oh,oh,oh!

70% success of any business depends on the effective SEO marketing. Advertising is something that makes a sale for you, and you have to work in the marketing area to achieve great results.

You can advertise yourself and it can be really successful; however it will not be a static solution for your internet business.

So better concentrate on SEO instead of SEM.

Lopez Obrador

[edited by: engine at 5:25 pm (utc) on Mar 25, 2010]
[edit reason] See WebmasterWorld TOS [/edit]

Of course, yes, you can outsource effectively. SEO Companies get links to you, without you having to put great content on your site. If done yourself, you'll need to commit time each day, EVERYDAY. Outsourcing is definitely a good option.

I'm sure SEO companies can get links to my website but the links will be worthless. Can you explain how SEO companies will generate worthwhile links for a website that has average content and without paying for them?

Welcome to WebmasterWorld richard_h, glad to have you around!

I outsource most of my web work; development, design, PPC etc.

I can see this type of work being outsourced but, I've not had one positive experience nor have my clients over the years. The few designs that have been outsourced were not accepted. The development we've outsourced was less than satisfactory when delivered, etc. I'm sure someone is going to tell me I've been working with the wrong people, and I have. Thing is, it's been 100% failure rate and there have been numerous gigs involving outsourcing. Did you get that? A 100% failure rate.

But I'm reluctant to offer SEO services as I'm not convinced this is a service that can be outsourced cost effectively.

Your reluctance is well founded. But you used the term cost effectively and that is what outsourcing is all about, sweatshop SEO. I wouldn't be surprised if there were 9, 10, 11 and 12 years olds sitting behind some of the campaigns I've seen out there.

My understanding is that while on-site SEO can be done by an outside company, a big contributing factor is link popularity.

Links? That's what outsourcing is all about. Most of those companies have an automated empire. Everything is on auto-pilot. Very little human intervention. I really don't want to get into all the crap that takes place in these types of scenarios.

And websites will only link to decent content, which then means your outside agency needs to produce content about a business they know little about, and therefore it fails.

BINGO! I've seen typos, grammar issues, incorrect use of language, etc. Not to mention all the damn copying that takes place. I let people know that when they outsource content, they need to examine the finished product closely. Take chunks of text from each paragraph and do exact phrase searches, you might be surprised at what you find.

Some of the services quoted by an Indian company for $500 per month included; article content development, article submissions, blog content, 15 one way links per month (PR2+), creating wiki profiles, amongst other things.

What's that saying? Run Forest, Run! Back in my day it was Danger Will Robinson, Danger! ;)

I'm sure SEO companies can get links to my website but the links will be worthless.

That's a pretty good summation. This is a timely topic too as I was just speaking to a prospect on the phone last week about their website's history. Traffic took a dive a while back and they were now out looking for "another SEO". I asked what the previous SEO did and they informed me it was a link campaign with directory submissions, etc. Approximately 30 days after the link campaign, their site traffic started to decline.

This is a site with 10+ years of online history which had an established link profile. Along comes some outsourced sweatshop SEO who poisons their link profile with all the crap submissions and link spam. They also had access to the clients site at the time to make changes and create reciprocal link pages. Absolute crap that appears to have harmed this prospects online presence.

Thanks for your comments pageoneresults. From what I have read in books and on this forum, my advise to small companies with limited budget is to do it themselves, i.e. they need to have an internal content generating strategy; blog, news etc and request links from relevant websites. Would you agree?

My advise to small companies with limited budget is to do it themselves, i.e. they need to have an internal content generating strategy; blog, news etc and request links from relevant websites. Would you agree?

I'd listen to others who may chime in here. My experiences may not be the best indicator of value via outsourcing.

My advise to small companies is to hire a consultant/firm to get them started, train them to do it themselves. Someone within the company needs to become responsible for that aspect of the business. If it is a one person show, they're going to have to invest the time and make it happen. If they don't, they'll be stumbling along with their Internet presence, in many instances doing more harm than good.

There are plenty of consultants/companies that provide quality services in this area. Thing is, they are difficult to find amongst all the rest of the crap that is out there. I've seen people operating from guidelines that are 5+ years old. There are certain parts of the world who just haven't caught up yet.

And then there is Sweatshop SEO - and it's ugly for the consumer.

Small Company or Big Company both have Organic SEO is better Option instead of SEM or PPC.

Because journaly Users use organic list only so concentrate on SEO only....

It can be outsourced you just have to do your homework and research. Many people out there get burned from hearing buzz words on the phone. If someone promises you the world along with riches I would run in the other direction. SEO is not a magic pill it is a building process that comes with many different layers.