Professional SEO services - is it myth or reality?

I assume these quotes are so high because you're going after very competitive keywords. Is that the case?

Spend your time and budget elsewhere...no one...and I mean NO ONE...knows how to do SEO anymore. Google has stirred the pot so much that it's a complete crap shoot...and anyone that tells you differently is lying to you.

I don't think you should sign any contract that says you have to pay but the SEO company doesn't have to perform.

There are 3 or 4 really great ones on here that I would trust my site with if I did not handle on my own.

You can start learning SEO in your own. But be sure to abide with Google's TOS.

That is why if you have an idea about SEO better to do it on your own than letting other to work for you.

I would spend time looking at your on page optimization before you do anything else. We did an inventory on the sites we're working on and found that over 50% of them have some sort of duplicate content on the site they are wanting to rank for.

So before you send out a single link take care of that. The info below is what we found out about Penguin. If anyone can add to the list let me know.

SITE DESIGN
Google has made it clear that clean layout, logical navigation, and appealing design are now an integral factor in their determining a site's ability to gain ground in the SERPs. While using an ultra-simplistic layout to maximize CTR or a widely-used free template to save on up-front costs for bulk site building may seem appealing, you've really got to ask yourself if the potential long-run sacrifice is worth the short-term savings. Perhaps it may be; but in most cases i see it's not.

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DUPLICATE CONTENT
It's extremely important that the text content on your site is 100% unique and original. Any pages containing content duplicated on other websites should be set with a noindex attribute and not targeted for search engine traffic.

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PAGE TITLE TAG - <title>Page Title</title>
I never choose to single out one specific on-page element that is more important than all else, but if i did, it would be the page title tag. Along with the meta description tag, they're the only pieces of your website that are explicitly displayed to visitors in the SERPs. Good practice of this tag calls for insert of a single instance of your keyword aside or within other words relevant to your site content. In addition, be sure each page on your site has a unique title tag that does not exceed a total of 10 words.

Appropriate --> <title>Guide to YOUR KEYWORD and other keywordy things</title>
Not Appropriate --> <title>YOUR KEYWORD</title>
Not Appropriate --> <title>YOUR KEYWORD | A Variation of Keyword | And Another Variation of Keyword | And One More Variation of Keyword</title>

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META DESCRIPTION TAG - <meta name="description" content="A sentence or two containing a single keyword instance within page-relevant text, unique from all other meta descriptions, and less than 160 characters." />
With the page title tag, the meta description tag is shown to search engine visitors on the SERP as a snippet below your page title listing. Make sure it contains spam-free text with a single instance of your keyword, does not exceed 160 characters, and is present but unique on every single page of your website.

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META KEYWORDS TAG - <meta name="keywords" content="primary keyword,secondary keyword,tertiary keywords..." />
Do not use the meta keywords tag. All of the top search engines have said for years that they ignore the meta keywords tag - but we still recommended its integration, cuz, you know, just in case. But now that Google has made it clear that the latest algorithm updates are exactly focused upon seeking out examples of keyword spam and over-optimization, it makes absolutely zero sense to hand them the master list of the terms they should seek out for examination. Dump it from every page on your website.

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TOTAL WORD COUNT & ANCHORED TEXT RATIO
The minimum recommended word count for a single page is 450 words, but do not place all 450 words within anchors. In general, a page's normal body text should outweigh its anchor text by a margin of AT LEAST 5 to 1.

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OVERALL PAGE KEYWORD DENSITY & ON-PAGE ANCHORS
There is no magical target keyword density which the search engines are seeking. Like many other factors, keyword density is elastic; the ideal percentage is variable and relative to other site factors. That being said, some safe generalizations we can make are: 1. Keyword density should be above 0.5% - one keyword instance per 200 words on your page; 2. Keyword density should not exceed 4% - eight keyword instances per 200 words; 3. Keywords should not appear excessively as anchor texts upon your page. Once or twice in the main navigation and once within relevant body copy is acceptable; 4. Keyword instances should be spaced apart from each other, never used in repeated spam fashion; 5. Keyword instances should not be stylized (bold, italics, underline) without reasons pertaining to enhancing visitor experience.

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PAGE HEADINGS & IMAGE ALT ATTRIBUTES
Your keyword should appear once within an H1 tag upon your page and once within the alt attribute of one of your page's images, but never in excessive fashion. It used to be good and standard practice to see how many keywords we could jam into H1's and image alt attributes, but no longer.

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WORDPRESS TAG CLOUDS
Do not use them.

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SITE MAPS
HTML Site Maps and XML sitemaps greatly enhance a search engine's ability to crawl your pages in an effective manner. An HTML Site Map is a page the same as any other on your website that contain a single link to every other page on your site. It should be linked to from your site's navigation or subnavigation in the same manner as the other top-level pages. An XML sitemap is an xml file containing links to your site's pages that is published for search engines. It should be named sitemap.xml and placed on the top level of your site directory - yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. More information on XML sitemaps can be found at sitemaps.org.

What did I miss?

try hubshot.

SEO is a myth. Its never worked and still doesn't work. Haven't you heard? Google did another update.

/endsarcasm

if they really are so good at seo then they'd be promoting their own websites and making bank from them instead of trying to dupe ppl into thinking they know how to rank somebody else's website

seo services are really just like wsos... all hype, no substance

Any professional SEO has to learn these updates and they may also be confused at this time..

Come on guys, why is it that in every single thread I look, it's the same.... It all boils down to people claiming to be experts at ranking websites and the constant remarks of "seo is easy. Click my signature. I have loads of sites ranked number one. Click my signature, buy my seo services" comments. Can't you guys add something constructive instead of constantly peddling your "seo services"?

To the original poster:

Unfortunately, finding a "good seo company" isn't straightforward at all. You're much better off forgetting about Google and hiring a good marketing person who can get your brand/products/services/whatever to your prospective customers in more clever ways. There was a time when the internet did not exist and entrepreneurs still made it big. Go back to basics. The basics still work, you just need to be smart about it.

P.s I just re-read and realised that you are selling web design. Why are you not looking at the Yellow Pages and looking for companies with huge banners but no websites? Call them and sell to them properly.

Go pick the company ranked #1 google when searching the keyword SEO....cant get much more proof than that right?

SEO is real. If you have enough money you can rank. Same way if you have enough money, you can get pretty much anything you want in this world.

I wish I could hire WikiPedia and Jimbo Wales to my SEO Geekgirl

Hello there!
Of course, SEO is real. There maybe a lot of changes in terms of how google rank websites. But once done correctly, especially by a reputable and experienced company, SEo will be able to lift your traffic. Back up SEO with organic traffic by building connections online and using social media.
Regards

PM me. I can help. SEO still works, you just need to know how to do it.

Gorillas,

Small businesses are in a tough position. In the past, you typically had two choices: do SEO yourself, but this is like learning a whole new career OR pay an SEO company a bundle of money, as you did, and get terrible results. But, now there is a third choice:


Hope this helps,
TP