Finding a good, REAL, SEO company...

[zurc.net]

I am currently looking for a REAL SEO company that provides, REAL, GREAT results. What questions should I ask, what services should I look for, what service should I stay away from? Approx how much does it cost to get ranked first page with google and other major search engines for a moderately popular keyword? Is a service like this going to keep costing me money to keep up with? Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Feel free to Pm me if you are in this field.

Thank you,
Mike C.

[jason32]

Hi,

We've been in SEO for years and have good knowledge and experience to take any site to #1 spot on Google and Yahoo.

Please give me the keywords to target so i could give you our best quote.

To give you a general idea, we charge $350/Mo for moderate completition keyterms. We can hit #1 spot quickly, we'll also guide you how to gain traffic from other sources without breaking your pocket.

We also sell Blogger Reviews from this site www.BuyBlogReviews.com. These reviews also help you gain high rankings and traffic.

Let me know if you are intersted.

Ryan

[zurc.net]

Sorry, but if a company is telling me they can get to number one spot easy, I would expect them to at least be first page for any keyword other than there own domain name.

-Mike C.

[jason32]

Hi,

Please check website ranking on these keyterms

Buy Reviews,
Buy Paid Reviews
paid blog reviews
get paid blogging
buy blog links
blog advertising

Check on both Google and Yahoo

[midgetlov]

It really depends on what you consider to be results. For instance, having the top position for any keyword really doesn't matter if your site isn't able to convert the traffic into business. In that scenario a good optimization firm would first focus on your site's conversion ability, then on increasing it's rankings.

There are many different questions to ask, but the most important thing for you to know is exactly - step-by-step - what they are planning to do. Then simply have them prove that their methods work and have shown results over several different industries.

As far as pricing goes...expect to spend a minimum of $15k-$20k per year. The more competitive/complicated your site's needs are, the more it will cost. If you are interested, feel free to PM me the site you are thinking of hiring a company for, and I'll see if I can recommend a few different companies. An approximate annual budget would help narrow things a bit, but isn't necessary.

Good luck either way!

P.S. Stay away from anybody that guarantees rankings. No legitimate company offers this for obvious reasons. It may sound good, but there are always a ton of loop-holes that result in you not getting your money back.

-Midgetlov

[zurc.net]

Originally Posted by midgetlov

It really depends on what you consider to be results. For instance, having the top position for any keyword really doesn't matter if your site isn't able to convert the traffic into business. In that scenario a good optimization firm would first focus on your site's conversion ability, then on increasing it's rankings.

There are many different questions to ask, but the most important thing for you to know is exactly - step-by-step - what they are planning to do. Then simply have them prove that their methods work and have shown results over several different industries.

As far as pricing goes...expect to spend a minimum of $15k-$20k per year. The more competitive/complicated your site's needs are, the more it will cost. If you are interested, feel free to PM me the site you are thinking of hiring a company for, and I'll see if I can recommend a few different companies. An approximate annual budget would help narrow things a bit, but isn't necessary.

Good luck either way!

P.S. Stay away from anybody that guarantees rankings. No legitimate company offers this for obvious reasons. It may sound good, but there are always a ton of loop-holes that result in you not getting your money back.

-Midgetlov

Thank you, this is the information I was looking for and yes, from what I hear any / all sites that gurantee rank are most likely BS. I understand the costs of SEO and these are costs my partner and I are prepared to pay as long as we can find a legitimate company that can provide true, legit, results.

Thank you,
-Mike C.

[midgetlov]

Hi,

Please check website ranking on these keyterms

Buy Reviews,
Buy Paid Reviews
paid blog reviews
get paid blogging
buy blog links
blog advertising

Check on both Google and Yahoo

LOL - I hate to put a damper on your day, but...
"Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results." http://www.google.com/support/webmas...y?answer=66736


There's many things wrong with the others in your list, but I don't want to spend too much time on it.

Again, good luck Mike.

Cheers!

-Midgetlov

[jason32]

FYI, there is no way for any bot to know if a link is paid or not unless you link to a high PR site that is not related to your website. There is no SEO firm in the world that doesnt use paid reviews or paid links. The thing that matters is how to run your campaigns and how you plan them. If you are talking about getting reciprocal links for your clients website then you are a fool and it would put the website in question at risk of getting banned altogether.

You are right about doing research before going asking for SEO.You failed to see i said Keyword analysis, website analysis and competition analysis should be done before starting the campaign.

The keywords i showed you above only means that we can acheive high rankings on any keyterms no matter what the competition is.

We've been in business for more than 5 years and have worked with industries top companies.

[bhartzer]

Sorry, but I just had to step in here. I don't agree with these statements:

FYI, there is no way for any bot to know if a link is paid or not unless you link to a high PR site that is not related to your website.

Google, who is going after paid links, has a few ways to determine paid links: they have the public turning in their competitors and Google employees who check spam reports and paid link reports. They also can determine if a link is paid or not based on words that surround the link and where it's placed on the page.

There is no SEO firm in the world that doesnt use paid reviews or paid links.

That's just not true. A paid review can be helpful at times for a quick link boost... but after a certain period of time those links don't count anymore. There are plenty of link builders and good SEO firms out there that do old fashioned link building and link baiting.

[jason32]

Well there is no point in arguing about something that you don't know let me give you an example, you say paid links or reviews are bad and google will and punish you for this right? ok now heres scenerio mayb you could shed some light on,

Ok now you say you dont buy links, ok now the only options you've to build links is to do reciprocal linking, submit articles and then link bait. In all cases you are getting links back to your website, now how in the world would google know that you have not paid any money for those links? and you are nobel guy or company? that google should not penalize?

On the other hand if you buy links or reviews, how in the world would a bot know that you;ve paid for those untill or unless that site clearly says these are paid links?

Its all an urban legend, you should get links just stick to your industry and dont go for sites that are known and already got penalized for doing so.

We are also running a links selling website for years so i know ins and outs of all the myths and truths out there.

Anyway i am out of this thread. good luck to you all

[NameCharger]

PM sent

[MikeinFlorida]

Well Mike C. you've gotten a pretty good start on your seo education. The industry is unfortunately covered with tons of unethical companies and people. The best place for you to start to get an education is Google's webmaster terms of service. Spend some time there at first to understand what you should really be shopping for in the first place so you don't waste your money to start with like most of us have in the past. Then visit the ihelpyou.com forum, which is the best place that I could ever find on the web for good solid seo advice. Just read the site to begin with. As someone who started doing seo years ago for our own sites because we dealt with too many unethical types and spent a bundle in the process I wish you luck!

[Raider]

Very interesting thread.

[SEO_Expert]

Contact me, I can give you examples of my SEO work.

I currently hold and maintain hundreds TOP 10 Listings at Google, Yahoo, and MSN
- including many First Place Results Listings (#1)

I can produce results quickly, or your money back!

-- Feel free to contact me if you are interested in know more about my SEO Services.

My eMail address is: clubscript@yahoo.com

[EstiBot.com]

Very good question by OP. Googling SEO services is useless; there is no way of knowing who does things right, abiding by webmaster guidelines etc.

And regardless of claims to the contrary, black hats do dominate a lot of SERPs in Google. Just goes to show that questionable methods, unfortunately, pay off.

On the other hand, bad SEO / blackhat SEO can seriously backfire, so if you end up hiring someone who does it wrong, a lot of damage can happen.

I'd be very interested to hear first-hand experiences/results, recommendations for a good SEO firm.

Obviously, the best SEO is quality content. If you have good enough content (read: incredibly good content), that's all the SEO you need. But for many purposes, professional SEO can help.

Anyone confident in their abilities, shoot me a PM, I have a lot of projects that need some SEO done.

[dcristo]

Originally Posted by EstiBot.com

Obviously, the best SEO is quality content. If you have good enough content (read: incredibly good content), that's all the SEO you need. But for many purposes, professional SEO can help.

You still need to promote your content to get it out there.

[EstiBot.com]

Originally Posted by dcristo

You still need to promote your content to get it out there.

Agreed, but if you have incredibly good content, you don't need to hire anyone to do that for you

[dcristo]

Originally Posted by EstiBot.com

Agreed, but if you have incredibly good content, you don't need to hire anyone to do that for you

If only SEO was that simple. Create good content and people will link to you. Shame it's not that easy, you have to be a little more proactive about it. But content is definitely important, I agree with that.

[bhartzer]

if you have incredibly good content, you don't need to hire anyone to do that for you

True, but you should still do an SEO Audit of your site to make sure that you're not missing out on any traffic; hire several SEO consultants to look at the site and give you opinions of what you're doing right and where you could improve.

[EstiBot.com]

Originally Posted by bhartzer

hire several SEO consultants to look at the site and give you opinions of what you're doing right and where you could improve.

So...back to the OP's question: which ones?