I paid an SEO company $300 - worth it?

[LavenderLounge]

I hired an SEO company in 2004 to work on one of my sites, and it did pretty well, but since things have changed I decided to try them again on a different site.

I paid them for two hours at $150 per hour and told them to work on just the splash page.

Please do a view/source and tell me if you think it was worth $300.

http://www.musclebearcub.com/splash/splash.html

[Lee]

Its only worth the money if you get higher SERP listings and more traffic $0.02

From what i recall though, you had pretty high listings on the majors SE's anyway so not sure why you are trying to improve already good listings on the first pages of the engines.

Regards,

Lee

[LavenderLounge]

Lee, you're probably referring to my main site, but this is a brand new site.

That's why I wanted to find out the latest tricks from the experts.

They just completed the work this morning, so I won't know results for a long time. Just wanted to see if they missed some important SEO tricks.

[Lee]

Lee, you're probably referring to my main site, but this is a brand new site.

That's why I wanted to find out the latest tricks from the experts.

They just completed the work this morning, so I won't know results for a long time. Just wanted to see if they missed some important SEO tricks.

Ah okay, well to be honest, ill i can see in the HTML is that they added some new meta tags.

I dont see any alt text on images, all the images have generic names, no target vaiables with keywords in them etc.

Just looks like a standard page that anyone could knock together.

Regards,

Lee

[mgillis]

Hey Mark,

It looks really clean and precise - they certainly didn't miss anything.

BUT - what is with the light grey text at the bottom of the page. The colour is so close to the background it could be misconstrued. I don't know what the exact rules are but Google and Yahoo have both expanded their "colour-on-colour text" spam rule to include close colour matches as well.

Now, question. Did they do anything for you that you didn't know how to do yourself? If so, the learning experience is probably worth the $300 becuase you can copy the style that they used (if it works) and continue on your own!

M.

[gaystoryman]

Frankly, as Lee said, doesn't seem like much was done in the way of SEO. Keywords that aren't used in the alt tags, or description, seem well, counter productive.

I don't see anything done SEO wise, worth $50 really, let alone $300.

my two cents

[LavenderLounge]

Mary,

The text color is one of the things I'm hoping to get feedback on. Anyone else see that as a problem?

Between you and me, you guessed my strategy!

[LavenderLounge]

Gaystoryman,

I had the same reaction. The initial quote was for 10 hours minimum (which would have been $1500) so I sent them $300 and told them to do whatever they could.

There was no indication that they could have done anything more than repeat the same process on all the other pages - something I could easily do myself.

Just checking to see if (a) I got ripped off or (b) are there other services that I am missing that would be worth paying extra.

[gaystoryman]

But what did they do? I mean I don't see anything really that they did.

Was it the title/description tag? That's way pricey for a few words, and the keyword tag is stuffed, which doesn't work well these days. Two or three alt tags? I really just don't see what they did, unless they also did the design work, but from a SEO point only, I don't see anything done.

There are 9 alt tags out of 26. For $300 I'd expect them all done, and a 'title tag' in the links,

just my opinion

[Bec]

you might want to give this a read - as well as back out to the home page and check out some of the other articles: http://www.webmarketingnow.com/tips/...uncovered.html

I don't see that they did much of anything, and putting that closing text into a font color that 'hides' it has been a no-no for sometime now.

[jIgG]

um
why is there text that almost blends with the background?
im no seo expert but isn't that something frowned upon?

all images should have alt tags
meta description
meta tags are not really needed IMO

that page needs more targeted text IMO

[Lee]

meta tags are not really needed IMO

They are when there is little other 'written' content on a page

Regards,

Lee

[IdolKnights]

They are when there is little other 'written' content on a page

Regards,

Lee

Or the Meta on the landing page to your enter link is for someone else's site.

[shaun]

Mark....

Not to brag... but....

I have page 1's under gay muscle, muscle men, male bodybuilders, muscle video, male muscle. etc etc!

You have my private email address.

Why dont you write to me?

(No, as a matter of fact, the SEO that was done for you is useless. PLEASE write to me, and I will tell you how to get googlebot to do what you want it to do!)

Shaun

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...&q=male+muscle

(4 of those are mine)

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...n&q=gay+muscle

(2 of the top 11 are mine)

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...n&q=muscle+men

(2 of those are mine)

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...e+bodybuilders

(3 of those are mine....)

[DEVELISH]

May I email you, too, Shaun?

DEV....