Search Engine Placement questions

[marcjacob]

If your planning on hiring a company to get your websites in the se's, what do you need to think about first?

For me, im thinking the only way to buy is to search google, if they cant do it to their own site etc.

Obviously i need to know the keywords to select, how would i decide which are best for me?

Also are you targeting page 1 in google or nothing? If they guarentee top 3 pages will that do to be on page 3? I mean i can build up inbound links and rise up to page 1 cant i or is it not that simple?

[Chilihost]

I would ask for reference clients that are contactable and find out what key words they targeted and then go search them yourself.

I would also have payout structured so that you hold back a % and they only get it when your site hits your desired position for the keywords / s.e. you chose. If they make a promise to get you onto page 1 (or 3) then they should be willing to accept that until their end of the deal is delivered.

And, no, getting more inbound links to a page 3 listing will not auto-jump it to page 1, its not that easy!!!

cheers,
Luke

[gaystoryman]

To begin with, any company that GUARANTEES you a TOP position is one you need to run away from and FAST. No one can guarantee you a ranking in Google's top page.

Secondly, determine what they refer to as page 1, and how many listings are shown on it. After all you can set page 1 results to show up to hundreds of sites... or just the top 10.

Choose your keywords based on the content of your page, and on how many times that particular keyword phrase is searched by using the keyword tool

Inbound links to your site will be a criteria for ranking. So it is also about finding valid link partners who will link to your page using specified anchors.

Get used to the idea that SEO and rankings is not a quick fix. It takes time and requires constant monitoring and tweaking. There are lots of tricks out there, be careful because a wrong trick will get you penalties and they can be nearly impossible to surmount. Duplicate penalties are tough ones to eat.

Original content is still the key, that means TEXT. Use of proper alt tags, H1 tags within the page, properly supported are required. Proper use of the Title tag in your head and the description tag are also important. Meta Keywords are depreciated and stuffing gets you penalties.

Hidden text or close to it also gets you dinged and can get you banned.

Linking to banned or penalized sites will also hurt.

In other words, NO QUICK FIX to get Google rankings.

[shaun]

Gay Story Man has the right of it. There is no quick fix, anyone promising you a page 1 is a big fat liar (or will cheat his way there, and leave you banned....)

My older sites all have page 1 - though my newer site register page 1 under only a few select keywords. I am able to consistantly, though, take a site to the top 30 in most categories - HOW? You ask...

Build a site that a search engine can understand. Google doesnt much LIKE php (no matter what people insist... php pages very rarely make the top 10.) Stick to css and html. Name your pages RELAVENTLY. Blow jobs should be site.com/blow-jobs.html. Hand jobs should be site.com/hand-jobs.html. Your links should say <a href = site.com/blow-jobs.html>Blow Jobs</a>

There's lots more to doing good google, but its about working WITH the engine, not trying to game it.

To be honest with you, if you hire someone to get you placement... and they dont talk with you about your html, your table layout, your site navigation and architecture, they dont actually know what they are talking about. Sure, there are lots of cheap and slimy tricks you can use to get temporary top placement in google - but I assume you want a long term stable position. Most SEO companies use cheap and easy tricks, and they take the money and run before the algorythm changes.

Google is EASY (relatively) if you give it what it wants. What it wants is about the same as a blind person using a text to speech reading device.... to rank well in google, you need only to give it things it can understand and will know what to do with.

[marcjacob]

Very interesting feedback. I DONT want cheap tricks to get me there, i want to get their without being banned. Are all seo companies doing that?

Maybe if i could get a good recomendation it would be better.

[Squirt]

You will fail in adult as your business model is to hire a company to take a shortcut to SE results.

As Lee, and many others, have said on GWW over the years, the best way to get top ranking SE results is to provide quality content and lots of it over a long period of time.

Perhaps you should do a search on GWW before posting next time to see what people have said over the years?