SEO Tangibles

[SteveM]

Hi

I'm very new to the world of SEO. I have a background in IT and seriously looking at SEO as a service i could use and offer to others. I'm still gathering knowledge and have a long way to go.

One of my questions is. WHat do SEO experts/consultants/companies offer the clients. You cant offer them all page 1 position 1 on a google search especially if you have several clients from the same industry. Are they offering ongoing progess up the search step ladder? But at some point that must stop. Would you then just be offering to maintain that position roughly where it is?

Also, does the client stop thinking your useful after they have reach a goog page listing.

These are just some of the questions that come to mind.

Regards
Stephen

ps if i posted this in the wrong place just let know :)

[inertia]

One of my questions is. WHat do SEO experts/consultants/companies offer the clients. You cant offer them all page 1 position 1 on a google search especially if you have several clients from the same industry. Are they offering ongoing progess up the search step ladder? But at some point that must stop. Would you then just be offering to maintain that position roughly where it is?

Also, does the client stop thinking your useful after they have reach a goog page listing.

SEOs offer SEO and usually a lot more! Strictly speaking if we only supplied SEO we would research the keywords, implement them on-site, sort out any other code, ranking, indexing and analytical stuff (etc) and leave... But in reality we need to offer a lot more. So link building comes in to the job list and so does content creation. A bit further down the line you may need to help them with improving page conversions, lowering bounce rates, targetting social media and targeting other forms of traffic (and whatever else is needed for them to make money from the website).

Dont offer clients services based on rankings. In fact, from the very start play down rankings and educate your client to the more important factors - like traffic and ROI. If these become your main targets with rankings close behind then your SEO work doesnt stop...

The client may want you to NOT work with any related sites. This is fair enough, but if you do come across clients with similar sites you may find that having two related sites actually helps them both and you should mention this to clients.

[earnest]

Position whatever on google is a semantically hollow expression. Position for what keywords? And do I even need to be on this particular position for this particular keyword?

This is an approach that in fact, to a knowledgeable client, denotes "I am done talking to this person".

Just as Inertia suggests, there are things like traffic and conversion.

But when SEO really works, one doesn't even have to refer to terms like that. It just works, meaning that the website in question works as well.

[steve-parrott]

I am a web designer and also manage my company's corporate website. Despite the fact that I'm fairly well up on SEO and SEM, I elected to hire an SEO firm to take our web marketing to the next level. It was a significant investment and I knew I couldn't expect miracles, still I expected and received excellent guidance and support.

Our initial objective was to improve organic rankings; the SEO experts analyzed keywords, content, navigation, programming, domain issues, etc. We had several meetings, they wrote comprehensive reports, and worked with me to devise a strategy for moving forward. They also guided me in getting backlinks and are setting up my blog - including automatic links to my social networking sites (they also educated me about those).

While getting up in organic rankings was certainly a major goal, I have received invaluable education and now have a trusted team that I can contact for any reason relating to SEO and SEM issues. My contract with them extends for a year and I plan to pick their brains and take their help at every turn.

To answer your question, a good SEO company offers this type of comprehensive support that goes far beyond organic rankings. As long as they keep me educated and up-to-date, I will continue to use this company and am sure that the ROI will be significant.

By the way, the company is Internet Marketing Services – MoreVisibility (http://www.morevisibility.com).

[claybutler]

I'm a bit confused with your question. Are you looking to hire an SEO company or become one. If you're looking to become an SEO professional then build a bunch of websites and practice on those for at least 1 year. Read everything you can about SEO and then experiment. Only then will you even be close to promoting yourself as a beginning SEO professional.

[earnest]

That's in fact a good point. Having IT background does not mean there's no learning curve one has to go through before understanding what SEO is about and being able to competently use the knowledge in the field.

[scgalvin]

I've been building sites for years, done everything myself, design, database, coding. I really love it. Then came SEO, that's where the fun stopped. It's sooooo different from any other IT base concept. The fact that the search engines don't want you to know how they rank sites makes it very hard to learn and test anything...oh and btw once you think you got it figured out they change the rules. SEO/SEM in one word "Voodoo".
In my opinion the number one most important thing is links, quality links pointing to your site, and lots of them.

[SteveM]

Thanks guys, that has been very helpful.

Searching the web can provide so much info that its hard to know whats needed to start from whats needed later. And whats relevent from whats not.

Yes i would like to become a seo professional and didnt want to assume the obvious, which would of led me in the wrong direction or left gaps in my learning. I'm of the opinion, rather than assume, its better to ask those that know and thus have a solid foundation to build on.

I mentoned my IT background not really as a plus but rather to give you an idea of my position in order to better help me, and help me you have.

Are there any other resources or ebooks i should read that any of you found helpful?

Thanks

[rob.b]

No the client will not think that you are of no use once they gains a good PR. Because if you do not keep a continuation of the backlink building process, your PR may fall after a period.

[shubh]

SEO professionals are the iconic "knowledge workers." Every client I met with was more interested in increasing ROI than they were in what color scheme to use on the site. I always promise for increased traffic but never commit for PR.