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orangio

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Hi guys, just after some advice.

I'm in contact with a company regarding SEO for my website, they are offering a proposal where I don't have to pay any money up front but they will take 10% of my bookings that get tracked through the SEO that they do to my website. Obviously I will be negotiating on the 10% as I want to be giving away as little as possible.

What I wanted to ask is does anyone have anything similar set up or heard of anything along the same lines.

It does seem attractive to me as there are no costs involved fore from the start and it means it's in the SEO companies interest to get business to me.
 
Do you really want to hand over 10% of your business for something that you can do yourself in a few hours?

It might be a bit daunting at first but there is plenty of guides and info about on Google! In fact, Google Webmaster will tell you most of what you need to know :)
 
Defo take the DIY approach :thumbs:
 
Ive been doing the DIY approach now for a while and been getting no-where in terms of a decent position on google.

I appreciate people saying try it DIY BUT how many of you saying DIY can type in google -

Your area
And what type of photography you do

And come in at least the first 3 pages?

I'll take Purple Clouds as an example ive typed in "greater manchester wedding photographer" NOW, ive gone through the first 7 pages and he's not listed in them..

Surely if you could get on those first few pages and get more bookings would it be worth giving away a small % of your income rather than seeing no business at all?

I personally dont want to give any of my income away from my business, but if COULD get more business by this form of SEO surely its worth it?
 
orangio said:
Ive been doing the DIY approach now for a while and been getting no-where in terms of a decent position on google.

I appreciate people saying try it DIY BUT how many of you saying DIY can type in google -

Your area
And what type of photography you do

And come in at least the first 3 pages?
Click to expand...

I'm on page one for my favoured keywords, a large part of that is down to Google Local Business, so if you haven't already done that you should get on there now. It takes time but the DIY approach definitely works.
 
Defo something you can do yourself. There are loads of helpful advice pages on the best, quickest and best to do a really good job (sorry cant remember links) but google them, Good luck with this.
 
orangio said:
Ive been doing the DIY approach now for a while and been getting no-where in terms of a decent position on google.

I appreciate people saying try it DIY BUT how many of you saying DIY can type in google -

Your area
And what type of photography you do

And come in at least the first 3 pages?

I'll take Purple Clouds as an example ive typed in "greater manchester wedding photographer" NOW, ive gone through the first 7 pages and he's not listed in them..

Surely if you could get on those first few pages and get more bookings would it be worth giving away a small % of your income rather than seeing no business at all?

I personally dont want to give any of my income away from my business, but if COULD get more business by this form of SEO surely its worth it?
Click to expand...

I haven't really done my website as it's been awaiting redevelopment for some time (and as of today is in it's new design!) so I am a bad example to use... especially as I do not actively persue web clients as most of my work is agency/commissioned sports stuff :)

I am on the Google local business listings though, as was until recently on the first page - and actually appeared before the first actual search listings :) Think I've dropped down a couple of pages but that's due to my previous design not being configured properly. If I remember correctly, my previous previous design hovered around mid-third page which I'd done some basic SEO stuff on - I had more time back then before I started the sports work!

I've taken two bookings for weddings in the past two weeks which have both come from search engines (bearing in mind I tend to limit myself to 10-15 a year.. that's not too bad!) so I can't be going too wrong with no effort :p

Like I say, before committing yourself to anything.. have a read through the Google Webmaster documentation and see if you can pick it up yourself. I get umpteen emails a week offering me guaranteed first page positions but you have to think, if every company they rang took up the offer, how would they all fit on the first page? ;)

Edit - I'm on page 3 if you search for 'Manchester wedding photography' which ain't bad considering I'd done absolutely no SEO work on my previous design... will see what happens when Google crawls my new design eh ;)

Top of page 4 for 'wedding photographer manchester' - just goes to show how fickle Google listings are.. just rearranging the words can throw your between pages... and just how many ways of searching for Manchester based wedding photography can you do? Loads!

As Neil said, you can't be good, proper marketing if you are attracting new clients!

To the OP, there would be absolutely no way they could actually work out what clients came from their SEO improvements, and which came from what you've already done.. as I've shown, Google listings change simply with a reordering of words - so how could you honestly say that the words you've done were the one's that got that listing position for that particular phrase? The company could quite easily turn round and pretty much say they'll be taking 10% of ALL your business that comes through the web.. there is no way to differentiate your work from theirs.
 
I'd guess that as they say they can track conversions and are probably guaranteeing first page a large portion of the "seo" they'll be doing to get you on the first page of google will be adwords.

It's a doddle to set up yourself, why not have a leaf through the computer magazines (like .net) at your local newsagent there is often a voucher for a free amount of adwords credit to get you started included in the normal advertising leaflets that get stuck in magazines these days, it probably wont be quite enough but if you match it it may be enough to see if it is going to work for you.
 
sounds like a start-up company if they are offering a 10% deal - might be worth checking them out, most established SEO companies I know of wouldn't dream of offering that sort of deal

while its true that seo can be done quite easily yourself, there's a lot more to internet marketing than you can learn in a few evenings reading articles online, if you do take on a company to handle it for you make sure they offer more than just ad campaign management and keyword optimisation, there's things like accessibility, social networking and usability testing that should be considered too as part of a wider package of services.

On the other hand - if you do decide to take it on yourself, my best advice is make sure your content is absolutely top notch - with great content and a bit of regular seo you'll go far.
 
matt2martin said:
It's a doddle to set up yourself, why not have a leaf through the computer magazines (like .net) at your local newsagent there is often a voucher for a free amount of adwords credit to get you started included in the normal advertising leaflets that get stuck in magazines these days
Click to expand...

I can't stress enough how good Adwords have been for me. I set up a campaign with a £50 free voucher, that was in October. I've still got about a fiver left but in terms of the amount of money it's made me, it's been unbelievable.
 
I would download and read Googles own pdf on SEO optimisation. Photoshelter also provide a guide which has some useful content, but is obviously written to explain why they are so good because they do it all for you.

I would consider replacing your self created blog with a wordpress one. I started a wordpress blog a couple of months ago, and its got to the stage where Google is indexing it within 15 minutes of it being published.
 
Being a web developer myself I can assure you that SEO seems fairly daunting at first but logical once you get your head around what the search engine actually wants to see from your site. I can usually get the sites I optimise onto the first page and sometimes in first place for the keywords I want people to search for.

This process detailed here is fairly similar to what I do give or take a few items: http://www.uksmallbusinessdirectory.co.uk/top-10-seo-tips.html

With web optimisation the key is to keep playing, there is always something you can do to gain that extra place.

Hope that helps.

Trev
 
andrewc said:
I would download and read Googles own pdf on SEO optimisation. Photoshelter also provide a guide which has some useful content, but is obviously written to explain why they are so good because they do it all for you.

I would consider replacing your self created blog with a wordpress one. I started a wordpress blog a couple of months ago, and its got to the stage where Google is indexing it within 15 minutes of it being published.
Click to expand...

Yeah ive read through that pdf file and done what it explains but hasnt helped me move up the search results.

My Blog is with blogger.com but it integrated into my website..

http://matthewwenham.blogspot.com/
http://matthewwenham.co.uk/BLOG.aspx

trvo said:
Being a web developer myself I can assure you that SEO seems fairly daunting at first but logical once you get your head around what the search engine actually wants to see from your site. I can usually get the sites I optimise onto the first page and sometimes in first place for the keywords I want people to search for.

This process detailed here is fairly similar to what I do give or take a few items: http://www.uksmallbusinessdirectory.co.uk/top-10-seo-tips.html

With web optimisation the key is to keep playing, there is always something you can do to gain that extra place.

Hope that helps.

Trev
Click to expand...

Cheers for that Trev, Ill have a look through that now :thumbs:
 
orangio said:
Thanks for all of the advice guys!

Think im going to go and get myself that mag today and see if i can get anything from it!

Cheers
Click to expand...

The vouchers I've seen in it are loose inserts so check before you buy in case they have fallen out. Also they'll probably only work on newly set-up adwords accounts (within the previous 14 days) so don't create your adwords account until you are ready to start going.
 
matt2martin said:
The vouchers I've seen in it are loose inserts so check before you buy in case they have fallen out. Also they'll probably only work on newly set-up adwords accounts (within the previous 14 days) so don't create your adwords account until you are ready to start going.
Click to expand...

I actually heard that they'd stopped the adwords vouchers recently, not sure if that's true or not though.
 
orangio said:
Ive been doing the DIY approach now for a while and been getting no-where in terms of a decent position on google.

I appreciate people saying try it DIY BUT how many of you saying DIY can type in google -

Your area
And what type of photography you do

And come in at least the first 3 pages?
Click to expand...



That's exactly the right point, so I just Googled myself to see

"Barnsley Wedding Photographer" - Google page 1 position 3

"Barnsley contemporary Wedding Photographer" - Google page 1 position 1 AND 10

"Barnsley reportage Wedding Photographer" - Google page 1 position 1 AND 2 AND 4

"Barnsley fun Wedding Photographer" - Google page 1 position 1 AND 2

"Barnsley car Photographer" - Google page 1 position 1

"Barnsley child Photographer" - Google page 1 position 2

"Barnsley pet Photographer" - Google page 1 position 2

obviously the wider the scope the less chance you have of being on page 1, that said...

"Barnsley Photographer" - Google page 1 position 1 :thumbs:


Now while I may appear to be blowing my own trumpet here, ALL of this is simply by doing what the others on here are suggesting, and doing it a bit at a time in my case. I still have Sod-all clue as to what SEO is all about, but my marketing budget has dropped from a few newspaper ads to nothing but time

Those SEO monkeys 'may' get you there sooner, but you really can DIY :)

DD
 
Dave, Vicky Reed pips you to first spot on a few of those searches for me... but are number 2 ;) Which is another thing... people all seem to get different positioning depending on who is doing the searching!

Still.. thats damn good for nowt! :)
 
purpleclouds said:
Dave, Vicky Reed pips you to first spot on a few of those searches for me... but are number 2 ;) Which is another thing... people all seem to get different positioning depending on who is doing the searching!

Still.. thats damn good for nowt! :)
Click to expand...

Glad you said that, I've noticed others tell me their position only for it to be different when I look :shrug: - perhaps there's an 'Ego massager' built-in :D

Well at least it's Page 1, which will do nicely :)

DD
 
I think pages you visit regularly are bumped up Google's listings.. but just for you. I was occasionally on the first page, but couldn't fathom where I'd gone when looking on my phone! Do you visit your own site that often? :D

Still very impressive results.. or Barnsley doesn't have too many togs :lol:
 
purpleclouds said:
Still very impressive results.. or Barnsley doesn't have too many togs :lol:
Click to expand...

:razz::razz::razz:

:lol:

Last time I checked there were something like 45 togs in the (small) Barnsley area; though several of those listings may well be old

As a 'test' a few years back I wrote (about a pretend daughter getting married) to 30 of them I could find addresses for, only 14 bothered to reply at all and most sent such poor marketing material & letters I wouldn't have been impressed by any of them had I been genuinely interested

For a smallish place (230,000 peeps) we still have over 900 Weddings a year, hence my aim to be as busy as I want to be without really travelling anywhere :D Last year, apart from 3, all were within 10 miles of me :thumbs:

DD
 
"barnsley short wedding photographer" - number 1,2,3,4,5,6,7

:exit:

SEO is banded around as a dark art, but if you just read a bit (especially the Google stuff, it's reasonably easy to get near to the top IF you take the time, and be better than your competitors. It's not a quick process by any means, and WILL take time to get there.

A lot of things i've read suggest using adwords to start with while the organic searches index your site, so you're instantly at the top with the paid results, then when your SEO takes effect, you can reduce the adwords accordingly :)

EDIT: Make sure you've got personalised results turned off as well, otherwise you might not be seeing the same things that everyone else does when you Google yourself :)

EDIT 2: and get yourself on Google Local, another easy way to get near the top quickly!

EDIT 3: Get yourself a Google analytics account and track where users come from, what pages they read, and whether they're going to your contact form (which is the whole point, right?)
 
DiddyDave said:
That's exactly the right point, so I just Googled myself to see

"Barnsley Wedding Photographer" - Google page 1 position 3

"Barnsley contemporary Wedding Photographer" - Google page 1 position 1 AND 10

"Barnsley reportage Wedding Photographer" - Google page 1 position 1 AND 2 AND 4

"Barnsley fun Wedding Photographer" - Google page 1 position 1 AND 2

"Barnsley car Photographer" - Google page 1 position 1

"Barnsley child Photographer" - Google page 1 position 2

"Barnsley pet Photographer" - Google page 1 position 2

obviously the wider the scope the less chance you have of being on page 1, that said...

"Barnsley Photographer" - Google page 1 position 1 :thumbs:


Now while I may appear to be blowing my own trumpet here, ALL of this is simply by doing what the others on here are suggesting, and doing it a bit at a time in my case. I still have Sod-all clue as to what SEO is all about, but my marketing budget has dropped from a few newspaper ads to nothing but time

Those SEO monkeys 'may' get you there sooner, but you really can DIY :)

DD
Click to expand...

Congrats, but does that actually bring any traffic through?
 
mattyh said:
"barnsley short wedding photographer" - number 1,2,3,4,5,6,7

:exit:
Click to expand...

Now where's that 2 fingered smiley when you need him :D

Chris Taylor said:
Congrats, but does that actually bring any traffic through?
Click to expand...

Yep - it's pretty much my ONLY source of enquiries and gave 12 bookings in the first 11 weeks of this year alone; though that's about to change from next week as I put some actual effort into getting new business :)

DD
 
DiddyDave said:
Now where's that 2 fingered smiley when you need him :D



Yep - it's pretty much my ONLY source of enquiries and gave 12 bookings in the first 11 weeks of this year alone; though that's about to change from next week as I put some actual effort into getting new business :)

DD
Click to expand...

Brilliant, glad it's succesful for you.
 
orangio, can you check your pm.

I've got an adwords voucher you can have if you want - came with this months .net but I've realised that it might only be included in the subscribers editions rather than the news shelves.

If orangio isn't interested I'll offer on the business forum.
 
orangio has had the voucher so the next one I get will go on the business forum.
Matt
 
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