Phone calls from SEO sales people

danger_mouse_tm

I sell and repair computers on a part time basis and one of my customers who owns irish eco plumbing recently contacted me to say that he couldn't find his site on a google search any more. It was coming up fine on a bing search, so after a few searches of "solar panels cork", and "underfloor heating cork", I couldn't find his site on google either. Up until a few weeks ago he was appearing in the top three. I've done searches using his own name (Alan Moss), and depending on the weather, it seems, he will come up first or not at all.

He is now tempted to go and fork out money to one of theses SEO companies that are constantly calling him touting for business. I have urged him not to as I believe that these guys can at best do what we have already done with the site (www.irishecoplumbing.com) and incorporate relevant keywords and quality information on the product that Alan is selling, but he is not convinced.

Do you think that it may indeed be time to throw a few hundred euro at these SEO professionals. I guess if it is going to bring in more business then it might be worth it. However, There are so many SEO companies saying they are the best who should we choose?

PaulPinnacle

I'm not sure what the actual question is here to be honest. Are you looking for recommendations for a company? Whether improvements can be made on the site (if it has dropped out of the rankings, you probably know the answer there already)? Or something else?

go and fork out money to one of theses SEO companies that are constantly calling him touting for business
No. Do some independent research, seek referrals from friends/business partners/colleagues/happy customers, do some homework on the various providers and choose one based on that (if you do decide to use one).

Using cold calling to choose a provider for any service is never a good choice. When it relates to a company that promote and provide pull marketing and they're using push marketing to sell to you, it has to raise some questions.

I believe that these guys can at best do what we have already done with the site
I only glanced at the site for a couple of seconds (note: I'm one of 'those guys', so obviously have a vested interest here that I'm happy to disclose) and spotted a number of issues that have yet to be resolved along with areas where significant improvements could be made.

As a first step, why not ask for a review of the site where users might be helpful enough to point out some of the issues and suggest where improvements can be made? If you genuinely believe that no improvements can be made on how you have the site currently set up, you might get a bit of a shock.

blue4ever

danger_mouse_tm
I’m not being flippant: If you want to be found in a search for "solar panels cork" then you have to have those keywords on your site! You have close to 50 pages indexed in Google (.ie) and only two of them have the precise phrase. So, that would be a good start – to get them woven into the copy a bit and one a few more pages without going ott.
The pages titles will also help you. So that that into the p[age titles.
I’m not suggesting you rely on that keyphrase, it’s just for illustration.
As for "underfloor heating cork" (exact phrase) it’s not on the indexed pages at all. Individually the words are there and appear together on many pages, but not as a group.
So, just be careful what you are searching for and make sure that what you are searching for is actually on your site.
DIY:
Page titles. Make more, a lot more, of that property
Headings and anchor text – you should have a look at them, just to smarten them up a bit.
Get you self Google webmasters – it’s a huge mound of information what will be really helpful.

market myself online

Hey danger_mouse_tm,

I am also one of those guys but before you pull the budget finger at someone like me, it might be worth trying two things...

1. try reverse engineering the links on a website that is currently coming up on the keyterms you are looking at. (use something like yahoo site explorer).
2. Wait for about 2 weeks. Sometimes minor adjustments in the google algorithm can make your site drop out of the search results only to return in a short time.
3. (I know I said two, but hey its more for your money). Find out if any extra pages, changes or links where added to the site in recent times and just undo them.

The good news is that if you where already in google, it is likely you will return quite quickly with a little bit of work. If you have the budget its never a bad idea to consult experts on professional time about improving your prospects, but if not, DIY will always suffice.

market myself online

As a semantically independent discussion I agree with you Paul that most of these companies can be misleading, however I would suggest its possible to use push marketing to market any product (including a pull marketing package) if push marketing happens to be the best technique for a given market.

PaulPinnacle wrote: »

Using cold calling to choose a provider for any service is never a good choice. When it relates to a company that promote and provide pull marketing and they're using push marketing to sell to you, it has to raise some questions.

PaulPinnacle

market myself online wrote: »

...if push marketing happens to be the best technique for a given market.

I won't disagree. It works very well for a large number of businesses and I wouldn't suggest otherwise.

My main point was that the selection of a service provider, be it SEO or any other service, should never be taken on a sales call alone. Having a slick sales team is no indication of the quality of the service, so independent research should be undertaken to find the right supplier.

market myself online

PaulPinnacle wrote: »

My main point was that the selection of a service provider, be it SEO or any other service, should never be taken on a sales call alone. Having a slick sales team is no indication of the quality of the service, so independent research should be undertaken to find the right supplier.

Agreed. A good word of warning to anyone who is looking to SEO their site and reading this thread.

pobrien84

I just had a quick look at the site there and the Meta-Title and Meta-Descriptions are both too long......

You have stacked too many keywords on your page as well.

Register with DMOZ also - small things like this will help somewhat.

Personally I think there is far too much repetition on the first page of the site.

Have a look at this also - http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://irishecoplumbing.com