We are in the market for three things.

1) A new SEO company to manage three brands. The current company we use has really fell behind and isn't up to par. There are a few local SEO companies, but they have no experience with our business (web hosting for example). Having searched here, I see a few that people recommended in the past but when researching them, they can prove no experience or show a portfolio. Who do some of you guys use? What experiences?

2) Public Relations. The company we used in the past to manage PR is gone. Local companies again have no experience with this industry and are very expensive. Who do you guys use? What experiences?

3) Ad Creative. We will be pushing out a lot of advertising. Right now Ceonex is finishing three sites for us. While they do excellent in design, we really were not to happy with the creative they have done in the past nor the price.

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Small Print:
Yes we searched here prior to posting. Yes this is three separate subjects. Any experience or recommendations welcome.
Mods: Feel free to move if this is too much of request and less a request for experience.

You can give a look to www.DotTrend.com out of Louisville. As far as I know they don't do SEO work, but PR and creative work they are good at. They've been doing work for a while, but recently split from another company. If you call, ask to speak with Dianna Castro (or maybe Diannah or Diahanna... never can remember how to spell it).

I've worked with Wayne and Di in the past on other things than this, but have also seen examples of their previous work in the area you're wanting and it was very nice. They don't work cheap, but they don't charge Ceonex prices either.

Wouldn't hurt just to talk to them. They may or may not be what you need.

Beware of most SEO companies as the business has become like webhosting and webdesign, with every second idiot thinking they can do it - all with little idea of the industry.

The worst offenders use auto-submission software - it looks too cheap and it is, because it will *not* get you rankings.

There are also companies with aggressive telesales campaigns - Iomart for one - which are also incapable of gaining any form of commercial rankings.

Absolutely avoid companies that build SEO campaigns firstly on optimising your website - some is useful, but to rank for commerically valuable terms the SEO work is conducted offsite in the form of aggressive link-building campaigns.

If you want a good SEO then you should really look into the industry first, and see what names come up. A place to start picking up names might be here:
http://www.seo-lab.com/seo-articles/full-index.php

All of those names have some impact on the SEO industry - Andy Beal, Dan Thies, Phil Craven, John Scott, etc. There are other names not there, though - Bob Masa and Jill Whalen, who have also made their names in respective fields of SEO.

A warning, to you, though - SEO usually doesn't come cheap, and anyone looking to pay for SEO for industries such as webhosting and webdesign are looking for rankings in some of the fiercest competition on the commercial internet - after porn. So expect limited achievable goals for limited funds. Also note - ensure you have a proper service agreement that sees a refund where targets are not met by your SEO.

Another last note - watch out for well-placed but inaccurate comments by SEO hobbyists. I learned my way into SEO working on my hobby sites - but the moment you step into a commercial environment everything changes. I wouldn't go get SEO advice from people who aren't actually earning their bread from their SEO services, anymore than I'd ask how to manage server from somebody who knows only how to build a website.

Originally posted by I, Brian

If you want a good SEO then you should really look into the industry first, and see what names come up. A place to start picking up names might be here:
http://www.seo-lab.com/seo-articles/full-index.php


Thanks for the link.
A warning, to you, though - SEO usually doesn't come cheap,

I know. We have been paying a lot for some time now. :)

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
1) A new SEO company to manage three brands. The current company we use has really fell behind and isn't up to par.
Just curious, did the last Google dance knock them around?

Originally posted by Aussie Bob
Just curious, did the last Google dance knock them around?

Yeah. Bigtime. We dropped places where we were in the top 5 with some great key words. Like "Cheap Servers" and a few others. We actually fell almost completely out of Google. We have been having problems since the main guy of the company we use now went back to college. :D

While they do excellent in design, we really were not to happy with the creative they have done in the past nor the price.

I just want to clarify this. As Theo pointed out, it sounds like we used them for creative. We have not. I was only referring to what I have seen done for others in this regard. Price is what it is.

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Also, yes. PMs are welcomed. You know who you are. :)

My experience is that the pages to really drop from Google lately are not well linked to - so sites that rely heavily on optimising their pages are losing out big time, while sites that worry first about building big backlinking networks are doing fine. Have to say even my hobby sites have only risen, but I'm finding it takes more links to get the same effect as before.

Maybe http://www.highrankings.com/forum would be a good place to visit...

Also, while Brian make some very good points, especially when it comes to the importance of links, I must say that "building big backlinking networks" sounds dangerously close to search engine spam... While they may be working now, they could backfire later... It's all about quality links...

Originally posted by I, Brian
so sites that rely heavily on optimising their pages are losing out big time, while sites that worry first about building big backlinking networks are doing fine. Sites that rely on heavily optimizing their pages by overloading on link anchor text, titles, heading tags, and high KWD -- things that made on-page optimization pretty simple until a few months ago -- are losing out big time. Google threw a big twist into this, but it's not affecting all sites and searches, at least at the current time.

Have to say even my hobby sites have only risen, but I'm finding it takes more links to get the same effect as before.
In general hobby sites will tend to be less affected by the most recent changes at Google than those in competitive categories -- again, at least at the current time.

UmBillyCord, when you mention 'local companies', what city or region are you speaking of?

Originally posted by JayC
Sites that rely on heavily optimizing their pages by overloading on link anchor text, titles, heading tags, and high KWD -- things that made on-page optimization pretty simple until a few months ago -- are losing out big time. Google threw a big twist into this, but it's not affecting all sites and searches, at least at the current time.
So Google are somewhat fighting the SEO industry, in the hope that more truly relevant sites are listed from a keywork search, and just not the highly optimised sites getting the top spots?

Originally posted by The Pioneer
UmBillyCord, when you mention 'local companies', what city or region are you speaking of?

San Diego, CA.

Originally posted by Aussie Bob
So Google are somewhat fighting the SEO industry That's the conspiracy theory some people are presenting, but it isn't the way I see it. As I see it, Google has begun implementing technology aimed at discovering what a given page is about as opposed to what keywords it's intentionally focused on. In doing so, they've made optimization more difficult for those who haven't kept up-to-date or haven't moved beyond the basics of "use your keywords as often as posible here and here and here".

Yeah, it's made it harder for all of us... but I don't think that is specifically the intent.

Originally posted by ldcdc
I must say that "building big backlinking networks" sounds dangerously close to search engine spam... While they may be working now, they could backfire later... It's all about quality links...

In a commercial SEO environment, backlinking networks are the necessary norm.

Simply submitting links to directories and link exchanges cannot always be enough, especially when the client is looking for results within months, rather than years. :)

For more information on the matter, here's a general builder's guide:

http://www.seo-lab.com/seo-articles/independent-back-linking-networks.php

IBLN's should certainly not be constructed to look irrelevant or off-issue, though. The golden rule of SEO is to stay on topic as much as possible.


Yeah, it's made it harder for all of us... but I don't think that is specifically the intent.


Heh, the SE vs SEO battle has been going for years - the point is to keep lifting the bar so that it takes greater dedication to actually optimise for specific results. If every kid could send their site to the top for a particular keyword, you would have a very dysfunctional search engine. :)

Originally posted by I, Brian
My experience is that the pages to really drop from Google lately are not well linked to - so sites that rely heavily on optimising their pages are losing out big time, while sites that worry first about building big backlinking networks are doing fine. Have to say even my hobby sites have only risen, but I'm finding it takes more links to get the same effect as before.

Just out of curiousity, has any used this software:

http://www.cyber-robotics.com/

The Zeus Marketing Robot

Kind of an interesting concept, and I just happened to stumble on it last night while browsing Tucows.

We too were hit hard by the last large Google dance.

So UBC, when your 3 Ceonex sites are complete, will the general WHT public be informed of which host you represent ? ;)

Originally posted by Bo3b
Just out of curiousity, has any used this software:

The Zeus Marketing Robot Zeus has been around for a few years, and can be a helpful tool in automating the search for relevant links. It can also backfire on you.

The default filename for the links page created by Zeus is themeindex.html. This search at Google (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=allinurl%3Athemeindex%2Ehtm) will return pages with that name. If you have the Google toolbar and visit those pages, you'll see that almost all of them have a PageRank of zero. That directly means two things: those pages are passing no PageRank benefit to the pages linked to, and those pages are contributing nothing to the PageRank of the site they are part of.

It also may mean that those pages/sites have been identified by Google as participating in linkfarming -- either simply through "guilt by association" by using a filename that shows them to be Zeus users, by otherwise analyzing the page contents to identify it as a Zeus-generated links page, or by linkmapping (that is, there are other link pages that also have a PR0, but using that search is only showing us those that have that filename). In either case it's risky. If the first is what's happening, the risk could be avoided by using a unique filename. If the second is what is happening, the risk could be mitigated by getting away from the default Zeus page layout. If the third is what's happening... well, that will be tougher.

Another point: ever been irritated by floods of link request spam emails, all worded the same way? Most likely it's produced by Zeus or one of the other similar programs. Do you ignore them, or report them as spam? If you send out a lot of link requests you may risk one of those results. If you send out a lot of link requests using Zeus' default language in the email, you increase the chance of getting one of those results.

Zeus is a tool that can help the process of identifying related sites that may make good link partners for you. As in many areas, automated tools for this purpose can be useful, but can also invite laziness or abuse. Use it carefully, and you might find Zeus (and similar tools) to be quite helpful. Don't be careful enough, and you may regret ever having used it.