Are we being taken for a ride?

[Babyboarder]

Hi all

Please can you help me! I'm working for a company looking to hire an SEO co. within the UK. The most promising proposal we've had is from a company who aim to get us listed at the top by creating micro-sites based on our keyphrases. Is this legit? They seem okay in all other ways.

Also they mention using misspellings, I thought this was pointless because you're obviously not going to replicate them in your text??

Finally, I'm very wary of the price they have quoted - £100,000 to submit (to .co.uk, .com and two European countries engines), monitor and create these micro sites for 10 keyphrases, plus a bit of competitor analysis. Is this a reasonable figure or are we being taken for a ride.

I've been browsing your forum for some time now and just want to say how totally informative it is! The answers to the above questions are probably somewhere but I always end up reading other topics and get distracted!

Babyboarder

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums Babyboarder! :hi:

Wow. That is a bunch of pounds! We have quite a few members here from the UK who are also SEO's themselves. They would be able to tell you better about the price and what they propose to do.

For me, I do NOT produce any "microsites" at all and opt to optimize the current site. Also, compared to my price, that price is high.

You definitely should check out other SEO in the UK. Check our fellow member SEO's very closely. You do not want to make any quick decisions. Check all you possibly can including references from current clients. Email them and ask, etc.

Good luck to you and continue to ask questions!

[french dread]

greetings,
concerning mispellings you can verify if they are often typed using the goodkeywords freeware downloadable at http://www.goodkeywords.com/

have a a warranty of positionning? top10? top20?

about price you are talkin about £100.000? or £100?
the fisrt price seems crazy imho

[manwah]

Greets BabyBoarder,

As Doug said that price does seem high. Are they actually proposing to create your mainsite and optimise that as well, or are they taking your existing site and just building some inter-related sites around that?

As long as the misspellings are searched for they can add traffic to your site, but it is usually only a fraction of the traffic of the correct spelling.

Definitely shop around and see what other people are offering before making a decision that big...

M

[JuniorHarris]

Welcome Babyboarder!~ :hi:

Not being privy to all the details it may be hard to judge, but as Mum always said "you'd better shop around".

Make three or four other contacts and then you'll have a better comparison as to the services and work they offer for a particular price range.

[Blue]

:hi:

I would add that you should check their own (the SEO firms) rankings because if they can't get themselves high rankings, they are probably not worth any price.

Secondly, ask for some of their clients URL's and look specifically at all the SEO techniques being used. If you find anything that is "spammy" or "against SE policy" or any other of the many unethical techniques mentioned in these forums, you should find another SEO firm.

Good Luck!

[french dread]

mmmh...i can say that some good seo companies are not very well ranked and the opposite is true. because of loack of time or other reasons. so the better is to check the client's rankings imho.
and you could perhaps contact these clients to have some feedback

[Mel]

Hi Babyboarder:

This is a difficult question to answer without knowing what business you are in, what keywords you are targeting and what the scope of work you expect from the SEO company.

Having said that, I would say that 100,000 pounds is a figure that I would expect to see as a budget for the construction and SEO of a very large website in a very competitive area for a Fortune 500 company.

I hesitate to say you are being taken for a ride without more information, but I would lean in that direction, since I do not believe it necessary to create minisites to rank well.

I would say that for 20% of that figure you could have a very good company design a site of 50 pages, submit your site to all the major and European search engines plus all directories and get you top ten rankings for many keywords.

We have several members of the forum who are well respected web design and SEO firms in the UK and would be happy to recommend them if you PM me.

[Babyboarder]

Wow! :circle: That was quick. Yes £100,000 was the figure not £100. Their other clients are so reputable that we think this is their main selling point plus the fact that they've been around for over 5 years.

We've been looking around for a good co. for ages, and I guess we'll have to keep looking. I was considering buying that recent document that lists the 24 or so major SEOs and details about them but thought it was probably US based, does anyone know if this is the case?

Ta for your comments,

Babyboarder

[ihelpyou]

I believe the current download is US based but the version coming up which will include about 50 firms will be worldly. I could be mistaken about that though.

BTW, yours truly will be in the next version. :)

If they deal with top 500 companies, then the price may be okay. Though I also believe they charge that much because they know the top companies can afford it. Those companies are not worth the hassle to me though. I prefer Many clients instead of one or two. Although, I know that some SEO's who deal with this turn out to use many "trick" techniques that other SEO's would find spammy and would not consider using.

Just because a firm is high, does not necessarily equate to quality... but definitely means they are high.

[JuniorHarris]

Great posts Blue!~ :thumb:

Checking client referrals is a great suggestion, just be sure to verify the "clients" as well. And as Blue suggested, review their work and with what you know here you should be able to at least make a solid decision about their technical abilities.

[Sharon & Roy]

Originally posted by Babyboarder

a company who aim to get us listed at the top by creating micro-sites based on our keyphrases. Is this legit?

Hello Babyboarder,

NO. What you refer to as a micro-site, Google (and other search engines) refers to as a "doorway/splash page" and considers them spamdexing (not legit).

Also they mention using misspellings, I thought this was pointless because you're obviously not going to replicate them in your text??

We totally agree that this SEO Technique is pointless and we would never recommend it.

Is this a reasonable figure or are we being taken for a ride.

If they are going to use spamdexing SEO Techniques to rank your pages, then in our humble opinion, you are being taken for a ride at any price, even if they gave away their services for free.

All you need is ONE Site with various pages for various keyword phrases. Create keyword rich articles (as separate Web Pages) for your various products/services and incorporate all the legitimate SEO Techniques and your rankings will be just fine.

That is Part I of your optimization process.

Part II is to concentrate on getting "Backward Links" (a.k.a. Inbound/Incoming/Inward Links) from all the high ranking Web Sites/Pages in your industry, that contain your keyword phrase in the "Anchor Tag Text" and you'll do just fine.

Here's a tip, don't necessarily ask for this information initially when getting your quotes/proposals, but when you find a company who concentrates and explains their "methods" to be closely related to what we have just outlined for you, then they are worth a "closer look."

All the best to you in your quest, Babyboarder!

[Mel]

HI Sharon and Roy;

I think you will find that there is a difference between minisites and doorway pages, the chief difference being that minisites have their own URL and IP address, while doorway pages are normally a part of the site.

Google and other engines treat minisites differently than doorway pages and are NOTconsidered spam, so long as there is no duplicate content. While they may not rank well unless they have sufficient content, links from them are counted.

This being the case, and since we really don't have much information about what the high priced SEO company is doing, to jump to the conclusion that what they are doing is spammy is rather far fetched.

Also in my opinion doorway pages and splash pages are not the same thing either. A moot point but since you are stating your opinions as facts it is better to use the correct terminology since otherwise new users may become confused.

[ihelpyou]

Very true Mel.

I might add that even if a microsite, if Google feels the only purpose of the site is to lead a visitor to another site, they will frown upon it as well. It should be a full site with unique content and it's own interior links and exterior links and links leading to it. If not, it could do more harm than good.

[Mel]

Hi all:

In thinking this problem over for a bit, we have to realize that we do not know the business of the website to be optimized, and therefor do not know how competetive the optimization needs to be.

For many very competitive businesses, mini sites are not only very useful, but completely legal. An Example (hypothetical)

Lets say you run a charter fishing business in the Florida Keys and there are many competing websites. These websites do not like to link to their competitors (and this is the norm, not the exception), and so getting good links for your site is a problem. A solution is to develop several related sites (minisites or microsites).

Lets start by developing a site devoted to sailfish, various species, their habitats and how to fish succesfully for them. Various pages of this site link to our home sites relvant pages, and vice versa. We also link to and solicit links from related sailfishing sites (maybe even from some of our competitors who do not see these sites as competition to their sport fishing business)

Then we can develop various sites for other types of fish that our site caters to and use them in the same way.

Next we develop a site about deep sea fishing boats, their desirabable features, and how to handle them under various condidtions. We then do the linking thing again.

Next we could develop sites about Deep sea fishing techniques, Fishing rods, cooking while offshore, how to cook sailfish, etc etc.

This is a lot of work but for some very competitive areas may be necessary and it is perfectly legal, IMHO not even immoral since each of the sites stands on its own and contributes a bit of knowledge to the web.

The best thing is that all of these sites are relevant to particular pages of the original site.

[Sharon & Roy]

Originally posted by Mel

HI Sharon and Roy;

I think you will find that there is a difference between minisites and doorway pages, the chief difference being that minisites have their own URL and IP address, while doorway pages are normally a part of the site.

Hi Mel,

While it is true that Joe and Joan may have various definitions of the same or similar terms, in this case, micro-sites was used by the company in question.

You used the term minisites.

We said ...

What you refer to as a micro-site, Google (and other search engines) refers to as a "doorway/splash page" and considers them spamdexing (not legit).

While we agree with you that if the company in question doesn't create what Google (and others) refers to as doorway or splash pages and they are in fact actually legitimate in design, then we apologize for equating the two.

By the way, Mel, do you have a link to where you saw that definition for minisite or is this just your opinion?

If there is a standard and acceptable definition for all these various terms, we sure would like to know about them, especially these ...

doorway page

hallway page

splash page

micro-site

minisite

bridge page

gateway page

Then that also raises another question. How can we (or anyone) be sure that the company in question, or any company will actually adbide by these definitions when they optimize?

[ihelpyou]

Each of those terms has a definition according to WHO is defining them. We all have our own definition. There is no single def. that is construed to be fact. It is all opinion.

Actually, those terms sited are a kind of "slang" anyway and I do not believe they are in a dictionary anywhere.

Mel, I agree with that. As long as the site is a site with content, no problem. I see way too many that are not.

[Mel]

Hi S & R:

Sorry for the typo, I equate minisites and microsites as being the same thing except that in a strict definition mini would logically be larger than micro, but both are "sites". Sites I think we can all agree on what the term means, but Webopedia (http://www.pcwebopaedia.com) defines site as:

A site (location) on the World Wide Web. Each Web site contains a home page, which is the first document users see when they enter the site. The site might also contain additional documents and files. Each site is owned and managed by an individual, company or organization.

Here are definitions for some of the terms you asked about:

doorway page (Mels definition)
Doorway pages are pages that have been specifically developed to rank well for a particular keyword or phrase, and are not normally the root page of a site.


hallway page (Mels Definition)
A gateway page (sometimes called a hallway or spider page) is in some ways the opposite of a doorway page in that you do not necessarily want it to rank highly with the search engines (though that will not hurt), but it is used to allow spiders to find the optimized pages you want them to index.


splash page: (from webopedia )
The page of a Web site that the user sees first before being given the option to continue to the main content of the site. Splash pages are used to promote a company, service or product or are used to inform the user of what kind of software or browser is necessary in order to view the rest of the site's pages. Often a splash page will consist of animated graphics and sounds that entice the user into exploring the rest of the Web site. Some splash pages will bring the user to the main Web site automatically, and some require the user to click on a link that will load the main page.

A splash page is sometimes referred to as a splash screen.

bridge page ???


gateway page:
See hallway page

Please feel free to modify or comment on these definitions, but S&R are correct that it will help us all to speak the same language.

As far as whether the SEO company uses the same definitions and abides by them, I would consider that to come under the term of buyer beware, or look before you leap.

[MazY]

Mind if I add my UK perspective to the mix?

Let's get the micro-sites issue out of the way first - yet it is morally fine to do that and can, in some cases, work well to do so. (Note that my own company is currently converting the one previous site into three more manageable and consensed sites.)

However, this is for a very specific reason. We are in a relatively rare position of offering web design, promotion and copywriting all from the one company. As you can imagine, optimising for all these from one site is not the easiest thing in the world to achieve. (Though we have with great success.)

The point being that "UK web design" and "UK web site promotion" are both pretty competitive fields to be in. And we rank from 1 to 20 all over the place without the use of the mini-sites. So, they can work but are in no way required to achieve top rankings. This is not guess work but based on experienced fact.

Now on to the comedy aspect - the price. Tell me that was a mistype? I cannot imagine a single scenario that could possibly equate to such a cost in the SEO world. Maybe I think too small but I couldn't even sleep at night if we charged a client that amount. Of course, I guess that developing the mini-sites has helped to inflate the costs somewhat. Nice. My advice is to drop the mini-site concept until you have actually proven to yourselves that you need to even begin to explore that avenue. I suspect that you do not need it but it may be worth exploring in the future.

Regardless of their experience, unless you are some extremely mammoth company with extremely massive demands then I would drop that one like a brick and cast your net again.

Hope at least some of that helps.

[MakeMeTop]

£100K !!!!! :)

That has to be a joke! This can not be any major SEO company in the UK that I have come across (and I think I know most) - and certainly not one who appears for the phrase 'search engine optimsation' on many (if any) search facilities in top rankings. If they are charging that kind of money and are 'too busy' to optimise their own site what are they doing to be so rushed off their feet. All they have quoted for is what sounds like a fairly standard job of SEO.

This has to be some sort of 'new media' agency who usually tries to subcontract the work that they have charged a fortune for to some other SEO for peanuts.

I get them calling nearly every day.

Look around yourself - don't get taken in by all that 'big agency' look.

[Blue]

Babyboarder:

I think MazY and MakeMeTop are absolutely correct in their critiques, especially as they are both well known in their field as well as being "local". I would take their advice.

Mel:

Mel, please correct me if I am wrong, but according to your definitions, the only truly "legit" method would be a splash page? In otherwords, all the others are somewhat, if not outright, spammy?

[Mel]

Hi Blue:

According to my ideas, only external sites as described are currently "legit" by SE standards.

Splash pages to my idea are pages which only serve as a fancy intro to a site and are usually devoid of indexable content, There is of course no reason that you could not optimize a splash page, but in order to do so you would have to get rid of (or severely decrease) the Flash and Audio, add content and navigation, so by then I think it would no longer be considered a splash page but a standard home page.

[JuniorHarris]

Great advice by MakeMeTop and MazY!~ :thumb:

[Babyboarder]

Thanks for all your help, I've put that one company on hold and have been v. busy gaining much more info.

Another question I have is should gateway pages, mini-sites, micro-sites etc be hosted on our servers or theirs? Also some companies copyright the pages so that, I presume, if we cancelled the agreement or the contract came to its natural end, our search engine positions would disappear and we would need to start again. Is this a reason for avoiding co's that use gateway pages/microsites or is it standard procedure to do this? (Oh and I have been paying attention :eyes: I know microsites and gateway pages are different).

Thanks again for your help

Babyboarder

[french dread]

Greetings,
I don't know uk laws, but i assume they are not so different than french ones.
As your doorways will contain names that u own the SEO company should not own these pages.
The company were i work don't own the pages we create for our clients, and we don't remove pages when the contract end. what we sell is service and not code.
it is better to host the doorways on the same server than the website.

[MazY]

I would strongly suggest that you retain as much control as possible by having as much as possible upon your own servers.

The very notion of web site promotion companies that insist on heaving the optimised pages on their own servers leaves a particularly bad taste in my mouth.

As for the copyrighting - I'm perplexed. If they have the pages, they own the copyright, then what exactly have you paid for?:confused:

With regards to doorway/gateway pages (in their old literal sense - though the line has become a little more hazy of late) my biggest problem with them is this:

Let us say that we create you a dozen or so doorway pages all nicely optimised to get high rankings based upon three of the major engines. Perfect.

Now let's say that next week, worst case scenario, those search engines all change their algorithms. What are you left with? twelve worthless pages. Of course, to help burn more money up, you can always call the optimisation company to look at them again. Rest assured that they will be happy to keep taking your money, I'm sure.

I come from the old school I'm afraid that relies on only one thing - content. Ignore the trimmings for a moment - what do the search engines really want after all the hype, tech talk and marketing slogans have been washed away? Relevant content. That really is it.

Yes, I am over simplifying things a tad but the fact is that you really cannot get more reliable returns than you do when you base your promotion on honest relevant content.

Hope this helps...

[french dread]

Greetings Mazy,
about the "doorways-issue": it seems that in US website are more SE-friendly, I mean coded in regular html and then easily optimizable. Most US website I see are less preoccupied with esthetics than in europe.
Of course optimzing directly the website is much better. But in france, most of our client are not aware of SE-friendly design. they use flash, dynamic pages etc...so we are forced to create "doorways" as they are most of time afraid of modifying their website.
we do not spam or trick, we just make strict html pages optimized and reflecting the real content of the website. I personaly feel no need to make a doorway for each SE, i prefer make a "normal" page with relevant content and some links. no tricks.

[Mel]

HI:
I would look at what the company you will be working with is going to do for you before finally answering that question.

In general I firmly believe that you should own and host any doorway pages (I am not a fan of that term since I believe that you can effectively create a normal page that will do the same job) on you own servers and most especially any optimized pages should be hosted on your own servers. There are companies who will host all their work for you on their servers and thus hold you to making a monthly payment to them in order to maintain your rankings.

But the question of minisites can be a different case. While they do not necessarily need to be hosted on your own server they should be hosted on your own site. This may become more and more necessary in the future as SEs discriminate against linking domains that are coming from the same Class C address. But this is not a particular problem, even ten minisites can be hosted on different servers (and thus different Class C addresses) for under $80 per month total.

I would never consider paying someone for something and afterwards they continue to own it. They're your pages and the copyright and content you pay for should belong to you.

[MazY]

Originally posted by french dread
Greetings Mazy,
about the "doorways-issue": it seems that in US website are more SE-friendly, I mean coded in regular html and then easily optimizable. Most US website I see are less preoccupied with esthetics than in europe.
Of course optimzing directly the website is much better. But in france, most of our client are not aware of SE-friendly design. they use flash, dynamic pages etc...so we are forced to create "doorways" as they are most of time afraid of modifying their website.
we do not spam or trick, we just make strict html pages optimized and reflecting the real content of the website. I personaly feel no need to make a doorway for each SE, i prefer make a "normal" page with relevant content and some links. no tricks.

Hi, french. Nice to speak to a fellow Frenchie. Being born in Dijon, I still consider myself French as opposed to English. Anyway - chitchat aside...


I understand what you are saying about the aesthetics, especially when the client is not willing or not able to change the aesthetics of the site. Though I would seriously question how badly they actually need or indeed want the rankings if they are not willing to heed the advice given to them by the very company they pay, in many cases, large sums of money to.

Your point about "strict HTML pages" is where I tried (poorly) to indicate that the term "doorway/gateway/no bloody way" page has become blurred in its definition.

I don't feel too uncomfortable these days calling any one of my pages doorway pages per se. Given that every page is highly tuned to be completely relevant to one to three search phrases. This, in essence, is what a doorway page is.

I just tend to shy away from the term because of its historic use which I always associate with spammers of the lowest order.

[french dread]

Re-bonjour then :)
I know...but it is very hard to convince clients to change their websites...and we are ready to do it by ourselves but they fear of security...
but that is no big problem as I always have success with my SEO till now with regular entry pages :D

[MazY]

Or Bon Matin! It still is, just!

I've been speaking to a couple of others recently and I have to say that so far, touch wood, I have not had any real problems with convincing clients of the merits of making the changes.

We have one client who we are particluarly proud of, who really took the time to listen and was very open to suggestions. We spent an entire afternoon just literally thrashing through their key-phrases and spent a further morning just writing the home page alone!

Their reward? Try typing in anything to do with Race Bikes and Fairings without seeing them in the top five across the major engines.

As I say, maybe I have just been lucky but we try to visit our clients personally and hold a presentation so that we can work through any questions and/or worries that they have. I usually find that people are more responsive to the human touch than they are to an e-mail.

Bon chance, as they say!

[french dread]

we do visit all our clients too and try to establish a real collaboration with dem.
the big obstacle about "SE-friendly-ing" is in reality not the client but the hosting and webdesign companies. some hosting companies even make dem customers pay when we ask dem to unzip 1 doorway page in the server :mad:

[MazY]

Originally posted by french dread
we do visit all our clients too and try to establish a real collaboration with dem.

Must be the "French way" then I guess.... :)

[MazY]

Incidentally, french....

Nice sites. Both of them. A man after my own heart - lots of white space to rest the eye on.

Very clean and tidy.

[french dread]

yes it is the french touch ;)

happy u liked the websites :)