I host a Drupal site for a friend’s business. She has hired a company called Blackwood Productions http://www.blackwoodproductions.com for SEO optimization. I’m told this will cost [gasp!] $600 per month. They want FTP access to the server.
Has anyone here had any good or bad experiences with this company or have any comments about SEO companies in general?
I think they’re a legit company. I can’t find anything particularly bad about them online but, even so, I have real doubts about the value for money. Careful use of Google Analytics and the Google webmaster tools would seem like a more economical way to go and that sort of money could buy some Google ads. They have a “Search Exchange” which enables them to put links to other sites on their clients’ sites to increase the incoming links so as to improve the Google ranking. I seen one of these lists on one of their client’s site and it looks kind of spammy. Their sales blurb promises impressive results of course but I’m dubious.
It’s ongoing. It’s a constant battle because Google and others are changing their algorithms constantly. And they aren’t going to let you know.
Getting to the top means nothing. Amazon and eBay the two most successful online sellers only have click through rates of 29% and 19%. So that means not even a third of people who come to Amazon through a seach engine, even CLICK on the ad. The ROC (return on click) where they actually buy from it is much less. Successful SEO is measured in tenths of one percent.
Design often conflicts with SEO. The best SEO depends on keeping it simple. Drupal is a very powerful program. So that SEO better have experts with Drupal so they can actually use it and program it and change it around.
This is vital as I’ve worked with people who place more importance on design than SEO. You want BOTH but it WILL be a compromise.
There’s no way to judge. What makes a good SEO? If you get click through but no sales, the SEO is fine, but the point of having it is useless if no one is clicking on your site or when they do, they don’t buy anything. I found working in travel, most people STILL like to get prices and look online and call in their order. (This is changing though)
Lastly NEVER EVER EVER pay to get to the top. Did you read that? Good SEO people will not say you have to pay a search engine to get to the top. Does that mean it’s bad to pay? No, sometimes you have to. If you had a common word like “Time” or “Car” and were trying to get to the top, you’re almost certainly not going to get their unless you pay. A good SEO expert would tell you that instead of paying you need to rethink your marketing and use different words or phrases