TopRankings Blog

Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ Category

Useless Packages, Counter-Productive Guarantees and Nasty Legally Binding Contracts.

Friday, October 16th, 2009

Prospective businesses owners and others seeking to engage an honest and results driven SEO firm continue to be clouded and confused by the true value for money being offered by Search Engine Optimisation companies.

Numerous mind boggling questions arise for the business owner including:

1. How can one SEO firm be offering to target 50 keywords or 10 keywords for the home page whilst another is strictly targeting 5 keywords for the home page etc?

2. Why do some break down their services into different ‘packages’ as well as how many links they’ll be adding for their ‘platinum’ packages whilst the other SEO firm makes no mention how many links they will be adding every month. Is link building as important as it used to be?

3. Why do some use words like ‘guaranteed results’ and ‘promising’ page #1 results when no SEO firm should guarantee results given no one ‘is in bed with Google’?

4. Why do some have fancy client video testimonials and extensive case studies but fail to demonstrate a small snapshot list of specific keywords targeted for their clients and where they currently appear on page #1 of Google?

5. Should a 6 month money back guarantee be assessed as a ‘risk free investment’ or lost revenue when strong Google results don’t produce a return on investment for the same timeframe and the process will have to begin from scratch with an SEO firm that knows what they’re doing in the first place?

6. Should I engage a firm that appeared on sponsored links but failed to appear in the natural results in Google for the phrase ‘search engine optimisation’? If they cannot deliver results for themselves for this phrase what chances of does my business have of success?

7. How do I differentiate between an SEO firm using white hat techniques to achieve results and those employing black hat techniques which could see my website banned by Google from appearing anywhere in its search engine?

8. At a monthly investment of $200, will the work to my website be outsourced offshore compromising the security of my website and risking illegal techniques being employed that can see my site banned by Google?

9. Why should my business be tied into a legally binding long term contract when results may not be clearly heading in the right direction or providing a return on investment for my company?

“With no contracts to sign TopRankings earn your business each month by delivering long term sustainable page #1 Google results”
We get you to the top…legally and continue to let our client results speak for themselves – no fancy packages just great results!!

Noam Judah

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Money Money Money

Friday, August 14th, 2009

Are SEO firms all about money money money?

It seems many are!!

With search engine optimisation being one of the fastest growing industries in Australia, it is regretful that many of our rival SEO providers are clearly rushing to sign up clients well before the client’s website is genuinely ready for online success.

Let me explain.

Just over a month ago a prospective client specialising in home and office cleaning enquired with both TopRankings and one other rival SEO firm.

I spent a good three minutes glancing over the website before quickly concluding it needed a professional overhaul.

  1. The colour scheme, font size of the text clearly didn’t convey a professional and credible and capable cleaning company. There was no emotional appeal with clean and clear photos or other imagery. 
  2. The architecture of the website was clearly not optimised for the user, nor the search engines. 
  3. Limited call to action cues

I politely invited the prospect to first speak to one of our web design contacts. I explained that through a redesign she will clearly boost her company’s credibility and professionalism and chances of conversions when visitors begin finding her in Google. 

Off went the prospect and contacted and engaged the web designer I recommended.

A few short weeks later our web design contact told us that the prospective client was being harassed with a phone call every second day by our rival SEO firm encouraging her to sign up ASAP.

Her feedback to the designer was that since the initial discussion, not once did the rival SEO firm suggest a website redesign. 

Any visitor to the current website will agree the site has aged and must undergo an overhaul. I’ve purposefully withheld the URL for now.

TopRankings continues to pick and choose its clients carefully. If the prospective client

  1. Doesn’t have a professional and credible website
  2. Doesn’t have a realistic understanding and patience regarding result timeframes. 
  3. Doesn’t understand that like any company we don’t commence work until we are paid.
  4. Isn’t results and value driven, but cost and ‘face to face fruitless meeting driven’…….

….then we invite them to approach our rivals who ‘guarantee’ results, lock them into 12 month contracts and employ illegal techniques that will see them being banned by Google from appearing anywhere.

We love our loyal clients…they are and continue to be

Patient and realistic about result timeframes

Passionate about leading their industry and growing their business.

Professional and commons sense in their decision making approach. When they chose us in the first place, they glanced at our results page and quickly understood that they would be delivered seriously strong results. That we wouldn’t represent their direct competitors concurrently and most importantly that their investment with TopRankings would be a drop in the ocean when compared with their profitable returns. 

And yes the commercial cleaning company is proceeding with TopRankings. The hard working business owner clearly saw who is passionate about her company’s future success.

 

Noam Judah

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Full Access To Have Or Not To Have?

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

As usual I try and post my blog entries on real life examples/occurences.

At TopRankings we pride ourselves on our ability to achieve and sustain clients rankings, however it has become apparent to TopRankings for us to achieve such results we rely on Full Access to a clients site. So what does full access mean?

Full Access means we can edit, upload any page within the clients website. Some clients prefer us not to have this access due to their business policies,  however these clients we usually dont take them on as feel that that this situation is generally not workable for numerous reasons.

           a)      Clients not updating sites as quick as we would like

           b)      Clients not fully applying the changes we recommend

           c)       Clients making mistakes when applying the changes

           d)       Web designers charging our clients an enourmous amount of money to make the changes we recommend.

SEO is an art form and has to be done expeditely and accurately, who would be responsible for the site if the website got banned by the search engines due to someone making an illegal change on the website? TopRankings likes to be accountable for all changes it makes, we simply dont like pointing our fingers.

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