SEO business - Should I do it?

[faisj]

Hi everyone,

Since a few months I have a forum called: The Twenty Four Forum.com
Because, I came to know a lot of people came from Google and msn search
I started to work on the SEO of the website.

I worked a lot of hours and:

1)
www.google.com search for: 24 forum
and =
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=24+forum&btnG=Search

2)
www.google.com search for: 24 fan forum
and =
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=24+fan+forum&btnG=Google+Search

3)
www.live.com search for: 24 forum
and =
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=24+forum&mkt=en-us&FORM=LVCP&go.x=0&go.y=0&go=Search

4)
www.live.com search for: 24 fan forum
and =
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=24+fan+forum&mkt=en-US&form=QBRE&go.x=0&go.y=0&go=Search


As you can see all the hard work did pay off.
The site was first 10 pages back and just by content placement,
meta tags etc etc... I got the sites on the first page and a very high score.

When I showed it to some people they said that I could earn a lot if I did
this for other people. As such this topic.
It does take a lot of time to get the page set up that good and
i cant give a garantue. ( i dont use any software I do everything manually )

Is there a good market for setting up pages (seo)
and if i would do this for people how much do you think I should ask.

kind regards,

Faisj

 

[TWM]

I would suggest optimizing for and marketing a more general keyword, working to beat out the official site. When you obtain top placement for that, then you can think about doing SEO work for others.

 

[faisj]

I would suggest optimizing for and marketing a more general keyword, working to beat out the official site. When you obtain top placement for that, then you can think about doing SEO work for others.

general keywords are almost impossible to do in such a short period of time
also it is very hard to do with a forum as I get restricted by the things I can
do by the vBulletin software.

But on the other hand, I could give it a try.

I was already very happy with the keywords i wanted: 24 forum and 24 fan forum

 

[faisj]

Anybody?

 

[DropLister]

Problem with seo is that you really have to deliver, and continue deliver. I have some sites that have ranked well, but no way in hell will I try to sell my services. Let's say you are hired and it doesnt rank well, EEEK. It's a strange field and changes in the search engines could really mess with your business. If you do get into good luck.

 

[Keral_Patel]

I have been doing some SEO work. But rarely.

The thing is that the clients want to target premium keywords and that also in short time. In short they wanna kill the SEO guy

It will create havoc and the relations might be at risk if you have any with the client. He will think you scraped him off from his lovely dollars and you are not giving promising results. By the time the actual effect takes place. He or she claims that "Man, when your SEO didn't worked I made 10 links myself and this worked." But they forget that someone has already worked hard.

I have a setup like this here: http://www.bluesoftweb.com/search-packages.php

This is not for my advertising but you can make a page like that. And do some marketing to get some clients. But remember the clients coming from everywhere don't know if you are a good SEO or not. So they will doubt you on every step. And explaining them the things is a big headache.

EX: If you make 1000 links he wants to see them all from google which is not possible.

Maybe more then half are not yet crawled by the google bot itself.

He wants Pagerank which is also not possible to see it on toolbar before an update.

He wants his results to move on top positions. Which is also not possible instantly.

If you take his site from #8 to #4 then it is just 4 positions ahead for the client. But for the SEO guy it is worth a month's headaches and sleepless nights.

Just sharing some horror stories that are involved in this thing. The SEO thing is not harder but the harder thing is to explain the client to give us proper time to show some results.

 

[dongan]

The SEO thing is not harder but the harder thing is to explain the client to give us proper time to show some results.

it may look like a marketing stuff. but not really so. i had such situations.

 

[Damion]

Hi Faisj,

You could get into the SEO business but as you said, at least that is my impression you just started out so you don't have a portfolio of results to show from other websites you may have successfully worked on.
This is kind of an disadvantage in regards to other SEO'rs.

Depending on the desired keywords where the client wants to rank good for you probably have to turn alot of clients down if you're honest in your capabilities and SEO knowledge since you just started out learning about the subject.

It's definitely a $$$$ and up business and the opportunities are for you in small businesses with crappy SEO'd websites.
I have seen quite a few Dutch websites which surprises me about the ineffectiveness about their whole set up.

I once came across a website that supposedly should be an online store but there wasn't a single opportunity to complete a sale, you just couldn't buy anything!

One online store mentioned "We are closed in the weekend"

And then to see the competition in the search results which is minimal and with some effort they can be on the first page if not #1 position for their primary keywords related to their products/services.

Just wanted to say that you can offer alot more then SEO alone but also from a Marketing point of view to increase their product/service conversions.

Opportunities are definitely there.

I think the best way to build a rep for yourself is to take on small projects for free to get your portfolio filled up and then start charging for your services but very moderately and advance upwords.

Try to find some local businesses that also have an online webshop and analyze the potential to increase their rankings to have better SERPS's so they can increase conversion rates and have less need for Adword campaigns.

Go really niche on this if you know what i mean.

Once you have something to show for you can take on more serious projects money wise and the keywords you are going to focus on.

There is a lot more then solely optimizing page titles and building links that all contributes to a better SERP.

Nice job on the 24 forum :tu:

Here is something to think about how to tackle this

You have a bunch of supplemental results,

site:www.twentyfourforum.com *** -sljktf <-- Use that line as a search query.

which you would want to analyze to get even more higher results for your forum as you have now.

It's a good business to focus on, either for personal projects or for taking on projects for clients but like Nick said there are also headaches involved

 

[Keral_Patel]

Know what. I have found that working for some site for 2 months can get a couple of $$'s but on the other hand we are domainers. And we have plenty of domain names with us. I developed some sites on them and did my own work. It paid me 5 times more then I would have got from a client for doing that same work for his or her site.

Just another opinion that I forgot to mention earlier.

 

[DropLister]

I think if you get into it, and they want a keyword and its really competitive go "long tail" and explain to them how it will probably bring more targetted traffic in the long run. It would be easier to get results for them.

 

[faisj]

Thanks for the advice guys I really read everyword twice!!!

 

[YesBrilliant]

I think if you get into it, and they want a keyword and its really competitive go "long tail" and explain to them how it will probably bring more targetted traffic in the long run. It would be easier to get results for them.

That is my take, too.

I did some projects as well and clients always asked specific numbers:
- In how many Days will my site be #1 in Yahoo?
- How many visitors did I get Today (the first day of work)?
- How many people will buy my product?
- How much - money - will I be making in one week?
... and so on.

My answer was always : "I can Not promise you any number!" (with emphasys on the capitalized words). Immediatelly I could see their faces with wide open eyes, astonished. In their head they were thinking "This guy is gonna take my money!".

Then I continued to explain that it would be Certainly better than it is today, maybe Much better But I can Not promise you numbers nor even time. Just to make a long story short.

It always paid to be upfront with the clients, letting them expecting less and delivering more than I said them. At the end, none of my clients complained. Along the way maybe, but not at the end.

BTW, I don't even have a SEO site myself to show my work, all was done via word of mouth referrals. Not loads of money but something I ike to do.

 

[Richieboy67]

At any rate, I have been doing seo for about 2 years now and I have taken course after course, I have actually flown accross the country for seminars and I have a library here filled with books....

Before getting into this field I would definitly learn a bit more because it can be brutal. It is true that many clients will not be happy unless they achieve over night results. Not to mention that nobody wants to pay what the service is worth. When our service fees end up lower quality can suffer. I try to include as much advice with service as I can because in some cases the seo will do nothing without the proper promotion etc....

Also, the fact that your site did well does not mean you know seo well so be careful there in the way you promote. Keywords and search phrases are important but it is just as important to place them in places where they will have the most impact. There is much, much, much more than just researching keywords and placing them in meta tags..... There is also much more to it then getting a high pr. A high pr does not mean the site is getting tons of traffic.

The results of a good seo job will include not only a higher pr but also many pages indexed in the targeted search engines.

My advice would be to give away some service free of charge for refferals as someone posted above. Portfolios are not generally needed in this field. All you need is happy client referrals really. At least that is my opinion for what it is worth. Join as many newsgroups as you can that are related to search engines, ad sense, google, seo, web design etc.... You have to also know html and xhtml more so, php and mysql also help a great deal. Visit those newsgroups daily and just read, read, read, read.... Get as many books as you can and read some more.... You can never read too much in this field...

Some easy things you can utilize to help you with seo are totally free. I love all the stuff that google offers. The tools and stats, I use them all and I don't know how I lived without them. Get yourself some good software if you can and believe me, it will help you a great deal no matter what your skill level is... I like IBP...

One of the easiest things to do to learn is go visit the top sites in the topics you want to go up in. Take a look at the source code of those sites, keywords, descriptions etc....

Feel free to pm me if you like. I would be glad to help in any way I can. I am by no means an expert. I have many years to go before I can honestly call myself an expert but I do feel that I am getting better every day by learning from the best....

give me a shout and I will hook you up with some newsgroups run by some industry leaders...

Good luck...