Here I would like to tell you my story about how I was
trying to hire somebody to work on SEO of my website. Finding a good SEO
specialist is extremely hard, as there are so many out there who just want your
money, with no guarantee of any considerable results.
I was doing quite well on my own in this, but after recent
google algorithm changes, suddenly my website disappeared from SERPs and I lost
nearly all of my business. I started noticing decline in traffic in February,
but I was quite busy with my direct job (managing projects), so I couldn’t find
time to even find somebody to work on this. So I was carrying on until there
was no job to do – time came to sit down and think what to do next. First
thoughts were – well, I’ll do that again myself. But I realised SEO got quite
more complex and more time consuming. Next thought – will hire some SEO
company. OK, so I googled and found many
of them, based in London and out of
London .
First thing I noticed – many of their websites were fresh
new (created this year in April or May). That raised my suspicion – if their
website is new, it means the old ones didn’t fit the new google algorithms at
all. And they managed to climb to the top positions in two months or so. I
noticed they acquired hundreds and thousands of links within that short time.
Now, google stresses that any website can get to the first page (and stay there
for long) only if SEO is natural (little by little, step by step you tweak your
website, create content, acquire good links). Surely these websites weren’t
SEO’ed naturally. So, these companies were out of my choice.
The remaining websites of SEO agencies (at least few years
old), ranking high – this is what interested me. So I contacted them for a
quote. I was willing to pay about £300 per month. I got many offers and the
main question was which one will bring my website back to where it was. I have
asked them to provide references of customers they worked for or at least examples
of their work. Many of them refused, saying this is confidential. In my
industry almost every customer asks for a few references, so I happily provide
them – and it was a surprise to me they couldn’t do that.
The remaining few agencies gave examples and some even sent
me few reports that they produced for their customers. I analyzed these
websites and to my amazement I didn’t find much of SEO work done. They weren’t
ranking well at all. Every SEO agency says that you should choose few keywords
to be able to rank well. And they weren’t ranking for these keywords either.
Promise that they make is – “we guarantee you to increase traffic by 40% in one
year”. My website was getting 40 visitors a day from organic search and after
google update – just perhaps 5 – 6 a day. So, after a year – there will be 7 –
9 visitors a day, after the investment of £3600. Well, I am sorry – that’s not
even remote to what I want to achieve, if I want to have my business running.
I was approached by some seriously looking media agencies,
who showed me a network of their websites (hundreds of them, well ranking) – I
thought that should be it. I know how difficult it is to get a good value link
and they already had good websites. But then in the end I found out that my
links would be”nofollow” or not even links, just profiles with a phone number
but no working website link. Again, not good enough.
To me this all didn’t look seriously: I understood I would
not get results that I wanted, or I would have to spend all my business profits
on that – then what’s the point? Google may change algorithms again at any
time, thus flushing down the toilet all the investment.
So, here I was back to the same point – no agency, no SEO
for my website. Then I realised – I am doing project managing in my property refurbishment business. I am not doing building work myself – I employ others
to perform different tasks. Same technique can be used with SEO: I have to hire
people to perform some tasks. I know what really works in SEO and how it should
be done. Most importantly – get high quality links from different sources –
other blogs, valued link directories, forums, etc.
The most difficult and time consuming for me – guest
blogging. So, I hired a specialist to write articles and publish them on other
websites. I pay him pricework – for a job that’s actually done (not for the
time spent) and I check quality myself. Just like I do in my building work. I
do other stuff myself – it doesn’t require that much time. Hopefully, when my
business is back on track, I will leave these other SEO tasks for others too.
But I realise now, I will have to be able to fully control the process and pay for
the actual work being done, not for promises.
