Should we fire our SEO Vendor?
-
Dear SeoMozers,
We are working on ranking towards some hyper competitive keywords (each query has millions of searches a month) and working with an external SEO Vendor. We were not satisfied with the progress, therefore we asked them to send a revised SEO Plan.
Here's what they proposed:
1. On Page Optimization (standard techniques)
Off Page Optimization
1. Directory Submissions (100)
2. Article Marketing (Two unique 300 word articles to be submitted to 300 directories)
3. Press Release (Two Press Releases to 100 PR Sites)
4. Classified Ads Submissions
5. Business Listings
6. Link Reinforcement (Create wheel to circulate traffic)
7. Blog Submissions, Commenting, Forum Posting
8. Web 2.0 Link Building (Squidoo Lens, Hub Page, Link Wheel etc)
9. One Way Links (Not Specified how many)
Our concern is that this sounds like low quality link building. We've given them 19 top keywords to achieve rankings for and will be paying $20-25K to achieve Top 3-5 rankings for the targeted terms.
Do you think this strategy would work or should we change the SEO Vendor?
-
This made me smile! HA
-
Is that one of Distilled's link building packages?
-
The "plan" doesn't look much like a plan... more like a list of (as already mentioned, low value) seo tactics to me.
Has anyone suggested tackling some less competitive, but related keyword terms first? It's easier to climb the tree from the bottom than to try and jump onto the top of it and you get to pick some low-hanging fruit on the way up.
What is important to the business - ranking for these highly competitive terms or more traffic/conversions now. Don't lose site of the business goals.
If you look at the sites that are currently ranking for your competitive search terms, can you honestly say that your site, your content delivers better value to the potential visitors and deservers to rank up there?
-
I think that's a great clarification. Paying $20-25K for someone to build authoritative, trustworthy links and content to drive you to the top on competitive keywords could be a bargain. Paying that for someone to create junk is worse than a rip-off - it could kill your rankings. Off-page (1)-(8) all look low-value to me, and (9) is ambiguous.
-
Also feel free to create a private question and ask for a second opinion from the Moz staff and associates. Those questions aren't indexed, and they're not viewable to anyone who is not Moz staff or associate, and you can share your URL and other details there if you would like.
-
Yep ... it is a public secret that once u rank first for some keywords and people get to know you you start ranking automatically for others too because people spread the word. And optimizing the next 5 is easier and thus less costly.
-
I totally agree with him here.
-
I completely agree. For that budget I would expect a select amount quality links rather than a large quantity of spammy ones, but who knows... maybe the company is working on relationships to get some really good quality links and is just doing the run of the mill directories in the mean time (playing devils advocate here a little because I don't believe that is the case).
I think the on page SEO is just as vital too. If the website in question is the one in the OP profile then I would question that a little too.
The homepage seems to be targeting 3 key phrases plus the brand name which isn’t ideal, especially not with very competitive key terms.
I could go onto the categories too - you have the category which is targeting the key phrase for men, women and children when there are separate sections for each which could target the male, female and child’s keywords while the main category page targets the general term.
I think in 6 weeks it can be difficult to judge the link building strategy but taking the on page SEO into account I would say you might be better changing...
-
Can you throw one of your keywords your targeting into the mix, this will allow others to give you an indication on what type of link building worked for competitors and thus an idea what kind of link building you should be doing.
-
You should definitely find another vendor that does not use spam techniques because the recent google panda update really hits them very hard.
-
One thing I will say is targeting that many keywords in one go is way to much, take 5 of the keywords, work on ranking them first, then once they are ranked, start on the next 5 and at the same time keep maintaining the first.
-
I am not saying the budget is over the top ... I am saying that if they are spending it for the services they listed it is not well spent.
-
We are working on ranking towards some hyper competitive keywords...
I do not believe that the work that they propose will be effective for your "hyper competitive" keywords.
-
Hello, First and foremost - thanks for the great responses. The reason why we posted this question here was because when we received the report, we were very unhappy with the quality of links that were being built. We have not been with this vendor for long (about a month and a half), but overall - for over 77% of the keywords, rankings have declined (though we are aware that its too early to judge). What concerns us the most is those spammy .edu links, blog commenting, thin articles, bad directories and so forth. The budget that we have set is to achieve the Top 3-5rankings, from thereon - we do have a maintenance budget to retain the top positions.
-
Not sure if I agree that the budget is way over the top for what you are trying to achieve if the keywords really are 'hyper' competitive. It depends how it has been structured - is it $25k when they achieve the rankings or $25k for the time period (3m, 6m, 1y) regardless of results?
In terms of their plan I agree with the others that sounds of the link building does sound a little low quality but even today those links can still get people ranked highly if done correctly (high quality directories, relevant one way links etc) and the on page stuff is good.
I don't like the way they state how many of each link you will get, that does sounds spammy and automated but there is know way of knowing if the 'one way links' are going to be high quality or not because there is no detail.
To me it all comes down to results - how long have you been with the company and how far have you progressed?
-
The price you are paying is GIGANTIC .... You can get what they are offering for like 250$ per keyword. and you are paying 100 times more.
And as the other guy said most of it is rubbish ... what they are offering is a lot of low quality links and what you need is not so much high quality links.
Regarding your content :
Google and people and "our world" basically favors quality over quantity. For the price you are paying you can get someone to "rework" your content so that it is professionally made like apple's content for the users and also keyword targeted for your searches. In other words REAL on page optimization.
Regarding your social networks status :
Also you will get professionally made profiles in all the social networks (VERY high quality backinks from them too) As Gillian (The president of seomoz ) told me when i last met her ... "it is all about gathering and nourishing your community". You will start gathering the community of your real fans... the real people that like you and will really spread the word about you.
Regarding links :
You can get links to relevant sites to yours and high quality ones. For example the 1 link you get from YouTube which has Page Rank 9 is worth 10 000 of the links you are buying for 100 000 times lower price ... Also the open directory and so on. I am from Bulgaria and I always do quality work here ... it is amazing how great it works on the low markets ... I get a clients website to top 1 on all keywords for 2-3 weeks just including them to like 20-40 websites like youtube, dmoz , facebook , linkedin , and websites from their area. The days of "automatic seo" are over man it has SO LOW value that it is not worth it.
Advice : You should be paying someone to research your busyness and figure out link bait techniques, find high quality relevant websites you can make link partnerships with, understand your busyness and advise you on how to spread the word and go social, work on your content and do some usability work and so on.
Regarding your vendor :
The services you listed are the lowest quality possible and are being almost surely done with automation software which sooner or later gets "caught" by Google.
Advide : Totally YES ... change the vendor. You can find lots of great people that can do that for you here in the seomoz community ... including my company ( a bit of shameless self promotion here for the time i spent answering )
-
Personally (and many may disagree) but:
1. On Page Optimization (standard techniques)
Off Page Optimization
1. Directory Submissions (100) (could do this yourself)
2. Article Marketing (Two unique 300 word articles to be submitted to 300 directories) (rubbish)
3. Press Release (Two Press Releases to 100 PR Sites) (ok'ish)
4. Classified Ads Submissions (rubbish)
5. Business Listings (ok if its yahoo directory and some of the big ones)
6. Link Reinforcement (Create wheel to circulate traffic) (not worth the effort)
7. Blog Submissions, Commenting, Forum Posting (spammy)
8. Web 2.0 Link Building (Squidoo Lens, Hub Page, Link Wheel etc) (this works for me)
9. One Way Links (Not Specified how many) (?)
Basically you got $1000 to spend on each keyword, id use the other $5000 for onesite SEO and a tidy up (if needed)
I would then take the 1k and spend most of it on having content generated targeting the keyword and throw it out on, your own site, guest blogging, squidoo, hub pages and a few other things.
Thats me though and im not a wizard at SEO (yet)
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Do links like this really help for SEO?
I was doing research with Moz's Link Explorer and one of our competitors had almost 50 links coming from sites like this. Mostly nofollow but we all know that today the nofollow can still help. My question is this: Will links like these help in any shape or matter. The reason I am asking is because Link Explorer is finding them, so I am sure Google will find them as well. Examples of sites: http://www.microlinkinc.com, http://www.cmolink.com The sites that I found via analyzing had DA 35-40 I don't want to share all urls but you get the point. Basically these sites are free keyword analyzing sites, once you put in a keyword they will bring up to 20 sites that rank for that keyword. And my research suggests that these pages stay and are crawl-able since Moz has crawled them. For example Moz says: date first seen 09/12/2018 so almost 6 months has passed but that result that was searched I am assuming has stayed. Would it make sense to search on such sites keywords that you know you are ranking for and then your site would be listed below and stay there for Google to crawl and another nofollow link in our link basket. Is my thinking correct or is it waste of time. Frankly it would take 2sec to run a search for each keyword. Any feedback and thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Davit
Link Building | | Davit19850 -
SEO Package: Good Value?
I'm having a real hard time trying to dig through all the BS and find a reputable SEO company that delivers quality and value. Anyway, here's a package that I'm considering from a company called eBrandz. It seems a bit overpriced to me, but I don't have a lot of experience with reputable SEO companies, so I'm hoping someone can weigh in - on both the package itself for the price, and the company (if you have any information about them). $1500/month 8 Guest Posts (With 80 Bookmarks) 8 Articles with Syndication (With 80 Bookmarks) 1 Press Release (With Bookmarking) 75 "Curated Business Directory Submissions" Social Bookmarking for 5 Urls (Each Url to 20 Sites) 1 (every other month) Video Creation (45 to 90 seconds) With Submission and Bookmarking.
Link Building | | JABacchetta0 -
SEO companies
So prior to joining SEOmoz I have tried a few seo companies and had somewhat decent results. All of these companies did things like: directory submissions
Link Building | | shiftins
social bookmarking
social profiles
blog comments
article syndication
press release and so forth. These things that they were doing worked and improved the rankings of my websites in the serps. After some time and research I figured out that all this stuff was easy to do and that I could do these things myself. After joining SEOmoz I come to find that these types of links are not considered high quality because they are easy to acquire. Some of you may even say that they are the basis of a spammy link profile. My question is why would you not want to do these things if they work and all of your competition is using these strategies, including big name brand companies?0 -
SEO value to Reddit backlinks?
Can someone point me to an authoritative article on the value of Reddit links? I'm trying to determine if it's something we want to put effort into doing on a regular basis. Are reddit links followed? It seems like some are and some are not.
Link Building | | BostonWright0 -
E-commerce SEO targeting Manufacturer Keywords
What are some good tips, articles, posts, etc. specifically on e-commerce sites that want to target the manufacturers they sell as keywords. For example: Footlocker.com wants to target "Nike" The products we sell are obviously much less competitive than Nike.
Link Building | | JMacSupply0 -
Ecommerce websites' SEO strategy
Hi, Can you please make a short list how to make ecommerce websites SEO strategy?
Link Building | | Netkreativ
I am working on ecommerce websites and I curiuos how You professional think this. Now I am: Optimizing the website Build few relavant links Regards, Misi0 -
An SEO companies position
One worrying thought following a meeting with a friend in the Poker industry was when he told me he heard some rival companies tried to spam other sites with paid listings a few years ago ? Does this happen all the time ? Also could it happen in other industries ? I was worried when hearing this news and then thought about an SEO companies position in all of this. Could an SEO company be falsely blamed for this sort of behaviour ? Is it is better to cover these things in contracts with customers.
Link Building | | onlinemediadirect1 -
SEO Tool to search mass URLs (for link qualification)
Hi, I have been using OSE and have a compiled list of backlinks to my competitor's sites. The next step would be to go through and qualify all of these links for a link opportunities for my client's site. To save me a lot of time, I require a tool that will search all of these pages (say 1000) for specific keywords in tags or body content. A search query might be - site:(URL list) intitle:directory site:(URL list) "add site" etc Any ideas would be great. Thanks.
Link Building | | DigitalLeaf0