Free SEO Link Building

We had quite a disturbing call from one of our free link partner website owners this week regarding an unpleasant experience they had with a so called SEO company in December last year.

They had a slick salesman calling them from he said an SEO company. We pointed out most likely they are not as they are merely reselling Google Adword spots for specific key phrases.

They agreed to take part in a 30 day trial for an agreed specific key phrase for their business having recently updated the site adding new pages of content and wanting to give the made over website a boost in the rankings. The company charged them £100 for 4 key phrases for one month in Google’s adwords area, with a guarantee of a first page position for all of them, too good to be true?  Find out............................

Having made a verbal agreement with the salesman and paid over the phone using a bank debit card, they then received another phone call from a lady apparently from their head office reviewing and confirming the key phrases and duration of the campaign.  At this point the first problem comes to light. The most competitive of the key phrases agreed with the salesman is not available and never was! Instead similar phrases, less competitive were agreed. Our client reconfirmed with the second caller that this was to be a trial for 30 days only to monitor the activity for their website. The lady said that this was the position and even gave our client an e-mail address to use to cancel the campaign.

The agreed campaign in Google adwords commenced, initially with the wrong text and URL of our clients website, but this was corrected by our client who e-mailed the company’s technical department, again mentioning that this was to be for a 30 day trial of their services only. Our client told us that within the first 10 days or so of the campaign often he would find his website not appearing on the first page of Google’s sponsored listings for his 4 search phrases as had been promised by this company. Again he e-mailed the technical department on a couple of occasions to point this out and was assured it was only a temporary issue and that the website would appear again later, he felt the technicians were rather irritated he had pointed it out to them! Nice attitude there.

Unfortunately our client received no extra business from being in the sponsored listings of Google for the agreed key phrases, primarily because they were too narrow not attracting enough searches per month to have any affect. This of course is why this company was able to offer him 4 key phrases in Google’s sponsored listings for a month for just £100.

Times must be hard in the World of Google Ads resellers because after the failure of his short 30 day campaign and loss of £100 our client wrote the matter off to experience and thought no more about the campaign, other than to make a mental note, won't do that again!  Imagine then how he felt this month when the company’s accounts department rang him to say, "You owe us another £100 for your January campaign". Our client protested explaining that this had been agreed and confirmed as a 30 day trial at the beginning of December and that as it had not been successful he had decided not to pursue it further. The man in the accounts department then becomes aggressive demanding immediate payment of another £100 by credit or debit card. He further claims that our clients e-mail to confirm the 30 day trail was not acceptable as they didn't accept e-mails as written cancellation of their campaigns. Furthermore if our client didn't pay up they would hand the account to a debt collections company. Quite rightly our client tells them he's heard enough and that he is not happy with their sales tactics, service or attitude.

The message here is clear we think. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is! If a telesales company call you offering you these spots in Google on a 30 day trial, don't buy unless they send you a contract stating the duration of the campaign before you buy it. These shady operators are out there unfortunately and the advice we have given our client is to report them to Google as the company claim to be resellers for Google Adwords.

Here's a link to a short  questions and answers on the subject of search engine optimisation, writing a blog and use of social media such as Facebook to help you promote your website. The author is Jennifer Horowitz Director of Marketing of SEO Company www.EcomBuffet.com The USA based company are well known in the industry and this article from them does back up what we are saying which is good news!

Good on and off page search engine optimisation combined with quality links pointing to your site is what is working for websites. If you have neither your website will not get found for your chosen search phrases.

If you are looking to improve results from your website get in touch with us. We can help you for FREE when you become a free link partner with us. For me details visit our site and get in touch:   www.free-seo-link-building.co.uk

Here's a link to a useful article that examines the question of how many links are needed to achieve a first page ranking for your website: http://911reputation.com/2009/10/optimum-number-of-inbound-links-seo/

Ideally before one word of your new website has been written, you should take some time to select the keywords and phrases most likely to bring visitors to your website from search engines.

Because Google is the most popular search engine with 65% market share start by opening Google and looking to see what and who comes up for your subject. Be careful here, remember you probably know your own business, niche or organisation much better than the average online visitor you are hoping to attract. The answer is to ask other people not as familiar with your subject what they would type into a search engine if they were looking for your type of niche.  Get maybe a dozen key phrases not just single word search terms written down and try Google with these. Single word search terms will be too broad E.G If you are a business making hand made wooden toys for pre school age children, the keyword "Toys" on it's own will be too broad a search term, as you will then be competing online for every conceivable type of toy there is. To find your business narrow it down further, perhaps "Toys for toddlers" will work better for you.

So who searches for what and in what volume? When you type in a search phrase on Google, a number comes up which tells you how many results there are for that search term: 

 Results 1 - 10 of about 6,150,000 for toys for toddlers. (0.24 seconds) 

Using the earlier example and searching using Google UK you will see there are a large number of results, don't worry these are not all your direct competitors. This is the number of places on the web where "Toys" and "Toddlers" are mentioned, but not specifically your exact niche.

Next let's use a free Google tool that is designed for selecting keywords and key phrases for advertising on Google, the Google Adwords keyword tool. Here is the link to it: https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal

We can type the example key phrase into the tool and it will tell you how many Google searches there were for it in the preceding month, so let's try it. "Toys for toddlers" gave a local search Google UK figure of 9,900 in the preceding month. This is a reasonable number and one I would select if targeting this market.

You will also see that the Adwords tool also gives all the realted search terms to the one used in the example together with the number of searches in the preceding month. From this analysis combined with your key phrase list you compiled yourself and by asking others, you should have a place to start for your website.