SEO Company - The Book-keepers Forum (UK)

woody88 · Senior Member

SEO Company

Stuartbham · Senior Member

I had a new website built a while back and I'd like to spend some money on SEO. Can anyone recommend a UK based, and not too expensive, SEO company?

I've spoken to a few already (mostly based in London) who want upwards of £500 per month!! disbelief

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

Hi Stuart,

I do mine myself. I put aside an hour a week to spend on it. Normally a Friday afternoon. I looked at a load of companies but wasn't really convinced that they all really knew what they were doing. The first thing they say is that there are no promises. This made me a bit wary. In any other industry you know what you're getting before you pay your money, but with SEO you don't. They may not improve your ranking at all, it may even worsen.

I put a few hundred pounds in Google Adwords which strangely improved my organic ranking too. Made sure I had the proper keywords in my website, well placed. Made use of headings, added my site to directories, signatures in forums etc.

For me SEO is neither art nor science. Of the companies I spoke to, and that was many, there were very few where I came off the phone confident with what they were offering for vast amounts of cash. There also seem to be many who use a piece of software to add you to directories and charge a bomb.

My future plans are for a blog and some article writing.

Just my view, but keep your money and do it yourself.

Kris

Sweetpea · Veteran Member

Hi Stuart,

I came across this website and found it very useful.

http://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo

I hope this will help.

BobHarper · Guru

@Stuart - contrary to what Kris says, the SEO providers who do not make promises know what they are doing.

That is because 1) SEO is always changing 2) you can't control the competition 3) only Google knows 100% what works.

£500 a month for SEO is a fair entry point. When you know what's involved you'll know why but I suggest you do your own.

And, this will probably help you get going:

http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

Bob

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

Bob, I do wish you'd stop misquoting me on this forum. I did not say that because they did not make promises they don't know what they are doing. These were two mutually exclusive statements. First I said of the people I spoke to, I was not convinced they knew what they were doing. Then I spoke about the no promises.

Kris

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

But £6k per annum reduction in one's profit figure would take an awful lot of increase in turnover generation.

Do you think that investing in SEO will generate the required turnover figures in our line of business Bob?

You also suggest that's entry level so what figure should people be thinking of when they think about SEO?

I appreciate fully that it takes gold to breed gold but is the risk reward ratio on that one not a little off kilter and would we not be better off concentrating on networking.

kind regards,

Shaun.

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

As a wee aside Stuart, having spoken to a few companies, don't you think SEO is the modern day breeding ground for snake oil salesmen?

Kris

BobHarper · Guru

@Kris - I double checked and re-read your post.

I may have misunderstood you but I don't think I misquote you; you said "I looked at a load of companies but wasn't really convinced that they all really knew what they were doing. The first thing they say is that there are no promises."

Yes, there are two separate sentences but it does not read as two mutually exclusive statements because you use "they" in the second sentence.

@Shaun - what I would say about SEO is that a) it is an investment and once made it could be of value for 1, 2 or 5 or more years and b) keep in mind the lifetime value of a client can be many thousands.

I do think it is worthwhile marketing tactics but I agree with Kris that most bookkeepers/accountants should do their own because it is not that difficult. And, SEO links to other marketing tactics.

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

The number of companies that get banned from this site for appearing simply to post SEO ad's Kris I think that they're more akin to the prospectors in the great California gold rush.

It does seem quite obvious from their sheer numbers that there has to be an element of that profession (!!!) getting a lot of money for doing very little (otherwise why would so many companies (mainly it has to be said in India) be piling on the band wagon?).

Sure that there must be exceptions but like the elusive good CV in a bag full of non starters, it's one of those area's where seperating the wheat from the chaff seems to be more effort than it's actually worth.

That said, if one found aa good SEO company I'm sure that it could be used to one's advantage. Just not too sure on the prices which seem disproportionate to expected short term return on investment.

Interested to read Bobs reply to my earlier post as I'm sure that this is something that he's thought through.

I might not agree with Bob for much of the time on bookkeeping and accountancy matters but when it comes to marketing I think that's really an area that he's spent a lot of time on so genuinely interested to hear what he has to say.

Talk later,

Shaun.

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

@Bob - for goodness sake, now you're checking my English? The two comments are not connected, won't you just take my word for it? I know what I was thinking when I typed it, unless you have a gift?

Like Shaun, I do respect your views on marketing, but I do think you're getting a bit pedantic with my posts. I'm not really sure why.

Kris

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Just don't bite Kris,

I got a warning that I should "feel free to have a go, so long as you can take it back" implying that there was something not being said and the gloves were about to come off.

To take a quote from Pirates of the Caribean "Roll out the sweeps Mr Gibbs".

lol.

p.s. Joke Bob.

BobHarper · Guru

@Shaun - I like having the crack and think value for everyone can come out of exchanges.

@Kris - yes, I did check what you wrote when you accuse me of misquoting you because I wanted to make sure that what I said was fair. It was, although I accept you meant something else.

The important point is that a good SEO company will not make promises. So, there is no need for Stuart to be wary.

MarkS · Expert

Personally i wouldnt pay anyone for SEO work. I view my website as a reference site for people who are referred by others or who pick up a flyer to go and read up on what i offer rather than for people finding me through a search engine.

Most people chose an accountant on personal recommendation above anything else so the most important thing to concentrate on is delivering a good service to your existing clients. That is the best form of marketing.

If anything i would put money into google adwords where you only pay if people click on your site. That way you at least have a track of how many people are finding you via the website.

Though saying all the above signed up a client tonight who found me through an internet search who are based about 25 miles away. So they would never have found me if hadnt a website.

Regards

MarkS

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

I have 20 regular clients at the moment. 10 of these came to me through my website, 1 from facebook, 3 from postcards and letters, 2 from choose-your-accountant and the rest as referrals from other clients, contacts, friends and family. Of my previous clients more tended to come from letters, but in the past year I've stopped putting these out as often.

Thought I'd add this as when I was looking at where clients came from I realised that of the 10 clients who came through my website, 4 are in the top 5 of my highest payers. These 5 make up about 70% of my fees. Just something interesting that I hadn't considered before.

Kris

-- Edited by kjmcculloch83 on Tuesday 15th of May 2012 11:20:26 AM

Count1314 · Senior Member

£500 per month???????
Might be ok if your business has grown to the extent of having to employee people or outsource
work, but if not at that stage and hoping to get there by way of SEO.....then it seems a huge gamble!
I mean......FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS???

I have a relationship with a successful city centre chartered accountants that don't even have a website!

As Mark says, personal recommendation is probably the most common way of getting new clients. Having a website is a plus of course although people are more adept at searching these days so not sure the extra expense is worthwhile.

Off to a weekly client visit now for which I earn £400/month. I wouldn't like to lose this client or the income so the thought of just paying it straight out (and more) on SEO just doesn't bear thinking about!!

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

My only comment about what has been said by Mark and Rachael is that of my clients 50% came through my website 30% from other adverts and about 20% word of mouth.

For me my website and SEO is important. But I do understand that some businesses survive perfectly well without one.

Kris

MarkS · Expert

Hi Kris

Out of interest how many clients do you have?

If you dont want to say that's fine.

But 50% from your website obviously shows you are doing something right on the internet.

Regards

MarkS

MarkS · Expert

Thanks Kris

Throw this out to everyone else.

How many clients do you have and what is the rough split of what they are; sole trader/partnership/ltd company and what do you do for them; year end accounts/bookkeeping/vat/wages/tax and how did you get them; website/advertising/referral etc.

I dont have the details of mine in front of me but think i now have 27 clients which are all either limited company/sole trader/directors of limited company. Also got a couple of others in that i do the bookkeeping for a charity (which is my largest fee earner at about £7k per year) and also teach SAGE and bookkeeping courses at a local enterprise company that is worth about £1k - £1.5k plus any spin off i get from it be it SAGE 1-2-1 work or pick up people who come to courses as clients.

My best source to date has been my flyers. Though have also got a couple through website and got one by just going into a pizza shop in glasgow and just got chatting to the owner which turned into a £1.5k per year fee.

I just do this in my spare time at the moment as i work full time in CA firm in Edinburgh but if ever get up to over 50 clients will probably need to consider about going part time.

Regards

MarkS

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

My goodness Mark,

How do you manage all that with a full time job too? I only do part time hours and am now at the stage where I would struggle to fit in many more bookkeeping clients.

Do you do anything other than work? lol

Kris

MarkS · Expert

Isnt too onerous.

Only having to do an extra day a week at the moment.

Work full time Monday to Friday 9am - 5pm and my own stuff i just do in the evenings or at weekends.

I am due to move into a small office soon and the plan is that i work from there on a Saturday all day (and during the week in the evening if anything needs to be done urgently).

Also have a taxi driver licence but havent been out for a few weeks. Tend just to do the busy shift if i do any which is a Saturday night in my area.

As said when i get to 50 clients. Which i probably will do before the end of the year as have built from 2 clients since February this year, then i will have a decision to make. As then i cant see me being able to do everything.

Regards

MarkS

Stuartbham · Senior Member

Thanks for all the replies and advice guys.

I had a chat this morning to one of my carpenter clients about this and they use a local guy who charges £65 per month for SEO. They've been using him for a few years and they rank number 1 or 2 on Google for Carpenters in their local area's.

I've arranged to have a meeting with him next week so will keep you all informed.

ghis · Senior Member

My husband and i paid for SEO, it didnt work for us, we signed in for a 12 month contract paying £200 a month and were showing on 4th page if we were lucky. I phoned the company up witin the first couple months and they say to see any result you have to wait up 6 months. We waited 6-12 months and nothing happened apart from £2400 lighter.

I currently do google adwords for my husband and it is instant and it works plus you can control it without having to pay a third party. Adwords is the way to go, but you need to do some light reading on how to do it otherwise could prove otherwise.

Good luck

ghis · Senior Member

Hi Bob,

I've sent you a link to the website

our main keywords were the geaographical towns and the word "locksmiths" as this is how a typical person searches for us.

Tell me what you think

-- Edited by Shamus on Wednesday 23rd of May 2012 05:37:10 PM

BobHarper · Guru

@Ghames - can you point me to your Website and tell us the keywords you were targeting so I can do an SEO review?

ghis · Senior Member

I forgot to say, that the company did more than that they also altered/ added some of the content as well for optimisation. Still didnt work

BobHarper · Guru

@Ghames - I can see how you are targeting towns with individual pages. That's good.

Can you tell me what your number one keyword/town is?

I had a quick look at one town and see you are page 1 position 9.

ghis · Senior Member

Hi Bob

We've never been on page 1 but if we are than thats due to Adwords ranking our website as we are no longer paying for SEO

Lets say our main keyword/town is Locksmiths in Canterbury

Cheers

BobHarper · Guru

Ghames,

I'll have a look at this next week but what I would mention is that Google Places dominate page one. This change fairly recently so can I ask, did you do SEO before or after Google made this change?

mushroom · Senior Member

I haven't been on for a while, and I know this is an older thread, but I have just had an interesting conversation and just thought I'd throw my tuppence in.

I have a client who is a high-end website designer, this guy is regularly designing sites for £15,000 plus. I picked his brains about SEO, and he has said there are a lot of con artists out there, and basically, anyone who claims that they can get you no 1 on google is talking through their jacksy and are to be avoided at all costs. You also have to watch for the ones that charge and don't know what they are doing. Unfortunately the website design profession has been affected by every tom, dick and harry starting up, (a bit like bookkeeping) and there are a lot of people who really are never going to be good at your SEO.

My client personally paid someone else for his SEO as he was too busy, and he paid about £300-£500 per month for 8 months. Apparently it can take 6 months to see results as SEO is a regular, ongoing campaign. Large companies, like coca cola etc thousands of pounds each month for people to do nothing but work on SEO.

Apparently it is better to hit geographical regions and keywords are no longer the in thing with SEO either. They help, but things are leaning towards social networking as well, blogging, facebook, twitter etc. Which isn't great for our profession, I mean, really, who wants to read a lot of blogs on bookkeeping and accounting. It's different for people who are selling fashion or cars or other interesting stuff, not our services. Unfortunately now though I am keeping up with the jonses and getting a blog page on my site (sigh).

Princess · Senior Member

There's a book called "How to outsmart google" which you can get for a reasonable price from Amazon. It gives you a brief education on SEO and the history of it. It also gives you ideas of how to do your own SEO. It's worth having a look at something like that before committing huge amounts of money to someone else. In the area where I live I don't think I would ever get to the top of "Accountant in [town name]" as there are so many franchises and other rubbish blocking the way. But the book has helped me improve my ranking a bit.

The book says that the key thing to do is to get other websites to link through to you. I got listed in the free small business directory and now come up much higher via their site. Similarly with the local town website.

There is a lot you can do on your own without paying a penny. The book isn't big, it took me a few hours to read it and took a lot of the mystery out of it.

ghis · Senior Member

Hi Bob

When were the changed made? We did SEO last year our 12 month contracted ended Jan just gone. I'm really not sold on SEO could be due to bad experiences plus would not pay for a third party again to deal with our SEO, and also it isn't any cheaper than adwords. So Adwords for me wins hands down. aww

ghis · Senior Member

mushroom wrote:

I have a client who is a high-end website designer, this guy is regularly designing sites for £15,000 plus. I picked his brains about SEO, and he has said there are a lot of con artists out there, and basically, anyone who claims that they can get you no 1 on google is talking through their jacksy and are to be avoided at all costs. You also have to watch for the ones that charge and don't know what they are doing. Unfortunately the website design profession has been affected by every tom, dick and harry starting up, (a bit like bookkeeping) and there are a lot of people who really are never going to be good at your SEO.

I picked our company to do SEO as they were a local website developers, i wanted someone i could go and sit down with them and chat to them about our requirements. They never promised top rank but they said within the first page was a possability. (never saw that). They talked the talk. But again like your client they also dealt with larger clients designing website up to £15000 we were small fishes so i dont think they really bothered in doing any work for us.

Whilst we are on this subject i was told having a you tube video on your website google will rank you up higher becuase of traffic going through to watch the vid and the length of time they are on your site also helps smile

BobHarper · Guru

@Ghames - I think the Google changes happened during your SEO campaign.

There are basically two sides to SEO:

1. On-page...there are 40 (ish) things that can effect the results

2. Off-page...this is basically the number and quality of links coming into a page

Off-page is more important that On-page (circa 3:1) but in my opinion there is no excuse for not having On-Page set correctly.

£200 a month isn't enough for a good link building campaign (especially because you have multiple keywords) so I wonder if they were helping you with keyword research/strategy and getting your On-page setting correct and you should have been building links?

Yes, PPC is quick and easy (like most advertising) and there can be a place for it but I do not agree with you that it is cheaper that SEO (when SEO is done well). And, remember PPC only picks up a small percentage of clicks so the biggest cost is not what you pay but what you miss.

ghis · Senior Member

BobHarper wrote:

Yes, PPC is quick and easy (like most advertising) and there can be a place for it but I do not agree with you that it is cheaper that SEO (when SEO is done well). And, remember PPC only picks up a small percentage of clicks so the biggest cost is not what you pay but what you miss.

Bob,

I actually said that SEO isnt any cheaper than Adwords.

I currently do our adwords and i maintain No:1 spot for all our geaographical town which i have done for a while so we don't actually miss clicks we get alot. As i previously said you have to do a bit of home work on adwords to get a good ROI. We spend an average of £500 a month and get an average of £2500 in return.

I do think theres a market for all, its down to personal prefrences. What works for one doesnt mean it's going to work for another

BobHarper · Guru

@Ghames - sorry, I made a mistake; I meant to say that I do not agree PPC is cheaper that SEO.

Over the next five years you will pay £30,000 and even though you will win business, you will a) pay more than you need to if you invested in SEO and b) miss that majority of clicks because only a small fraction of people click sponsors links.

I think the reason you are sold on PPC is that you are comparing a bad SEO with good PPC. That is not a fair comparison.

What I should have also said earlier is that instead of looking at SEO you need to fully embrace Inbound Marketing.

ghis · Senior Member

Yes over the next 5 years we will pay £30,000 but our return on investment would be anywhere between £120,000- £150,000 so when you say it like that £30,000 is a small price to pay.

Yes bad experience over good, but we've had a few bad experiences paying companies to do web advertising thats why doing it yourself is the way to go.

I think SEO companies should also offer the first 6 months free so you can see what they can offer and what you are paying for, you lose £3000.00 before you see any activity on google (at £500 a month.) or at least give you an extra 6 months on top for free. But of course thats just my personal views.

BobHarper · Guru

@Ghames - £30,000 is the financial costs of not doing SEO, but there is also an opportunity cost.

Most PPC campaigns only get between 2% to 5% of potential clicks - is this consistent with your experience?

The number one natural link via SEO can get 20% to 40% of clicks.

Based on what you are getting, this means you could be missing over £750,000 over the next five years.

As for free for six months, I would suggest SEO firms agree a share of the sales. Then your and their interests would be aligned.

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

sorry, I'm lost. How did Ghislanes turnover just jump to £750k?

I Like the idea about goal congruence between the SEO firm and the client although I can't imagine any client giving a chunk of their business to one of these firms of new age muggers.

Seems to me that at the moment they get six months payment without having to show any results so where is the incentive for them to do anything?

This whole industry seems like a revisiting of the .com bubble which has to be said gave us a few great companies (such as Amazon) but most of it disappeared in a puff of smoke and I think that this one will do the same as it's a whole industry built on nothing.

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

I think I've decided I'm now going to become an SEO expert, well for 6 months at least. If people complain I'll tell them I'm a professional so don't make any promises.

Hmmmm....

Kris

BobHarper · Guru

@Shamus - the discussion is about the costs over the next five years and the biggest cost to a business is always the profit it missed, usually from poor marketing, sales and pricing.

@Kris - you joke but there is no reason why bookkeepers can't add value to client relationships.

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

Bob, I'm not so sure I am joking. I managed to get my site to number one position for the terms: fixed price bookkeeping, fixed price bookkeeper, fixed cost bookkeeper, bookkeeper ayrshire and bookkeeping ayrshire.

I'm also above the fold on page one for a host of others, and the bottom of page one for more. I accept that none of the terms I have targeted are highly competitive, but being top for a business type plus area seems to be what people are looking for. I'm sure that I could do a better job than a lot of SEO companies out there. It may be something I will think about.

Kris

BobHarper · Guru

@Shamus - my calculation was based on these assumptions a) SEO click rate for being number one is 30% b) current PPC click rate of 5% c) sales from 5% clicks over five years = £135,000.

So, my calculation was £135,000 divided by 5 times 30 = £810,000.

The question is what difference could this make to the business owners in terms of extra profit and business value?

And, what would this extra money mean to them on a personal level?

I know we all generalise but it seems like Ghames is going to let one bad experience turn their back on a massive opportunity. We all make mistakes, the idea is that we learn from them and improve.

These are the takeaways:

1. £200 a month is not really enough to implement an SEO campaign that will make a difference.

2. SEO is part of Inbound marketing...this requires at least a day a week and ongoing investment.

3. Research should be carried out before embarking on an SEO campaign including detailed competitor analysis.

4. Good SEO/Inbound Marketing adds value to a business and protects revenue.

For me, this type of analysis is what bookkeeping/accountants should be doing to help clients. It is numbers based and potentially hugely valuable. And, there is no reason why a bookkeeper cannot provide support to clients in the area of SEO.

The example of charging for results is from Value Pricing - the only 100% ethical pricing model.

BobHarper · Guru

@Kris - win them on the bookkeeping, build trust and then let clients buy other services. That is Permission Based marketing.

ghis · Senior Member

Hi Bob

The company that did our SEO spent 3 months on research
6 months for SEO to work
and the rest of not alot really.. But yes bad experience and can't tarnish everyone with the same brush.

It also really depends on what you have to offer customers, if customers want to do extensive research on what they want to buy and compare to others i'm sure seo will work, in my husaband's line of work when people are lock out in emergency they click on the 1st link they see.

BobHarper · Guru

@Ghames - interesting. so what Click Rate are you getting?

scottart · Newbie

Hi all,

It seems you have had a mixed bag of experience there which is not surprising really considering the vast difference in quality of SEO firms.

I actually work as an SEO consultant and just to pick up on a couple points:

- be a bit wary of contracts because I've heard a lot of times that people have signed a contract then basically nothing has happened and although it is true that it is very hard to guarantee rankings for certain keywords, there are a lot of keywords that you can pretty much guarantee rankings for - especially easy local ones such as "carpenter in leeds" or wherever.

If you are not in a contract then you can pull out anyway.

- Doing SEO yourself is hard and time consuming as you have to build links and write content etc on an ongoing basis while keeping up to date with all the latest search engine changes.

Oh and forget automated tools - the people that use those are usually the same people that cry every time the next update happens and their sites drop. None of my clients have ever been affected by the updates because things are done the right way.

- Cost - cost for SEO on the whole is expensive - it just is so obviously you have to make it profitable. This is done in the right keyword : time required ratio (as time is usually used as a cost measurement).

If this is done correctly then it works and this should all be laid out for you in the initial proposal.

Unfortunately there are a lot of sharks in this business who are too quick to take your money and not actually work closely with you to actually achieve conversions and an ROI. A lot fo them like previously mentioned also use questionable techniques which could bite you further down the line or they use their own link network meaning if you leave them they will remove the links and your site will drop.

Hope you find a good seo consultant anyway but try avoid a contract and try get them to talk about conversions and ROI in the proposal.

Scott

emmawilliam87 · Newbie

Hey I have heard alot about sandyallain SEO Services, The best affordable seo company in europe, You should try their packages, I guess they have all type of packages available from small to large firms.

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

Ooo... Would that be the same as the one in your signature???

langston7 · Newbie

Interesting topic. I've a bit of experience with SEO and with SEO companies over the years. Although I've heard of some good SEO companies, there are a lot other low quality companies out there that basically ruin it for the good guys.

I've ended up doing SEO myself and whilst I'd say I've got good rankings, the time was quite overwelming. I'm sure the good companies have procedures in place to effectively speed up what I was doing.

On site SEO is important, so the first thing to do is to get that sorted. It goes deeper than making sure the tags on your site are keyworded etc, but it is actually fairly easy to do. For SEO advice for those that have little (or even lots) of experience, I'd start with SEOMOZ. They have the basic articles (What is SEO, basic HTML etc), but they also have some in depth/technical articles. Effectively, the information to learn how to become an "SEO Professional" is there, it is just a case of digging through the rubbish and highlighting the key points. Getting the content right on a site helps a great deal, especially when the keywords match the anchor text from backlinks obtained.

Now I'm no SEO expert, but this is what I've learnt over the years:
There are good and bad SEO companies. I'd only EVER use one in the future if they had been personally recommended by someone I knew and they could give me an honest breakdown of what they did, how it helped, the cost and so on.

Backlinking is just as important, if not more important, than on site SEO. Relevant links are likely to be given more value (make sure they are dofollow), although getting on a well known site (in Googles eyes) is not going to do you any harm even if it isn't really related. Anchor text is important. When it comes to backlinking it is the quality and not the quantity, so these companies offering high volumes of directory submissions are not where you should be looking. Spend time finding good sites. I did quite well from "guest posting" (finding a site related, offering to write a related post in exchange for backlinks).

That's a few basics i've drew from what I know, but like I said, have a search round SEOMOZ as there is some quite good information on there, and you will be surprised how many professional SEO companies/individuals actually use this site and its tools on an ongoing basis.

Other things I would suggest are setting up a "Local" google listing. It's free and essentially will get you on the first page without doing any SEO (it's worth spending an hour researching how to create a good one as this will affect placement etc). https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin?service=lbc&continue=https://www.google.com/local/add%3Fservice%3Dlbc

Sign Up with AdWords. You have to pay every time someone clicks BUT they regularly give out £100 free vouchers (which isn't a scam as I've probably gone through £500 of freebies). Again, look on SEOMOZ or similar sites for a "Basic guide to AdWords Local Targetting" or similar, as believe me, if you don't target your campaigns, £100 won't last more than a few hours and you'll get nothing from it.

Just thought I'd throw in my 2p as I'm looking at training, so I'm taking all the advice and have nothing to offer. If anyone wants to contact me I can point them the right way in terms of where to look for information etc.