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The rapid growth of the search engine marketing industry has resulted in many different companies springing up and offering a confusing range of services to website owners. Unfortunately, however, many of these search engine marketing companies have dubious credentials and techniques that can leave a business frustrated and disillusioned by the results they achieve - and at worst, their websites banned from some search engines. We have had numerous clients come to us after having lost money with lower priced, poor quality services that guaranteed top search engine placements, but in reality could only achieve them on less popular search tools with obscure terms that generated no traffic (even though the terms of the 'guarantee' were met). Such methods give the whole search engine marketing industry a bad name, resulting in companies believing that good results aren't possible - when of course THEY ARE, but only if you choose the right search engine marketing company and the most cost-effective strategy. So how do you know what to expect and which service to choose? There have been companies that quickly entered the market, having read about the techniques for search engine marketing and then try to achieve good results by simply copying metatags and copy from successful sites, without really understanding what is involved. Other companies send out spam e-mails or make cold-calls promising top rankings, but gloss over the actual techniques they will use - which can result in only short-term results or, at worst, getting your site banned by some search engines. Needless to say, seeing some proof of search engine optimisation experience and real, meaningful results across a range of different websites and search engines is where the real expertise is likely to be found and where you should feel more confident about investing your marketing budget. Before making your choice of supplier, please use the following summary of the pros and cons of different types of service available. Submissions to thousands of search engines However, there aren't that many search engines in existence, so most will be Free-For-All sites that will simply generate spam e-mails to your in-box and give you no benefit in site traffic. To target traffic to your site you realistically only need to focus on 10-15 of the most popular search engines and directories, most of which will not accept automated submissions from this type of service! Finally, if your site is not optimized then even if your site does get listed, there is little chance of it ranking anywhere. Cost effectiveness rating = 1/10 The DIY approach There are a number of software packages that can help to optimize a site, although there are differing opinions about the effectiveness of these and how some of the top search engines react to their automated submissions and rank checking programmes. Using the DIY approach will take time but can be effective, depending on your market sector. However, you will not benefit from the broad experience of optimising many different types of websites in a variety of markets that a professional SEO company can offer, plus if your in-house expert leaves, you may lose any experience that may have been gained. Cost effectiveness rating = 3-7/10 Guaranteed placement services There may indeed be good companies that can get very effective results, but most search engine marketing experts agree that nothing can ever be guaranteed with search engines - whether it's getting listed quickly (unless you pay for it), or getting a high ranking that will last. So what is on offer? Most companies promote a guaranteed level of performance that is based on optimising a site for quite obscure, low traffic search terms that are easy to achieve a placement for. This results in the guarantee being achieved and payment is due, regardless of whether your site actually gets any traffic and therefore your return on investment (ROI) is very poor. Another technique we have seen increasingly over the past few months is the claim to achieve top rankings on selected search tools for a set monthly fee, which in reality is achieved by the supplier simply buying keyword placement on the main pay-per-click tools like Overture and Espotting. As each search term and bid price used will have been forecasted to fall well within the monthly fee, you end up paying over the odds for traffic and your placement will only last for as long as you pay for it. Cost effectiveness rating = 4-6/10 Separate domain optimisation or cloaking techniques Although proven to generate some good traffic, such techniques can have inherent problems - such as spamming through multiple pages that are automatically generated with slight variations in keywords. Such pages can be invisible to users because of the automatic redirect, which may then be ignored by some search engines, or at worst, lead to the banning of your site. The other disadvantage of this technique is that your own website fails to gain any long-term benefits from being optimised. Because these services often require you to pay regular monthly costs on an ongoing basis, once you decide to end your contract, you may lose the pages on the separate domain that are driving traffic to your site and end up with no gain. If you are considering a company that suggests using cloaking software on your site - whereby the server will identify the IP address of visitors and generate different pages to search engines compared to those that web users will see - we would just say avoid this technique! Search engines openly discourage such practices and if your site is found to be using it, you are likely to get it banned. Cost effectiveness rating = 4-6/10 Search engine marketing specialists In most cases these companies will also build the optimisation into your own website and create a structure that avoids the risk of search engines penalising the site, so that you gain good search engine rankings that will last, without being held to ransom by paying a regular monthly fee if it is not really required. As in most markets, you tend to pay for what you get and you should expect to budget anything from £500 upwards for a professional search engine marketing company to generate targeted traffic to your site. However, fees can still vary widely, with some large London agencies charging very high rates to produce results that can be achieved for a fraction of the cost by some smaller specialist companies. Cost effectiveness rating = 6-10/10 So how do you find the real search engine marketing specialists? Those that can achieve high search engine rankings in their own business sector can be one good indication of performance. The US-based Search Engine Optimisation Consultants Directory is also a good source, as their editors have vetted all those firms listed against a series of qualifying criteria and standards. Perhaps the best way to choose from your shortlist is to obtain independent recommendations from clients of each company and to request examples of websites that have achieved high search engine rankings for popular search terms on the best search engines - particularly on Google, which is now one of the biggest sources of search engine traffic and also the best search engine for identifying and penalising any techniques designed to trick its rankings. At the web search workshop we can provide this evidence for you and will give you an honest, open approach to the techniques we use and business principles that we follow. Speak to us now to learn more about how we can provide a cost-effective search engine marketing strategy for your website, or see how your website is performing by requesting a FREE site assessment today.
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