Is paid SEO worth it?

**skill_guy101** · 02-24-2005, 06:32 PM

ok, my familys runs a self storage business and i made the website.

a company phoned up today and said that they would get us on the front page of google for "bristol storage" for £20 a month and £200 up front.

i recenly updated my meta tags because they were poor and re-added the site to google. That completely lost its listing. i think that they delete it until there crawlers pic it up again.

is it worth paying someone for getting high ratings for google? do you think it would be better to see what happens when the crawlers reach the website? are they charging a extothate amount? should we go with this company? if we got 1 extra customer a month from it we would still be gaining from it. 50% of all customers come from yell.com.

i would really value some imput.

thanks alot

**pastthepresent** · 02-25-2005, 01:03 PM

FYI... I just ran a key word check on Overture for "bristol storage" and it appears that no one is searching for this.

**MG315** · 02-25-2005, 05:04 PM

If you're gonna be paying 20/month for sone SEO guy to MAYBE get you a top listing, why not just use adwords and pay 20/month to DEFINATELY have a top listing (on the side).

besides, its gonna be pretty difficult for a flash site like that to get a top listing. I suggest making an html version at least.

**skill_guy101** · 02-25-2005, 07:15 PM

Pastthepresent, what is Overture and how do u know no one is searching for it?

MG15, Im not sure about you, but whenever i seach google, i never look at the sponserd links.

my dad went ahead with this guy so i supose time will tell...thanks for your help tho guys.

**pastthepresent** · 02-26-2005, 02:04 AM

www.overture.com - this is a ppc service

by the way, it does not matter if you are looking at sponsored links... 75% of people who use search engines do not know the difference between sponsor links and organic links. Now that does matter...

**IgotDreams** · 02-26-2005, 01:32 PM

I have not posted here in many many months but saw this post and had to respond.

First your asking SEO questions on a Flash site.

Second, that guy is cheap, even though that is an easy keyword to place, after all there were only 903,000 webpages in google competing. I usually have to try to beat millions or billions of pages. You have to understand that almost all of those sites do not know any search engine optimization, or think it is just meta tags.

Third, you can probably do okay by teaching yourself the basics and getting placement for that word. But if you were trying to come up for the word "storage" I would say definitely hire a SEO firm.

One thing to know though, only use words in your meta tags that can be found on that page. If the word is not there, do not put it in the tags. Besides rumor has it that google ignores meta tags, but other search engines still read them.

Good luck, and please do not direct any questions to me cause I will not be back anytime soon to see them. Email me through one of the sites in my footer if you like.

**skill_guy101** · 02-26-2005, 07:33 PM

Ok thanks for your responces guys.

Getting on the front page of google for "storage bristol" or "bristol storage" is worth 5 times more than £20 a month.

pastthepresent and co, i see your point about sponsered links. however as previously stated, my dad has gone ahead with this firm. I supose the best bet would be to go ahead with this firm and if after a month or 2 it is not working out very well we could use sponsered links.

Do you think that is the best way forward.

You guys have been very helpful, thankyou.

**RazoRmedia** · 02-28-2005, 01:19 PM

okay, first things first.

If your family run a storage business, they need to use the right marketing channels to gain customers.

I would think that localised offline advertising would be much more advantageous to your companies profits but I will assume that this is already covered and therefore simply talk about online.

All the company will do is to suggest a few things to change on your site and your tags (this information is available for nothing in several places on the web - including on fk from me and others).

They will then use PPC to stick your company at the top of google which you could do yourself without the companies markup.

SEO is a difficult and constantly expanding subject for natural searches but all this company are going to do are use PPC and possibly utilise a few link exchanges.

If I were you, I would keep the money and use it for PPC. This way, you can use trial and error and the overture search suggestion tool to use the money to keep you at the top of google and other engines for longer than a year.

Trust me, at least this way, if you use proper tracking, you can capture the keywords and actually find out not just what puts you at the top of google but what actually converts your clicks through to punters.

Don't do it, with a days reading on the web, you can do it yourself.

**JFlashK** · 02-28-2005, 01:43 PM

those sponsored links on google will bring some visitors to your site for sure. But if they buy is a different story. A site we made http://please pm for link - sorry fl...es a g-rating. (warning: contains some erotic content) tried a sponsored link for a while, it brought +100 visitors a day, but allmost no sales.
Getting the right visitors is the key to succes, examine your target audience very well, where are they, where are they gathering their information...

google doesn't idex flashsites very well! so put some content in html if you want to get listed.

edit by razormedia - sorry jflashk, had to edit, hope you don't mind.

**skill_guy101** · 02-28-2005, 05:30 PM

thanks again for the responces.

RazoRmedia, most of our domestic customers are moving house from say London to Bristol so they want somewere to store there stuff for a while. Therefore, local advertising has proved to be rather in effective.

We have a resonably good sized add in the local yellow pages and a very small persentage of bussiness has come through that (that was by far the biggest marketing expenditure). We have also spend similar amounts of money with other directories with similar success. We are listed on yell.com and that is what draws most of our business.

We have also had articals writen about us in the local paper (2 articals).

So we thought about what we would do if we wanted some storage in bristol. we desided that we would probably go on to google and search for 'storage bristol' or 'bristol storage'.

When my dad got a phone call from the company saying they could get us listed on the front page of google (for a relitively little price) he went ahead with it.

i am unfimilar with the term PPC and i wikipediared it and it said it was Power PC. is that what you ment, if so i dont get how that would help.

intersting point about sailes JFlashK. But i expect that has alot to do with what people are searching for, because there are few storage companies in bristol and not many people would look for storage comany's without the intent of using them. do you agree?

thanks both of you for your imput.

RazoRmedia, my dad has paid the £200 so what do you think would be the best option, keep it going to see what happends, or stop it and loose the start up money and do the rest ourselves?

thanks

**pastthepresent** · 03-01-2005, 12:21 AM

PPC = Pay Per Click

www.overture.com or google adwords.

**pastthepresent** · 03-01-2005, 12:24 AM

So we thought about what we would do if we wanted some storage in bristol. we desided that we would probably go on to google and search for 'storage bristol' or 'bristol storage'.

Also, you can not think about what you would search for as this is limited to only 2 people. You must research what your target would search for. Do a survey, check overture listings, etc.

**johntabita** · 03-01-2005, 02:42 AM

Originally posted by Pastthepresent
FYI... I just ran a key word check on Overture for "bristol storage" and it appears that no one is searching for this.

If you checked Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool, it may be that it's only checking US results. If you go here, you have the option of selecting what market Overture searches (i.e., US vs. UK). Here are the results for variations of "storage bristol":

Wordtracker:
bristol self storage - 3.0 /day

Overture:
bristol self storage - 1.9 /day
bristol in self storage - 0.5 /day

Not exactly a stellar amount of searches. Now, project that out over a month's time. That's 162 / month. How many of those do you suppose you can convert to buyers?

But here's another thing to consider. Are the people who are searching for "bristol self storage" looking for storage in Bristol, UK? Or are they looking for storage in Bristol, Massachusetts; Bristol, Rhode Island; Bristol, Vermont; Bristol, Virginia; or Bristol, Conneticut? (Try searching for "bristol self storage" on Google and you'll see what I mean.) Now your 162 searches a month has become diluted and you have no way of knowing what percentage of that actually applies to the UK.

**pastthepresent** · 03-01-2005, 02:45 AM

Good thoughts there JT.

By the way... the Yellow Tie link in your footer is broken. It looks interesting...

**RazoRmedia** · 03-01-2005, 04:41 AM

Originally posted by skill_guy101
...RazoRmedia, my dad has paid the £200 so what do you think would be the best option, keep it going to see what happends, or stop it and loose the start up money and do the rest ourselves?

thanks

Then my advice would be to use the company, make sure you get a report each month of them for the keywords they use, no matter how successful or unpopular. Get the to document everything so you have information for the future should you wish to try it alone. If they're worth their salt, they should be:

Giving you their PPC keywords each month
Reccommending meta tags
Giving you tips on content and keyword loading
Finding companies to do link exchanges with

Keep us updated in to what they offer you, I'm sure the boardroom members can add some hints and tips along the way to make it a success.

Good luck.

**skill_guy101** · 03-01-2005, 05:57 AM

Thankyou johntabita, that was some valuable information you have gave me.

So what does Wordtracker and Overture's results actually show? the number of searches in where? anywere? in google? in yahoo? in a number of differnt search engines.

you make a good point about the differnt bristols in the world.

Thanks for the advice about getting as much information from them as posible RazoRmedia. I will do so and keep u upto data about what they are actually doing.

**johntabita** · 03-01-2005, 03:48 PM

Originally posted by pastthepresent
Good thoughts there JT.

By the way... the Yellow Tie link in your footer is broken. It looks interesting...

Thanks for telling me. It's fixed now.

It's a brand new organization but, coincidentally, there's already a chapter forming in Houston...

Originally posted by skill_guy101
So what does Wordtracker and Overture's results actually show? the number of searches in where? anywere? in google? in yahoo? in a number of differnt search engines.

I'm not sure exactly where Wordtracker gets their data from. They have a free trial. You can get a 1-week subscription for £14.00 and a 1-month subscription for £28.00. You should check out their website before you decide to undertake any SEO or PPC campaign.

If you haven't already figured it out, you should be aware that there are two different types of search engine marketing: Organic or "natural," and PPC (Pay-Per-Click). Some experts recommend one or the other; some advocate both. I have an article on my website where I've tried to present the pros and cons of each, in layman's terms. There's also a list of resources at the bottom that you might find helpful.

**OddDog** · 03-07-2005, 05:38 AM

I run several medium sized (+10,000 Euros a year) ppc campañas.

the experience of all of my clientes has been positive. they have all increased budgets for 2005.

ppc can work. but the best thing is that it is so simple to have a small budget and give it a go. try out 20 euros. see what happens.

on the topic itself, I would have to say that those are not large amounts of pounds being spent. watch it for a year. then decide.

you should go to webmasterworld to learn about this more.

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