SEO recommendation

[one]

Can anyone recommend a decent Australian SEO firm? I don't need some super-expensive firm that can work miracles, I simple want to move one of my sites up Google for a single search phrase. I'm already on page 3 of Google after six weeks and no professional SEO work, so it shouldn't be too hard.

Can anyone recommend a decently priced SEO mob?

Alternatively, if anyone on here thinks they can help, I'm happy to pay cash for results.

The search phrase is "tradesman insurance" and the site is tradeinsure.com.au. I also own tradesman-insurance.com.au which is were the site is actually hosted, and tradeinsure.com.au is parked there via cpanel. So I wouldn't mind some SEO advice on how I should structure the domains too.

Cheers

[Jemma]

Hi Shane,

I have a business that looks after online marketing and seo strategies for small businesses - you can have a look at the website in my signature.

I've had a look at your website and have some ideas for you. If you let me know what you're realistically budgeting to spend, I'll try and give you some options that will suit you best.

Or send me a message with your phone number and I can give you a call if that's easier.

Thanks

[one]

Hi Jemma. I've found a few places that are priced around $400-$600 and guarantee page 1 results for at least one search phrase. This sounds reasonable to me and is within budget. To pay any more than this we'd need a very compelling reason.

[Jemma]

Hi Shane,

I know a guarantee sounds great but just be careful to check that they're actually going to get you to rank in the number 1 position for the search phrase you want.

One of the things of an online marketing agency is that you're paying for the service and the advice. So if you're not looking to spend too much money and happy to not pay the premium for the advice I've set up an outsourcing service for small businesses. If you're interested send me a msg with your email address and I'll give you the information.

Otherwise maybe consider an arrangement where you pay a fee based on the benefit you receive from the service. This is something I'd be more than happy to discuss with you, just let me know.

Thanks, good luck with it all.

Jemma

[Paul Baker]

Hi

You seem to have high scoring elements in your website structure, but to gain that little extra climb poses some extra challenges that SEO work might not be able to do.

• Are the websites above you in that keyword phrase, in the same industry and business as you. If so they are going to be harder to climb over and you will need to look at their promotion strategies
• How strong is your inbound link strategy? Do you have enough high page rank reciprical links aimed at your site.
• Is your keyword relevancy in your content around 4%
• How long do visitors stay on your website? Increase time on websites do increase your relevancy score.

I believe that your selected keyword phrase is very competitive, why not consider a specific keyword phrase like "plumbers trade insurance" which is probably searched for more often than "tradesman insurance" for example.

Remember being number 1 in race that has few customers watching is almost useless. Try to position your website where your customers are searching and not what your competitors are doing. They might not be correct.

[superalex]

Hi Shane,

I hope you're well, some good commentary thus far on SEO from Jemma and Paul.

The biggest challenge I had appears to be similar to what you may be going through now - making my site rank higher - except that you've had much better progress than I without any professional help, so well done!

My initial brief was "I need SEO done"... unfortunately there are a few elements to this, and seemingly many IT sharks around who claim they "know SEO" ... I did get my fingers burned initially but luckily it "only" cost me a few hundred $.

I've now found a fantastic guy who used to work for me who I now get to assist me when required.

As SEO appears to be quite an art (it's more "how" the work is done and less "if"), I am sure he won't mind me sharing my learnings here - most of which he gave me. If you'd like to get in touch with him, message me and I'll pass you his details (he is in Melbourne, but travels a bit and does lots of skype video calls to his clients).

At the risk of telling you things you may already know, here are some bits of information which help me ensure I know what I'm asking for, and I hope they help you and the readers of this forum avoid the mistakes I made through not knowing what to really be asking for.

Learning #1 - SEO comes in 2 categories: on-site and off-site. To get your rankings higher you'll need to do both. On-site is essentially making sure your site content is search engine "friendly", and is optimised for your keywords. Off-site is really about promoting your site, in particular doing "link building" by posting your URL(s) around the internet.

Learning #2 - you need to pick the right "keywords" (pick ones your customers will use when searching for you - plumber instead of tradesperson is a great example provided by Paul). Use this tool from Google to estimate how many people search for your keywords, to decide which ones to concentrate on).

Learning #3 - link building isn't all that great - putting loads of links about your site all over the web (often via subcontracting the work to india via sites like elance) - generally doesn't work too well. It's best to do this manually, and only on web sites you expect your customers would typically go to, relevant to the work you do. The search engines are pretty smart, and know if a posted link is genuinely useful to others (they can almost "read" web pages nowadays).

Learning #4 - use three or less keywords per page, and make them different on every web page you have under your control. This way search engines see your site as highly relevant, and containing quality information - which increases your ranking.

Learning #5 - have patience - I expected it to all happen very quickly - it really is a long process. The progress you have had to date is really quite impressive, expect to see good results 6 months after you start. (Search engines place a lot of emphasis on the age of your domain name and age of your site, their assumption being "if the site has been around for a while it must be doing OK"). Google took me about 6 weeks, Bing took me about 4 months to give you an example before I saw any results come back.

Learning #6 - pay hourly - don't pay a flat rate of (eg) $300 per month, it is better to know exactly what work is being done, so you know (a) you're getting value for your money and (b) you know how much time has been spent on off-site versus on-site, to get a better indication on what is working for you. The going rate for my SEO guru is $80+ per hour, but I believe it's money worth spent when you compare to how much adwords can cost you over time. Mine gives me recommendations and mini-projects to work on to keep my costs down while improving SEO results (and my learning too).

Learning #7 - use a decent analytics package so you know how your SEO is going - Google analytics is free but I find it hard to make much sense of. I now use both this and "Clicky", which is much more user friendly.

Anyway I hope that helps, and I haven't gone too overboard with all this info - have a think about item #1 to help you identify where you need to get some work done. I'd recommend you ensure your "on-site" is optimised before going off-site based on recent experience...

John/Jenny, please feel free to correct me or add to this if I have missed something.

All the best with your project, and of course your business too

Cheers,
Alex

[one]

Well I've chosen an SEO provider and they've started work today. The cost quite a bit more than I was planning on, but their track record is very good and they've managed to get some extremely good position 1 rankings for their other clients.

I'll keep you updated on how it goes...

[seopiper]

Hello Shane,
In case you still need help, please have a look at my signature and go to the ranking page. Maybe it's something you're looking for.

[newman]

Hi Shane, Good luck - I've had SEO done by two fairly prominant SEO compsniers and in my experience both were a waste of money. I think signing into an on going agreement only benefits 1 person = the SEO company. I hope you didn't fall into this trap - I wouldn't cut them any slack at all - especially when the start saying it may take a month to get picked up - I've had new pages rank in google in as little as a few hours and whole new sites in under 12.

Good luck

[one]

The mob I've gone with have been pretty disappointing so far. There have been a few teething problems, but the biggest issue has been some re-written copy they're trying to do for the site.

Firstly I told them I didn't want anything written as I was happy with the existing copy, but they said their copywriter was very good and I'd be pleased with the results. They sent the re-written copy to me and it was absolutely terrible! It was basically just my existing copy with some added keywords, and stupid lines like "we are the most trusted professionals" which not only sounds stupid but is completely unsubstantiated. I refuse to have crap like that on my site.

But the worst part was the grammar and spelling, it was abysmal. I sent it straight back to them and told them not to bother me again until the grammar was corrected. They came back to me soon after and said they couldn't find much wrong with it!

So yeah, very disappointing so far...