Can anyone recommend an SEO expert???

[hottoddy]

I have an already-existing business and website that I'd like to convert to 100% online sales. In order to do this, I need an SEO expert (I can probably do it myself by learning SEO stratgies but that is not the point of the 4HWW). Although there is a huge sum of people and companies that tout themselves as SEO experts, I have found it quite challenging to find one that is relatively professional and delivers even a decent proposal in a timely fashion.

Can anyone recommend a tested SEO professional who doesn't promise the world and deliver nothing? I am also on a tight budget so I'm looking for someone who might be interested in a performance-based arrangement.

Please let me know.

Cheers!

[webgal]

The SEO industry has tons of scammers. Their big trick is to inflate your visitation by hiring outside the US so people just click on your site. Actually, there are several angles but finding a legit one is hard to do.

You probably need more than SEO, however. You probably need your website to cater to a target market. This process involves writing, finding and exploring keywords. So you need a good product, a website set up as a sales and marketing tool that inspires an audience to respond to a call to action (in your case buy stuff), and then you need to market it through the appropriate marketing channels to reach the RIGHT target audience.

You don't need tons of generic traffic, you need your audience. And if there are tons of your audience, you need to find them. So if you want to make a go of converting to online sales 100%, your transition will involve more than some SEO applied by machine to lay any kind of foundation for success.

I haven't seen your site, so this is general information.

[Livingit]

I've used www.search-placement.com with excellent results for my SEO. They got me up to the first page of Google for "Croc shoes" within 5 months. I think their minimum spend is 1k a month, though tts well worth it for me!

If you contact them tell them Jon with elotta referred you please.

But like the above poster said, there are lots of scammy SEO companies out there. Beware of anyone that doesn't have a lot of case studies and references to provide.

[hottoddy]

Thanks for the responses! All very insightful and helpful.

Webgal, I completely concur. I don't want a bunch of random and unnecessary "window shoppers"; I want conversions! I have read enough about online marketing (and my background is in marketing/PR) that I believe I can make the necessary copy changes to the website to convert it to a sales mechanism (with keyword ratios/calls to action/etc.). The person or company I want to hire will be able to build on that or make the necessary changes (hopefully few) to be able to produce a site that cultivates the desired action from customers.

Livingit, thanks for the referral. It's good to hear that you've had excellent results. I was curious to know if the company achieved those SERP rankings in the organic or PPC listings. Also, what has been the increase in your CTR as well as your conversion rate since hiring this company?

I was also curious to know if either of you, or anyone else out there following the ideas in the 4HWW, has been successful with implementing these online businesses with only the PPC approach that Tim discusses in his book. Obviously, I love the ideas he presents and am trying to implement them, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this, but to be honest, I have really struggled with coming up with a new idea that was viable (thus the reason for me going with the already-existing business) and implementing his strategies. When I began to look at how much it would cost in PPC to compete, it was not only a substantial amount, it was way more than what I could budget. We are talking about thousands of dollars per month and that's without knowing if you will actually obtain conversions. Personally, when I'm shopping, I RARELY click on a PPC link; I almost always go with the organic SERP. So, my question is, has anyone done exactly what is suggested in 4HWW with any success? I'm not being cynical; I'm trying to learn more so that I can be successful.

Cheers!

[travelhead]

hey there.. I run a search marketing company, so I can answer a few of your questions..

Regarding finding a great SEO company- this is actually fairly difficult because the market is flooded with a lot of poor/uninformed companies who claim to know what their doing. Unfortunately, most of these companies are still back in 2004 or so and are based in India (I don't have anything against India, but in my experience a LOT of these companies are very poor choices for SEO).

Ideally, you want to find a company that can dedicate a significant amount of time to your site.

Here are some questions to ask:

1) What specifically will you be doing to improve the rankings of my site?

(if they mention 'keyword density' then run!.. if they are focusing on changing your meta/title tags, this is just one step..)..

A full SEO strategy will mean that you are either hiring copywriters to write high quality articles on your site, or you will be writing these articles yourself. You want to have content that people will willingly link to (ie. linkbait).

2) You also want to ask about their link building efforts. What type of links will they be getting for you?

Now, this is a tricky subject, because Google recently said buying links is a 'no-no'.. But what you want to watch out for is if a company is involved in 'triangular linking, reciprical linking, link directories, link farms, etc).. any of these is a sign of BAD NEWS!

A great SEO strategy is based on developing high quality content, getting GREAT links from high quality sites, placing relevant Title tags on each page, and structuring the content so it's accessible to search engines).. It may also include uploading/creating sitemaps, and making sure your pages are getting indexed.

Any strategy that does not contain these elements is not going to work very well for your business...

Okay, regarding PPC (pay per click)..

Whoever told you that you have to spend a lot of money with pay per click is wrong. It's very easy to set a daily budget, which can be as little as $5/day. Of course, you probably will want to set it to at least $20-$50 per day so you can get some clicks..

Your main concern is your conversion rate. If only 1 out of every 100 people buy your product, you probably won't do well with PPC unless you make A LOT from that one sales.

You can figure out your ideal bid price by doing some math..

First figure out your conversion rate.. let's say 3%

How much do you make from 3%? Let's say you sell a product for $33.33.. that means you'll make $100 at at 3% conversion rate..

Next, your break even point is $1.00 per click.. So it will cost you $100 to send 100 visitors to your site, and you will make $100..

So if you set your bids to 0.50 cents, then you are getting a great return on your money... Then you can increase your daily budget to $100, or even $200/day and keep your bids at 0.50 cents.. Always split test your Google Ads.

Anyway, this was typed up VERY quick so excuse the grammar.. hope this helps :)

[hottoddy]

travelhead-

Just wanted to thank you so much for taking the time to give me such a clear run-down of SEO & PPC info. Hopefully, it helps others out there as well. Thanks to yours and everyone else's solid advice, we are finally on the right path. There is so much to learn but with a network like this, it makes the journey a whole lot easier!

Again, much appreciated.

Best of luck to all-

Todd