Patience is a virtue

SEO is a long winded game – just had my Google backlinks updated and all of my PR links have not been spidered - although present in Yahoo. I am thinking of getting a SEO expert. I know there is many shady companies out their. Does anyone know of a good company who will get results first and then charge once your website is optimised? I am conscious of paying loads of money up front if they will only tweak a few keywords which I can do myself. Thanks for your help.



Thanks



Elaine

IMHO it will take as long for a SEO company to get you website up in the serps they have to wait for Google update if you follow the tips for on page optimization in this forum you can do as good a job.
It depends on the time you are willing to spend getting links, submitting to the free directories, writing and publishing articles etc.

Thanks for this. Yes you are right just getting a bit deflated. I am astute with the practices content+backlinks and have made great progress - it has nearly been a month since web launch and I have been spidered and submitted to most directories- but not even in first 50 for my keywords in google. It is really hard work - and time consuming! Thanks for your reply.

A month?

I am sorry, but you are being too optimistic. Even if you hire an SEO expert, there is no way he can get any results before at least 3 months (and with all the craze on Google now, he might have to wait for 6 months).

Yes, Patience is a virtue.

Maybe you are doing a much better job than you think. Keep up the good work, and let's see what happens soon...

Yes elaine you can expect a good ranking in google in 2-3 months for low competition keywords and at least 6 months for competitive keywords even if you use some good seo agency and get lots of links required for that keyword. Even if you have optimized site, got all the desired links, got all the pages of site indexed in google you have to wait for another few months to see good ranking.

Thanks for your help. I am running out of where to find good links - submitted to all directories - any ideas?

If I could sum up what you need to do in two words it would be "Be Creative"

There are many ways to get links with directory submission being just one. I average about 100 live links a week through the following methods:

1.) Recipricol Trades with Related Sites (By far the smallest percentage for me) - The way I handle these is I place the recip with content on my resource pages. I stay away from Link pages - If it isn't useful to your visitors, dont do it
2.) Directory Submissions
3.) Writing Articles - One of my most recent articles was reprinted 300 times giving 35 Live links! One of my other articles was used by someone elses emailed ezine which had the added bonus of bringing customers
4.) Press Releases
5.) Writing Testomonials for Products/Tools I use
6.) Adding content/tools to my site then sending emails to those that would find it useful "allowing" them lo link to it
7.) And More

As far as #3 and #4 I will plagariaze my own article which is posted below:

Creative Methods for "One Way" Links

Everyone knows the importance of getting other sites to link to you and the most common way is for a reciprical link. That is the kind of link that Click Sentrys reciprical tools address. These are great links and should always be sought after. However, there has been much discussion about Google giving less weight to a link that is recip. One of the ways to combat this is "triangle" linking but this can be very time consuming and hard to explain to new website owners. That brings us to another method:

One Way Linking

When most people think about one way linking their mind immediately turns to directories. These are a great source (and are seemingly endless) of one way links but there are even more creative ways to get them. I am going to break it into two very easy categories - Press Releases and Article Submissions

Press Releases - New websites seem to believe that people who need their service or product will just find them because of that need. Anyone who has started a site just to sit back and let the orders or visitors roll in has been quickly reminded that despite being the "web", people still need to know you are there.
There are plenty of great sites that allow you to "announce" your arrival. Even if you are an established site you are still able to write a press release to announce any new products or tools you may have. Somehow in the move from newspapers to internet many have lost the fine art of writing an engaging (and self serving of course) press release. I will write another article sometime about that lost art with step by step instructions. In the meantime, just read some of the other Press Releases and adapt your own. These press releases are spidered by google so it is a great way to not only get a link but to also drive traffic to your site.

Here are some sites to start with:

http://www.prleap.com
: Your free press release goes to google news(news.google.com) and searchengines like yahoo, msn altavaista and you can view the history and statistics.
For this release, your article must be professional.

http://www.prweb.com:
One of the best press release websites i come across. You can issue free press release which goes to related websites and article posting websites.
For a fee of 60+ only, your article goest to various news sites like yahoo news, business.com(iam not sure of this) and related big news websites.

Article Submissions - The second great way to gain links is to submit articles. Do you have a web design site? Write an article about Google starting to index flash sites. All of the good submission sites allow you to put an about the Author section with links to your site in it. This gives you an instant link from the site you submitted it to but MORE IMPORTANTLY, these sites allow other website owners to boost their content by including YOUR article in their websites. The only thing they ask is for the article and your link to not be modified. Write a good article and you may see 100's of one way links within weeks. Write 10 great articles and.... well you get the idea.

Here are some sites to start with:

http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.articlecity.com

Good Luck!!