Onsite SEO work and Linkbuilding costs

Trojan

Yep, apologies for the jargon, but you got it - SERPs are Search Engine Results Pages. IBL is in-bound link, OBL outbound.

brianbaru

Trojan wrote: »

The issue is that Google are giving less and less of their SERPs real estate to organic results, particularly on high value keywords (the long tail and informational keywords are still fairly ok). They are driving search traffic to their advertisers, their own products and partners.

Example from SEObook with only 3 organic listings on page 1:


You can see the same in many travel and local business listings.

IMO the natural conclusion to this is Google losing market share to new competitors in the long term, but that could be a long time away.

I don't really understand the post. Unless I'm missing something. If you remove the custom location and just do a natural search, the results are the same as any other. two or three sponsored results, a couple of organic, 7 google places followed by 7 organic.

brianbaru

People should remember, if people thought that the results in Google's serps were biased for a moment, Google would go bust over night. There are sponsored results but they are plainly marked as such. Personally, I can't ever see the day when all you will ever see are sponsored results. I agree, sometimes it might look like Google are promoting "the big boys" but when a companies are spending millions of dollars on internet marketing and mr.jones creates a few blog links in his spare time, it's hardly surprising he's not up there on the first page with those companies.

Trojan

brianbaru wrote: »

I don't really understand the post. Unless I'm missing something. If you remove the custom location and just do a natural search, the results are the same as any other. two or three sponsored results, a couple of organic, 7 google places followed by 7 organic.

There's only 3 organic results there.

brianbaru wrote: »

People should remember, if people thought that the results in Google's serps were biased for a moment, Google would go bust over night. There are sponsored results but they are plainly marked as such. Personally, I can't ever see the day when all you will ever see are sponsored results. I agree, sometimes it might look like Google are promoting "the big boys" but when a companies are spending millions of dollars on internet marketing and mr.jones creates a few blog links in his spare time, it's hardly surprising he's not up there on the first page with those companies.

Google are continuously expanding the keywords where Google products dominate the SERPs. The number of organic results on page 1, particularly above the fold, is dropping dramatically - to only 2 or 3 in many instances.

Yes, this trend should have a negative effect on Google's business model, but I certainly don't see them going bust overnight.

brianbaru

If you look closely at the page, it's a customised search. If you did a normal search it would bring up an entirely different looking page as described in my previous post with 9-10 organic results. I appreciate the results above the fold are not as organic as those below the fold but Google are there to make a profit. So naturally they will put their customers above the fold.

The results in Google's places would be classed as organic too so I'm not sure the results are less organic. Just different ways of showing the same results depending on your search. Thats my impression anyways.

cormie

Do a search for "man with a van" on Google.ie, the place pages do of course seem organic, but in no way influenced by SEO unfortunately. I think they used to be perhaps? I remember a search for "man with a van" had VanTasks top of the place listing with 5 nice big shiny yellow stars beside the listing too. They seemed to have replaced the place listings now with some other algorithm and have replaced the stars with numbers too a red 29 or 30 is the best score you can get, but to some people, a red 29 or 30 could come across as 29/100 RED for warning.

brianbaru

cormie wrote: »

Do a search for "man with a van" on Google.ie, the place pages do of course seem organic, but in no way influenced by SEO unfortunately. I think they used to be perhaps? I remember a search for "man with a van" had VanTasks top of the place listing with 5 nice big shiny yellow stars beside the listing too. They seemed to have replaced the place listings now with some other algorithm and have replaced the stars with numbers too a red 29 or 30 is the best score you can get, but to some people, a red 29 or 30 could come across as 29/100 RED for warning.

When you see a site like boards.ie or any other site like it ranking #1 for that keyword, it's based purely on it's a overall authority and based on that alone you know the other sites must be a real mess. On further investigation, they are. The only page that has any real right to be on the first page in SEO terms is #2 (onemanandhisvan.com)as he has a PR of 2, 6 years old, 500+ backlinks, 6 indexed pages and his domain to backlink ratio is one of the highest.The backlinks though would not be of the highest quality. Directories,blogs and forums.

You could get to #1 in a heartbeat with a little SEO and an aged domain.

cormie

I thought my own site was somewhat decent SEO wise, at least in terms of page titles, keyword usage etc. I know there's a lot left to do also, I thought I had done everything but "The apprentice" sent me a PM with some advice outlining all that could be improved upon. A LOT! How does my own compare to onemanandhisvan?

brianbaru

Which site is yours?

cormie

vantasks

brianbaru

Short and sweet. It's your backlinks profile. Only one that I can see has man with a van as an anchor. Most of them are from boards.ie. Think diversification in anchor texts, ip's, platforms etc.

You are in a good position to write a few tips based articles on moving and how to pack etc and publish them around the web. Look at zajava,squidoo,article base,ezine,goarticles,hubpages etc.. and promote them as well. Do a press release once a week on a different topic. There are literally hundreds of different topics to write them on without repeating yourself and they are extremely powerful. I've done many that get a PR of 3-5 without ANY promotion. Make a few youtube videos linking back to you on how to pack and move home and promote them. Use all and every platform you can think might be useful to your business and use them regularly. get into a routine and write it down so you don't forget. To do SEO well, you need to be very methodical and organised.

I get the impression you don't have any kind of marketing strategy. By depending on the web alone, you are leaving all your eggs in one basket. The way Google is right now, very few sites are safe when it comes to rankings. Make sure you hound storage places to pass on your number and leave cards in all of them. See if you can get links on their home pages and any other sites that are relevant.

Best of luck!

cormie

Thanks a lot for that. Good advice on writing the articles etc. I do plan on improving on SEO soon and will probably start a thread here looking for recommendations

M.T.D

Hi Cormie
Out of curiosity, what do you think are the keywords, that your main landing pages are currently targeted for.

Referring to your #9 post on this thread.
These are observations from my own experience.

• Most small business owners do not know what their customers actually search for as they never ask.
• Most small business owners could not write 300 coherent words about their own business, from plumbers right through to solicitors. not a criticism just not their area of expertise.
• Most small business owners do not know what makes a good website, not a criticism just not their area of expertise.
• Many web designers can not write good content
• Many web designers, and they could be good at design, are mediocre when it comes to SEO.

Most painters are probably crap at plumbing
Most plumbers are probably crap at painting
They know they are crap because it takes them twice as long as it should and the quality is poor. They know this by the drips paint/water when they do the others job.
A painter is better off getting an extra painting job and paying a plumber to do the plumbing job and a plumber is better ...........

You may say that is obvious ...

It also applies to websites
A plumber is better off getting another heating job and paying an online marketing strategist, web designer, content writer, SEO specialist, adwords specialist etc.
You do several years training to become good at anything.
So to leave what is potentially the main source of leads for a business in the hands of an amateur makes no sense at all.
Phone around, not web designers/seo , but their clients, find out if they get genuine business from their site, and when you find one ask who did it and employ them to do yours. It will save you a lot of money and wasted time.

cormie

Thanks for that M.T.D. See the issue was, at the start I had absolutely no budget for anything so I got the website built cheap enough and filled the content in myself and then worked on the SEO myself. Spent absolutely hours at it, trying to come up with the most keyword rich titles etc and checking to see how popular google search terms are. I do ask most customers where they found me and what they searched for and "man with a van" seems to be amongst the most popular.

I believe I'd be a lot more knowledgeable with website/seo stuff than your average man with a van or average plumber etc and I believe it shows considering the amount of business I get via the internet (I've never put money into any type of advertising offline as far as I know, well business cards and sign writing the vans is about all!). It's pretty much all my own work too, I got the backbone of the website made for about €400 6 years ago and haven't paid anyone to do anything with it since. I've been plugging away with what I know and it's worked enough to get the business established and it's bringing in enough work and I believe I've built an excellent reputation and have many loyal customers and great feedback on the likes of my google place page, facebook and indeed boards.

In saying all that, I now realise how much more can be improved upon and I believe I need a nicer, easier to use website as well as an SEO campaign that should, as a few SEO folks have said, shoot me to number 1 no problem! I also don't believe I can do it myself so plan on finding somebody who can

M.T.D

Hi Cormie,
Sorry for my last post it was not meant to be a dig at you personally, more a general observation about how little most business owners appreciate the differences between a "good" website that generates leads and clients and is a real asset to their business, and a web site that might actually have more visual appeal but is an expense as it does not produce customers.

Separate question do you know what key phrase each page on your current site targets?

cormie

I'd definitely agree with your general observation. I remember talking to a painter who was saying he got a website made but didn't get any jobs from it so gave up on the idea. I'm sure that's the case with countless sme's.

When you say about the key phrase each page on my current site, well that's the thing, as far as I know, it just depends on keywords throughout the page and the page title and description. For example, my piano transport page is result #1 for "piano transport" on google.ie, but I'm sure there's a plethora of other factors which influence it too, of which I'm not sure.

cormie

Just as a side note, my blog seems to rank pretty well. I'm on the first page for a search of "Winter Tyres" and it also comes up in a few other searches too. Why would that be I wonder?