There are plenty of blog partner marketing programs that may divert a heap of traffic to your blog and make it real hot property in no time. Ways that of obtaining congestion to your blog would be to possess firstly, terribly edifying and interesting s…

All that said, before you go into saying don’t pay a monthly SEO fee, no disrespect intended, but make sure you actually know what SEO is first. YES THERE ARE BAD SEO “PROFESSIONALS” OUT THERE THAT WILL CHARGE A CRAZY MONTHLY FEE, SO TO THOSE… STAY AWAY. But all it takes is a little research of the company to see if they are legit. Not too hard to ask for a quick client reference. Ask for a website they have done the work for, check out their site, and check some keywords you would think they should show up for. And there you have it.. knowing, is only half the battle.

As far as SEO goes, SEO can be comprised of many different strategies, especially in a competitive market, where one literally fights with competition on a daily basis for better rankings. Submitting news articles, press releases and directory listings are all types of white-hat SEO as long as they are not spammy and keyword rich. These things take time to do, and again, in a competitive market, must be reviewed on a daily basis, and in my opinion, would require a monthly fee as I’m for sure not going to do 40 hours of work a month for free.

Just my 2c.

Chip, I can see your point but let’s not forget:

This kind of people that you are talking about is a very rare kind. Most seo experts that do a monthly seo fee plan, do actually work. I mean continuous work. I am in the seo business myself. And we do have plans and a lot of work ahead of us.

But when you are in such a competitive business like seo is, you tend to keep the client in the dark regarding the sensitive details of your work. You never know, he might become the next seo expert and take your work. So you see, it could be fairly easy to mistake the real thing with the impostor (or at least it can in the start. A short talk with the expert will tell you all there is to know about him/her)

I applaud any organization that “takes care of SEO” for their client…however I don’t know how you can do so without engaging the client in the process, SEO is far more than rank…it is positioning and earning the click (not just top rankings) from the most qualified targets…after all for most businesses and website models, what good is a million clicks if you can’t convert a single one of them?

In highly competitive local, regional and national marketplaces, a one-time SEO effort will never be enough, even if you achieve top rankings.

Think about it…whomever you have replaced upon achieving top rankings is not going to just accept the loss of business…they are going to reoptimize their website.

Not to mention the ongoing addition of content that can dilute SEO if not optimized, and the inevevitable event of algorithm changes.

We work with designers, global advertising agencies, developers and webmasters from businesses of all sizes across North America and I can tell you that although many believe they are doing SEO, most will admit to me (privately of course) that their mastery is mostly guessing and rarely strategic.

SEO is a function of marketing…it must target qualified audiences, differentiate from the competition…and at the end of the day promote conversion.

We actually measure and optimize with our clients continually…and achieve measurable results for every client.

There are many firms that do work diligently for their clients on a monthly basis. Sadly there are many that “scam”…but just like traditional marketing, Search Engine Marketing is a process not an event.

Unfortunately, those “guys” that don’t do a darn thing and charge monthly fees make it difficult to legitimately perform these services at a fair fee. Luckily, we earn the trust of our clients and they appreciate the efforts. I agree, those burned by unethical money-focused SEO’s have given the profession a bad reputation.

I realize there are not as many out there, but many of us are marketing professionals who approach these methods ethically and diligently.

As a marketing firm that specializes in these practices, I can tell you that our clients depend on us to leverage their website to leverage SEO, SEM, Usability and Conversion…to deliver results and improve the bottom line.

It seems that the SEO reps posting are hosting advertising campaigns, pulling in traffic from all corners of the internet. Isn’t this less about optimizing the site for a search engine and more about marketing?

I understand that in the world of SEO, there may be a blending of those services, but it seems like most of this discussion is about semantics.

Alex Centeno MBA.
Digital Media Director
Merkados™

To address your point about changing keywords, meta tags etc. Sorry but this is incorrect. We have disproven the age trust theory so many times its become boring.We’ve ran two sites on two domains but using different key phrases for over 3 years.(avoids duplicate content penalty) The easy phrases will rank in a few weeks. The sought after phrases never rank . There have been thousands of similar experiments with the exact same outcome.

You say small business sites don’t need monthly SEO. Again this is incorrect. What about shops? Have you ever uploaded to Google base? These xml files have to be hand coded.

You slag off the SEO company for approaching your termite company and make it look like you’v done a great job for them. Er…sorry but you haven’t. I pointed out to you nearlier that the key phrase you claim success for has ZERO searches on overture and wordtracker. This means that NOBODY has used this phrase in a search other than you and probably your client. Install GA on his site and see how much traffic they get from search.

If you knew your stuff then you could do a little KW analysis, some long tail analysis (that’s a bell curve) and realise that your clients website is targeting a totally unproductive phrase.

Monthly SEO – even for small businesses involves spreadsheeting kw’s, using ontologial phrases, setting proximities and prominences – and for very modest fees. nIt can take 6 months to a year to get it spot on but during that time there will be measureable results. You will never get this using the trust method – it’s just not true.

Here’s a wager for you – you leave your client’s website up to the trust theory. Get another domain, duplicate the site and get an seo to apply monthly KW strategy to this and lets see how much business it brings in.

I note your point about designing a custom wp theme – I already said we do the same thing for less than half your price earlier. You can get a custom theme built on line from any of the guys on css many a for a few hundred dollars – every bit as good as anything we’ve done or seen.

I’m designing a custom Wordpress theme for $2499 not just installing Wordpress.

I don’t see why my article bothers you so much. I’m talking about small business websites, not big websites that need comprehensive research and analysis.

You claim websites don’t need SEO so I took a peek through your website. So…lets start with the sites you showcase on your front page. The first one for example ranks Number 1 for the phrase “termite inspection raleigh”. On google the raw competition is 74K. Do an “allinanchor: termite inspection raleigh” and this dilutes to 9.7k . Next check overture, wordtracker or any other word analyser and they show up 0 searches for that term in the last month. (Yes ZERO). All the sites you claim to have number 1 rankings are almost identical – even “web design raleigh” had zero searches last month.

So…lets go a little deeper. Raleigh appears on local search so the serps are heavily diluted. A googling of the local population shows 308K so it’s rather a small catchment area in the grand scheme of the USA.

So what’s my point here? Well…this is exactly how the scammers convince small businesses they can get them to the top of Google. They pick low value key phrases that are easy to get to the top of Google then show off on their websites how good they are.

You sell CMS from $2499 yet you install wordpress! Don’t you think that’s a bit hypocritical? Wordpress is free. Our web design department installs and creates a custom theme for around $1000. When you say “FREE SEO” wordpress is already brilliantly coded for SEO so the work’s already been done for you. BUT…you’re still claiming credit in your website.

So…you claim to have achieved these results for your client? By default your are using negative advertising techniques to obtain work for yourself and it could easily be construed that you are using the SEO aspect to justify the cost of your web designs.

Your article presents a very one sided view about SEO and you tell your clients they don’t need it at all to rank. This in itself is highly unethical because you give your clients the impression they will receive new business.To quote from your website “We are confident that you will be on the first page of Google Search Results* and actually have visitors asking about your services.”

Now your clients must be thinking – great I don’t need to worry – my website does everything. Take the termite company for example. I know for a fact that the key phrases they SHOULD be targeting are nowhere in your site. So effectively you are preventing your client from obtaining new business from google! You ddi no competitor analysis at all – email me if you wish to know how I know.

It’s obvious when you built the site you did no keyword research either – hence the result. This client would benefit from some proper research so that he can attract targetted business.

Ontological research, a/b testing on landing pages, keyword proximity & prominence research, and long tail analysis would cost a few hundred dollars and provide your client with a decent ROI for the fee. Monthly adjustments would fine tune and react to market variances.

So what’s my overall point? Web designers are equally as bad as the scammers who rip clients off on monthly SEO fees. You charge $2000 for a website and tell your clients they will receive business because they don’t need SEO. I’d be a very angry client if you made that promise to me!

Have you any evidence your client’s have had a ROI for the website. I wager no! Has it been measured? I doubt it. Do you have any data to support the enquiries? I doubt it. .Sorry my friend but this article is as unethical the people you criticise in the first instance.

Since you’re giving SEOs such bad press – did you ever consider the effects it could have? Your article could be picked up on forums and before you know it you could be google bombed by the black hats.

People in Glass houses…!