Yes or No to SEO?

 

We all want our website to appear at the top of page one on Google and there seem to be thousands of companies promising this very thing.

Before you waste a small fortune read on… 

Last year I took the plunge after an excellent presentation from a search engine optimisation company, they promised to get our website on page one of Google for 80% of the 30 key-phrases we gave them.

These were very competitive phrases, such as ‘Personal Injury Lawyer’ and so on, but they were very confident (and convincing!).

They weren’t cheap either, we paid a £5000 deposit and set up a direct debit for £1500 a month, at this price we were certain the results would come.

All this company did was to purchase 150 domain names, such as personal-injury-uk.co.uk and set up awful looking mini sites that linked to the main website.

They said this was their clever way of outwitting Google! There was no ongoing work at all, although they assured us they were working on the sites all the time (in an attempt to justofy the monthly fee).

And that was it, they told us to be patient, sit back and wait – 6 months later we were still only on pages 3-10 for our main phrases and we decided we were sick and tired of the false promises and what we now knew to be black hat techniques.

I have now ditched this company and after some considerable research have found an SEO who is very ethical (be careful they will all tell you they are ethical).

I decided the best way to find an SEO company who were likely to get you to the top would be to find one who had got themselves to the top for SEO related keywords!  

Then I spent a lot of time talking to the companies who appeared on page one for SEO search terms to try and establish who wanted our money and who was an SEO geek who loved the thrill of seeing his clients climb up the listings.

I found a small outfit who are very passionate about what they do and within 6 weeks of starting work have already got us appearing at No 4 for ‘Personal Injury Lawyer’ – not a bad start!

My thoughts are that SEO is well worth the money if you are dealing with a company who can deliver. Before you spend a penny make sure you satisy yourself as to whether they will…take time, do your research, speak to plenty of companies, take references from other clients and don’t use SEO companies who have a name starting with ‘L…….’

Any comments on your own SEO experience would be welcomed, I will be giving regular updates on here of our progress.