Rankings...

To get our site ranked on front pages,is it better to let a company do it,or buy a software like IBP.We know clients love the software when we sell it to them,and there is a market for it.But we want Desk Quote Professional to be ranked front page or 2nd page when people put in CRM software,data handling software etc.Our web can be found at http://www.deskquote.co.uk
Thanks Ianski

Re : Rankings

It depends on your knowledge with regard to SEO and how much time you have to do it.

If you know what you are doing and don't mind spending time working on it then do it yourself. If you have no idea how to increase your exposure or would rather pay someone else to do it - because your time is better spent running your business - then outsource to a quality provider. That's about it, just like any other business decision it comes down to a judgement call!

Re : Rankings

Its not too hard to learn the basics of seo which will help, but if you are looking to seriously increase your rankings then i would reccomend hiring an seo expert for about £500 who should be able to get you a decent page rank and on the first few pages of google

Re : Rankings

I`m not sure it`s as easy as that, I think it is a long , ongoing process, better to do it inhouse, set aside so many minutes a day.

Adam
http:/www.myfrenchmaison.com

Re : Rankings

It certainly is an ongoing process, and from what I understand you should not get discouraged if your site ranks very poorly for around the first six months it is in existence... some of the search engines take a while to assess the "true" worthiness of a new site so it might be slightly depressed from where it will ultimately end up at first.

Re : Rankings

May be better to focus on one or two long tail keywords similar to 'small business crm software' as there lack of competion will propel you to the top of search engines.

At Contextured we spealize in offering both technology combined with expert support a combination which get results in seo
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Contextured Limited 99 Farringdon Road London EC1R 3BN t : 020 7503 5792 f : 020 7833 1103 c: 079 7179 5544 http://www.contextured.com http://www.getcontextured.com

Re : Rankings

If you want to get your site performing well on the search terms you are targetting, there are no easy answers.

Generally you will either need to commit a fair budget if you are getting the job done externally (assuming the keywords you are targetting are competitive, which for most businesses not operating in a total niche they will be).

Or, alternatively you will need to commit a fair amount of time if you are doing it in house. So since time is money, there is a sizeable outlay either way.

The best way is to build the site from the ground up with performance in mind, so that you just have to create the site once rather than launch it, then re-structure it for good search performance down the line.

This means ensuring that there is natural prominence for the content that matches your most important keyword searches, and that the pages on the site are built in a way that is conducive to optimum performance: this is the basics such as tightly aligned content to keywords, good and clear and relevant titles and meta descriptions, well written, compelling content and so on.

It's also a long term process that requires building a site with a solid external link basis, and of course regular addition of content that will have humans and search engines coming back.
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Web Design

Re : Rankings

I have just put your domain name into my Link Pop Checker and I see like us that Google do not list you at all, mind you being a UK site that does not supprise me as most UK sites struggle on Google.
We are top of page one if anyone enters Health and beauty shop on line but every site on the web can get top IF the person who is told by you what to enter in search engine.
What I am saying is that not one website will get top on page one by hit and miss, eg BBC will get to top on page one if you enter it, but you know the BBC is there, but who knows your site? not a soul till you tell them.
David
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www.Alternative4u.co.uk

Re : Rankings

I would highly suggest to do the SEO in house, if you do go with a SEO company, make sure you choose very carefully, 80% or so do not tend to produce decent results.

I don't believe any automated computer programs will be able to help you with SEO very much.

The best option really is to have your webmaster learn SEO and commit two hours a day or so to getting more customers for you, you will defiantly need to make sure he educates himself with a few good books, SEO for dummies is a good starting point.

I would outsource link building to a place like India if you can, for about 200 Pounds you can get about 2000 manually submitted links done in India, that would take hundreds of hours to do on your own, and you can bet your wages are higher.
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Re : Rankings

Yes most SEO companies are not very good.

Generally you can instantly get a good idea by looking at the traffic that the site of an SEO company gets itself, and how they rank.

If they get hardly any traffic and their site is clearly not well optimised, then they aren't going to be that good.

Same old story - everyone calls themselves an expert and don't let total lack of knowledge get in the way of doing that.

Re : Rankings

Tim is definitely right. Before you buy from those that call themself Pros, try to study/research on there website first. I prefer to do my SEO optimisation by myself (No SEO software used) and my website http://www.uncommondeal.com is ranked (google page 1) well in most of its keywords. You can do this too.

Re : Rankings

Why not share your tips on how you managed to do this, Uncommondeal - I'm sure the people here with company websites would be grateful

Re : Rankings

Getting ranked #1 for "your" keywords is quite simple, the very most important things is finding keywords with not a lot of competition, if you are the only person with the keywords "sport hamster racer" you will be ranked #1, however if you wish to be ranked for more competitive keywords such as just "sport racer" you will have to insert the keywords often in your meta tags as well as your title and on page content, you can not just say "sport racer, sport racer, sport racer" or goggle will flag you as a spammer, you really need to do something more like. "Discount sport racers, sporty racers, racers that are sporty, sporty racers to buy online, sport racers online, etc etc etc"

Then if that is still not enough you need to go find a bunch of "do-follow" websites that allow you to backlink to your web page with the hyperlink reading "sport racers". Hopefully your domain is sport racers.com and your web page is all covered in text and images all referring to sport racers.

This is all there really is to SEO, you need to make it painfully obvious to goggle what the web page is about, so they know they are sending the customers to the right place.

Now keep in mind if Google does send them there and they leave right away, over and over again, because your site is exceptionaly slow, irrelevent to the keyword or just ugly, Google will likely stop sending so many customers your way.

You may also hear a lot about Pagerank, rather than explaining it all in this post please read my article on the subject.

http://www.planetarybargains.com/Blog/?p=603

Go get a book called SEO for dummies if you really want a complete rundown on everything you want to know, make sure it is the most up to date copy, SEO changes all the time.
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My Funny T-Shirt Gallery - Chasing Carrots Blog

Re : Rankings

Very useful post that last one

Re : Rankings

SEO is an ongoing process and should be something you think about on a weekly basis. There are some good SEO people out there (and some awful ones too) My advice would be only use them if they will explain and show you evidence of the work they have done on your behalf. Simply buying software like IBP is#nt a magic bullet. You need to work on media distribution, back links and keyword ranking on a regular and ongoing basis to rank highly.
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Re : Rankings

As mentioned by localweb above, a very important point is that it is something that you should do ONGOING.

Some companies will, say, pay for a month's SEO, and may get a little benefit, but then that will fall back over time.

It needs to be an ongoing thing, gradually doing bits and pieces that over time will improve the rankings, so that you can a gradual and gentle upturn in traffic over the course of time. Adding fresh content, gradually building quality in bound links, improving page content and targetting, over a long period of time, all help, and should derive as much success as paying out for the SEO.