Had SEO Firm tell me to Start Over - pros and cons help please
-
Hi
So I have quotes of 1250 to 2500 a month to run my website, seo wise.
What I am told is they will do all facebook postings, 4 blog posts each month, some citations, and site optimization.
Those amounts due seem like a lot. Yet I was last to start all over.
Basically I was told that because of some bad backlinks, which only a few remain, that you can never recover from an algorithm penalty. And with a Disavow, its like telling Google - penalize me please
So the plan was this:
$3000 for a new site, and new domain, and then it has no penalties, and I will be ranking in no time.
The problem is I am branded. My domain and business name is Bernese Of The Rockies. People know us and we are very respected.
So if we create a new site like example.com, I do not want to mislead people. Or if there is a penalty for say a landing page or site, where I am sending people to my main site for more info type of thing.
Just looking for your input if this is a common issue, where if you have a non manual, but algo penalty that you must restart?
Thank you so much for your thoughts and suggestions.
-
Hi Berner
In relation to "links", you can recover and fairly quickly as William pointed out.
Every website needs continued maintenance. Disavow provides you the opportunity to keep you site in shape! We run monthly health checks (using Moz) for our clients which includes refreshing link data, keeping disavow files updated etc. This gives us the opportunity to identify and solve any site issues efficiently with the client firmly in the loop so to speak.
What has happened? Why it happen? Where? What we will do? Evidence/Outcome?
Whoever you employ, make sure they cover everything and provide "evidence". You deserve to have this. It's not just links that can get you penalised however. If you are researching what exactly Google will penalise you for, take a read below.
http://blog.kissmetrics.com/penalized-by-google/
Keep us informed, we're a friendly bunch!
-
Hi Thanks for the concern. No signed contract or anything like that. I was shopping around for quotes first.
I just figured $36,000 a year to do seo on a site is crazy for my budget. So this is why I am here too learn all I can first, then maybe either do good enough to do my own work proudly, or save some money by having some of the work done myself.
I love the challenge of SEO, yet I find difficulties when there is not a clear road map as I see black hat and white hat seo, but sometimes its difficult to know the difference.
But I am here to learn and I am very grateful for the opportunity.
-
I totally agree with Lesley. And here's the thing, the fee for what you need (around $3,000 a month) is pretty realistic...however, the plan of action is not. I totally disagree with the approach. I don't think that you are being communicated with effectively. I am hoping that you haven't already signed a contract and paid these folks. There are better SEOs who can and will provide you better advice and action that what you are being given. If you are stuck because you already have paid, pass along the info you're getting here and continue to post as they make new recommendations. Don't let them do anything to your business that makes you think "Hmmm, I don't know if that's the right thing." - Ask a ton of questions. You are the client. They have an obligation to serve YOU.
-
Thank you for the tips. It is greatly appreciated
-
You can recover, but I wouldn't recommend hiring one of those companies that said you couldn't.
-
The prices are in line with industry standards, but I think the way of handling it is not. The only time I ever recommend someone changing their domain name is if the company went through a period where they have a bad reputation and cannot recover from that. Like there are bad reviews and things that you cannot control around the internet with links back to the site.
If I were doing SEO on the site I would look for a penalty and then disavow any bad links. Then I would start drilling local citations for the site. I have seen your posts a couple of times on here lately, it seems that local citations would help your site out a lot. I am assuming that you do not ship dogs across the country, or it is very rare for you to do. So you will want to focus on local sites that can get your local ranking factors higher.
At the same time I would do the blog posting and I would also do forum posting too.
-
Thank you for the support.
That's just it I cannot afford $3000 for a new site, yet if there is no recovery from penguin or whatever, then I have to start thinking about the future etc.
Thank you so much for your kind words.
-
Hi Chris,
You have been misinformed. Disavow is your friend when done correctly. If you know you took a hit for bad backlinks, you can recover. This comes from personal experience of fixing this issue. You are usually talking about 1-2 month recovery period when link cleanup is done right.
If you like your brand, domain, and you were ranking before a link penalty, then clean it up. Should be cheaper than a new website as well.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What is the best way to differentiate and optimize two similar websites's SEO?
What is the best way to differentiate and optimize two similar websites's SEO, having in mind that they do not produce content?
Local Website Optimization | | EmmaGeorge0 -
Even after doing every possible thing required for SEO my client's website is not coming on top.can you tell me where i am lacking?
_ Hi team_ I have been working on a website called signboards.co.in since 4 months.it was not in top 100 but now below 50 for 2-3 keywords.even after submitting in many directories after competitor analysis moz shows only one external link in its link metrics.apart from this every possible thing required for SEO is done in a proper way,but still it is not giving results.can you help me out?all my other clients work is going good except this one.can you please let me know what is going wrong with my project?As the project submission date is near i need your help as soon as possible. Thanks Najia jehan
Local Website Optimization | | Najia-ali0 -
Question About Local SEO
Hey all, If a business operates in one city but works with associated organizations across multiple regions how would this impact a local SEO campaign? For example, a transportation company is located in Texas but services the Northwest and New England by outsourcing to smaller transportation companies in each of those regions. Would it be wise to create pages for each region they service on their website and then break that down in further into specific cities? Also, would it be worth targeting local search terms even though specific cities are serviced by the associated organizations and not the parent company itself? Thanks in advance, Andrew
Local Website Optimization | | mostcg0 -
Multi location silo seo technique
A physical therapy company has 8 locations in one city and 4 locations in another with plans to expand. I've seen two methods to approach this. The first I feel is sloppy and that is the individual url for each location that points to from the location pages on the main domain. The second is to use the silo technique incorporated with metro scale addition. You have the main domain with the number of silos (individual stores) and each silo has its own content (what they do at each store is pretty much the same). My question is should the focus of each silo, besides making sure there is no duplicate copy, to increase their own hyperlocal outreach? Focus on social, reviews, content curated for the specific location. How would you attack this problem?
Local Website Optimization | | Ohmichael1 -
Can PPC harm SEO results, even if it's off-domain?
Here's the scenario. We're doing SEO for a national franchise business. We have over 60 location pages on the same domain, that we control. Another agency is doing PPC for the same business, except they're leading people to un-indexable landing pages off domain. Apparently they're also using location extensions for the businesses that have been set up improperly, at least according to the Account Strategists at Google that we work with. We're having a real issue with these businesses ranking in the multi-point markets (where they have multiple locations in a city). See, the client wants all their location landing pages to rank organically for geolocated service queries in those cities (we'll say the query is "fridge repair"). We're trying to tell them that the PPC is having a negative effect on our SEO efforts, even though there shouldn't be any correlation between the two. I still think the PPC should be focused on their on-domain location landing pages (and so does our Google rep), because it shows consistency of brand, etc. I'm getting a lot of pushback from the client and the other agency, of course. They say it shouldn't matter. Has anyone here run into this? Any ammo to offer up to convince the client that having us work at "cross-purposes" is a bad idea? Thanks so much for any advice!
Local Website Optimization | | Treefrog_SEO0 -
Schema training/resources for local SEO?
I am currently in the process of apply schema for dozens of clients (many are large retailers). Although I am not a developer, I do know the basics of schematic markup & structured data. I do work with a development team and I'm trying to provide them with schema application best practices. Obviously there are many good articles/blog posts out there about schema. However I'm looking for a more substantial training course, webinar or resource website about schema application. Does anybody have any good recommendations?
Local Website Optimization | | RosemaryB0 -
Does the Location of my Server effect my SEO?
Does the geographic Location of my Server effect my SEO? HELP US! We are arguing for 3 weeks already. My partner has mentioned multiple times in the past that "since 2013 google does not require your server to be in the country you are targeting for seo"
Local Website Optimization | | DanielBernhardt
And that actually all they care about is if its a good and fast server - not where its physically located in the world. I am a strong believer that the geographic location of your server directly effects your SEO ranking... lets say if you want to target www.google.ru for your seo, best you have a server located in Russia for hosting your website.. WHO IS RIGHT? Choose the winner and base the facts.
If anybody has the correct answer and information to base it on it will help us alot - and maybe even spare some unnecessary violent between us two! we found some articles across the web, sadly they are all dated back to 2012.... Thanks in Advance for all the help guys!0 -
Local Rank & Branding Confusion - HELP
I am working with a client now that has two sites that serve two segments of a particular market segment. They have two different URLs which cater to these different target markets BUT the company is known in its local market as a their brand name (of course) which is different than their 2 domain names used on these 2 sites. Confusing eh? This has resulted in confusing Google and their rank has suffered a bit. To provide more color + insight- Let's just say this company is called AtlantaEventsInc and they offer event services for corporate events and let's say weddings. So let's say they have had atlantaeventscorporate.com for 20 years and then they add atlantaeventweddings.com about a year ago since their wedding business is expanding. So they promote their corporate events on one site and their wedding events on another. These 2 sites also currently share one blog, share one Facebook page, one Twitter and have two Google+ pages. Should we keep these two sites totally separate? and even have separate blogs and separate social media accounts? OR since our rank has only suffered with the new wedding site (just a year old) should we retire that site? (i suppose we could still keep separate blogs though for each target market. WOULD LOVE INSIGHT ON THIS! Thanks, Chris
Local Website Optimization | | Sundance_Kidd1