Am I wrong? I think a good SEO expert should be able to..

I think whatever company you are using to build your SEO for your site is doing a very bad job of it. Exp if your paying them some ungodly amount of money to do it. I could spend a hour a day and build enough QUALITY backlinks for my site to bring in visitors that convert and land sales. It all goes back to where they are backlinking your sites. I tend to do most of SEO myself from commenting on other blogs and gearing it towards the content found on my sites.

To answer your questions YES a good SEO expert would be able to do that for you. If they are not producing cut it out of your program keep what does work toss out what dose not. If it has not worked for the last 3 months whats going to happen to make month 4 work all of a sudden?

It depends on what the SEO promised me when I signed on.

If they promised me I would get the first page of Google for my five best terms, and they do that, they've kept their end of the bargain.

On the other hand, if they do the "first page of Google will make you rich overnight" dance, they better by Golly deliver. With that promise, I want to see more than just traffic - I want to see targeted traffic that converts (assuming my site converts at some rate already). I want them to make me multiples of what I'm paying them.

That's what I think...

Yes and No. Depends what the customer is prepared to pay for. Someone can pay me to help push up their site and get traffic but converting traffic is entirely different. Not saying it's hard or difficult but to be able to get traffic to a site and know how conversion works and what can be done to a site, requires a special person!

All these web design companies dont know jack about conversion, all they think about is pretty flash files and nice colours and thats what initially wows the clients. Web designers are not seo guys and seo guys are not conversion experts.

Search engine optimisation is just that, has nothing to do with conversion (landing page wise).

I started in the SEO business as an employee of a small SEO firm. Dealing with clients is tough because they rarely understand what they are paying for, what is possible, and what the risks are.

If you are in the business of promoting other companies web sites, educating them on SEO is vital.

Links are one thing, rankings are another, and KEYWORDS are yet another.

So what if you're on page one for a keyword? Is it a high traffic term? Is it relevant to your business? Does it convert?

21 backlinks in 3 months is fine if that's all it takes to kick ass on the keywords that mean the most to your business, but there's no point in any of it if you don't even know what those keywords are yet.

I've said for over a decade, SEO is about getting targeted TRAFFIC, not rankings.

It's possible to rank #63 for a very popular keyword and get more traffic than you will ranking #1 for another related, but less popular keyword. I know this first hand. Sure, it would be better to rank higher than #63 for that keyword, but that isn't the point.

Problem is, it's tough to brag about benig #63, SEO customers want to see #1 rankings.

Another point over-looked by many is that 40-60% of all SE searches are "unique", meaning they are longer, obscure, one of a kind keyword phrases. Someone will type in certain keywords and there are NO sites with an exact match, and the engines scamble to find results for these keywords.

The way to get virtually half of all SE traffic is to give your pages the best chance to rank for these types of searches, which means using a wide variety of keywords to create tons of possible combinations. But again, any individual search will be so obscure that a high ranking for it is practically useless, it's the combos that matter.

IMO, the goal of any SEOer is to bring traffic at a price low enough and targeted well enough, that it is profitable for the customer. This should be the end goal, not "rankings"...

Hey there Ave Girl,

My view is that an "SEO expert" should be responsible for driving traffic to their site as well. Ranking means nothing. I am afraid that many of the offline programs being sold to the public just emphasizes getting ranked on 1st page of Google, with no mention or care about bringing in traffic. Many of these offline "students" are going to get dropped soon from their clients if they cannot prove that they can attract traffic for them too. Any client is going to "assume" that 1st page rank also means tons of traffic to their site....not true!

Half of my business is online and half is offline. One of my services is SEO, but I put a little twist on it.

When I make the "promise" to my clients regarding SEO, I explain that there are no two sites that make it to the top in the same period of time. That there are many circumstances and labor that I must do to make strides in getting them to a high point in the search engines. I never guarantee the 1st page of Google. I do promise that I am helping them build a solid FOUNDATION for attracting traffic and search rankings.

Regarding the number of backlinks to the clients' site, I don't think there will be a dramatic effect in the short term that will attract will convert into traffic.

I promote my "offline" SEO services based on what I promise the client what I can do "now."

My start up SEO program includes the implementation of 5 things:
(note: this is for soliciting to offline clients)

1) Registering the clients' site to local search with Google, Yahoo and Bing
2) Getting lots of testimonials and/or reviews from their customers to add to each local search entry. The more the better ranking!
3) I write 5 articles and submit to article directories for back links.
4) Set up a basic blog using the targeted keyword and keyword phrases and made 10 posts. (this is based on using 10 main keywords) The blog can be used as a "feeder site" to their main website if applicable.
5) Insertion of a PR piece on PRWeb Press Release Distribution Increases Online Visibility and Web Traffic

I also add that I track monthly results of traffic (mainly uniques) and make some "upsell" service suggestions if they are "desparate" for more traffic.

The client at least knows I am making progress that otherwise normal "webmasters" don't even know about or even will "touch." Marketing is a "foreign" animal to them anyway!

Hope that helps!

Bruce

A good SEO should be able to understand the client's requirements and to come up with an SEO plan to achieve that.

One of the most common requirements is traffic which ideally should come with rankings. Maybe it's conversions.

Sometimes it's just branding and a client might want to "own" the keyword in the search engines no matter what the conversions are. These are usually short tail keywords which might not immediately bring any conversions, but are good for branding.

Or perhaps the client wants to push the competition out of the first page by way of SEO.

Guess what I'm saying is, find out what the client wants and work towards that.
It's not always about traffic, conversions, or anything else, it's about what the specific requirements of the project are. SEO is just a means to an end.

they have been cashing your checks

sounds like their is a disconnect between the client and company. perhaps setting some goals and updates of work accomplished might be a step in the right direction.

I remember you saying this once in a post a while back and it really stuck in my head. I think we get so focused on being #1 that we forget that the end goal is to get traffic!

I just started experimenting with this myself. On the page I am actually going for a really competitive highly searched for keyword, but I work in 5 (or more if I can) longer tail phrases. Then I launch an article marketing campaign using those 5 long tails as the backlink anchor text. It was your earlier post about being #63 for a popular keyword that got me thinking along those lines.

Lee

SEO means getting better in the search engines, and to me, this also includes getting more people to click on the listings once presented with it. Getting them listed higher is just one important part of the optimisation. If you don't encourage the clicks then it's all for nothing.