Gift box Website SEO's
It's 5.19 am, and I'm still working on the SEO of a NZ gift box and gift hamper (I started at 10 p.m. last night) I'm doing a few searches by hand in Google to see how the site is doing in various searches; I have a program to do it, but like to do it the hard slow way now and again.
I notice two sites were often in the top (most expensive and often more than $10 per click) Google Adwords position (that’s the position that’s right above the non-paid results) and you often almost click them by mistake.
So I decide to have a look at these site and see why they didn't highly rank in Google natural Search Engines Results Page (SERP), of course I was thinking these sites couldn't have any SEO work done on them. I had intended to use the sites as examples of how SEO could help.
Shock! Horror! They have had SEO done on them! Both sites were optimized by different Auckland SEO firms; and expensive SEO firms at that. So off I went to visit these SEO firms online; I further investigated the back-links to these firms that help them do better online (the SEO companies, not their clients) in SERP’s for keywords like SEO Services and guess what.... the two gift-box sites were each sending links to their respective SEO firms; 4 from one gift-box site and 8 from the gift hamper site.
So I click back to these gift sites, and have a look at the sites that were linking to them... You know, these high priced SEO firms, had not given their respective gift sites one single link. Not one lousy stinking link.
And to top it off; on closer inspection of the SEO work done (although at first glance the SEO work looked ok), with my experienced eye, I could see that the on-page SEO was basically a waste of time.
So the owners of these gift websites, apart from paying through the nose for a good looking website, had also paid for SEO work; and now still had to pay at least $10 per click to get people to their website and hopefully to buy their goods.
Now I don't deny that both websites the gift box and hamper sites were nice looking websites, the graphic and page layout was professional and looked great; the photos of the products were stunning, with nice fake drop shadows added (obviously photos taken and enhanced by a professional photographer and graphic artist). The site looked lovely, but these sites main job was to send links to the SEO and web design firm that created them.
I'm probably underestimating it when I say that each site (selling approx 250 products each), would have cost the owner at least $40 thousand each. Consider the cost of the web design, the photography and so called SEO; and now they are paying at least $10 per visitor...Hell it makes me so mad when people are taken advantage of like this. I guess these gift box businesses could have had the websites made as a tax write off; they would be excellent for that purpose....
The thing that really bugs me too is I would dearly love to write to these gift box businesses, and suss them out (not to try and get their SEO business, but to tell them they are being ripped off big time), but that would be seen as questionable conduct on my part.
I HATE SEO COMPANIES THAT RIP OFF THEIR CLIENTS. GOD DAMMIT GIVE YOUR CLIENTS A FAIR GO, OR ADMIT YOU CAN'T DO SEO.
Ok, I've had my rave.
Regards Lynny
