath )