Does paying for SEO work?
- Thread starter Roxter
- Start date
Roxter said:
In my opinion: No. Good and legitimate SEO's charge exorbitant prices. For a new site that's just not worth it. Avoid anyone offering cheap service as it's liable to get you banned from Google (because most are black hat). The SEO sites like ours need done can be done by us. Creating backlinks, communicating on other niche forums, etc. Do it yourself and save the money.
THF_Martin
Addicted
For forums it is a lot less useful. I don't think forums have a very good time with SEO and isn't really much you can do to make it more appealing to listings rather than make sure the homepage hits as many keywords as you possibly can. If you are creating a website or a blog then I would say it is much more viable to hire someone out to help you in that aspect as it can make a much greater difference.
To be honest, it works but only if you buy high quality SEO services. Don't trust those "5000 back links for $5" services. Those will not work. However the high quality SEO services will cost more money so if you are willing to invest into SEO, it will work but it will take time.
mikesmithnew
New Arrival
SEO is a service. It will be on-going. Its better to hire Some experienced SEO team for managing SEO operations. Monthly fee is preferred.
Roxter said:
By far, the most important factor in ranking well in the SERPs is content, which is completely under your control, if yours is a regular website or a blog, and somewhat under your control if your site is a forum.
By content, I am talking about having a large amount of textual content, but not just that. Assuming you're talking about a forum, since this is a forum promotion forum, you need to encourage long threads, as long as they stay on topic.
Each thread should have a specific topic, and that topic should be reflected in the thread title. The closer you can keep forum members on topic, the better. As long as they remain on one definable topic, longer threads will rank better than shorter ones.
Basically, the better organized your forum is, the better it will rank in the SERPs, since the search engines are going to be able to figure out what it's about.
No, I am not ignoring your opening question. I just wanted to emphasize that your content is the most important thing. By having well organized and rich content, you will have something to call attention to.
Search engine optimization calls attention to it. I think it's far better to do your own SEO if you are able to do that. While there are some honest people doing SEO, the scams far outnumber the honest services that are out there, and most of what the good ones will do for you will be stuff that you can do for yourself.
Someone who understands what needs to be done in order to place well in the SERPs can certainly help, but not everyone who offers that service is very good at what they do. If they start talking about PageRank, run.
Strictly speaking, search engine optimization refers to your content and its organization. In SEO, you are optimizing your site so that the search engines can figure out what it is, so that they will be able to index it more efficiently.
Often referred to as off-site SEO, the rest is really marketing when you think of it. With proper SEO, you have prepared your site. Through marketing, or off-site SEO, if you want to call it that, you are calling attention to your site. For the most part, the things that you might do to try to encourage people to come look at your site will be the same stuff that will be effective at attracting the search engines.
Once you have the attention of the search engines, don't bore them. Make sure that you have fresh content in your forum all the time so that they keep coming back.
In forums everywhere, I see people calling for more threads and, while more threads are helpful in that they may attract more people to participate, longer threads are more useful in placing well in the SERPs; again, as long as they remain on topic. I have my forum set so that threads are not indexed until there are at least 500 words in the thread.
People focus way too much on SEO. SEO comes out of the box with any modern software; even if it technically doesn't. Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and all the rest of the big boys will find your site and rank you appropriately without you having to use any SEO techniques whatsoever. If anything, there are too many blackhat methods that will put you on blacklists. Algorithms will change faster than any SEO expert can learn them.
It's so cliche to say by now, but it will always be true: content is king. If you have good content on your website and you regularly update said content, that's your SEO.
I personally wouldn't spend more than a casual week working on SEO in-house. During the time you waste chasing an endless goal, you lose out on ranking by not updating your content consistently. If you're not the one wasting time, then it's coming straight out of your pocket. That money could go into site features or paid content instead. Or heck, a few dozen burgers.
It's always good to learn what bad SEO techniques are. Avoid those, and things will work out. Keep in mind that word of mouth is powerful as well. Work on your content so that it's praised. Everything will fall into place.
I just read @kfander's post after typing this. Well said!
It's so cliche to say by now, but it will always be true: content is king. If you have good content on your website and you regularly update said content, that's your SEO.
I personally wouldn't spend more than a casual week working on SEO in-house. During the time you waste chasing an endless goal, you lose out on ranking by not updating your content consistently. If you're not the one wasting time, then it's coming straight out of your pocket. That money could go into site features or paid content instead. Or heck, a few dozen burgers.
It's always good to learn what bad SEO techniques are. Avoid those, and things will work out. Keep in mind that word of mouth is powerful as well. Work on your content so that it's praised. Everything will fall into place.
I just read @kfander's post after typing this. Well said!
In my opinion: No. Good and legitimate SEO's charge exorbitant prices. For a new site that's just not worth it. Avoid anyone offering cheap service as it's liable to get you banned from Google (because most are black hat). The SEO sites like ours need done can be done by us. Creating backlinks, communicating on other niche forums, etc. Do it yourself and save the money.
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