We’ve had a lot of requests to link to our old retro style seo company website due to the website being showcased on several of the CSS awards sites - so we thought we would bring it back for those who liked the design. The requests were due to us being showcased on several retro classic websites for the header image.

The old website was based on a 50’s style American classic cars theme.  It was considered to be unusual for a search engine marketing company to have a well designed website and it even surprised us how many people complemented us on the design . Whilst we loved producing the design we never thought it would attract as much attention - clearly we got something right.

We’ve now rebranded the web design arm of the company and if you are looking for web design then please visit our new web design website. It’s being developed slowly so excuse us whilst we tidy up. It should be fully fledged in the new year

Meantime, we hope you like the reintroduction of the old site.

There seems to be a lot mud thrown in the direction of SEO companies recently. Comparing them to managment consultants (no offence), confidence tricksters and scammers, SEOs are being portrayed as the ‘Dick Turpins’ of the information highway because of the monthly SEO fees they charge. 

Ceratinly, the SEO service industry, just like any industry has its fair share of scams and rip offs but this does not mean that all SEOs are ‘highway robbers’.

This article (we hope) should give a little insight into good SEO practices and help you avoid falling foul of the ‘masked bandits’.

The “scam” defined…

It works roughly as follows:

• SEO Company guarantees client a “Top 10 Position on Google”
• Client appoints SEO company to get their website listed on the search engines
• SEO ties the client into an optimisation plus monthly fee contract
• SEO optimises website for low level key words/low competition phrases
• SEO tells client they need to keep adjusting keywords each month
• SEO (sometimes) tweaks these keywords/phrases
• SEO sends monthly website report to client
• SEO charges monthly fees (e.g. £200 - £500 pm) for “updates and maintenance”

The SEO may have performed the optimisation and obtained the “guaranteed” result on Google but has most likely used low competition key phrases to achieve this. For example they will use keywords such as the owners business name (the most common keyword mistake) or esoteric inhouse terminology such as “widget model v1.1 repairs”. Easy meat.

By ranking the site for phrases nobody wants the site can stay on Page 1 of Google for years to come. The SEO knows this and can impress the client each month in the monthly ranking reports. This is great for the SEO because they can earn monthly fees for literally pressing a button and therein lies the scam!

Monthly fees are NOT a rip off!

In order to calculate monthly fees the SEO has to evaluate the overall campaign goals. The first and most valuable part of any SEO campaign is the setup fee or initial consultation of the website. This is a skilled SEO service where you will learn everything about your website, your competitors, your goals and targets. This information is worth its weight in gold and not be be undervalued, so expect to pay fees anywhere from £500- £25,000 for this service. (Some large companies will pay a lot more!)

As part of your setup your SEO Company will tell you what services you require - whether it be PPC management, web page optimisation, display advertising, affiliate marketing etc. They will also advise you on the level of monthly “maintenance” required (if any) to achieve your goals. The fees themselves can be for services such as uploading daily data feeds to Google Base, analysing your visitors, spotting trends, making adjustments, performing a/b tests or analysing heat maps. These services are highly skilled and often too much for most companies to perform inhouse. Depending on the website, fees can range from £100 - £10,000 per month and rest assured they’re not figures plucked out of the air! They are carefully calculated towards the returns (ROR’s) on your campaign. So basically the SEOs are putting themselves on the line for your company.

How to select the best SEO company for your campaign? 

Look at their work and the length of time they have been trading. Look at their clients and the testimonials they provide. Look at their results and the competitiveness of their key phrases. Then look at the websites they optimise. Are you enticed to buy from such websites? A good internet marketing company will have all these on hand for you to examine from their website.

When you obtain advice at the initial consultation make sure to ask what’s involved in the monthly fees. If you have a brochure website and do not expect to sell products then it is unlikely you will need any maintenance - your SEO company will tell you this. If on the other hand you sell products in a competitive marketplace then it’s certain that you will need additional services to achieve your goals.

A carefully planned monthly campaign will bring good results and decent returns.

If your SEO company provides you with monthly statistical reports about your website then make sure your data has not been “ring fenced” otherwise you could have problems in the future! This article explains a practice used by some SEO and PPC companies using Google Analytics accounts to lock you into their services.

So what is Google analytics (GA) ring fencing?

Basically, its when your SEO Company registers your website on a free Google Analytics account but denies you access to that same account. Your website could be stored on a single account or a parent account with up to 50 other websites.

Here’s how it works:

Your SEO company contracts to provide you with monthly reports as part of your SEO package. They add your website to a GA account then place some Google tracking code on your website. After a week or so you receive your first report (usually by email). However the problems arise later when you ask for access to your online reports. You make your request only to be told your reports are “confidential”, “too complex” or you could “view the reports of other clients”. Hence your data has been “ring fenced”.

Why it benefits the SEO company.

This benefits the SEO company because they can lock you into their services in the following ways: 

• You can only obtain the reports from the SEO company
• You have to rely on the SEO Company for technical expertise on your data

but there are darker sides that benefit them such as:  

• They get to charge you fees for generating the (free) report
• They can threaten you with losing your historical data if you…
  • stop using their services
  • move your SEO to another company
• Tell you can lose your rankings (yes some actually say this!)

Conclusion

Any ethical SEO company should provide you with your own analytics account to which you can access your data any time. They will not charge you fees for reports but a small fee to set up the account is reaonable. They will not make claims about losing historical data or losing your rankings.The data if free and it is yours!

It is fair however to be charged for analysis of these reports and any adjustments to your website. The reports provide valuable data aimed at professionals which can be used to improve the performance of your website.

If your SEO Company is ring fencing your GA account then perhaps its time to look for alternatives.

Today’s article describes the differences in traffic we receive between two of the key phrases deployed in our own website;

1. seo scotland
2. search engine optimisation scotland

We used to target phrase number 1 some time ago but we decided to shift our efforts towards more productive terms. SEO is an acronym for ” search engine optimisation ” and over time we discovered it was used more by geeks and other SEO’s than potential new clients.

We used to rank equally for both the above phrases and we always asked any new enquiry what phrase was used to find us.  We checked the phrases against our stats logs and saw that only 5% of phone and email enquiries arrived via the acronym based search phrase. A further analysis showed that many of the click-throughs from the “SEO scotland” search phrase were actually from the same daily visitors (IP addresses). So unless there are a whole bunch of companies too shy to contact us then it’s reasonable to assume that it’s our competitors checking us out. 

As a search engine optimisation company we want to attract “buyer traffic” as opposed to “tyre kicker” traffic and for this reason we shifted our focus onto more productive terms.  (Incidentally, we use this expertise in all our client projects no matter what the industry to ensure the traffic is targeted and productive)

This is very useful information for any company to take onboard and we strongly recommend that you keep a record of what key phrases your new customers are using and check this against your website statistics.  It could very well pay extra dividends for your business.

We recently stumbled upon an article/competition that started in January of this year about who is the best seo company in Scotland and we discovered ourselves amongst the results.

What interested us was that we were amongst the “elite” for key phrases we have never targetted so this got us thinking. What would happen if we did target these key phrases? Would we succeed? Of course we will!

Now all this is just frivolous fun on our part and completely tongue in cheek. It’s not a dig at any other reputable SEO company in Scotland - it’s just fun - pure and simple. If anything we recognise the high quality of our competitors so let the games begin!

Firstly, the key phrases are, Regional (Scotland), UK and International accross Google, Yahoo & MSN (Although we’ll only be targetting Google)

SEO Scotland
SEO Company Scotland
Search Engine Optimisation Scotland
SEO Services Scotland
Website Promotion Scotland

For UK & International - drop the “Scotland” from the above.

So how do we go about all this? Ah…that’s our little secret! We can’t let the competition now what we’re up to after all. We’re going to quietly demonstrate who really is the best seo company in Scotland.