small business owner looking for affordable SEO company

Hello,

I can't seem to find the appropriate forum to post this message. If this is not the proper place, please let me know.

I am looking for an experienced SEO person/company to help me optimize my new eCommerce website. It's a very small (one person) business, so I cannot afford the big SEO companies.

Can someone recommend a good SEO whodoesn't cost too much?

Rather than fishing here (it's like walking to the inner city and yelling "anyone got Crack??"), talk to some web developers/designers and see who has been getting business for their clients.

SEO is like owning a boat, a whole lotta money can go into that hole in the water before you realise you're broke. Find a SEO by their results then it's a business decision, not a guess or gamble.

The other option is to find other sites like/similar to yours and find out if they've been SEO'd. Find out who did their work. Ten to one, if they did one site like yours, they will do more and with experience comes speed (less time = less $$ to get running). If a SEO firm gets you traffic you can afford more.

Cheap doesn't mean good and "famous" doesn't mean good.

Just some friendly advice..


Mike

Hello Maha....


Read Read Read ---

You'll be surprized how much you can learn here! ;-)

I tried to do some reading.. but it seems like the more I read, the more confused I get!

It takes time.... If your interested in succeeding on the internet you need to learn SEO - There's no doubt about it. It's hard to keep up with. But theres noone better to count on then yourself. Years ago, it was easy to make money on the net - but it's growing so fast. The competition seems to be doubling every day. You need to be on your toes.

Honestly, It just plain 'ol sucks. But - You've found the right place to start.

I've learned so much here...
I honestly believe that withing a year, you can become a search engine professional with the information you'll find on these pages... It takes the right learning desire but all the information you need is here - and everyone is ready to answer your questions.

I want to learn.. but I also need to start making money so I can put food on the table... I can't afford to spend a year learning if you know what I mean.

I know exactly how you feel.... I have a wealth of knowledge.... Yet I still am not earning what I should be...

On the internet everything happens in waves.... Some days your planning your fortunes - while other days have you wondering what went wrong...????

Good post clasione! This is very true. I run a one person retail business and do my own SEO.... but I do hire consulting from time to time. Do your best... get somebody to tweak it... and never stop experimenting. I spend 20% of my time researchin the SERPs, tweaking my sites for opportunities and defending my positions - so, if you want SEO it ain't cheap - it will either cost you in the wallet or on the clock.

EGOL... If you had to do it again (or if you are in my shoes). Would you hired a SEO to "jump start" your eCommerce website or take the time to learn to be an SEO yourself?

Also, have you had success with other forms of marketing other than Search Engine? I'm considering Opt-In email marketing?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated for a newbie eCommerce startup..

LOL :-)

If you want to find a good SEO company to do some work with your site, you should have the budget for it 12 hours of consulting will cost you anywhere from $2000 or so, I would avoid all firms that offer service for $399. There are a lot of very fishy SEO comanies out there.

Think of SEO the same way as you think about car repair. With some with some car repair skills you will be able to do some maintanace of your car, but some jobs you leave to the pros.

maha, you came to the right place. I was in your shoes a while back. I spent allot of money in online marketing, emails, banners etc. but it didn't match the response from ranking well in the SERPS. Almost 82% of my traffic comes from SE's and this is targetted traffic that is interested in what I have to offer (sales).

I think it depends on how competitive your kw's is before you make a decision on paying a SEO specialists. Drop us a clue to the kw's and we will give you an idea on DIY or HIRE. The fact is if you are going to compete against other SEO's at very competitive kw's then leave it to the specialists. On the other hand you better reallise that SEO is something that will take months to figure out. So will the ranking of your site. You do not submit a brand new site today to Google and Pfoof it is searchable. This will take at least 3 - 4 months! In the mean while launch your Emails (DO NOT SPAM!) place some adds have a look at Google addwords etc. But get the word out.

here's another question? who (and how) should I use to do my Opt-In email marketing? There are so many guys out there...

Here is the steps that I took to get started....

I searched google for terms like "search engine marketing" and other related terms, reading lots and purchasing a few ebooks written by people who seemed to be quoted on a lot of the sites that I visited.

Then I used all that I learned to build a website to display my products. I studied and built for a month or more. It got fairly good rankings after a couple of updates and as PR started to flow.

I then joined seochat and learned lots here and built that new knowledge into my site. Also read everything in tutorials at ABAKUS
http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/en/forum/ .... spent hours and hours at the pagerank calculator.

After that I got one-on-one cousulting from three different sources (one was Webby who owns Abakus who is a moderator here and who I recommend highly). This was worth every cent that I paid.

Since then I have been running my own show but have a few ventures in mind where I will probably look for one-on-one consulting again. Just one good idea or tweak can make all of the difference.

Maha

I think it is good news for you, as far as I can see these aren't very competitive keywords. The most competitive keyword is Plantronics but the top 10 sites has only 3 optimized sites, this tells me you stand a good chance to make it.

On thhe keyword Plantronics the top ranking site has a PR of 5 and 14 backlinks. That means you need at least 15 backlinks to your site. Fortunately that is not a difficult task. But you need to make sure that the actual pages your link do appear on has at least PR4 or better. Rather get backlinks on high PR pages that on 0 PR pages.

1st step, Research your KW and decide what keywords you are targetting. Remember that each page in your site must target at the most 2 to 3 keywords or phrases! I understand your site is already designed. Is it a E-commerce site done in ASP or plain HTML?

Maha, coming from with someone with experience I would definatly try and learn the basics, and if not more yourself, it depends on the level of traffic you require, and what type of market you are aiming for.

Learn as much as you can from here and other SEO forums, places like www.webmasterworld.com is also a fairly good place. Have an open mind, and don't believe everything you hear!

If you really don't have the time to read and learn yourself then I would recommend Webby and SEO guy from here, both have helped me in the past and have been very useful, if I could afford them I'd use their skills for sure

Darren