Boston Pro Weight

Boston Pro Weight

Is Your Seo Provider Really Doing Their Job?

This last year has provided me quite an education as I went from one chosen profession, to trying to learn the intricacies of another by launching a successful website business. Even the term SEO was a foreign one when I got started.  I, like a lot of people, thought that money would be better spent paying a professional SEO company to optimize my website than trying to do it myself.

The perception of promised results over time is a powerful one so I went ahead knowing full well that the results would not occur overnight. Sure, it was costing money, but I assumed it was just the cost of doing business. All the successful sites were paying for it, right? I could not have been more wrong.

Not only don't all companies pay for SEO services, I  learned that the main job of an SEO company is to generate income for their success, not yours. More importantly though, no SEO company cares about your website as much as you do.

I do have to admit that most of the blame is my own. As a complete webmaster newbie, I made a lot of assumptions back then, and only found out later how wrong they we're. But, it was the lack of timely or correct information to me, from any of these SEO professionals along the way,  that really surprised me.

One of the first, and biggest mistakes I had made when I started out, was to select keywords that were really popular. I would have no chance of ever being found with them. No matter. I went ahead anyway. A lot of people make this mistake when they start out. No only was it a complete waste of my time and money, the SEO company, that I had hired in Boston, didn't bother passing on that little detail, as they gladly collected the $500 monthly service fee while my organic traffic activity remained dead.

Later, when I realized the mistake on my own, I selected a different SEO company. This company said that they could optimize five non-premium keyword phrases for $350 per month so long as each term did not exceed 300,000 monthly searches on Google. So, as I spoke with the SEO representative, I chose the five phrases. For months, I believed that the big number on the top right of Googles' search results page was the monthly search volume. Wrong again! Not only had I never heard of Googles keyword tool back then, if I had, I would have discovered that all but two of my keyword phrases had monthly search volumes so low they didn't even register a number! And, those that did, were too low to bother with.

While I wondered why my long-tail phrases were not generating organic traffic either, the SEO company continued to collect their monthly fee too. None of the SEO professionals had bothered to check my keyword phrase volumes correctly or tell me just how worthless they really were. The SEO pro who had helped me select my keywords on the phone, was just as clueless as I was.

Due to my exasperation over time, I began discovering free tools for website optimization myself like Googles keyword tool, alalytics and Hubspots' website grader. I also found a minutiae of free SEO related information online, on blogs, and on forums.

Website grader happens to be a very cool and free SEO tool that uses over 50 different variables to measure the marketing effectiveness of a website.  It's just a tool though, nothing more.

As time passed on, I was coming to the realization that if my website was going to succeed, without breaking my bank account, I was going to have to do it on my own.

It was time to cut the cord.

I became more intimately familiar with the meaning of on-page and off page optimization, metadata, html, javascript and php. I also began to discover many flaws with my own websites on-page optimization, even though I had been paying for SEO for some time by now with two different providers.

1- Half my title tag included my website name instead of my chosen keywords. There is no need to place your website name in a title tag since it will usually appear at the top of the search list anyway when people type in your website name. The exception being a more competitive expression.

2-Having more than 10 keywords dilutes the effectiveness of those words. I had over 20.

3-Your H1 and H2 header tags need to include your keywords, if you want tags. You don't have to though. I did,and only one of my 6 header tags had any keywords.

4-All your keywords should  be included in your websites content description. Most of mine were not.

5-If you do want header tags on your homepage, make sure only one is H1. I had four.

6-Have your keywords placed in alt text for images, if you have them. I had two on my homepage with no keywords in either of them.

7-Having your main keyword located on the top left, inside your only H1 tag, and located on the bottom right of your homepage, maybe to the right of your copyright information, because this is how Googles' crawler reads a website. I only had mine on the top left.

Regarding off-page optimization, I learned the following:

1-I learned how on-page optimization (website specific improvements, keywords, etc) are not weighed nearly as heavily by the search engines as off-page optimization (article writing, blogging, commenting, and link building.

2-I learned how exchanging links with sites that rank higher than yours & are complimentary to your users can be more helpful to you than just exchanging with every site that asks you. 

3-I learned how, every day, websites are being banned by Google because these sites are linked to a bad neighbor. These webmasters have changed nothing about their own websites yet they have no clue as to why they are no longer indexed by Google at all.

4-I learned how one-way links carry a-lot more weight with Google than link exchanges and how they are obtained over time through the submission of good quality articles.

5-I learned about the importance of strategic thinking when it comes to choosing keywords or even a website name before you get started.

6-I learned just how advantageous it can be for a new webmaster to use keywords that only show up on a competitors sub-pages for page one on Google, i.e, not their homepage, when starting out.

7-Finally, I learned just how crucial an analysis of your competitors page rank really is before any keywords are even selected

For me, the value in using an SEO company initially, was the peace of mind that I felt the moment I got started with one. They are, after all,  the experts, right? In spite of my experiences, I know there are a multitude of excellent SEO providers out there. I also hope this article doesn't give the impression that I am an SEO expert because I am not. I just know alittle more now than I did a year ago.

I also need to say that there are several individuals at the second company I had hired, who have continued to help me. I am indebted to them as I proceed on this journey of self discovery on my own.

About the Author

Carlos C Bea

Co-Founder

TreeHouseForRent.com

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