SEO Specialist?

[VladtheImpaler]

I am starting my own practice. Anybody here a SEO expert (and able to provide references) or able to recommend someone? Thanks in advance.

[photon]

c.t.ner would be a good place to start, I've worked with him (not for SEO, but other stuff) and he's great to work with.

He also recommended this guy for someone at the next level:

http://www.zagoumenov.com/

[VladtheImpaler]

Originally Posted by photon

c.t.ner would be a good place to start, I've worked with him (not for SEO, but other stuff) and he's great to work with.

He also recommended this guy for someone at the next level:

http://www.zagoumenov.com/

Thanks! At the "next level" , what price range are we talking about?

[BigBrodieFan]

Here's my guy: http://www.seomike.com/

PM me if you have questions please.

[photon]

Originally Posted by VladtheImpaler

Thanks! At the "next level" , what price range are we talking about?

No idea, but $$$$ I imagine.

I guess it depends on the goals.. making sure your site is not penalized for dumb things or that it shows up properly is one thing, making sure yours is the first that shows up when you search "<whatever job> calgary" is a whole different thing.

[VladtheImpaler]

Originally Posted by photon

No idea, but $$$$ I imagine.

I guess it depends on the goals.. making sure your site is not penalized for dumb things or that it shows up properly is one thing, making sure yours is the first that shows up when you search "<whatever job> calgary" is a whole different thing.

I want the latter , so I think I will have no choice but to pay...

[MickMcGeough]

"SEO consultants are the male nipples of media" - Mike_FTW

Before you fork over a bunch of dough to an "SEO Consultant", keep this stuff in mind:

- the only guarantee in SEO is that you can't guarantee anything
- google is in the process of making significant changes to searching, putting emphasis on semantic searching rather than keyword searching. You may end up paying a lot of money for keyword search optimizations, only to find that the methods you paid for aren't necessarily obsolete, but no longer optimal.

In my estimation, somewhere around 5-10% of SEO consultants are legit. You want somebody who's been doing it for awhile as their primary source of income. There are a lot of guys that do it on the side and don't really know much about it.

I don't know SEO Mike, he seems to have been doing it a long time, but the decade-old tech his site is runnning on is a big red flag for someone who needs to be on the cutting edge of the web to stay competitive.

Beware of anyone offering concrete promises (like you'll be on the first page of results in a month or something) without promising that you'll get your money back if they don't deliver.

[Old Yeller]

Isn't a good ranking on Google dependent as much on the amount of traffic to the site as it is on the actual site content that it's searching?

[zamler]

Originally Posted by MickMcGeough

I don't know SEO Mike, he seems to have been doing it a long time, but the decade-old tech his site is runnning on is a big red flag for someone who needs to be on the cutting edge of the web to stay competitive.

This is a red flag to me.
http://www.seomike.com/newscomp-case-study.html

He fixed a whole whack of code errors and calls that a "SEO Case Study".

[getbak]

Originally Posted by MickMcGeough

- google is in the process of making significant changes to searching, putting emphasis on semantic searching rather than keyword searching. You may end up paying a lot of money for keyword search optimizations, only to find that the methods you paid for aren't necessarily obsolete, but no longer optimal.

Not only may it not be optimal, they're looking at punishing "overly optimized" sites.

From a talk at SXSW last week: http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/17/no...rly-optimized/

Normally we don’t pre-announce changes, but there is something we’ve been working in the last few months and hopefully in the coming weeks we hope to release it. The idea is basically to try to level the playing ground a little bit. So all those people who have been doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly doing their SEO – compared to the people who are just making great content and trying to make a fantastic site, we are trying to level the playing field a bit. We try to make the GoogleBot smarter, try to make our relevance more adaptive, so that if people don’t so SEO we handle that. And we are also looking at the people who abuse it, who put too many keywords on a page, exchange way too many links, or whatever else they are doing to go beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by Old Yeller

Isn't a good ranking on Google dependent as much on the amount of traffic to the site as it is on the actual site content that it's searching?

Not exactly. I'm not totally positive about this, but without Google Analytics installed I don't believe that Google really has an accurate idea of your site traffic (nor are you rewarded for having GA installed, that I know of).

It's pretty clear that highly popular sites earn a higher ranking, but Google ranks popularity by quality (over quantity) of incoming links to your site. I got my own site into the top 5 page 1 results of my target search terms largely (I think) by having some highly-ranked web design sites sites link to my own.

That said, SEO is like a soft science, at best, so this is all educated speculation.

[photon]

Originally Posted by MickMcGeough

In my estimation, somewhere around 5-10% of SEO consultants are legit.

Lol yeah I think when I asked c.t.ner about this this was the first thing I brought up.

[freedogger]

Just put up an honest site that describes what you do. Spending your SEO budget on the google adwords program might be a better option.

[freedogger]

Originally Posted by Old Yeller

Isn't a good ranking on Google dependent as much on the amount of traffic to the site as it is on the actual site content that it's searching?

The largest ranking factor is how many quality sites link to your site.

[Flames0910]

Originally Posted by freedogger

The largest ranking factor is how many quality sites link to your site.

followed by good semantic markup (title, header tags, etc)

[Russic]

We had a local SEO guy do a guest blog entry for us that I feel came out really well. He's one of the few I trust around town and has some interesting insight.

http://buildstudio.ca/5-tips-for-sma...es-new-to-seo/

If you'd like to see an example of his work, do a google image search for "the best looking man in the world" (spoiler - He's #1). The result you see is partly mirrored throughout the world. As a side note my apologies to those who feel threatened by the male form... you may have to deal with having to see a few dudes without their shirts on. I'm sure you can handle it!

[cmyden]

The biggest factor in determining how much Google loves you (at the moment) is by the quality and number of sites that Google loves, having love for you.

Make sense?

A good book with current info, written by someone who knows what they're talking about, and can explain it all in a pretty straightforward manner:

http://www.amazon.com/Outsmarting-Go.../dp/0789741032

There's a lot of snake oil in SEO, so it's a good idea to at least know a bit about the basics before paying someone a lot of money for nothing.

The game is changing, as it always does. Google is now in the awkward position of trying to play catch up to Facebook.

[squiggs96]

I worked with him in the past, so I would go with this guy:

http://www.mackay.ca/employees/alber...gary/paul_seo/

[KTrain]

Originally Posted by squiggs96

I worked with him in the past, so I would go with this guy:

http://www.mackay.ca/employees/alber...gary/paul_seo/

Accountant humor. Awesome as always.

[BigBrodieFan]

Originally Posted by zamler

This is a red flag to me.
http://www.seomike.com/newscomp-case-study.html

He fixed a whole whack of code errors and calls that a "SEO Case Study".

Eh, we do ok. He's an odd duck. Just switched over from a company in India that was really mucking the language and screwing up our backlinks. Our google rankings are always very competitive, and considering the fact that internet is the only way we advertise, and with all of the constant changes to the algorithms, we are happy with the results. (so far)